BLOG POST: HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH LIGHTROOM® PRESET SALES
Selling your own presets is possibly the easiest way to earn money as a photographer. If you’re acquainted with Lightroom settings and tools, nothing stands in your way of creating your own sets to sell.
You may have already noticed companies promoting presets, but don’t let this dishearten you.
In the past couple of days, I’ve been doing some research.
Firstly, I’ve gone through my sales records and learned that I’ve already earned over 100 K with preset sales, even though I rarely market them - so imagine if I did!
Secondly, I’ve calculated how many settings there are in Lightroom and, roughly (I’m not all that good at this type of maths), how many unique combinations could be made, and I’ve come up with the number 18000, but there are in fact more as each tool comes with its own slider which can be adjusted from 0 - 100.
Both these numbers prove the point that:
1. there’s a lot of money to be made with Lightroom presets.
AND
2. the options for combining Lightroom settings are endless = enabling you to create sets that are absolutely unique.
How to make presets:
Essentially, a preset is nothing but a saved group of editing settings made in the Lightroom software. So once you’ve made the edit, you can save them as a preset.
Learn how to do this in this video:
Who will buy them and why?
In a nutshell, it will be other amateur photographers who will be the most interested in buying them, especially when they see the transformation made to seemingly boring photos with one click of the mouse —these people are already following you on Instagram or your Facebook page, and more will join you when they notice that your account serves a specific purpose.
You can post before and after photos in your stories, making-of’s in your posts, Reels and carousels.
Something like this:
You can set links in your bio that take them to your Etsy shop, website, or Shopify store. I would suggest Etsy to begin with. You can set up your store there, and when someone has purchased and passed checkout, they can download them directly from the confirmation page.
What can you expect to earn?
Go to Etsy and type “Lightroom Presets” in the search bar. Some of the top sellers are selling sets that include 5000 presets for a few Dollars, and they are selling thousands of times. I don’t know who is buying them, but creating 5 K presets seems a little overwhelming to me. I would go for sets that include around ten presets and sell them for maybe 8 € - 15 €.
Look at this set, for example. It’s selling for 8,08 € and has been sold at least 499 times = 4.031,92 €.
