[00:00:00] Real quick guys has this podcast offered you any valuable insights for your business? If it has i'd be honored if you could pass it on to a friend or another creative Share it via Instagram story, send a tweet, send a direct message, whatever feels right for you. I'm driven by the goal to empower as many creative freelancers as possible.
But I need your help to achieve that. Thanks for your time. Now let's dive into today's episode. Okay, this episode might get a little heated here. It's a little controversial. But I want to talk about what the big photographers and filmmakers of YouTube don't tell you. Yes. We're talking about the Peter McKins of YouTube here.
And before you start saying that I'm just a hater, I love watching all these guys. They've inspired me so much, but there is something that none of them really talk about that I have to address here. Welcome to the creative biz launch podcast, where we talk about how to grow your creative business and scale it to six figures, whether you're a photographer, filmmaker, or designer, you'll find something of value here.
You're probably here because you love photography or filmmaking or design. Or whatever creative art form you're [00:01:00] pursuing and you want to get better at. When we watch the big YouTubers, we love those cinematic drone shots, the sick product photography, and the crazy b roll. That's what we aspire to do. But the problem is that these top YouTubers are getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to do what they do.
Meanwhile, you're not making a cent from your b roll shots. I've seen the videos they put out on making money from photography or videography, and while the advice is good, it's not sustainable long term, and it's extremely generic and not really applicable to most people. When I was first trying to figure out how to make money from photography, I looked at these bigger YouTubers for advice, and the problem is they all said the same things, and those things weren't sustainable long term.
Now, I'm not saying anyone's lying in their videos. The advice they give is good, but there's a problem with it. I've seen a video from a few of these guys, and it's always titled something like, How to make a thousand dollars from photography this weekend. And while that sounds enticing, and the advice that they give in the video is sound, it isn't a sustainable business model.[00:02:00]
The title of that video is how to make a thousand bucks from photography this weekend. And the videos actually deliver on that. Those types of videos will walk you through how you can book 10 to 20 of your friends or social media following for headshots over the course of a weekend, which sounds great.
Make a thousand bucks from photography. Yeah, why not? The issue is that this only works for a weekend or two or maybe three, not that many other weekends. You'll make your thousand dollars, but you won't have a business. In those videos, they don't teach you marketing or how to handle referrals or even sales.
Simply put, they don't teach you how to build a photography business. Why? Well, quite frankly, I think it would bore their audience. What's cooler cinematic B roll and epic drone shots, or some dude talking about how to have to email 20 people just to get one client. You got to do the boring work if you want to build an actual business.
And that's what I teach here. Now it sounds like I'm hating on these guys and that's not what I'm trying to do here. They've built up their followings by posting awesome looking content, [00:03:00] landscape photos and videos, travel films, and all the stuff is super cool And I love it, but they've built up their following doing something that they actually love and you can too But the problem is that this is a very very very competitive game to do that kind of thing Even if you're the best of the best, it's going to take years for you to build up enough of a following to generate money from this.
All these big YouTubers went through the stage of building up their audience slowly while working on another gig. And now that they're big, they don't need to do that other gig to support them. But what about you? The small content creator that doesn't have a big following, but is passionate about photography or filmmaking.
What if I told you that you can make a lot of money doing something that you love while building out the audience on the back end, running your own business while building out that audience. When you watch these big YouTubers, it's easy to think that the only way to make money from photography is doing paid sponsorships on social media or collabs with Sony or Canon.
You probably think that once you get good enough at photography. These brands will approach you. You see these guys taking epic [00:04:00] landscape photos, and that's what you want to do too. The problem here is that there isn't that much money in the space unless you're really, really good. There's only a few dozen prominent photography YouTubers that are crushing it.
Then there are thousands and thousands of others who aren't making a dime. So how can you start making money from your photography in a way that the big YouTubers don't talk about? It's time to start a creative business. What do I mean by this? Well, we're basically going to be using our skills to find clients.
You have a valuable skill set that people will pay money for. You're good behind the camera. You're a good photographer, a good designer. Maybe you're a good filmmaker or an editor. Whatever your creative skill is, you can monetize it by making a business around it. But first let me talk about the path that the big YouTubers took and how they made their money and how they're currently making their money because that's two very different things.
You don't want to do what they're doing right now. You want to do what they did on the climb up the mountain, right? For the most part, these [00:05:00] guys started out as freelance photographers and videographers. And the freelance life is a tough space to be in. You're working project to project and you're always on the hunt for new clients.
And as creatives, for a lot of us, learning the business and sales and marketing side of things sounds terrible. We've got to do this photography thing. We want to do more photos, more videos, more films, right? Well, yeah, obviously, but in order to make a living from it, there are three paths that we can go down.
Path number one is that we work for someone else. Here, we don't have to start a business. All we have to do is learn, learn how to use our cameras better, get better at our craft. You get to do what you love all day long. But the drawback here is you won't really make that much money from it, but you can still make a good living doing this.
