This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
One of the fun things I love to do on book tour is get some cool photos of everybody else who comes out. Just the whole interactive experience. Sometimes great people. Sometimes people bring cupcakes or some other baked goods to share. And it's all coming up in just a week.
So in one week, new book Gonzo Capitalism is gonna be out. I'm gonna be out on the road. chrisguillebeau.com/tour if you'd like to come to one of the stops. And that's not just a plug for the tour, even though I'm happy to do that too. It also relates to today's episode.
Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. We have a question from Nora. Nora is a graphic designer with a passion for photography. I believe she is in Miami, if I'm not mistaken.
Could be wrong on that. But she's getting ready to freelance with Snapper. So Snapper, a book tour. How do these things come together? Well, one of the things I learned after doing lots of events in lots of different cities is it's great to get volunteers to do photography whenever possible.
But it's not always possible to find a volunteer and people's skill level tends to vary just like with anything else. So this cool platform, which is not a sponsor, it's just something I've used myself as a customer called Snapper. Basically they describe themselves as Uber for photographers. So if you are a photographer and you wanna do some photo shoots in your city, basically this app allows you to do it. And if you are a customer, if you're someone who needs photos taken, could be new head shots, could be for an event like I do, then this is basically the app that brings it together and makes it all happen for a pretty affordable price.
Like it's not super cheap, it's not free, but it definitely is a lot less than most commercial photographers would charge. So I've been using Snapper for years again as a customer. And so Nora wants to know how can we turn her hobby into a side hustle? I guess that's what a lot of people want to learn, but specifically photography with Snapper, let's see if we can help her. How can you get paid to take photos with this service?
And there could be some other services like this as well. So if this might be of interest to you, pay attention. Detailed question coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hi, my name's Nora, and I heard about your show after reading the $100 startup. I work a full-time job in medical sales, but I'm really good at photography.
Ever since I was a kid, I've enjoyed capturing moments. And now I'm thinking of turning my hobby into a side hustle. After coming across Snapper, the app that matches photographers with people who want photo shoots, I've been thinking it might work for me. I'm still an amateur, but I really want to learn. How can I make the most out of Snapper?
[Music]
Nora, good news and bad news, or it's not really bad news actually. It's more just like good news and something to be aware of. The good news is I do think this is a great opportunity for a lot of people, especially those who don't have a lot of commercial photography experience or haven't really built up, you know, like an email list or, you know, another client list, you know, source of referrals and such. Snapper doesn't pay a ton of money. I guess that's part of the sort of bad news, but it is easy to get going.
Like there's a lot of decisions you don't have to worry about when you use a platform like this. So I described Snapper as like a starter platform. The way I think of other platforms where it's really easy to like create a listing and make a profile and then potential clients can hire you right away. So, you know, the only downside is that you're not controlling like a lot of elements of the process. You can't really set your own pricing.
You know, Snapper is going to do that. They have lots of policies of their own. You're not supposed to communicate directly with clients outside the Snapper platform. Although, you know, people do that. I know for a fact that people do that.
But so the best thing you want to do, if you want to get started is, you know, just spend some time on the platform. Again, I have no affiliation here. I've just used it as a customer app.snapper.com. S-N-A-P-P-R. So two P's, double P, as they say.
You're going to create a profile. You're going to, I guess there's some, probably some application process to go through to be a photographer. Then you're going to upload some of your best work and such and just start taking whatever is offered to you at first because you want to get ratings and reviews, you know, to then allow you to maybe set a higher rate if they allow you to do that or be more selective on the shoots. And, you know, from there it's like, okay, what do you do next? Well, you can keep doing Snapper forever or you can use it as a kind of, you know, jumping off point to eventually doing shoots on your own, perhaps charging a higher price, not paying the commission to Snapper, which they don't love, but people do it again.
So basically that's what you do. It's pretty simple. And I think, you know, for the right person, as I said, it's a good thing. And it's definitely been a good thing for me as a customer and a client, just being able to have some really cool, high quality photos of the different events, like the bookstore events and such that I do for a book tour without paying a ton of money. 'Cause I don't have like a budget to, you know, full on hire someone for a thousand dollars or a few thousand dollars sometimes for every city when I'm doing like 16 cities in a row and such.
So that's been my experience. I hope it's helpful to somebody out there, either on the photographer side or on the, you know, looking for a photographer side. Listeners, if you've got a question or a comment, sidehustleschool.com/questions. We will continue to feature them throughout the year, throughout the week, both, you know, both are true. And even as I go on book tour, of course we're gonna have a new episode every day.
I'm not just gonna be talking about the book. I always like mention it 'cause I like to talk about what's going on in my world, but I'll also be sharing different stories and lots of other side hustle stuff as we go. So thank you for being out there. Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
