One day you discovered a hidden talent. You took out your camera, took some shots, and were surprised with the end result. All your photos looked stunning and your subjects looked magnificent under natural lights. Then you decide to take it a step further.
Whether you’re an amateur photographer or a professional one, you must have an interesting story about how you found your great love for photography. And it wouldn’t even matter if you only took pictures of your pets, took snapshots of the beauty of nature, or emptied your film reel with the profiles of many wonderful people.
Aside from the fun, enjoyment, and unbridled liberty you can feel while taking photographs, did you also know that you can make a living out of it? Or if you have a day job and taking photography as a profession isn’t really part of your plans, you can just build a great side hustle with photography. So how can you do it?
Many photographers out there have been uploading digitized versions of their photographs into their online portfolios. If you’ve ever come across a stunning photography website, you’ll see amazing shots of models, architecture, and other creatives. Other times, photos are often compiled into a digital magazine and are made available for monthly or annual subscriptions.
Stay by the end of this blog so you can discover how you can start selling digital photography magazines with Strikingly.
Popular Digital Photography Magazines
Learning doesn’t halt and it shouldn’t. No matter how long you’ve been into photography, there’s always a new technique to learn and new tools to try.
Finding a compelling source of creative inspiration is essential to many magazine photographers. Knowing the right places to look into can help foster productivity and creativity as a photographer.
If you’re planning to start selling digital photography magazines on your website, you can find motivations and brilliant inspirations from the following popular photography magazine subscription copies:
- Aperture - Aperture Magazine was published in 1952 by a non-profit organization called Aperture Foundation. This magazine is stylized more as a photography book rather than a typical digital magazine.
The contents of Aperture are mostly concentrated on inspiring ideas and works from various photographers rather than focusing on giving tips and techniques in Photography.
Some of Aperture’s photographers are Ansel Adams, Barbara Morgan, Dody Warren, Dorothea Lange, and Ernest Louie.
- Click - Click Magazine boasts an impressive portfolio of high-quality, flawless images. Unlike Aperture, Click offers a section dedicated to the editorial head, wherein critiques, feedbacks, and comments on their reader’s photography portfolio are published. But that’s just one thing that makes this magazine Unique.
Click is unlike many digital photography magazines. They treat photography, not as a hobby or a career, but as a lifestyle. This perspective on photography resonates with their extremely friendly approach to taking images and presenting them.
Click is a bimonthly magazine available both in digital and print format.
- Outdoor Photographer - If you’re a lover of the great outdoors, then you should get motivations for your website from Outdoor photographers.
Outdoor Photographer makes use of nature’s unmatched beauty and the colossal mystery of the wild. For many years, this digital magazine had been on the top lists of many outdoor enthusiasts for technical tips and advice, reviews of photography gadgets, and guides when traveling outdoors.
Outdoor Photographer releases 11 issues per year and even offers photography contests for their subscribers.
- Foam - When developing your website to sell digital products, you shouldn’t forget Foam Magazine as a source of inspiration.
The contents of Foam Magazine range from interviews to photography portfolio reviews and showcases of readers. Foam is one of the best online photography magazines out there in terms of combining great graphic design with remarkable content.
- Nature Photographer - In terms of producing the best online photography magazines, Nature Photographer is at the top of the list.
Before you start selling digital photography magazines on your website, take a quick look into how Nature Photographer Magazine builds their content.
The editors of this magazine consider this as a ‘how-to’ magazine, producing content about tips & tricks, techniques, and gear reviews for photography. The magazine also provides great content for both amateur and pro photographers magazine publishers.
- Shutter - One of the most prominent online photography magazines in the digital world is Shutter. Flip through Shutter magazine and you can get valuable insights when designing your website.
As one of the world’s most recognized photography magazines, Shutter presents itself as a photography magazine by photographers, for photographers. The magazine’s content is more on the business aspects of photography, which can give you great information before making your photography magazines available for online purchase.
Even though Shutter is business-centered, they still feature inspirational articles and techniques. This magazine is available every month in print and digital format.
- Black + White Photography - don’t sell digital products yet unless you’ve seen Black + White Photography. If you’re planning on creating digital magazines in Black and White, you can get amazing inspiration from this reputable magazine.
Black + White Photography Magazines is one of the world’s best photography magazines that features monochrome imagery. Their content is usually targeted towards showcasing still-life photos, portraits, landscapes, and even documentaries.
Aside from breath-taking monochromes, the magazine adds color to its content by provider its readers with a wide array of extremely helpful tips, and one-on-one interviews with some of the world’s most renowned photographers.
Building Your Online Portfolio With Strikingly
Before you can start selling photography magazines, you must first design and develop your online portfolio. Follow the steps below to start creating your website, and make use of Strikingly’s amazing features:
- Go to Strikingly and create an account. Once you’re done, go to your dashboard and click ‘Create New Site’. That should get you started.
- Next, pick the proper template for your photography magazines website.
Once you’ve picked your template, you can tweak your designs by changing the colors and fonts of the template. You can also change the layout and the background image and the style of your website.
Strikingly offers many options and choices for website templates. Depending on the template of your choice, you can add an About Us section and a Contact Us section.
Make sure that you pick a template that represents your values and the products you offer on your site. Since you’re selling photography magazines, make sure to use eye-catching colors and high-quality images. That way, you can give a strong first impression to your visitors and potential subscribers.
- Add a services page to your website. Another way to make your website stand out is to give your visitors a list of services that you offer outside of photography magazines.
Although this option is more appropriate for photography services for special events and occasions, you can still add this to your website to let people know that you can also be hired as a photographer for special events.
But if you’re not into that, you can tweak the services page and turn it into a features page, where you can promote your photography magazines. You can choose to add and remove magazines and highlight the ones that are ‘best-sellers’.
You can also opt to turn this page into a section that takes about you as a photographer, including the gears you use, your techniques, and your subject. It can give your readers a better idea of who you are as a photographer.
- Next, start selling digital products online by adding your photography magazines on your product list.
From the store section of your site, click products. Then select the correct product type, which is a digital download for your photography magazines. You can now upload the product image, product name, and add an attractive product description.
From this section, you can also set the prices for your magazines photography. Afterward, you can now upload files for your photography magazines. You can find accepted file formats in Strikingly’s guide to selling digital products online.
Finally, after uploading your magazines and making them available for online purchase, you can now set a paid membership option on your website.
Click on ‘AAd New Section' on your website template. After clicking that, choose the option to add a pricing table.
As you can see on the image above, you can add and edit membership plans. You also have an option to set the price for each paid membership plan, as well as the option to add a short description to each one.
This feature from Strikingly can help you raise revenue and make money by having readers subscribed to your membership plans.
You can also opt to set payment periods depending on the release of your photography magazines. You can place a different set of paid membership plans on the different digital products that you offer.
Before all this, make sure to set the right payment channels on your website. You can do this by reading through Strikingly's guide on how to add payment channels to your website.
Now that you know how you can monetize your passion, you can start making money by promoting your photography skills and gaining engaged readers.
With Strikingly's wide array of features, you can enjoy a steady flow of income, one click at a time.