You'll still have a boss, but you'll still be able to do what you love. There's less freedom, but there's maybe more security.
Path two is you start a freelance or creative business. Here, you need to learn all about entrepreneurship. This is the path that I'm on, and I love it. I don't spend most of my [00:06:00] day doing photography work. I spend it doing sales, marketing, administrative work, managing my team. And personally, this is really nice for me.
I love this. I love the business side of things, so I'm living the dream. And path two is what most of these big YouTubers started down. This is a really tough path, and for a lot of people, They wanted to escape this path. Maybe they didn't like doing sales and client outreach. Maybe they wanted more photography or filmmaking work.
Whatever the reason, they decided to pursue YouTube as their main revenue stream. They saw it as a path out. And this leads us to path number three. Path number three is earning a living from YouTube and social media. Now, this is really tough. This is what a lot of big YouTubers say to do. And YouTubers earn money from AdSense, affiliate links, sponsorships, selling their own products.
And in order to earn money from that kind of thing, you need to build up an audience. And this takes a ridiculously long time, and there's a lot of competition out there. If you're looking to start a YouTube channel because you want to earn a living from it, you're doing it for the wrong reasons. It's going to be at least two or three years of nonstop work to [00:07:00] start earning a livable salary.
If you want to start a YouTube channel, your reasons can't be to make money from it. I started my channel in January 2021.
As of recording this podcast episode, it's September 2023. I've got nearly 60, 000 subscribers and all the money that I make from the channel still gets reinvested back into the channel because I'm paying an editor. The way I make money is through teaching other creatives online and through coaching.
On top of that, I still have my product photography business, which generates a lot of revenue as well. So if YouTube isn't the only way to make a living doing what you love. Let's talk about path number two, starting that creative business. So how do we actually make money? If you want to actually make a living from photography, you need to be able to have a steady stream of income and you get this through client work.
Now, this isn't fun for a lot of photographers, but this is how the business works. You're going to need to hone in on your niche. Let's say product photography. From there, you build a website and once that's up and running, you begin reaching out to brands, [00:08:00] reaching out to brands via cold email, via Instagram, any way you can get ahold of them.
Um, get those leads. Once you get responses from them, you pitch them on how you're going to help that brand, and then you're going to hop on a sales call. Through that sales call, you dig into their problems, propose solutions, send a proposal, and if you did it right, you're going to be able to land a client.
Now this is a process you can repeat over and over and over again, and land client after client. This is how you actually make money from photography. And yeah, it would be great if Sony or Canon could sponsor all of us and fly us to Iceland for a week, but that's not the reality of how photography Work and businesses exist.
Photography businesses function like any other business. If you can help someone solve a problem, they will pay you. Does this person need product photos for Amazon? You can help them. Do singles in your area need new headshots for their online dating profiles? They're going to pay a lot of money to get that date.
There are a lot of ways you can make money from photography and very few involve selling your landscape print. If this is the first time you're listening to a podcast of mine, [00:09:00] welcome to my channel. This is where I teach creative business and we have dozens and dozens of episodes on this topic. We cover all things from client acquisition, pricing structure to sales calls all here.
I want to wrap this up by talking about client acquisition for another minute here, but if you need a deep dive on this topic, go grab my free workshop. It's in my show notes at 60 minutes full of pure value link for that is down below. First off, if you want to find clients, we need to find a niche. My niche isn't just product photography.
My niche is product photography for food and beverage brands. Now, if we dive further into my profile, you'll see that I have a unique style where I do action shots and lifestyle subs, which further differentiates me and establishes me as an expert in this niche. Now if you think niching down means there's less businesses to reach out to, then you're right.
But still within my niche, there's thousands of businesses in the US for me to work with. How do I work with them? First, I use Amazon to look up some food products. Let's say matcha. I look up matcha on Amazon. [00:10:00] Make a list of all the companies, and then you can use a software like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get their email addresses and send those cold emails.
Always make the email unique. Make it personalized. I tell them what I do. I provide credibility with brands I've worked with in the past. And then I have a call to action at the end of the email to hop on a discovery call with me.
The call goes well, we sign a proposal and we lock in that deal. Now, when I'm trying to get new business, I send hundreds and hundreds of these emails a month to hundreds of companies. And it works. It's a numbers game, but it's a tough game to play. But it does pay me well and I love the process. Now, imagine if Peter McKinnon started telling you to send cold emails and doing all this stuff, you'd probably be yawning, but you're, you're listening to this podcast rather than watching that B roll video and maybe you're yawning at this episode.
Um, but this stuff isn't the most entertaining to talk about, but it's going to get you clients and it's going to transform your business. But if this is the type of content that you like, check out my other stuff, check out that YouTube channel and that free workshop. I hope you learned something [00:11:00] today.
Again, this is not me hating on anyone. I just want to provide a roadmap for you to make a living from your craft. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you in the next one.
