7 Essential Income Streams for Creatives

It’s not just you. Those nagging thoughts of economic uncertainty that are keeping you up at night are becoming all-too-common among not just creatives, but the general workforce. With regular headlines about layoffs and economic uncertainty, relying on a single revenue source has become a risky strategy—even in the best of times. It’s time for a new plan, starting yesterday.

As a photographer or creative, many of us grew up believing that a steady stream of client commissions was the ultimate goal. But in a volatile market, putting all your energy into one type of work can leave you exposed when priorities suddenly shift. I’m here to argue for a diversified approach to your work that could one day save you from being blindsided by abrupt corporate budget cuts which might otherwise devastate your business. This is your guide to creating reliable multiple income streams as a creative.

The Two Pillars of Creative Financial Resilience: Active vs. Passive

Although the importance of creating multiple income streams in order to remain resilient during seasons of adversity dates back to antiquity, applying this enduring wisdom in your own life is a sensible idea even in the best of times. Essentially, this concept is to have several smaller revenue streams coming in from various sources. The goal: a wide enough spread of income that if one revenue pipeline isn’t doing well for a few months, the others can still keep you afloat while the external factors beyond your control sort themselves out. 

In this guide we’ll look at seven essential income streams for creatives that can help bolster your business through:

• Active service offerings: trading your time for money
• Passive products: items that you can create once and sell perpetually. 

I’ll also touch on ways you can generate work that can be multipurposed into various income streams so that every effort acts as part of a larger cohesive strategy rather than toiling in the production of one-off creations.

1. Creating & Selling Digital Assets & Stock (Passive Product)

One of the best ways to diversify your income as a visual artist is to make your work available for licensing through a stock photo agency. Most stock houses today accept a wide range of media including photos, videos, illustrations, 3D models, and design templates. These visual assets are part of a large searcheable library that attracts almost any type of business imaginable, with everything from Fortune 500 enterprises to boutique advertising agencies being frequent customers. These companies license stock assets as a means to save time and money when advertising their brand, which makes it an attractive option in our fast paced, social media focused world.

The key to success when it comes to submitting to stock agencies is to stay on top of cultural and visual trends, and reputable agencies will provide seasonal creative briefs that you can use to inform your own content production plan. As a general rule, lifestyle content and difficult to shoot subjects such as healthcare or business usually perform best, but your mileage may vary. 

And that leads us to the biggest consideration when it comes to shooting stock, which is that it’s highly unpredictable in terms of income from month to month. Unless you have a sizable portfolio of 10,000+ assets, stock is best treated as a smart addition to your overall strategy rather than something that can be consistently relied upon. You also shouldn’t allow your work to be undervalued, so I recommend that you partner only with premium agencies that pay a fair royalty rate such as Stocksy, Adobe Stock, Stills, and Film Supply.

As someone who has been in this industry for over a decade, I personally wouldn’t advise you to create anything specifically for stock agencies, as it’s very difficult to predict what will sell. Instead, I suggest uploading content that you have already shot from other commissions (make sure you’ve obtained written permission to do so) and make this a consistent practice whenever you produce new work. 

Acknowledgement: 

The field of stock is seeing rising competition from AI-generated assets. There is still room for real photography, illustration, and concepts. Focus on high-quality, authentically human, and conceptually unique content that AI models are still struggling to generate. Or highly-skilled work, like 3D modelling that relies on context and accuracy. This ensures you maintain a solid stock photography income.

2. Selling Prints & Reproductions (Passive/Hybrid Product)

In a similar vein to stock licensing, selling prints can be an accessible way to leverage your existing imagery into a new passive income stream. This approach is generally only effective if you already have a built-in audience for your work, and can prove to be a great way to establish a deeper connection with your true fans.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to selling prints is to avoid the perception of mass-produced work. And the best way to do this is to have your own personal storefront that may include a mix of more affordable open edition prints, as well as limited run fine art prints at a higher price point. 

