This articles talks about how much does a real estate photographer make (annually). If you are looking into making your photography passion your full-time job, here are some things you might want to know. Now that you are no longer taking your photos for fun or as a hobby, financial incentive needs to be seriously considered.
Wondering about the salary of a photographer, here are some benchmarks. An average real estate photographer working 40hours/week can expect to make about $20/hour (Glassdoor). Photographers who are in the first 4 years of their career, make $14 – $18/hour (Pay Scale).
Real Estate Photographer Career Income
There are two options in this career path, building your own photography business, or working as a photographer for a company. The company can be a professional photography group or a real estate media house or brokerage. These options shall depend on your skill level and personal work preference.
Let’s break down our article into 2 sections. One for those who are just starting out. What will be in your immediate future. How much can you expect in compensation just out of the gate?
Secondly, we will take a dive into what is a feasible salary for an intermediate to advanced level photographer. You are already good at what you do. Your experience and portfolio speak for themselves. Now, it’s time for you to consider maximizing and growing your career & business.
Beginners in Real Estate Photography: How much can you make as a real estate photographer in training?
Assuming you have had some prior experience working with a camera, you are considering making photography your full-time gig.
What are some ways you can get paid starting out in Real Estate photography?
In this initial stage, you need to prioritize two things. Practicing your craft and getting paid for it. To do that, you would need to have properties to photograph. While it is simple and less stressful to do some pro bono shoots at your own home, and those of your family and friends, capping it at 5 is enough to get your portfolio going.
The reason you should prioritize getting paid for your service is because you are transitioning your mindset. This is an activity that from now on brings you an income. The faster you make that transition the better. Photographers who have gone ahead would have advise no different. There are many realtors out there looking for freebies. Everyone is looking for freebies. Even though they can be good in the beginning, providing your services for free will not serve you, literally. If something free, than perhaps it’s not that valuable. How you are supposed to negotiate a good salary for yourself if you instinct still says “I’m willing to do it for free because I enjoy it”. The quicker you get out of this mindset, the better.
Now, that we have established not doing things for free, the second priority is getting in the hours.
How can you get your foot in the door as a beginner?
This will depend on whether or not you want to work for someone. If a photography job is what you are looking for, a traditional approach to find a beginner/apprentice level photography is your goal. Get your foot in the door. Begin to learn on the job under the guidance and tutelage of your employer. On top of that, they would more than likely have a list of clients for you to work with. Do your best to learn and improve in and out of work. Going above and beyond to make clients happy with your work.
With this approach, you will be guaranteed to get paid for your work. However, if you are more independent and more of a risk taker, going out on your own as a beginner is also an option. Seeing your self as a business owner, the most important thing is to find yourself some clients. Without them, you cannot practice your craft and get compensation for it.
Start out small using word of mouth. Get in contact with people in your social circle looking for a professional photographer to help sell or rent our their property. Negotiate with them an amount of money that you would be happy to work for. Go out their and do as many as you can. As your portfolio grows and your confidence increases, start to go to where realtors hangout. Reach out to them on the phone, or via email. Start a conversation with them and let them know about your products and services. It’s a numbers game. Soon enough as you acquire a good amount of clients that are satisfied with your work, you will be well compensated for your photography.
How to improve your skills and salary as a beginner?
Practice. Do it over and over. Until you don’t have to think too much about it. That’s not enough. How can you practice? How do you know things that you do not know. If you work for a photography company, chances are you will have the opportunity to be mentored by more experienced photographers. They will help point out things you are doing well and things that you need to improve upon. However, don’t take it for granted. Be proactive and ask for help, feedback, and constructive criticism.
If you are out their own your own, consider joining some photography groups in your area or online. Have people more experienced than you review your work and find out how you can do better. Constantly ask yourself how you can do better with your photography.
If you are a curious person and a constant learner, as time goes on, I have no doubts that your skill as well as salary will increase.
How fast can you progress in real estate photography?
Like anything, real estate photography is a skill. While it takes 10,000 hours to become a master. However, your best bet is to start small, with small learning goals. Make a plan on how you can accomplish certain goals that will help you progress your skills. For example perfect the basics, get your HDR shots down, perfect your editing process, streamline your post-production… If you take the time to create a plan for how you can improve your skills, you will be able to make incremental improvements at a rapid pace. The article on skill mastery suggests that it will take someone about 6 months to be decently good at a new skill. This is a realistic timeline you can base your improvement plan on.
What are some additional tips you can use to improve your salary?
DO what the pros do!
