Making some money with your erotic photography can give you the budget you need to do a little more on each shoot. I thank God every day that I am fortunate enough to do what I love and make a living at it. However, starting to earn an income with your photography can be challenging. I am frequently approached by photographers who say, “I have photographed this girl and we would both like to make some money—but she doesn’t want to do porn.” What’s the answer?
Getting Hired to Photograph Nudes
Getting hired to create fine-art nude images for an individual (or by a non-adult company) is next to impossible. People who want fine-art nudes often have a hard time going from wanting nude images to hiring someone to create them. Often, they will ask a friend and get less-than-perfect results. Luckily, I have carved out a niche market of wealthy socialites who want very high-end, fine-art nude bodyscapes or similar images. Since I have shot so many of these, my name gets passed around by word of mouth and I get hired that way. For me (and other photographers I talk to) word of mouth works. Getting hired to photograph nude images via Model-Mayhem, Facebook, Google+, or other sites just doesn’t seem to happen.
Print Sales. Selling nude photographic prints is harder than selling prints in most other areas of photography. Few people or companies want to hang fine-art nudes on their walls. It is becoming more common, but it’s still pretty rare. I’m not saying it can’t be done, of course—I sell a good amount of work as 30x40-inch prints—but it has only been in the last five years or so that print sales contributed any real percentage to my income.
If a model is nervous about shooting nude, look for concepts that will allow you to shoot inventive nude images that are not overly sexual.
I have carved out a niche among clients who want fine-art nude images.
Adult Image Sites. Another possible way to make money is to submit images to adult sites. While not all adult sites have porn, or even want nudity, there are a lot of sites that want artistic nude images. The only problem with this is that you will often lose all your rights to the images. If shooting for adult sites is something you think you can do, e-mail the site, submit some samples of your work, and see what they think. Some companies are willing to front half of the money for a shoot (so you can hire a model) then pay the balance when the images are uploaded.
Zivity. If you are a strong photographer, you can likely make some money on Zivity.com (which allows creative nude photography but not pornographic images). Zivity subscribers get a handful of votes, each worth a dollar, then vote on photo sets they like. The photographer and model each get a share of the dollar the vote is worth. In theory, this is a great idea—however, viewers don’t have to pay to play. Often, people just look at your content without voting, so your hard work doesn’t get rewarded.
Another issue with Zivity is that you can’t control the payout. Often, I work out different deals with different models, depending on the project and its cost to everyone. The Zivity payout model was originally set up so the photographer would only get 20 percent of each vote and the model would get 60 percent (the rest went to Zivity itself). Recently, they have changed the payout so photographer gets 30 percent and the model gets 55 percent (again, the remainder goes to Zivity).
The sad reality, though, is that the bulk of photographers and models only make a few dollars—a hundred at best. Zivity has turned out to be more of a social network than a real way to make money. My current average for Zivity is 34 votes (netting me roughly $10) per set. My highest set earned 857 votes and my lowest received none!
Voting for an image set on Zivity.
Coming up with new shooting ideas can be been difficult. A few years ago, I discovered Zivity’s contest site (www.zivity.com/prize). The contest ideas are designed mostly by fans and artists—and some of them are really great. The concepts give me and my models something interesting to create. (And you don’t have to enter the contest to shoot some images based on the concept presented.)
Diverxity. What if there was a more modern and fair way to share the wealth? Well, that is what the folks at Diverxity.com set out to create in 2011. They have figured out how to more fairly distribute the earnings from photography and other forms of adult entertainment. Diverxity created a really cool payout model, which is awesome (despite its being a bit more complex). The money coming in from Diverxity subscribers is distributed in the following way: 67 percent of the money goes to the content creators (like you), 8 percent goes to whoever referred the subscriber, and 25 percent goes to Diverxity. The amount paid to the content folks is based on the time subscribers spent looking at your content, how they rated it, and whom the subscriber “follows” (their favorite models or photographers). This hybrid system promises to share the wealth fairly with everyone who works hard to create content.
Additionally, you can control the earnings split with your models. If I agree to pay a model 70 percent of our earnings, then I am free to do so. If we agree she gets 30 percent, so be it. I am all for more freedom and transparency in publishing my art and getting income from it! (Oh, and even folks who don’t create content can make money by referring their friends.)
If you have talked to your models and confirmed that it’s okay to show off the work you created with them, where can you put it? If it is nude, then Facebook and Google+ aren’t going to allow you to place it on there. Some places to show off single images (or small groups of images) are:
You can get a free account. |
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You can get a free account. |
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You can set up a basic blog at no charge. |
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With a free account, you can blast your nudes to the world. |
