Can I Make Money With Photography?

I've never done a real day's work in my life, and somehow I ended up with several million dollars. When I started off in New York at the age of 20 I had $163 in the bank.

I just fool around. Once in a while I edit magazines, then I made some good deals with a marketing deal I put together.

I spend as much time as possible avoiding work as I can. For example, posting on forums like I'm doing now is probably costing me quite a bit of dough.

This week I could have made $27,000 but I was too lazy to lift a finger and finish a copywriting project that's six months late.

Sometimes it's aggravating being so much smarter than you are.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Interesting. I didn't know that the Daily Mail had a large readership in the USA.

Cheers,

R.
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He's telling the truth, Roger. The jobs pay so little its the only way a woman who doesn't marry a well-paid man can support herself in many parts of the country. The press likes to demonize those on welfare, but most have no choice. You simply cannot live on $8 an hour here, even in places like Indiana where the cost of living is very low.

Its one of the great injustices in our country though. If a woman has a baby she cannot support, the state sets her up in a life, hands her everything....free housing, free food, cash to spend, and free education if she wants one. If a man has a baby he cannot support, he's a 'deadbeat' and a criminal who is hounded by the courts and often jailed for nothing more than being poor, which is a crime for a man in this country.
 
Why do you consider yourself a "fine arts photographer"? What suddenly makes you one over a plain old "photographer"?

Do you think calling yourself a "fine arts photographer" makes you one, whatever that is? Does that make you a "better" photographer than a regular crummy photographer?

You are not going to make a living selling prints on a cafe wall in a state where everyone is out of work or making minimum wage.

You moan and groan, but you set yourself for the situation you're in, then you complain how "bad" everything is.
 
LuLu, there are millions of anonymous millionaires posting on web forums. You have been one of them.

Pretty cute, though, taking the name of a notorious mobster hit man.
 
Hicks is an example of high intellect with deficient self marketing sense.

He's an "authority", but it's coupled with a deficient income and an inability to break out of a niche. I hired many like him, for example, a guy who was an expert on 1950's celebrities. He was a brilliant writer, but could only sell low-paying articles to third rate magazines. He had a couple of breakouts with celebrity biographies that sell well on Amazon, but produce a mediocre income.

Randy Newman said it well:

Of all of the people that I used to know
Most never adjusted to the great big world
I see them lurking in book stores
Working for the Public Radio
Carrying their babies around in a sack on their back
Moving careful and slow

(Chorus)
It's money that matters
Hear what I say
It's money that matters
In the USA

All of these people are much brighter than I
In any fair system they would flourish and thrive
But they barely survive


They eke out a living and they barely survive

Hicks has good knowledge but he's not a commercial success. He sunk enormous amounts of time and energy into his website, for example, which was not a moneymaker.

He sold a number of manuscripts to middling specialist publishers. These projects are published but pay very modest advances, and royalties are few and far between. They make for OK credentials, but little else.

A column in a UK photo magazine? Again, good for the reputation but not the pocketbook. I would be shocked if he made over £200 per column, probably much less.

So how does one compensate for financial foibles? Ego. One must feel (and convince oneself) that one is superior and of high intellect, perhaps by becoming an authority notable by his postings on a forum. The only alternative is the gaspipe.

I would not be wanting to leave late middle age and embark on my senior years with a few pennies coming in from a dubious column and a few teetering book deals.

Or exile to a Northern country with a civil service job, offset by lower expenses.

In these cases, hobbies are a blessing because you can immerse yourself in camera fetishism rather than contemplate your future as aging non-successes in a hostile, expensive world.

It's frightening and you can see the middle class being mercilessly ripped off by huge, out of control central governments.

It can't end well.
 
