Years ago professional photographers had the edge on taking great shots and convert their photos into hard cash. However, things have changed - big time! There has never been a time in history where more photos have been taken than now.
Whether you are a professional photographer, amateur, hobby photographer or just had some great lucky shots, you can capitalize on your photos, if you know how!
The era of digital cameras, the internet, and mobile phones with built-in cameras has revolutionized photography in such a way that everyone is now able to make money selling their photos.... all it takes is a little research, follow the guidelines of the experts, and sit back waiting for the fruits of your (mostly minimal) labor...
You may ask yourself, is it really THAT easy? - The answer is YES!!! But you need to know HOW!
Let me tell you a little bit about myself, a 'traditional value', relatively 'conservative', hard- working, and a very sceptic kind of guy, who needed countless persuading and prompting from my dear family to convert from traditional film to digital photography.... if that's anything to judge by!
I started off as a hobby photographer and slowly worked my way up to become a professional wedding photographer. It takes years of hard work and dedication and a lot of patience, money, man hours and marketing skills to build up a successful business.
Even though I studied photography, I learnt the hard way buying expensive equipment that I later found completely unnecessary, as I learnt tricks of the trade talking to others or finding out better ways of achieving the same goals by experimenting. I used to spend hours trying to be more creative, inventing new niches, spending money on useless advertising campaigns, etc. etc. until one assignment where I happened to talk to an annoying young guy...
As professionals we've all come across people who point and click and want to talk shop with us professionals... Being a nice person, I listened patiently and (at first!) half-heartily until he told me how much money he made with his ordinary, 7 mega pixel, supermarket camera! After physically forcing myself to close my mouth, he had my full and undivided attention! For those of you who wonder, it was at the end of my assignment :)
This kid capitalised his fun shots and not only made more money than I did for an entire wedding, he also didn't work half as hard for it as I did, PLUS, his sales continued, whereas mine usually stop after the wedding album is delivered.
Mr. 'Annoying' who by now had turned into Mr 'Very Interesting' was joined by a friend who didn't even own a camera! This guy just had a cell phone and the conversation continued and took an even more interesting turn. They more or less mocked the way hard working professionals like myself were working their little behind off to make money, when all they did was have fun and made money at the same time!
I laughed along with them, agreeing - even though I was quite taken aback on some of the things they told me until the right moment arrived when I 'jokingly' asked how they 'stumbled across' all these money making ideas.
We all had a good laugh about the question - theirs genuine, mine intrigued - until they shared their knowledge with me: Where I had invested in special courses and expensive equipment, they simply invested in buying some e-books - at the fraction of the price I had spend on expensive photography education and equipment!!!
I told them that I also read some e-books but that I wasn't too impressed as most of them seem to suggest selling stock photos - which I wrongly assumed as I always considered it somehow 'beneath me' to invest in such a waste of time! - and asked them which e-books they liked best. Of course they couldn't remember the exact titles, so they asked me for my business card, promising they'd send me a list of the ones that made them the most money.
They stuck to their word and a couple of weeks later I received a list of 'the best' ebooks. Having a 'wild moment' thinking 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' I decided to invest in a couple of books to 'further my education' on how I can make more money.
Things were busy and I didn't have time to read the books for a months on end. I have to be honest, I completely forgot about the list... until my business took a nose-dive due to the economy. That's when I remembered the books I purchased and started reading the first one. I quickly recognized some tips of capitalising from your photos that I had already come across, whilst others were completely new to me.
I immediately started to explore some of the avenues and within a short period of time I found that not only had my initial investment already paid itself off, I was actually making extra money that I would have otherwise not had.
I read the second book and found that even there were parallels to the first book, it also contained a few new tricks of the trade, which I immediately started to explore and 'bingo'!
Again book No 2 paid itself off within a couple of weeks and my additional income had increased even further. It was money I had literally 'thrown away' because of my ignorance!
By now I was hooked, especially as I managed to get the money back that I invested in these books and I started buying more. I found that even if there was only 1 new tip or trick in each book,
- each book DID pay itself off and
- steadily contributed to the rising amount of extra money that I was making,
- PLUS I discovered that reading these ebooks also immensely contributed to me becoming a lot more creative in finding more and better ways of making more money,
- wasting less money on expensive gear that I really didn't need
- AND save myself a lot of time, money and gasoline to do the things I enjoy apart from taking photos!
I admit that I used to feel slightly threatened about all these hobby and amateur photographers and that ebooks on 'how to...' used to be one of my 'pet peeves', but... I am a convert and after reading these ebooks AND having made first-hand experience that its not just 'blubber' to get me to buy something useless, I have come to realise that the photography market is continuously and indefinitely growing, meaning that the cake is 'big enough for all'. That's why I'm happy to pass on the knowledge to you, so that you can also benefit!
These are the top 5 books I can personally recommend - there is no particular order, each one has some unique special ideas that have contributed to the others do not feature:
Enjoy, good luck and let me know how you got on!