Most creative industries are highly competitive and difficult to earn high income. In this video, Lizzie Peirce walks you through her nine income streams and how they work, which may give you inspiration for your own business.
When I made the decision to become a full-time, professional photographer, I knew it was going to be tough to make decent money. I was willing to fight for my place in the industry, but even then, I wasn't prepared for the first two years. As an industry, photography is one of the most competitive out there, and due to its low barrier of entry, you can end up fighting for even basic jobs.
I quickly learned that photography alone would not suffice and that I needed more revenue streams. This isn't to say that photography would be the root of the income, but pressing my shutter button in exchange for money couldn't be the only way I got income. Given my background in academia and writing, starting a blog and freelancing as a writer were my first steps and they worked out well and led me to be an Editor here at Fstoppers. However, the more revenue stream you can develop and maintain, the better.
What revenue streams outside of photoshoots have been the most lucrative for you?
They certainly spend a lot of time commenting on articles they deem a "waste of time".
Yyyepp. I know, right.
Love it! Next you can deny watching the video, reading the article, reading the entire thread and spending time writing/contributing to the thread.
Merry Christmas, Benoit!
Thanks. Same to you and your family.
Looking at this as an artist, not a business person, I'm very curious to know how many hours a day she works, what her average hourly rate is over the course of a typical year, and is it worth it over a decent paying 9-5 where one can pursue art as a hobby without all the stress & anxiety of having to run it as a business.
I get the impression any type of multiplatform content creation is a serious grind. The constant branding must get tedious. This particular video was a heavy handed advertisement. Didn't work, at least not the way a great TV or radio spot would.
If she's working 10-14 hours a day, 6 days a week (including travel time), I have to wonder if it's really worth it for the average artist. It's gotta be hard if you're also marketing yourself as a product (model, brand name). Always on, always in character.
I don't know whether you remember Sorelle Amore; she built her brand, and walked away for a time, because it was making her miserable.
bingo. These people can't make a mistake on top of spending their life trying to fill their quota. In a world where any reasonable arguing labels you as a negative person, it's a lot of pressure.
yeah that's a good point. one bad tweet away from unemployment...
You can sleep well tonight thinking they'll never tell you the truth. Plus who wants to be one of the the top on the IRS "clientele" list for not understanding that all income has to be reported including "gifts".
This is very much my issue with life, I get paid fairly well, work 36 hours, work from home 3 days a week and get to mess around with SQL databases and tech.
I hate my job, and after 24 years hate what the company I work for has become, but honestly I’d be an idiot to give that up chasing a dream.
I would say to everyone they need to have a serious look at things before diving in on any sort of endeavour like this. Lots of youtubers spend a lot of time in a seemingly negative state over the stress of providing content. If I come home with no good shots I couldn’t care less.
>I hate my job, and after 24 years hate what the company I work for has become, but honestly I’d be an idiot to give that up chasing a dream.
Dude that's harsh. I'm in the same boat. We're in decent shape financially but the job is so unrewarding. I'm treating as a 9-5 now. The best thing about sticking it out with a large corp is accumulating more vacation days than we know what to do with. 3 day weekends from Spring to Fall is the kind of perk I didn't expect to love so much. We're lucky to have a boss that is ok with that.
Yeah it’s a tough choice to turn your back on stability isn’t it. We get 32 days leave too, plus pension, sharesave schemes, overtime and all that kind of stuff.
I'm happy for anyone that finds their niche and can turn a profit off of it. But I do slightly have a problem with people that become walking billboards for the brands they "support", when it feels like the only reason they support those brands is because they are being paid to do so. Not to mention I find her photography to be just "ok". Not that it's as bad as some are pointing out in the comments, but that it isn't that much different than the other thousands of times someone else collected the same composition.
But whatever. 100k+ followers is nothing to scoff at in this instance, as she's clearly making money off of that influential sphere she is in. Just as you don't get and understand the benefits of influence or a huge social media following, I don't understand the huge passion behind needing to shoot film in the digital age... it's just not my thing.
"don't understand the huge passion behind needing to shoot film in the digital age". I am coming from that era I think it makes them feel special, out standing, different to all those (including me) in the big mass of digital shooters.
Flm has its own properties.
DIYphotography: Dune was shot with an Arri Alexa LF, transferred to 35mm film and then scanned back to digital again.
https://www.diyphotography.net/dune-was-shot-with-an-arri-alexa-lf-trans...
That is true. But many follow a hype.
Yeah, it drives me a little mad too.
Yes, Lizzie's self-aggrandizing and incessant Intel Evo laptop pitch are annoying. As are the personal feuds among folks in this commenting stream. But she raises a valid question... one that has been at the heart of my work for decades: How much should we diversify from that core product or service which we founded our business upon?
My first job out of college was in the printing industry, and even at that time in the 1970s, common wisdom was that the paperless office was just around the corner, and print would be dead in a matter of a few years. Many of my competitors chose to diversify their sales by including branded promotional products... stuff like caps and t-shirts. Which is the point when I realized there's a psychological aspect to running a business that dictated some of what I decided to sell. A logo imprinted baseball cap just couldn't get me excited about going out and making sales calls.
Now that my business is largely focused on photography, it's the same issue applied to a different product. I can make art, and I can speak comfortably face-to-face with those people who might purchase it, but short of gunpoint I'm not going to conduct workshops or develop a following on social media. And I don't believe that it's necessary that I do all of these peripheral things in order to make a living at photography.
I will argue that much can be gained by focusing on one product or service and doing it to the best of your ability.... possibly better than anyone else. Every type of job related to photography takes a lot of work and experience to become proficient. And it's hard to imagine working nine different revenue streams and being very good at any of them, especially if eight of them required me to perform a task that my heart wasn't in.