Being Good At Photography Won’t Make You Money | #56

You take incredible photos.

Congratulations. That is something most people only dream of.

But just because you can take incredible photos doesn’t mean you’ll get paid for it.

You need to acquire other skills to actually monetize your craft. We’ll be walking through the concept of skill stacking so that you can make the most out of your photography.

This concept is true across so many industries.

Just because a restaurant can make delicious food doesn’t mean it will stay in business. It needs marketing, great waiters, and a reliable supply chain.

Similarly, a great photographer needs a set of skills other than photography to make money.

In fact, you can be a decent photographer with business skills and make way more than some photographers who are just focused on the photography.

Skill Stacking

The first skill photographers learn is how to use a camera. We’re handed this piece of technology with buttons and dials, and we need to figure it out.

Once we learn how to use the camera, we’re still not good at photography. We need to stack skills.

We learn lighting.

We learn composition.

We learn how to pose people and style products.

Finally, we can take great photos after stacking these skills.

But now if we want to transition from photographer to photography business we need a whole new set of skills.

The first skill we need to learn is sales.

No, not the kind of salesman that goes knocking on doors.

Sales isn’t about pushing your photography down people’s throats. Sales is all about matchmaking. It’s about identifying the potential clients that you can see benefiting from your service.

You know you take good photos. You know that good photos will help businesses. Assuming these two things are true, it’s now your job to help as many businesses as possible. But the problem is that businesses don’t know you exist. Your job becomes reaching out to these businesses and showing them how you can help them.

Then we learn how to negotiate our prices.

We learn how to market our portfolio.

We learn how to write compelling copy to get more clients.

We learn how to train and manage a team to handle our editing and other tasks.

Each of these skills unlocks a new level of business. A photographer that learns sales can have a six-figure business. A photographer with sales, negotiating, marketing, and managing skills can have a seven-figure business.

The more skills you learn, the more they stack on top of each other.

Which skills are you going to learn?