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Online Niche Photography Businesses
Are you a photographer or an aspiring photographer? With an “eye” for photography and focusing in a specific niche, a teen can start a fun and profitable online photography business. It’s not essential anymore to spend thousands of dollars on expensive DSLR cameras and gear to take phenomenal pictures. I started my photography business with the Canon T Series, like this one https://amzn.to/3ov5rXi. My second camera was the Sony A6000 mirrorless camera, https://amzn.to/3lQWqGe, which I love and use often for family and portrait photo shoots. Both cameras are amazing but most of my recent landscape/skyline shots are done with my iPhone.
The newer smartphone cameras, and the one you probably have, may work perfectly for your business. A good friend of mine and a professional photographer for 30 years, as an example, snapped outdoor pictures for a wedding with both his $5,000 camera and his iPhone and the results were indistinguishable. While showing me the album, he stated “it’s not so much the camera as it is the person behind the camera.”
I’m not going to lie, photography is a very competitive industry. Especially since smart phone technology has everyone falsely believing they are professional photographers. Like I said before, it’s not about the technology, it’s about the artist, you. If you have an “eye” for photography then you have a good chance of beating out most of the wanna-be’s.
Offline Local Event Photographer
Online and offline photography businesses are approached very differently. Local photographers meet with clients, discuss and confirm event dates and details, attend the events to take pictures, spend hours choosing the best shots, edit and upload the photos to an online album, and then send the pictures to a company to create a physical photo album. Besides doing some marketing and posting private albums for clients, local photographers don’t usually sell their pictures online nor can they, which limits the extent of their business. That’s why in the E-Teen course we are teaching how to start a niche specific to online photography business, opening up many more possibilities. Niche photography can be more exciting, expanding into a variety of online markets, while being more profitable and providing businesses with residual income.
The secret to a successful online photography business is the subject you will be photographing. This is something I had stressed in the beginning of the course. What is your interest? Building your business around a specific subject/niche, will give you a chance to dominate that online segment.
Here are 60 photography niche ideas:
Portrait
Still Life
Landscape
Food
Wildlife
Macro
Events
Fashion
Street
Photojournalism
Documentary
Weather
Architectural
Long Exposure Photography
Automotive
Babies
Birds
Bottles
Construction
Dogs
Drone Photography
Sports
Airplanes/Jets
Floral/Flowers
Plants
Glamour
Golf Courses
Haunt Industry
Volcanos
Horror
Humor
Jewels/Jewelry
Kids Product/Toys
Yachts/Boats
Mining
Camping
Vacation Spots
Parks
Travel
Real Estate
Skateboarding
Skydiving
Tattoos
Underwater
Vintage Neon Signs
Horses
Wine Bottles
Yoga
Cityscapes
When people are searching on the web for a particular genre or style of photos, you will want your images to populate in the search engines. This is accomplished by building up and promoting your photography business around that particular photography or subject matter. A great illustration of this is a photographer in Maine who exclusively specializes in beach and coastline photography. She has a niched series of photos which centers on ocean waves hitting the rocky coast line. Because this content matter is unique to her area, she is dominating the online market and people are downloading her images like crazy. This is a targeted photo subject, and people are actually searching for “pictures of rocky coast lines” in Google, Etsy, Shutterstock, etc.
I refer to niches throughout this course quite often. I cannot stress enough the importance of having a niche, being diligent, and having patience throughout the process. Not having a niche doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be successful, however it will require more time and more work on your part to “rank” your content in the search engines. Whether you have a particular niche or not, those who persist and stay the course will be the most successful.
Photo Website Creation
Let’s assume you already have an arsenal of amazing images in your library. How should you get started building your online business? I would suggest going back to the basics and working on building a blog, or writing articles about your niche and photo ventures. A great idea would be to include an image gallery on your blog that showcases samples of your work. Then set up your blog to sell your images using the Wix Art Store App (or whatever plug-ins/app your website platform offers if it’s not Wix). The Wix Art Store works with a third-party service, and provides a complete print-on-demand service for you to sell your digital images and prints online. Be sure to create social media accounts and fill them with your niche ideas (Facebook page, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.)
