How much do wildlife photographers make?
According to research, top wildlife photographers earn between $40,000 to $45,500 per year in the United States, while junior wildlife photographers earn between $20,000 to $38,000 per year. Consider building your portfolio and improving your marketing skills If you want to earn more.
Limited Opportunities for Wildlife Photographers
Some of the largest and easiest to enter photographic markets such as weddings, pets, teams, classes, and portraits are of course just not there for wildlife photographers.
Finding a full-time job as a press, photo agency or in-house company photographer was always difficult. With the number of photographers looking for work increasing as the barriers to entry decreased by technology opportunities are even more limited.
Other opportunities such as training especially hands-on training linked with travel to exotic destinations ranging from the Antarctic to Namibia are limited to the very experienced and recognized photographers.
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A good opportunity, especially at the start of a career is selling your photographs, rather than your services, directly to the consumer or to a business selling to the consumer.
A Living by Selling Wildlife Photographs
Auctioned Fine Art Prints
Fine art prints like those auctioned by the famous Christies are the market where you can achieve the highest selling price for a photographic print. Let alone the multi-million dollar prints like Rhein II by Andreas Gursky.
High-End Wallart Printers
Online art galleries such as Saatchi Art and Fine Art Amerca sell higher value fine art prints at prices similar to paintings. There are many such galleries whose suitability varies enormously and is beyond the scope of this article. However, there are many reviews including these two online.
There is generally no cost in investigating these galleries and applying to become one of their artists. They mainly work on a royalty paid to the photographer, there are no other costs and they do not necessarily demand exclusivity. However, this varies between galleries, and the photographer should be looking to sign up in as many places as possible and practical to generate more diverse income.
Photostock Agencies
Shutterstock, one of the major microstock agencies, claimed on the front page of their site that contributors have been paid 1 billion dollars in the last 20 years. In 2018 Shutterstock sold images valued at $159 million. But looking at an individual level there are 650,000 contributors who earned this income which means the average income per photographer was $ 24.46 / year. Alternately the income would be enough to provide the US living wage to 2,368 people or 1 in 274 contributors.
There are many other agencies from large to small with different costing and licensing that offer an easy way to get your photos into online catalogs. The downside is that your images get lost in the masses of images and they are sold at low prices.
This is a very general statement but there is a lot of information online which can help you to understand what is possible and how agencies compare.
Poster and Printed Goods Shops and Sites
Many businesses from Amazon to your local print shop produce a whole range of products including posters, T-shirts, sheets, smartphone covers, calendars, mugs, glasses, and books that can use your photographs and designs based on your photos.
Non-Fungeble Tokens (NFTs)
This is a very new market that seems to be complex and will maybe be covered in a future post. It’s interesting to note that many of the companies selling “High-End Wallart” have added NFTs to their business.
Informal markets
Photographic prints and other items based on an image such as t-shirts and photo books are good products to sell at informal markets.
Own Website
Many reviews rank one’s own website or online shop as the best place to sell your images as you control all aspects of the business. This moves the problem to how you get people to find and visit your website and there is only one website.
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Selling Your Wildlife Photographs Into These Markets
There is no absolute reason why you should not be able to sell your photographs through these markets. The constraint is on whether your photographs are found by the right consumers and buyers and whether they find them special enough to buy.
This is a result of the sheer number of photographers, the large number of photographs they produce, and the ease with which they can be displayed for sale. It is estimated that over 54 thousand photographs are taken every second which is 4,7 billion a day. 1 647 million stock photos are listed by the 10 largest stock companies, finding yours in there is a lottery if you don’t do anything to increase the odds from 1 in a trillion and a half to something that matches whatever you need.
So how do you get your photograph to stand out from the masses?
- First, you need to find a subject that people are looking for. This can be done using keyword research tools and plenty of time online looking and learning
- Second, you need to take photos and produce stunning high-quality images that have a recognizable style
- Third, you have to tell as many people as possible, by really mastering the use of social media
- Finally, you have to sell and deliver which you can be using dropshipping