If you work for a company for some time and have proven yourself, consider asking your employer for a raise. Be reasonable and realistic but fight your what you think is a fair compensation for your contribution to the company.
If you are working for your own business, consider increasing your price or simply going out there and getting more clients. However, do not sacrifice quality for quantity. You will gain clients but also lose them easily. Make sure your process and business is prepare to take on more work load. Consider getting some additional help that you can afford. It has to make financial sense. Some photographers often outsource their post-production to companies abroad. It can save them a lot of time in post-production. Time which they can re-invest in getting more clients and taking on more shoots.
Intermediate to Advance Real Estate Photographers: Things you should consider.
What are the next steps for your career?
If you are working for a company, you have got some reflection to do and decisions to make. After a few years in the business, are you breaking the average salary of approximately $20/hour? If not, ask yourself why. Is it because your skills are not up to par? Or is it because you have not asked your employer for what you deserve. These are questions that only you can answer.
Should you consider starting your own business?
If your skill sets are ready time for you to take the next step. You already have a portfolio. It’s time for you to create a website to showcase your work and service. Not only that, you would most likely have some connections during your time working in the real estate industry. Now that you have decided to go out on your own, you should consider letting your network know. This is important because your network will most likely become one of your business’s first clients.
How much money can you expect to make with your own real estate photography business?
Let’s break down some numbers together.
If your previous salary was per hour, consistent, without too many variables, things will be changing drastically.
Your salary now will depend on the amount of services you can acquire on the market. On average, realtors will pay photographers $100 to $300 (for just photos) depending on the size of the property and budget they are working with.
What does this tell you?
How much does a real estate photographer make running his/her own business?
If before you were making $40,000 annually, how many clients would you have to acquire and provide service for to make the equivalent of your previous salary?
Let’s take an average of each realtor and will pay you $200 per property. Take 40k divide by $200, we will get an approximate number of clients you will need to get to achieve your previous salary. Oh, it’s only 200 properties you need to shoot annually.
How many is that per month, you may ask? About 16-17 per month. Let’s take another step. Weekly you will need to shoot 4-5 properties. Let’s say you are productive, that would make you have 1 property shoot per day.
How much are you actually making as a professional real estate photographer per hour now?
Much more than before. It should take you 1 hour per shoot. This should be one of a more lengthy shoot. Your post-production time may take up another 3-5 hours, depending on how efficient you are with your tools. We can say that you are now working:
- 4 hours a day
- 5 days a week
- You might need to work some extra hours to get yourself some vacation time over the summer and for the holidays.
Overall, not bad. That’s why people venture out on their own.
However, let’s not stop here.
How much can you actually make comfortably, while working the same 8 hours day for 5 days a week as a photography business owner?
What are the steps to maximizing your revenue as a real estate photography business?
PRODUCTS & SERVICES
To begin to address this, let’s think about where you are losing time. Per calculations above, 1 hour per property is too much. As experienced as you are, you can probably blast through 2 properties in 1 hour while not sacrificing the quality of your photo.
Already here, you have doubled your income. You are looking at an annual salary of 80 thousand dollars. But hold on, more photos means more editing/post-production, right?
Yes and no. Chances are, you are losing time editing photos by yourself. Moreover, it will take you up to 3 hours to process the RAW files and arrive at the final product per property. Hence, you can probably do it in less. But, this part is still the most time consuming part of your business.
Can you automate this process? Sure there are two ways, using software or hiring editors. Using software will save you time but currently it doesn’t exist. Humans are still most optimal in creating the best images for real estate.
This is until AI technology takes over. They would probably take the photos as well.
Considering hiring some editors in your local area. You would have to put them on your payroll. This is a great way to support your community. It does come with it’s own challenges. But in a few years looking back, super worth it.
Another option to consider is outsourcing your editing.
There are many countries in the developing world with photoshop, LR wizards. They can do it all. Just try for yourself a few teams and evaluate how they work.
We have a suite of services as well. Feel free to send us some samples.
With your post-production handled you are now working for approximately 2 hours per day while making doubled your previous salary. Not BAD. You are a natural at this.
Now that your product and services are quality and time efficient, let’s talk about clients.
CUSTOMERS
To be able to maximize your revenue, you need clients! Simple as that. They are the one who will be paying for your services.
Firstly, the most important step is to get more clients. Secondly, satisfy them. We would suggest using a Customer Relationship Management tool (CRM) to automate and keep track of things. Your clients will love your services just for this alone. Making their lives easier. Most of them are busy realtors running their own business and working for their own goals.
As you save them time and providing them quality products, they will come to you time and time again. Every now and then they will even refer you to one of their realtor friends.
