Online Jobs

TIPS60 - Should You Quit Your "Day Job" To Become a Full-Time Photographer?

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.



TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on whether you, if you love our hobbyist photography, should become a professional. I'm John Harrington. The short version is, if you love what you're doing as a hobbyist, stick with it as a hobby. It's something that you do to relax, to entertain yourself, to blow off steam, to just kind of get away from the office. If you love what you do as a hobby stick with it as a hobby. If you're going to become a professional you're going to actually have to treat the business of photography like a business. You're going to have to treat it like you do your day job, your nine to five job. I strongly encourage you to consider that, when you switch from being a hobbyist to being a professional, that you really are starting a business from the ground up, from scratch and hopefully you will find that you can focus on staying as a hobbyist and not becoming a professional, unless that's what you want to do seven days a week. So before you consider making a jump from hobbyist to professional, recognize that it is a business and that's something that you need to stay completely professional on and not treat just like your hobby.

---

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.