Does anyone here make regular money from their photo-hobby? I'm interested on feedback from sites like Shutterstock. Anyone made anything more than a few quid? Not that I think most of my stuff is up to it, but I thought it would be worth a punt, you never know.

I've been offered money for the last shoot i did (which didn't go on these pages) and for one coming up, but in both instances i have turned down the cash. I just don't feel proficient enough at the moment to charge , but may start soon. I have friends struggling to make ends meet as photographers - it seems that making a few bucks on the side is the best they get. A friend of mine is beginning to make some money after spending a huge amount of time developing his own website and doing shoots to develop his portfolio! Check out his site on http://www.richardbarryphotography.com if you want to see his standard. I'm not so sure about the whole landscape nature thing - it looks to me that you have to be very good to earn anything much more than pocket-money.

Some friends recently gave me $100 gift card at the liquor store for shooting some portraits of their dogs, does that count? They wanted to pay me, but I told them to give the money to the local humane society instead.

Here's one of the shots I did for them. Unfortunately Drake lost his battle with bone cancer on July 4th

There've been a few shoots I've done where there has been a 'donation towards my costs' shall I say, but it's never got close to equalling the equipment investment to do it properly, let alone the time to produce a significant income - even gross I don't think I'd have ever hit even minimum wage were I contracting out the work. Maybe now I've got a little more / better gear.... Seriously though I wouldn't expect it. Plus, don't underestimate the different feel of shooting to play and shooting to order for someone else. Very different atmosphere, impression, all sorts. You can't just give up on the shoot that really isn't happening.

I looked into a few bits a while back when unemployed and willing to try anything. Photographers Direct is a friendly, easy to work with site with good quality work in general but at the time, inferring from what data I could find, it didn't have the traffic to make anything worthwhile. I had a test portfolio with them for a while but nothing came of it. I've put a few images with various microstock sites as an experiment but frankly found the whole _submission_ process such a hassle that it wasn't worth it for me. Maybe if I had the time to put in a bigger effort it could pay off, but I didn't then. Alamy are big and not that hard to get registered with, and seem to have binned their 'resize to our spec' rule (which was frankly silly) but have two caveats - one, their stocks are so large and not very well pruned that it's too easy to get lost in the pile, and two their contract effectively (and explicitly) requires you to take out professional indemnity insurance because it passes all the liability for any hassle onto you. While the principle of that is sound I still think it'd make far more economic sense for them to handle the insurance themselves (moral hazard issues notwithstanding) and treat it as a charge against royalties, but it's their business and their choice.

Others? Microstock sites are all over the place and have vastly different levels of traffic and possible reward. I think Micro Stock Diaries is still going and charts a lot of submission rates, payment against accepted portfolio size and other useful data points. The data seems to be that, though their individual payments are low, for at least some shooters the higher traffic results in a roughly equivalent income per image. BUT the proliferation of sites means there's quite a lot of workload to get anything going at all, and don't expect anything consistent from a portfolio size that isn't at least well into three figures.

From people who are around here to a greater or lesser degree and I understand shoot a reasonable amount of pro work:

• Eyeslifted runs a pet photography studio
• Canon_Bob shoots wildlife for Getty, I belive
• Todd runs a portrait business doing mostly HS Senior photos and families
• NateStahly shoots concerts with some portrait work
• thomps6s shoots landscapes (sells through a website and craft fairs I think) and portraits
• D Brainard shoots a mix of animals and people I believe
• DavidRedding shoots weddings and portraits
• dolevy shoots weddings and portraits
• Getson shoots weddings and portraits

There's probably more I've forgotten so sorry to anyone else! That's just off the top of my head and those whose websites etc I could track down, and gives you an idea of what pays.... but it's a cut-throat market from what I understand.

Something to keep in mind (this may be different in each country, not sure), but as soon as you make that first penny selling something photography related, you are considered a pro by insurance companies. This means that all your photography gear is no longer covered under your house insurance, even you have a rider to cover it.

A few years ago I made £150 taking photos for a company website. I did have ideas once of trying to get more work of that type but I didn't get beyond the "thinking about it" stage. If you want to see the photos they are here http://www.btlprecision.co.uk/photos.htm - not that great really but it was actually quite good fun to do ...

It surprises me that more on here with the talent on show are not making money with your shots, perhaps with the advent of digital its a buyers market and its easier than ever to take great shots but im not 100 percent convinced of that, I think a few here (more than a few) could make money with their photography, of course its a personal thing and they may simply be doing it for the love of it, dont sell yourself short, lifes not easy these days and Im more than convinced if a few here explored the right avenues then they would make money from their photography, I certainly hope to persue that avenue in the future when im good enough, im not silly enough to turn down anyone wanting to pay me for my shots, I have 5 children and money is tight at the best of times so if someone down the line wants to pay me to take photos then im certainly not going to argue, I only hope that one day im as acomplished as some of the fantastic talent I see on this forum

Nuff Said


Ade

I have made some money from sport shots but in the end I decided that I didn't like it to go out to big competitions and click away.
For me photography is a hobby and I want to take the photos I like to take in a way I like and I don't wont to take photos the way someone else wants them and get payed for my hobby by taking photos I don't realy want to take. I hope you understand what I mean. I once had an exhibition and sold some photos, that is different because that were all photos I had taken how I wanted them. So for me I only take photos I like and if someone happens to see them and wants to buy then its OK but I will never make a living out of that .