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chippy said:
i've heard those phrases you said many times in movies etc, no doubt it is deeply ingrained in USA culture...not to argue, but in support and understanding i and i am sure most aussies would say the same thing, we have (as long as we can remember) a similar culture where we all say to our own families (kids) that anything, absolutely anything is possible here, there is absolutely no limits to what can be done!

everyone can own their own home and make a million if they have the gumption to do so (of course we know that people from the poorer areas dont do so well, but on the other hand every Aussie can pick out half a dozen current 'poor' people that did make it, next month there might be another half dozen...meanwhile everyone else works to better themselves or is happy with what what they do,,,(sure there are those that are miserable, we call them the poms LOL)...

i am not sure what the answer is, its not as if our politicians are giving us any better visions than yours are, maybe we just all know and are united in knowing how crappy our blokes are that we feel better and just keep going...we dont need a wild west 😉
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I will be complicit in following this thread veering inevitably toward economics and our place in the social order. I think the romantic "cowboy mentality" which obtained for so long in the United States and Australia has finally run up against the reality of huge populations and diminishing resources.

Those with vested interests in the status quo will deny and rationalize and manipulate in order to prolong their life based upon the current model. But I don't think it can be sustained. It takes additional resources to build another strip mall, and it occupies more land that could have been farmed and it requires more people — more consumers.

At some point the planet says no. That's enough.

The logical extension is not, "Can I make a living in photography?" but simply, "Can I make a living?"

I'm glad I'm retired!
 
Lulu Rosenkrantz said:
Hicks is an example of high intellect with deficient self marketing sense.

He's an "authority", but it's coupled with a deficient income and an inability to break out of a niche. I hired many like him, for example, a guy who was an expert on 1950's celebrities. He was a brilliant writer, but could only sell low-paying articles to third rate magazines. He had a couple of breakouts with celebrity biographies that sell well on Amazon, but produce a mediocre income.

Randy Newman said it well:

Of all of the people that I used to know
Most never adjusted to the great big world
I see them lurking in book stores
Working for the Public Radio
Carrying their babies around in a sack on their back
Moving careful and slow

(Chorus)
It's money that matters
Hear what I say
It's money that matters
In the USA

All of these people are much brighter than I
In any fair system they would flourish and thrive
But they barely survive


They eke out a living and they barely survive

Hicks has good knowledge but he's not a commercial success. He sunk enormous amounts of time and energy into his website, for example, which was not a moneymaker.

He sold a number of manuscripts to middling specialist publishers. These projects are published but pay very modest advances, and royalties are few and far between. They make for OK credentials, but little else.

A column in a UK photo magazine? Again, good for the reputation but not the pocketbook. I would be shocked if he made over £200 per column, probably much less.

So how does one compensate for financial foibles? Ego. One must feel (and convince oneself) that one is superior and of high intellect, perhaps by becoming an authority notable by his postings on a forum. The only alternative is the gaspipe.

I would not be wanting to leave late middle age and embark on my senior years with a few pennies coming in from a dubious column and a few teetering book deals.

Or a warehouse job at Amazon either.

Or exile to a Northern country with a civil service job, offset by lower expenses.

In these cases, hobbies are a blessing because you can immerse yourself in camera fetishism rather than contemplate your future as aging non-successes in a hostile, expensive world.

It's frightening and you can see the middle class being mercilessly ripped off by huge, out of control central governments.

It can't end well.
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Well, you just wrote that and didn't make a penny on it - so you're more stupid than him!

Gotta go. I'm on $2.50 a word and you've cost me more than you're worth.
 
Dick, I've got to agree with you. I'm glad, at almost 60, that the bulk of my life was lived in a different time. If I was a young man facing the obstacles the future holds now, I'm afraid I would live in despair. There are a lot of young people struggling not only with the future, but with making a decent living today.
 
Pickett Wilson said:
Dick, I've got to agree with you. I'm glad, at almost 60, that the bulk of my life was lived in a different time. If I was a young man facing the obstacles the future holds now, I'm afraid I would live in despair. There are a lot of young people struggling not only with the future, but with making a decent living today.
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The concept of a "decent living" has more to do with how and why we live than a bank balance. If your priorities are a half-million dollar home and two new SUVs and you're two paychecks from poverty, you're going to have to sleep in the bed you make eventually.

I'm not one to settle for mediocrity, but working 60 hours a week and letting the government raise your kids is counterintuitive. Are people living heir lives, or are people's lives living them? I enjoy working as a photographer because of the variety, flexibility and creative aspect (within the bounds of commercial work, of course).

