In 2025, going into 2026, it seems that photography isn’t always just enough. You usually need something else on the go or another way to earn income to survive the slow periods between jobs. As a professional photographer for quite some time now, I’ve developed a handful of income streams built in and around photography that allow me to take a little pressure off when I may not be as booked and busy as I otherwise am.
Here are a couple of those income streams to maybe give you some idea of how you, too, can diversify your photography income if you’re looking at going pro while having a lengthy and lasting career. The first thing I started with as a way to make money with my camera, in addition to actively shooting different projects, was getting into shooting and selling stock footage.
Not stock photography — by the time I got into being a professional photographer, stock photography had already taken a dive, to the point where a photo sells for roughly 20 cents. Stock footage, on the other hand, still had a much higher yield relative to the effort involved. So I filmed thousands of clips, uploading them in hopes of being paid down the road. This did pay off, maybe not quite as heavily as I expected, but it also requires a lot of filming, editing, and curating to make it worthwhile.
It’s not something I actively pursue as much anymore. I’ll sometimes go through bursts where I’ll shoot or dig through hard drives of footage, upload things, and have them categorized when I have more time on my hands. I’m still getting paid from videos I shot two, three, five, even seven years ago that occasionally still surprise me. It’s not necessarily the most lucrative form of income, and it does take a certain level of upkeep — but it gives a nice little boost each month.
The other, and at one time most lucrative, thing I did was start teaching online classes. I did this primarily through Skillshare and, I would argue, at the peak of their platform — early in the COVID pandemic, when everybody turned to online learning and was looking to pick up new skills. That was a great time for it, and it ended up being rather lucrative for me. I’m still teaching classes; in fact, I’m working on a new one right now. And I’m still getting paid for classes I made years ago.
That said, in recent years, due to a decline in online learning demand and market saturation, the royalties aren’t as high as they once were. The process of launching new classes has also become more involved. You can go the route I did, or if you have a large enough audience, you can sell your courses independently. The benefit of a platform like Skillshare is that it operates within its own ecosystem, so you don’t need an existing following to get started. But if you do have an audience and launch independently, the returns can be significantly higher. If you’re serious about building out a teaching side of your business, it may also be worth checking out The Well-Rounded Photographer: 8 Instructors Teach 8 Genres of Photography as a model for how multi-instructor educational content can be packaged and sold.
There’s also writing articles like this one. Then there’s a bit of YouTube income — I don’t make a ton from the videos I post. It’s more for fun than anything at this point, but it’s something I enjoy, and getting a little back from it always helps. In the past, I also dabbled in print-on-demand through Redbubble by way of some digital art experimentation. It’s not what I’d consider substantial income, but it can cover a couple of coffees every month or so. And lastly, the only truly passive form of income I’d point to is investing.
I lean heavily into dividend stocks as a way to get a little extra return. It’s nice to receive a small bonus every so often. These are all the income streams I have outside of actively working as a photographer. I also lump my photography together with work I do on film and television sets — that’s what I’d classify as active income: being on set, shooting with cameras, whether still or motion. Those are my two primary sources of active income, and everything else listed above has at least some degree of passive income built into it.
Have you tried to diversify your income as a photographer? If so, how has it gone? It can definitely be worthwhile, although I’d recommend a healthy balance between diversifying your income and growing your core photography business.
If you put everything into your photography business, that can be great — but when a slow season hits and you haven’t managed your money carefully, you can run into trouble. On the other hand, if you put everything into passive income streams, your photography business may suffer, and those “passive” income streams may not yield what you were hoping for.
Just a realistic take from someone who has been through all of it, along with a couple of words of advice for those looking to follow a similar path. Let me know your thoughts on these income streams and whether you’ve developed any others to flesh out your photography or videography business.
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