If you prefer to handle the entire print process yourself, you can use the integrated Format Store to conveniently sell your work online with no commission fee. However, if you’d prefer to set up a print on demand shop with direct to customer shipping options from a professional partner lab, adding a ShootProof storefront as a subdomain to your existing website might be the option you’re looking for. 

3. Monetizing Lightroom Presets, Brushes, & LUTs (Passive Product)

If you have a natural inclination to color theory and viewers frequently ask how you’re able to achieve such beautiful tones in your work, then you’re already sitting on a potentially lucrative income stream. There’s always a healthy demand from fellow creatives and enthusiasts for time saving post-production automations which provide high quality one-click looks that will quickly elevate their craft. Once you’ve mastered your workflow, you can create Lightroom / Capture One presets, Photoshop brushes, video LUTs, fonts, etc, and sell them using your own online store.

Easily the most appealing aspect of monetizing your own custom presets is that they cost almost nothing to make and can be sold at a high-margin with unlimited supply. You can also strategically offer some presets for free as a lead magnet in order to entice buyers to sign up for your newsletter, which you can then use to market future product launches directly to them. 

Start by creating a small pack of Lightroom presets based on your most popular images. Offer 1–2 presets as a free download in exchange for an email address, then upsell the full pack to your newsletter subscribers.

Check out this comprehensive guide on how to make and sell your own Lightroom presets courtesy of Zenfolio.

4. Retouching, Editing, & Post-Production (Active Service)

As we’ve just seen with selling custom presets, a dialled in post-production workflow is a valuable asset that can make you money in more ways than simply putting the finishing touches on a project that you’ve been commissioned to shoot. High-end portrait retouching, color grading, and complex compositing remain in demand skills that are needed by other photographers, advertising agencies, and in-house creative teams for e-commerce brands. Truly professional photo editing can be a significant bottleneck for creatives, so the value that you’re offering is clearly made evident by freeing up their time for other tasks.

Retouching apps and generative commands are coming to impact this field as well, which is why highly skilled creatives can instead leverage the niche work that requires more than just clicks, but eyes and critical judgement. Focus on specializing in areas that require unique expertise to provide valuable retouching and photo editing services. 

Create a dedicated Retouching & Editing page on your portfolio website that shows side-by-side before/after examples, clearly lists your services, and gives a simple contact form. With Format, you can spin up a clean service page in minutes and keep all your work in one place.

Additionally, it’s worthwhile to set up a profile on Behance (where many of my colleagues have found creative work), add a Services section to your LinkedIn profile, and distribute screen recordings of your retouching process across all of your relevant social media channels.

If this all sounds appealing but you don’t yet have the skillset to charge for this type of high level editing, I highly recommend the excellent Frequency Separation tutorials from Pratik Naik which have made a massive improvement to my own retouching work. Frequency separation isn’t just a valuable skin retouching technique; it’s also indispensable for minimizing reflections and imperfections in product photography as well.

5. Assisting and Second Shooting (Active Service & Networking)

In the face of erratic budget fluctuations that tend to have a direct impact on the volume of freelance projects in the creative spaces, having consistent part-time work to pad your monthly income offers an invaluable sense of stability and peace of mind. This is where assisting other established professionals in your chosen field makes a lot of sense. Ideally, you’ll be an assistant or second shooter for someone who is already a step or two ahead of where you’d like to be in your career.

The benefits of this are twofold: You’ll be making money and at the same time learning valuable insider industry expertise in the process which you can then add to your creative skill stack for further success in the long run. Whenever you’re assisting someone more experienced than yourself, be sure to take as many mental notes as possible. Pay close attention to their lighting setups, gear selection, how they conduct a shoot, their bedside manner when interacting with subjects, and how they deal with unexpected problems.

Attitude goes a long way in this line of work, so try to be of the mindset that no job is beneath you. If you’re actively looking to be useful and to be a problem solver, people will take notice and in turn you’ll get more work because they genuinely enjoy working alongside you. And don’t underestimate the power of networking when it comes to word of mouth referrals.

