How to Find the Best Photography Niche as a Beginner
There is no one perfect way to become a successful photographer. However, some tips can help you find your niche as a beginner.
What’s the good news?
Today, we’re going to discuss step-by-step ways of finding the best photography niche.
Without further ado, let’s talk about how to find your photography niche.
Why Should You Find a Photography Niche?
Finding a photography niche has a lot of benefits. One of the benefits is that you won’t be competing with everyone.
Deciding to become an expert in 7 different photography niches all at the same time, may cause you not to be good at your niche.
So you have to pick 2 or 3 niches and master them.
This makes it easier for you to describe to prospects and people what you do and what products/services you offer as a photographer.
This is very important when you’re writing or brainstorming your business plan and that’s what we’re going to discuss in the next chapter.
How to Find the Right Photography Niche as a Beginner
This post will help you to know the 25 best photography niches to choose from as a beginner.
I believe you clicked the link to read the post about the types of photography niches.
Now, let’s dive into how to find the right niche for your photography business.
You must do so because it will help you make money with your photography.
1. Research all the niches out there
The first step to finding the right niche for your business is to research and know all the options available.
Knowing all the different niches out there, you start thinking about the ones that sound interesting and align with your skill set.
We discussed all the different types of photography niches in this blog post. This will help you examine each of them and write down the ones that interest you.
You can break down the list to 3–5 niches, however, research each niche, head over to YouTube and watch some videos of people in that niche, then narrow your list to 1–2 niches.
2. Evaluate your interest
One big mistake many people make is that they want to dive into a particular niche — wedding photography because they learned that it pays well and of course it does.
Take time to evaluate your interests.
Example questions to ask yourself include:
If yes, find options that involve photographing outdoors and maybe stay away from indoor photography or studio photography.
If yes, consider venturing into street, portrait, or event photography. If not, stick with night, product, wildlife photography, etc.
3. Evaluate your current skill set
A lot of people might disagree, but I believe some niches require some skill set.
For me, anyone thinking of going into street photography should first master how to take portrait photography and landscape photography.
They will help you develop basic composition skills and knowledge of lighting and shadows.
The same goes for wedding photography, master portrait photography, and event photography before attempting to cover someone’s wedding because it’s the person’s big day and the stakes are a bit higher.
So sit down and evaluate your current skills and be honest with yourself. I know it’s difficult for us to be honest with ourselves but you have to.
Doing this will open your eyes to your strengths and weaknesses as a photographer, which will allow you to know the areas to focus on before niching down as a photographer.
You’re probably saying — I’m a beginner with no experience in any niche.
That’s why knowing your strengths and weaknesses is very important.
Knowing your weakness is the first step to knowing the niche to venture into. The second step is to take the needed action to solve that weakness like:
- Being a second shooter or assistant to someone
- Reading up on that photography niche and tips to improve
- Watching some YouTube videos
- Taking an internship
- Doing a couple of shoots for family and friends
4. Narrow it down
Once you have researched all the niches and evaluated your interest as well as your current skill set.
Then, it’s time to narrow it down.
5. Research competition
Time to research the competition within your area. Use these free online tools to know the keywords and see what competition you have in your local area.
These free tools would help you in SEO to digital marketing, and also, to analyze and optimize your website.
Or, you can use Google to find the competition within your area. Head over to Google and type in “[insert photography niche] + [location].”
Let’s say you want to dive into the night photography niche and you live in Ohio, just type in “night photography in Ohio” or “night photographer in Ohio.”
Take note of the websites ranking on Google and showing up in the Google My Business map pack.
I recommend you check sites ranking on Google up to page 2 or page 3. This free Google SERP tool will help you find the websites ranking in one place with their Domain Authority and Page Authority score.
It’s very important to know your competitors so you can see how they brand themselves, position their service, and gain insight into profitability and price as well.
On your competition’s website, look out for these four things:
- About page,
- Their services/products pages
- Their portfolio
- And the price page.
Tip: If you don’t have a website for your business, you need one ASAP. You can contact Lastiana to handle that for you.
6. Determine profitability
Money is the lifeblood of any business.
When researching your competitors, check for the average price they are charging and then work out your own math.
This will help you know how much to collect a year to be profitable, then calculate how many photoshoots to do per month to achieve that.
(Note: If at this stage, you don’t like the profitability, the competition, or your overall confidence in the niche, start over again for another niche until you feel confident.)
7. Put it on paper
Time to write everything down to lay out a game plan for your intended business.
Create your business plan to lay out how to start and manage your business. It will serve as a roadmap on how to structure, run, and scale your business.
Creating a business plan gives you more insight and vision into your business and what it takes for you to become successful in the photography niche you have chosen.
Originally published at https://myhustleinfo.com on June 10, 2022.