*There are a lot of poor photographers making great money - they know the market and how to capitalize.
*There are many, many more great photographer making no money - they either do it for the love of it, or have no idea on how to sell.
If they want to make a go of things they need to make a plan with some tough goals. It's a lot of work and it needs a lot of effort to get yourself out there, understand the market, and promote your services.

Mike's point is a good one and one of the reasons i have not attempted to make pocket-money. It will cause all sorts of insurance and tax problems. I make ok money with my job and have no kids so i'm in fortunate situation financially and time-wise. If money was more tight then i would be making a concerted effort to make a few bucks with the camera now i have got past the snapshot stage.

It also seems to me there is some money to be made with weddings and many togs earn the majority of their income this way and top it up with money from the work that they truly love. In Perth, where i live, there are some tremendous wedding togs (and some terrible ones). The good ones can rake it in during the wedding season.

It also seems to me that in order to make good money with stock you need to think very carefully about what to submit. I'm not happy to sell my stuff for a dollar or less. However, take a look at the best selling images on the stock sites. If you go and take a photos of two clean-cut office workers looking at a laptop in a generic office then you could have hundreds of downloads a year. If you have 10 images getting 300 downloads a year then that is $3000 to add to your annual paycheck. And they earn money the next year and so on. Seems like a lot of trouble and very boring to me, but some people are really targetting their photography to sell like this.

I'd really like to thank everyone for the replies! Thanks for all the useful info.
I'm not looking to make a living out of it (quite happy in my current career), but as people here have said, even if I felt confident enough to do shoots on spec for clients, I would no longer enjoy what im doing. I muck about with my camera because I just love it - on that note if I were taking shots for someone I knew I dont think I would accept money either.
The insurance point is a good one and the indemnity would probably worry the hell outta me. Nothing's easy
I just wondered if anyone was making anything more than a few quid here and there out of these stock sites. I (naively)thought I could upload a few of my better examples to a site and see if anything materialised, nothing ventured so to speak. Might be a few quid to put towards that new lens I wanted . Certainly don't intend deliberately taking shots of people round laptops

Thanks again to all who responded. Was worth asking the question I think.

Jamie

I make beer money mostly, last year a bit more shooting sports. . I made enough to cover my son's college tuition even after Uncles Sam's cut. I filled in as a substitue staff photographer at a local community paper, shot sports for a yearbook company, along with a friend made sports camps brochures and did extra duty "quantity" shooting at a hockey tournament. The hockey tourny was cool because the vendor had Alien Bees set up in the rinks. A local advertising company may hire me to go out on shoot a local business building, traffic on the local expressway and once a tree on someones property , weird stuff but.....

The IRS will be happy that I will actually have a profit this year so they can rest a bit more easy knowing I am helping reduce the deficet. It's the last year of depreciation on my lenses!
It isn't what anyone would call "fine art" photography but it gets me off my butt. Here's a fine example of my wares!

Next week I am shooting a soccer camp.

I have been paid for a few images that have run in photography magazines. I have been asked to shot weddings but that is not my strongest area of photography so I usually talk them out of using me. I did have one young couple beg me to shoot the wedding as they were on a very tight budget. I hope they like the images. The groom said he would give me something for my trouble we will see how that works out.

Mostly I shoot because I enjoy getting out and about and recording my activities if I get something I really like I will sometimes submit the work to contests and even place once in a while.

I don't think that I would enjoy the business side of photography and that is the key to making a go of it. Finding a market and working it until you can make some money, at least that is what the magazines say about it.

My neighbour's daughter is getting married next year, and they are planning on going somewhere south for the wedding. They keep asking me to be their photographer, and promise me they don't want formals, just candids. I keep saying no, and I will continue to say no. Photography is my form of relaxation, and I'm not going to bring that kind of stress into it.

Their last argument was that there had to be a price for which I would be willing to shoot their wedding. I said "Yup, but for about the same money you could hire Annie Leibovitz, and she's a much better photographer than I am."

But seriously, that's my whole thing about shooting for money. Photography is a stress relief for me, and I don't want to change that by bringing stress into it. As soon as money gets involved, everything changes. I don't mind selling prints of photos I've taken, because they can see the photo and they either like it or the don't (and if they want to buy a print, then I assume they like it). But to contract to shoot something is different. There are expectations and timelines and all kinds of crap that I just don't want to deal with.