Hot New Side Hustle Alert – New Home Photo Shoots

We’re living in an increasingly Instagram-able world. And your peers are willing to pay good money to have these special moments in their lives documented and shared. This is the perfect opportunity for you to launch a new side hustle: new home photo shoots.

You’ve heard of engagement photo shoots. And maternity photo shoots. And gender reveal photo shoots. It’s about time someone offers new home photo shoots! How about you?

The Basics of the New Home Photo Shoot Side Hustle

To make money with new home photo shoots, you simply position yourself as a photographer specializing in new home photo packages. You can charge an hourly fee or a session fee, which would include post-shoot photo editing to make sure the images are properly cropped, colored, and retouched as needed.

What kind of photos would you take? There are so many fun options! Here are just a few ideas:

• the buyers accepting the keys in front of the house
• the buyers carrying each other over the threshold
• a champagne picnic on a bare living room floor

Just look at these beautiful shoots on Tidewater and Tulle, Anna Lynn Hughes Photography, and even in this Huffington Post article.

So the process is simple: take the photos, edit them, and provide the finished photo set to your clients.

What You Need for Your New Side Hustle

To launch your new side hustle, you need:

• Basic photography skills to get started
• Access to a good camera (cell phone photos aren’t going to cut it if you’re going to provide a professional photo package)

Focus on practice, practice, practice to hone your photography skills. Follow your family and friends around the house taking portraits.

As you grow into this new business and learn more, you’ll probably want to take a few photography classes, learn more about lighting equipment, and get experience with more specialized editing software.

There will be plenty of time for that in the future. And you’ll be able to increase your rates as your skills increase! But everyone has to start somewhere.

 

5 Keys to Making the Most of Your New Side Hustle

To really maximize the income potential of your new home photo shoot side hustle, take advantage of these 5 keys…

1. Start improving your photography, and then keep improving it

This income stream is only sustainable if your images are just as good as the professional photographers in town. So start learning everything you can about shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Experiment with your camera to find out what works. You’ll also need to experiment with people. What poses make for the best shots?

This requires a substantial upfront time investment, but you’ll soon be able to make your manual adjustments and pose your subjects without even thinking about it.

2. Have the right equipment

First, you need a DSLR camera. If you don’t already have one, you can get a good DSLR camera, complete with accessories, for under $500. You may also want a basic studio lighting setup to improve the quality of the photos and show your clients that you mean business.

Want to make the photo shoot extra special? Bring more props than just the keys and a sold sign. Here are a few prop ideas:

• a bottle of champagne and 2 glasses for a toast
• confetti
• a balloon bouquet
• a picnic set to lay out on the bare floor
• moving boxes
• a chalkboard with the closing date or address
• a welcome mat
• flowers
• a “1st home” sign
• an envelope addressed to the buyers at the new address
• goofy new home photo booth props
• a toolkit for fixer-uppers

3. Build the right portfolio

Your portfolio will start small. That’s perfectly fine. But try to vary the images. Different poses, different styles, different lighting etc. The sooner you can vary your subjects, the better. Your prospective clients will notice if your portfolio images are all of the same people.

This sounds terrible to say, but it’s a fact: prospective customers want to see beautiful people in your photos.

It’s sort of like haircuts. People see a person with an attractive face and think that haircut will make them look like that model. They think the same way about photographers. If they see beautiful models in your photos, they subconsciously think you single-handed made the models beautiful, and you can do the same for them.

When they see average-looking people in your portfolio, they think the photographer just couldn’t capture that subject’s beauty. I know, it doesn’t make sense. You’re a photographer, not a magician. But the harsh truth is that you’ll convert more shoppers into customers if you feature beautiful people in many of your portfolio photos.

So once you’re confident in your ability to produce portfolio-quality images, consider hiring a couple models for a shoot. New models may be willing to trade their services for copies of the images if it will help with their commercial modeling resume and/or portfolio.

4. Price appropriately

If you’re brand new to photography, I strongly recommend offering starter rates to your first few clients. $25-$50 for a 60-minute session plus photo editing. You can reasonably expect to spend about 30 minutes editing for every 60 minutes spent shooting. Then price your local photographers. How much are they charging for senior pictures, engagement shoots, maternity shoots? That will help you gauge an appropriate rate once you feel confident in calling yourself a professional.

5. Promote, promote, promote

Promote your side hustle all over social media. You may even want to launch an inexpensive website to add credibility to your new business.

Then contact local real estate agents to tell them about your services and offer them a referral fee. If they recommend their new buyers to you for the new home photo shoot, you’ll give the agent a cut of the profits.

 

 

How to Get Started with Your New Side Hustle

Like most things, to get started, you just have to start! Sure, you should probably read a few starter articles like How to Become a Photographer or  Beginner Tips for Posing People with Confidence. But you’ll probably learn more in a single session than you would in a hundred articles. So jump in!

Post to a few local Facebook Groups offering low introductory rate shoots. The fee should just be enough to cover your time, not so much that your clients would expect professional-level photos (yet!). I’d have been thrilled to pay $25 for someone to take 10 or 20 decent amateur photos as we moved into our first home. The thought just never occurred to me at the time!

If you’re not comfortable accepting money for your first couple sessions, offer them free of charge. Just to get yourself some real-world experience.

A few sessions like this will help you build a bit of a portfolio. Then you can increase your prices incrementally. After each session, just bump your pricing a bit until you’re making professional photographer money for professional photographer images.

How to Push this New Side Hustle Further