44% of our Readers Have Made Money from their Photography

Have you ever made money from your photography?

This was the question we asked in a recent dPS poll. Over 11,400 people responded and the breakdown was like this:

OK – so a fairly large percentage of readers have actually made some money from their photography – but how much and doing what type of work?

I spent a little digging around in the comments of the post where we launched the poll and while there were too many comments to come up with a scientific result on this the main way that people say that they’ve earned some money from their photography is via ‘Freelancing’ of some kind.

This includes a large variety of things including portrait work (both personal and in corporate settings), weddings, covering events (Fashion, Parties, Music) and Real Estate work.

The second most popular response was ‘selling prints’. For some this was selling prints at markets, for others it was online (at sites like Etsy) and with others it was simply to friends.

The third most common response was ‘Stock Photography’ – either online via sites like Crestock, Shutterstock, Fololia or 123rf  or through agencies.

There were also a range of other responses including selling books of photography and winning prizes in competitions.

In terms of how many readers were working professionally/full time as photographers – it was a little harder to gauge (perhaps I’ll run a poll on this in future) but I’d say that in the 300+ responses there were probably 10-15 who seemed to be making a living from their photography (although with some it may not have been their only income).

The vast majority of answers indicated that readers were not full time and had only made some money from their photography (ranging from those who said they’d done it once through to those who make a nice side part time income from it).