In 2025, entering 2026, it seems that photography is not always enough. Often you need something while you are traveling or another way to earn money to live the slow time between jobs. Being a professional photographer for a long time now, I’ve developed several built-in income streams around photography that allow me to take a little pressure off when I’m not as busy as I am.
Here are a few income streams that can give you an idea of how you too can turn your photography income into something if you want to become a professional while working long term. The first thing I started as a way to make money with my camera, apart from actively shooting different projects, was to shoot and sell stock photos.
Not photography – when I first became a professional photographer, photography was already taking a dive, to the point where a photo sold for about 20 cents. Stock photos, on the other hand, still had a lot of product associated with the effort involved. So I made thousands of films, uploaded them hoping to get paid. This paid off, maybe not as much as I expected, but it also requires a lot of filming, editing and editing to make it worthwhile.
It is no longer something I am actively pursuing. I’ll occasionally break out there to shoot or dig through hard drives for pictures, upload things, and group them when I have a lot of time on my hands. I’m still getting paid for videos I shot two, three, five, even seven years ago which sometimes still surprises me. It’s not necessarily the most lucrative type, and it takes some level of maintenance – but it does provide a little boost every month.
Another, and at one time it was a lot of money, thing I did was start teaching online classes. I did this mainly with Skillshare, and, I would argue, at the peak of their platform – at the beginning of the COVID epidemic, when everyone switched to online education and wanted to acquire new skills. That was a good time for it, and it ended up being a lot of money for me. I still teach classes; actually, i’m working on a new one right now. And I’m still getting paid for classes I’ve done years ago.
That said, in recent years, due to the decrease in demand for online learning and the saturation of the market, salaries are not as high as they used to be. The process of starting new classes is also very involved. You can go the way I did, or if you have a large enough audience, you can sell your courses on your own. The advantage of a platform like Skillshare is that it works within its own environment, so you don’t need the following to get started. But if you have an audience and start privately, the rewards can be very high. If you are interested in building the educational side of your business, you may want to check out The Well-rounded Photographer: 8 Instructors Teach 8 Types of Photography as an example of how multi-instructor educational content can be proven and marketed.
There are also articles like this one. Then there’s the YouTube income – I don’t make a ton from the videos I post. It’s more fun than anything else at this point, but it’s something I enjoy, and going back to it always helps. In the past, I’ve also contributed to print on demand through Redbubble with some digital art experiments. It’s not what I would consider an income, but it can cover a few coffees every month or so. And finally, the only way of money I can suggest is investing.
I rely heavily on dividend stocks as a way to get more profit. It’s nice to get a little bonus every now and then. These are all sources of income that I have besides actively working as a photographer. I also combine my photography with the work I do in films and television – that’s what I can describe as income: being in a chair, shooting with cameras, whether it’s still or moving. These are my two sources of income, and everything listed above has at least some income in it.
Have you tried diversifying your income as a photographer? If so, how did it go? It can be beneficial, although I would recommend a balance between diversifying your income and growing your primary photography business.
If you put everything into your photography business, that can be great – but when the slow times come and you don’t spend your money wisely, you can run into trouble. On the other hand, if you put everything into making money, your photography business may suffer, and that “idle” income may not produce what you were hoping for.
Just honest opinions from someone who has been through it all, along with a few words of advice for those who want to follow the same path. Let me know what you think of these income streams and if you have developed any to improve your photography or videography business.
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