If this resonates with you, be proactive and reach out to the top five professionals in your area whose work you admire and offer to assist them in whatever they might need. Be sure to clearly communicate how your skillset can be of value to them and even be open to sweeping floors or running coffee errands if that’s what is needed. Because regardless of what you’re doing, you’ll undoubtedly learn something if you pay close attention to how they manage their business.

Closely observe: 

• Lighting setups and gear selection
• How they direct subjects and manage time
• How they communicate with clients and crew
• How they solve problems when things go wrong

6. Teaching Workshops & Courses (Active/Hybrid Service)

You’ve likely heard the phrase, “those who can’t do, teach”, but I’d like to contend that those who can do and teach unlock a potentially lucrative revenue stream that’s often mistakenly overlooked. Even if you don’t think of yourself as an educator by nature, I know from experience that teaching is a skill which can be quickly developed and many people inherently crave the human connection that in-person learning experiences offer. The demand for lighting, post-production, and street photography workshops remains high, in part because visual arts are simply easier to learn through hands-on instruction rather than reading about the theory behind them. 

Teaching photography workshops is a great way to leverage your expertise. Just like when selling fine art prints, one of the best ways to generate demand is to market your workshops as exclusive sessions with limited spots available. You can start small, with one-hour paid classes to gain confidence and gather testimonials before launching a full-scale course. And when it comes to paid bookings, I like to use TidyCal which is both free and super simple to set up. 

If the thought of conducting face-to-face classes sounds incredibly draining to you, consider creating online courses instead using Skillshare which has a built-in customer base or selling them exclusively on your Format Store (and keep all the profit). But regardless of whether you choose to do it in-person or online, teaching can be a reliable and surprisingly fulfilling income stream to incorporate into your larger business blueprint.

7. Affiliate Marketing & Gear Reviews (Passive/Hybrid Product)

You’re already using specialized equipment such as cameras, software, and services like Format on a daily basis in your professional life, but have you considered that sharing your thoughts about these tools can be an additional source of revenue? Whether it’s on your blog, social media channels, or Youtube, the process of reviewing and recommending gear can be monetized by earning a sales commission when someone makes a purchase through an affiliate link that you’ve provided. This works especially well if you leverage your existing professional credibility, as audiences will trust voices that they respect and admire.

Some popular affiliate programs that have a fairly low barrier to entry include Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network, KEH Camera, and B&H Photo. The biggest downside with these programs is that the sales commission is usually quite small, so it’s worth also seeking out affiliate partners that pay 10% or more. As a word of caution, be wary when joining an affiliate program by an individual rather than a company as there’s a higher chance that they won’t pay out, leaving you with little recourse. I’ve learned this the hard way.

As your platform becomes more well known, you’ll likely be contacted by a variety of different companies, many of which won’t align with your values (such as asking for a review to appear organic when it isn’t). Although you may feel pressured to go along with these types of requests, remember that it takes a ton of work to build an audience’s trust, but it can be quickly broken if they feel they’re being misled. With that in mind, I suggest only promoting gear that you genuinely enjoy using, discussing your own personal experience, and most importantly communicating how it might benefit the reader.

One of the most important elements of this is the need to disclose your professional agreement, marking clearly that your content is an ad will keep you safe from any legal concerns, and maintain the trust of your audience.

Repurposing & the Resilient Creative Practice 

When the market is anything but certain, we all need to continuously iterate and expand our professional offerings. The most successful creatives operate with a 5x Content Multiplier mindset: every shoot should generate materials for at least five different income streams. With their permission, client work can potentially be used for selling stock photos, prints, a blog post with affiliate links, sample photos for your custom presets and LUTs, and materials for an online course. Whenever feasible, try to repurpose everything that you create. 

In order to minimize complexity, use a portfolio website as your homebase through which you funnel your various income streams while maintaining a cohesive professional brand. With Format, you can set up an integrated storefront to sell your digital products, add custom pages to showcase your unique services, sign & store contracts, and add external links in your site menu for stock licensing or a Youtube channel.

The process of creating new revenue streams might feel uncomfortable, but try to remember that it’s an act of self-care. In doing so, you’ll be creating a financial buffer, reducing stress, and giving yourself the space to focus on doing your best work.