I've got no illusions on my prospects, but then I don't aspire to wealth and fortune. I want to enjoy my working years, be outdoors with my family and friends. I aspire to cook from a refrigerator full of real food, see some of the world when it's convenient and not worry about next month's bills. That's not how a lot of people think these days; I understand I'm in the minority.
 
MatthewThompson said:
The concept of a "decent living" has more to do with how and why we live than a bank balance. If your priorities are a half-million dollar home and two new SUVs and you're two paychecks from poverty, you're going to have to sleep in the bed you make eventually.

I'm not one to settle for mediocrity, but working 60 hours a week and letting the government raise your kids is counterintuitive. Are people living heir lives, or are people's lives living them? I enjoy working as a photographer because of the variety, flexibility and creative aspect (within the bounds of commercial work, of course).

I've got no illusions on my prospects, but then I don't aspire to wealth and fortune. I want to enjoy my working years, be outdoors with my family and friends. I aspire to cook from a refrigerator full of real food, see some of the world when it's convenient and not worry about next month's bills. That's not how a lot of people think these days; I understand I'm in the minority.
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I agree with you on the greed that makes people work long hours for silly luxuries, but I don't think you understand that millions of young people, a huge percent of whom have university degrees, are working jobs that in many cases pay 1/3 to 1/2 the bare minimum cost of living. 70% of the jobs that exist in my home city pay less than $9 an hour, while the cost of living here just to put a roof over your head and food in your stomach requires you to earn about $2000 a month before taxes. You simply cannot survive on less unless you live with your parents or you go on welfare (and welfare here is only for women with young children, it will not help men at all nor will it help intact families or women without kids). That $2000 a month works out to $12.50 an hour for fulltime work, and it will support one person, no children. Its even worse in places where cost of living is far higher than here in Indiana (one of the cheapest places in the USA to live). In many American cities, rents are 3-4 times what they are here, yet pay is not much higher.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
I agree with you on the greed that makes people work long hours for silly luxuries, but I don't think you understand that millions of young people, a huge percent of whom have university degrees, are working jobs that in many cases pay 1/3 to 1/2 the bare minimum cost of living. 70% of the jobs that exist in my home city pay less than $9 an hour, while the cost of living here just to put a roof over your head and food in your stomach requires you to earn about $2000 a month before taxes. You simply cannot survive on less unless you live with your parents or you go on welfare (and welfare here is only for women with young children, it will not help men at all nor will it help intact families or women without kids). That $2000 a month works out to $12.50 an hour for fulltime work, and it will support one person, no children. Its even worse in places where cost of living is far higher than here in Indiana (one of the cheapest places in the USA to live). In many American cities, rents are 3-4 times what they are here, yet pay is not much higher.
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Adapt. You're only a victim of your circumstance if you fail to take responsibility and action. Move to where you can use your field of expertise. If you can't move, change your expertise. Swing a hammer in Corpus Christie if that's what it takes. Wait tables in Spain. Be a tour guide in Bali. If you can't move or change, you're not thinking hard enough about how to make your situation work. Maybe it's doing a few different things part time.

I'm not talking about greed. If somebody wants those nice things, it's their right and privilege to work their asses off to get it. There are degrees of success, but as I said, it's a personal journey. If what I chose as a profession made me wealthy and happy, well bully for me. It just happens my choice in occupation doesn't make wealth, but offers time and flexibility. Different individuals place priorities as they will. Don't think for a second that if I considered myself "poor" or was worried about making the mortgage payment I wouldn't be out digging ditches, pumping gas or bagging groceries in a New York Minute.

I don't think that you understand that a university degree is not a ticket to a job-for-life like it was in the 60's. A BA, MFA, MBA or anything else you can reel of doesn't entitle people to a carer, a living, nice home or happiness. If you're unemployed for a decade, that's not anyone's choice but your own. If you'd go hungry before working for $8 an hour at Walmart or otherwise, you're part of the trouble and not part of the solution. The definition of delusion is repeating the same actions and expecting a different outcome.

