The gig economy now allows anyone with any tradable skill to make a living without having to go through a middle man. If you are a decent photographer, you can make decent money on the side without disrupting your current career.

If you promote your work well, your income from photography may surpass that from your regular income thereby allowing you to quit your job and pursue your passion for photography full time.

Here are some of the ways you can monetize your photography skills to earn money on the side.

Earn Royalties on Stock Photos

Content publishers are ever in need of good photos to use on their magazines, websites, ads, newspapers and videos. Most publishers rely on stock photography sites for images.

Stock sites license out images submitted by various photographers from around the world to these publishers and give the photographers a percentage of the revenue generated.

There aren’t any barriers to entry into this business and you can have your images uploaded to the sites as soon as you create an account.

To maximize the amount of money you make from these sites, you should learn how to promote your work using industry best practices. Since most people searching for photos on these sites will do so by entering particular keywords onto the search bar, you should ensure that your images are tagged correctly and for highly searched keywords.

Become a Weekend Event Photographer

While your buddies are watching TV and drinking beer over the weekend, you can level up your income by seeking out gigs at events over the weekend.

The money you will earn from events will be higher than the amount you will earn when working with just one single person. You can charge an hourly rate or choose to charge a fixed rate based on the type of events you cover.

Open a Photo Studio

Instagram has revived photo studios and their popularity is on the rise especially among the so called ‘Instagram models’.

When you open a photo studio, you will be operating as any business would operate and your success will depend on how well you manage your operations and the success of your promotional efforts.

You will need to choose a specific audience to target. If you target Instagram models, you will have to learn how to market to the demographic.

Partner with Other Photographers

As a one-man show, you will be limited to small projects. Big projects that require a big project team will be out of your reach.

To solve this problem, you can partner with other photographers so you can take on big projects when they get presented to you.

Since you will probably want some freedom to work on your own projects, the agreements you enter into should be on a project by project basis. Remember to put your agreements in writing. You will be better positioned to seek legal remedies in case anything goes wrong if there is written evidence of your agreements.