How Photographers can Make Extra Money In The Slow Season

Not only are photographers struggling a bit due to the Coronavirus and all of the restrictions, but winter is just about here. If you are a photographer that doesn’t operate with a studio, when January hits, you know that down time slump that I’m talking about. 

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When you run a business, you more than likely think ahead to the seasons that are approaching. In the winter, we are thinking about spring sessions for promos. But our clients typically aren’t thinking about getting photos until the weather warms up. 

Don’t start to panic! There are plenty of ways that we can continue to make extra money in the slow season, and keep our businesses relevant, even when the economy bounces back! 

Branding Photography Sessions

There are businesses around you that are still operating. They may have had to downsize, or restrict their normal operations, but they are still operating at some capacity. All small businesses need as much help as they can right now. Start networking with them and offer updated employee headshots at a discount for their websites and social media for a small fee. 

You can even create packages that include more detailed images along with the headshots. Take photos of their services and products. 

Go a step further and create social media captions for the images that you take for them. 

Sit down and make a list of all the small businesses that are open and operating, check out their social media platforms and see what areas they could use help in as far as photos. 

If you need help with how to contact these businesses, check out this done for you prewritten text and emails.

Real Estate 

There are real estate agents out there that still use their cell phones to take photos of listings. Reach out to local agents, explain the importance of quality images for selling properties. 

Get business cards made up and leave them at the houses next to the other agent business cards that get left there. Create a special savings discount for the new owners as a congratulations. “Let’s celebrate your new home with some updated photos!”.

Real Estate Photography Products

Promo Videos

Are you skilled at taking videos or slideshows? Offer this as a service to anyone with a business. 

Product Photography

People are starting to use apps like Mercari and Poshmark more and more these days. Even Facebook marketplace. Create a service of taking product photos for people. They can send it to you in the mail and you send it back, or offer this service locally. 

Food Photography for Restaurants

Depending on where you are located, restaurants might be closed for indoor dining. I know where I am, most restaurants are offering new services like curbside or delivery. Offer to take entre’ images for their social media and online menus. 

Stock Photography

Stock photography can be a great way to make extra money. You do need to make sure that if you intend on selling images with people in them, you do need to acquire the proper permission from them. 

1. Adobe Stock Image 

2. Shutterstock 

3. Istock 

4. Alamy 

5. Stocksy 

6. 123rf 

7. Getty Images 

8. Canva 

9. Can Stock Photo 

10. Crestock 

11. Offset 

12. Dreamstime 

13. Bigstock Photo 

14. Aurora Photos 

15. GL Stock Image 

16. 500 PX

17. Etsy

18. Your own website

You can even turn your images into products to sell with print on demand options like Printful and Printify. 

Offer Editing Services

Do you love the editing process of photography? Offer editing services to photographers. You can list your services on places like Fiverr, Upwork, and any social media platform. 

Contact Past Clients

If there are clients that you haven’t seen in awhile, contact them and offer an exclusive price just for them for an updated session. 

Sales

Offer exclusive savings to your clients for getting on the books NOW before the spring busy season. You can offer sales on seasonal sessions, mini sessions, holidays, ets. 

If you have a print store where clients can order prints from you, run an end of the year print sale. 

Get the Product Sales Toolkit

Referral Program

Offer a referral program to your clients. How a referral program works is when your client refers someone to book with you, they would receive a discount on things or free things in return for their referral.

Teach Workshops

There is always someone that would love to learn how to be a photographer. Even moms would love to learn some insider tips and tricks to help them take better photos of their kids at home. Host a workshop! If you are in a location that is restricted due to Covid, there are many options to host an online workshop. 

Everything you need to teach any niche’ of photography

Blog

Blogging is not a quick success. It does take a little time to create the content and get up and running. However, you as a photographer already have 90% of your content already established. Your photography work. Take each session and create a blog post. You don’t need to have a writing degree, all you need to do is jot down some descriptive details about each session, where the location is that you took the photos, and then any other little details you want to add in. When you get the hang of it, you can start to add in affiliate marketing into your blogging strategy. That is one of the main ways that bloggers make money. You join an affiliate program, recommend the product to your audience, if they make a purchase from your recommendation, you get a percentage of sales from that purchase. 

Everything you need to start blogging in your photography business

Social Media Services

I have been a social media account manager for about 3 years now. If you are good at creating engagement, gaining followers, making graphics, and in general, building a presence on social media, this is something that a lot of business owners really do need help with. 

Check out all the done for you social media content

Network with Businesses in Your Niche’

At the beginning of this pandemic, most, if not all businesses, had to figure out how to keep money coming in, and had to learn how to restructure for what society had dealt them. I saw so many businesses network with others in their niche’. They offered specials for using their business, they offered bundle deals packaged with multiple businesses. It was truly amazing how a lot of these businesses just figured it out. And as we are slowly getting back to normal, they are still using these strategies and thriving. 

Networking Made Easy for Photographers

If you have any questions on how to get started doing any of these, you are more than welcome to ask in the comments below, or send me a message at info@photos2profits.com!

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