No offense, Chris. You're sounding like a broken record. Being an entrepreneur (like this thread is about, in my opinion) is about flexibility, opportunity and making smart moves in a timely fashion.
 
MatthewThompson said:
Adapt. You're only a victim of your circumstance if you fail to take responsibility and action. Move to where you can use your field of expertise. If you can't move, change your expertise. Swing a hammer in Corpus Christie if that's what it takes. Wait tables in Spain. Be a tour guide in Bali. If you can't move or change, you're not thinking hard enough about how to make your situation work. Maybe it's doing a few different things part time.

I'm not talking about greed. If somebody wants those nice things, it's their right and privilege to work their asses off to get it. There are degrees of success, but as I said, it's a personal journey. If what I chose as a profession made me wealthy and happy, well bully for me. It just happens my choice in occupation doesn't make wealth, but offers time and flexibility. Different individuals place priorities as they will. Don't think for a second that if I considered myself "poor" or was worried about making the mortgage payment I wouldn't be out digging ditches, pumping gas or bagging groceries in a New York Minute.

I don't think that you understand that a university degree is not a ticket to a job-for-life like it was in the 60's. A BA, MFA, MBA or anything else you can reel of doesn't entitle people to a carer, a living, nice home or happiness. If you're unemployed for a decade, that's not anyone's choice but your own. If you'd go hungry before working for $8 an hour at Walmart or otherwise, you're part of the trouble and not part of the solution. The definition of delusion is repeating the same actions and expecting a different outcome.

No offense, Chris. You're sounding like a broken record. Being an entrepreneur (like this thread is about, in my opinion) is about flexibility, opportunity and making smart moves in a timely fashion.
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What you've written is patently false. I cannot move without giving up custody of my son, sorry, won't do it. Oh hell, I'm not sorry. Working for $8 an hour didn't work because EVEN WALMART AND McDONALD'S and other low wage places WOULD NOT HIRE ME. I Tried! It wasn't my choice that no one would hire me. Let me make this crystal clear, you'd be picking your teeth off the ground. Our country's rulers have destroyed the economy of this country and people like that then spit on the victims and tell them its their own fault.

In any case, I no longer need or want a job. My income from my photography is enough to support myself and my son. I was talking about my past experience and what MILLIONS of hard working Americans experience now. Its all their fault that most of the decent jobs have been exported and the rest devalued to starvation levels? Bull****. Your time is coming. The parasite class in this country won't rest until every citizen has been reduced to beggary. I've seen a lot of you holier-than-though conservatard fools lose everything here in the last year and some of them are actually starting to understand.

Its too bad that reality doesn't support your politics, but it is what it is.
 
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Lulu Rosenkrantz said:
Hicks is an example of high intellect with deficient self marketing sense.

He's an "authority", but it's coupled with a deficient income and an inability to break out of a niche. I hired many like him, for example, a guy who was an expert on 1950's celebrities. He was a brilliant writer, but could only sell low-paying articles to third rate magazines. He had a couple of breakouts with celebrity biographies that sell well on Amazon, but produce a mediocre income.

Randy Newman said it well:

Of all of the people that I used to know
Most never adjusted to the great big world
I see them lurking in book stores
Working for the Public Radio
Carrying their babies around in a sack on their back
Moving careful and slow

(Chorus)
It's money that matters
Hear what I say
It's money that matters
In the USA

All of these people are much brighter than I
In any fair system they would flourish and thrive
But they barely survive


They eke out a living and they barely survive

Hicks has good knowledge but he's not a commercial success. He sunk enormous amounts of time and energy into his website, for example, which was not a moneymaker.

He sold a number of manuscripts to middling specialist publishers. These projects are published but pay very modest advances, and royalties are few and far between. They make for OK credentials, but little else.

A column in a UK photo magazine? Again, good for the reputation but not the pocketbook. I would be shocked if he made over £200 per column, probably much less.

So how does one compensate for financial foibles? Ego. One must feel (and convince oneself) that one is superior and of high intellect, perhaps by becoming an authority notable by his postings on a forum. The only alternative is the gaspipe.

I would not be wanting to leave late middle age and embark on my senior years with a few pennies coming in from a dubious column and a few teetering book deals.