NOTE: Watermark your images with your business name so they can’t easily be downloaded by others. Use online programs like Canva to accomplish this. A watermark is either your logo or business name imposed on top of the image which renders it unusable to anyone trying to download it.
Saving Images
Be sure to save your images on an external hard-drive and somewhere online (Google Drive or Dropbox). I also use Google photos to save my photos for quick access. I use this external hard drive https://amzn.to/3lSEqLI to save my photos offline and to free up space on my hard drive.
Make Money as a Contributor
Uploading images to stock photography houses like Getty, Fine Art America, and Shutterstock is easy, free, and can be quite profitable over time. When you contribute to these sites , you still retain the copyright to your creations, and you receive a royalty whenever a subscriber downloads one of your photos. If you are under 18, your parents would have to create an account. If accepted into these programs, you’ll be able to submit original photos, videos, illustrations or vectors. Here are 3 popular photography contributor sites.
Selling Wall-Art Canvas/Frames Pictures Online Business
Print-On-Demand sites like Redbubble are a great way to get started. You can upload your designs for free on t-shirts, mugs, water bottles, clocks, curtains, phone cases, canvas, poster art, and more. Just keep in mind that there is a lower profit margin on some of these sites because they are doing all of the back end work for you like printing, packaging, and shipping the items, as well as providing the organic traffic you need to your store. Sites such as Teespring offer a higher profit margin but require you to design your own store and draw your own traffic. In addition, these sites offer a smorgasbord of merch. Like we discussed earlier, this may or may not be more product than you want to offer. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide which products you would like to offer in your store. If you are particularly interested in turning your designs into high end Wall-Art (canvas art and framed art), I suggest connecting with separate online print companies that have higher profit margins while still offering competitive pricing.
The retail prices of canvas wall art, even on the print on demand sites, tend to be pretty high. Over the years, I have found a variety of canvas print companies online, but there are two in particular that I have had excellent experiences with, and have reasonable pricing. If you have some time right now, go check around different websites and compare prices of canvas wall art. You will discover why I like to order from sites like Canvas Champ.
If canvas art and photography is the business direction you would like to pursue, here is an example of how you would execute that if a customer wanted to order one of your prints. Let’s say a customer finds your 16x20 canvas art selling for around $75, and decides to contact you to place an order. They can choose any size or dimension you offer in that exact design. You would cater it to their wants, adjust the price accordingly, and accept their payment on the website while ensuring you have all their info and shipping address. At this point you’ll manually order the canvas wall-art and ship it directly to your customer. A 16x20 canvas print on Canvas Champ costs you about $30 which includes shipping. Remember, if you sold the wall art for $75, you would be making a $55 profit! Of course, you can charge whatever you would like within reason for your art. Just make sure you are making a profit.
If you don’t have a website set up yet, no problem! You can also offer your products on your social media accounts, sell them there, and take payments with Paypal, Venmo, Zelle, etc.
Last, and certainly not least, Sell your digital images and/or wall art on ETSY!!! You can create the perfect niche photography ETSY STORE. This is probably the quickest way to get your online business going quickly and effectively. The first thing you need to do is go to Canvas Champ to get all of the details on the type of wall art you would like to create. Go through the entire Canvas Champ purchasing process to get a feel for how the site works. A good plan would be to order a sample for yourself so you can experience what your customers will experience.
Figure out what your cost is, note the product details, and start setting up your ETSY Store. Start with JUST ONE image to get comfortable with ETSY. Once set-up, start advertising your new business on your social media accounts. Etsy is a great “destination” website where shoppers visit to make purchases, plus you’ll get free traffic! When a customer purchases an item from you, order it from Canvas Champ, and dropship the item to your customer. www.Etsy.com
Be creative! I am only offering suggestions for you and your new business. I’m positive that you will generate other ingenious ways to sell your photography. I’d love for you to share your ideas to help the other members in the course.
My last piece of advice is to ensure the use of niche specific keywords and hashtags in all of your titles, tags, posts, and content. If you don’t use niche specific keywords, you will not be found by the search engines. Have fun with this and please keep us posted on your progress. We would love to view your work too. Please share them on the E-Teen Lab member site!
- JP
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