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Balance

Being a professional photographer/small business owner and having a life outside of that will be one of your biggest challenges. I see photographers that have really profitable businesses but they are divorced or from the looks of them, their idea of a health fitness program is to fill the bath tub, pull the plug and fight the current. I see others working 60-100 hours a week to make their studios work. Life is more than a successful business, you need to balance your life in all the other areas also. Such as your spouse, kids, spiritual, health and fun stuff. For me, being successful included my wife being able to stay home with the kids and for me to be able to spend time with the family. You can get more money, but you can't get more time, use your time wisely. Our kids are flying the nest now and I can look back at our photo albums full of vacation pictures and be happy with that. We didn't make much money starting out but we have lots of good memories.

Being a photographer is a time consuming job. One big problem is PhotoShop and the amount of time being spent fixing pictures because they weren't taken properly in the 1st place.

The first thing you might want to consider is the amount of money you would like to earn and the amount of hours you want to work at it. If you're starting a photography business that will be your full time job you'll probably need to work at least 60 hours a week at first to get it off the ground. Depending on the level of income you want to make you'll have to work more or less hours.

Many small studios have been going out of business in the last few years due to the increase in photographers with less expensive digital cameras. With more photographers this causes a lower demand which drives profits down to the point you can't pay the bills. Many new photographers have other home incomes to rely on so giving away photography for free or next to nothing isn't a problem for them. In the 1980's there would around 15,000 small business 1 hour photos and then with the over supply of them and price cutting there are around 1,000 left. Similar thing is happening with professional photographers. So one of the 1st things to decide is what level you want to be at. A part timer for a few extra dollars or full time?