How to Make Money as a Photographer Online

Photography is one of those skills that people massively undermonetize online. Most photographers think about shooting clients for money — weddings, portraits, commercial work. And that's a real business. But it's also time-limited, location-dependent, and increasingly competitive.

The photographers I've seen build the most interesting online businesses are the ones who turned their skills and aesthetic into products. Here's how.

Option 1: Lightroom Presets

This is probably the most well-known digital product for photographers, and for good reason — presets are genuinely useful, easy to apply, and visually compelling to market.

If you have a distinctive editing style, packaging that as a preset pack is a natural first product. A set of 20 portrait presets, a moody travel preset collection, or a bright and airy family photo preset pack can sell for $15–$49 depending on quality and niche.

Marketing is almost automatic: post a before/after on Instagram or TikTok, show the mood transformation, and link to your store. Photographers and hobbyists will find you.

I'd sell presets on MadeThis — the setup is fast, delivery is instant, and you can start for free. Buyers download their preset files immediately after purchase without you needing to manually send anything. See the MadeThis pricing page for what the plans cost.

Option 2: Photoshop Actions and Overlays

Similar to presets but for Photoshop users — actions, overlays, textures, and mockups. If you work in Photoshop and have built tools that speed up your workflow, other photographers and designers will pay for them.

Bokeh overlays, lens flare effects, grain textures, and sky replacement overlays are consistently popular. These are relatively fast to create if you already know what you're doing, and a well-priced pack can convert reliably with the right visual marketing.

Option 3: Photography Education — Tutorials and Courses

Teaching photography is one of the highest-leverage options because the education market for photography is enormous. People want to learn lighting, composition, portrait posing, product photography, editing — and they'll pay for good instruction.

A course doesn't need to be long. A focused 6-part video series on one specific skill (e.g., "Natural Light Portrait Photography for Beginners" or "How to Edit Consistent Wedding Photos in Lightroom") can be priced at $47–$147 and deliver real value.

You can bundle video lessons with a PDF guide, before/after example files, or preset packs on MadeThis. Bundled products tend to convert better because the perceived value is higher.

Option 4: Stock Photography and Licensing

Selling photos through stock agencies (Getty, Adobe Stock, Shutterstock) is a passive income model, but it's a low-margin one — you earn small royalties per download, and you need high volume to see meaningful income. It works better as a supplementary stream than a primary one.

A higher-margin option is selling your photos directly through your own store on MadeThis as licensed downloads — styled product photos, brand photography packs, or curated lifestyle images for a specific niche (food, wellness, travel). Businesses and bloggers pay more for niche-specific stock than they do for generic images.

Option 5: Posing Guides and Shot Lists

This is a sneaky-good product idea: posing guides for photographers, or shot lists for specific types of shoots.

A beautifully designed PDF with 50 family portrait poses, 30 couples' poses, or a complete "newborn session shot list" is useful to photographers at every level. These are quick to produce if you already have the knowledge, and they sell consistently because the need is evergreen.

I'd price these at $15–$27 as standalone products, or bundle them at $39+ with preset packs and editing guides.

Building Distribution for Photography Products

Instagram and TikTok: Before-and-after transformations, editing tutorials, and behind-the-scenes content drives enormous engagement in the photography niche. Every video can end with a link to your store.

YouTube: Long-form tutorials build trust and convert to product sales. A 15-minute tutorial on "How I Edit Golden Hour Portraits" can drive consistent traffic to your preset shop for years.

Pinterest: Highly visual, highly searchable. Photography tips and visual examples of your work get pinned and re-pinned, sending long-tail traffic to your store.

Blog + SEO: Targeting search queries like "Lightroom presets for [style] photography" or "portrait posing guide free" with blog content creates a consistent organic traffic pipeline.

My post on best tools for your first $1,000 online covers the foundational marketing and selling tools if you're building this from scratch.

Getting Your First Product Live

Pick the simplest product you can create in a weekend — a preset pack or a posing guide — and get it listed.

Don't wait until it's perfect. Don't wait until you have a thousand followers. Get a live product, share it, and learn from real buyer feedback.

Set up your store at MadeThis.com, upload your first photography product, and start earning from your skills in a way that doesn't require you to be behind a camera.