Or a warehouse job at Amazon either.

Or exile to a Northern country with a civil service job, offset by lower expenses.

In these cases, hobbies are a blessing because you can immerse yourself in camera fetishism rather than contemplate your future as aging non-successes in a hostile, expensive world.

It's frightening and you can see the middle class being mercilessly ripped off by huge, out of control central governments.

It can't end well.
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Thanks for the backhanded compliments.

Actually I've had the opportunity to break out of the niches, but it's never really worked out. As you say, it's not what I want to do or am good at. 'Self marketing' generally suits best the people of very limited talent and very strong ego.

There's a modest change of direction under way at the moment -- look at the new home page on the site -- and I'm also trying to sell some fiction. I am not convinced it'll work, but what's the alternative?

The idea of the 'information society' pisses me off mightily. What is information worth? Nothing. People prefer free rubbish to genuine expertise that actually costs them even a penny. The 'information society' gives money to those who control the means of distribution.

If you're interested in becoming my agent, I'm all ears.

Cheers,

R.
 
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The diversity of useful information on RFF grows ever wider! - we now have people with intimate knowledge of our financial status, our achievements, failures and aspirations (or lack of) in life, as well as employment and travel consultants, and of course the foretelling of future events!. Now I'm getting the impression that - if I had called myself an 'artist', I could have avoided doing a 'proper job' for fifty years!😀....I just feel so humble when logging on, lately!😉
Dave.
 
Hi Chris

Hi Chris

If it helps to lift your spirits, I can try to find a link to a Neil Young cover tune that a friend of mine recorded, that mentions something about Santa Fe. He is trying to learn to play the geetar.

Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Cincinnati is a beautiful city. Like I said, I'm stuck in Indiana till my son turns 18. The courts won't let me leave the state without his mother's permission. Given that I REALLY want to go back to Santa Fe, she'll never give that. I doubt she'd give us permission even to go to Ohio because she sees him often now that she's out of the mental hospital, and she wouldn't be able to if i moved from Ft. Wayne. I can legally go anywhere in Indiana, but the rest of the state, including Indianapolis, is the same as Ft. Wayne....bad economy.

Might as well stay here so my son can stay in school with his friends and can see his mother. I'm in school again and halfway through my MA so I want to finish that too. My son will be 18 a few months before he graduates from high school, so we'll stay here till he has his diploma. I plan to research other places to live heavily as we get closer (5 more years). Where I go will depend on where economic opportunity is, and where my son wants to go to college. Indiana has some great universities, but I'm going to encourage him to go to school out of state so we can leave and I can try to make a living and help him through school.
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Velveeta?????

Velveeta?????

Philly said:
Like Velveeta?

That sells very well.😀
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Isn't Velveeta the Government Surplus Cheese that is given away for free.

I grew up on sandwiches made from white (balloon?) bread, velveeta slices and mustard made by my dad. Once a week we got a treat and the mustard was horseradish mustard.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
What you've written is patently false. I cannot move without giving up custody of my son, sorry, won't do it. Oh hell, I'm not sorry. Working for $8 an hour didn't work because EVEN WALMART AND McDONALD'S and other low wage places WOULD NOT HIRE ME. I Tried! It wasn't my choice that no one would hire me. Let me make this crystal clear, you'd be picking your teeth off the ground. Our country's rulers have destroyed the economy of this country and people like that then spit on the victims and tell them its their own fault.

In any case, I no longer need or want a job. My income from my photography is enough to support myself and my son. I was talking about my past experience and what MILLIONS of hard working Americans experience now. Its all their fault that most of the decent jobs have been exported and the rest devalued to starvation levels? Bull****. Your time is coming. The parasite class in this country won't rest until every citizen has been reduced to beggary. I've seen a lot of you holier-than-though conservatard fools lose everything here in the last year and some of them are actually starting to understand.

Its too bad that reality doesn't support your politics, but it is what it is.
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Thanks for the tantrum and slander. It certainly makes your argument more credible. That said, congratulations on sustaining yourself solely though the fruits of your art. I sincerely wish you well.
 
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