How to Make Extra Money as a Filmmaker

In this video, we take a look at some of my favourite ways to make extra money as a filmmaker.

Passive income is a great way for filmmakers to earn extra money while you wait for that next job to come around.

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Top tips for earning extra money as a freelance filmmaker

In this video, we’re going to take a look at some of the best ways for you to earn extra money as a freelance filmmaker.

The best thing about these additional sources of income is that they will carry on earring you money in the background and you barely have to lift a finger once everything is set up.

The first method I’m going to mention is probably the easiest and most obvious:

Selling stock footage and photography

I say this is probably the easiest because chances are, if you are anything like me, you will have a tonne of extra unused footage sitting on hard drives from old and recent shoots.

The main thing to keep in mind is that you need to make sure you have signed permission forms for whatever stock material you are selling. This may be model releases or location releases for example. It needs to be clear on the form, what you intended to do with the footage.

A lot of the stock websites will have examples or even copies of their own forms that you can download and use if needed.

I won’t go into too much detail on selling stock footage in this video as it deserves its own and if you’d like to see that, let me know in the comments.

To give you an idea of what kind of material you can sell, just take a look at some of the stock sites and you can see what kind of clips are selling well. There are always people that are looking for stock footage or photography of something.

It’s worth thinking about what kind of unique stock do you have that you can’t find elsewhere. It may be a unique location or piece of equipment for example.

Sometimes the most peculiar things can make you the most money through stock licensing.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is my next suggestion. I’m sure most of you are familiar with this term by now and you may have even seen it mentioned in the description of my videos. For those of you that are unfamiliar, affiliate marketing is a way for individuals to earn money from various online stores using unique tracking links.

As an example, when someone clicks on one of the affiliate links in my description, they will be taken directly to the product they were looking for and if they decide to buy that product, I earn a small commission. What’s important to keep in mind here is that these links have no additional cost for the people that click on them and so it’s a great way for them to show support to the person whose links they have clicked on.

Affiliate accounts are fairly simple to set up and you will find that a lot of the major online stores and companies have affiliate programs. Amazon probably is one of the largest.

This is a great way for filmmakers to earn extra money because as a community, we are obsessed with what everyone else is using. Now I know this isn’t the case everyone, it’s quite the generalisation but hopefully, you get my point.

Having affiliate links to the equipment you use for your work saves someone having to ask you and earns you a small commission in the process at no extra cost to them. It’s a win-win.

It doesn’t have to just be equipment either. I like to include links to other products and services I use such as Artlist or MZed.

Digital Products

Digital products may take slightly longer to set up than the previous two options, but they may earn you the most profit in the long run.

One of the main benefits of digital products is that you don’t have to worry about shipping them out to customers.

There are plenty of digital products that you can create as a filmmaker that your audience may find useful.

These can range from fairly simple things like LUTs or E-Books to Full online courses.

If you are going to create a digital product, make sure it’s good! No one is going to want to invest their hard-earned money into something they could have made themselves.

If you know there is a way you can offer value to your audience, it’s worth considering creating a digital product for it.

You can sell these products through your own website or use other online sites, just keep in mind how much commission they will take if you are selling them through someone else.

Physical Products

Following on from digital products, it may be worth considering actual physical products.

This could be in the form of prints, t-shirts, hats or even physical copies of your films on Blu-ray as an example.

There are plenty of sites out there for you to sell physical products without you actually having to handle the shipping aspect of the process.

Sites such as spread shirt will allow you to make a shirt for your company for example and they will deal with all the shipping and delivery side of things. You just need to put a link to it on your site somewhere. You may get a smaller commission this way, but every little helps right?

This is the same for sites that sell prints and hats. You just need to upload your images or designs and they will handle the rest.

Some sites will print your images on just about anything from socks to pillows and canvases.

Consultations/ Audience support

The last thing I wanted to mention was consultations and audience support

These are two separate things really but I’ve just put them together because there can be some cross over.

As a freelance filmmaker, you have a unique set of skills that can be highly valuable. There are plenty of companies out there that don’t have their own in house videographer or marketing team and will likely find your knowledge in this area incredible useful.

Consolations can be done in person or online through Skype or zoom for example.

They can be as simple as explaining how a company can use video to increase their audience on certain platforms. They can also be more in-depth, I’ve given sessions to large teams that have no experience in video or photography and walked them through the basics and how they can start to create their own videos.

This could also potentially lead to more work for you as a filmmaker.

The main thing I’m trying to get across to you here is that, whatever it is that you do as a professional, there will always be someone that can learn from you and this can potentially be monetised.

This is why I’ve tagged audience support into this section as well. Sites such as Patron or even YouTube now have ways for your audience to support you in exchange for other things you can offer. This might be 1 to 1 tutorial or training, exclusive behind the scenes or perhaps ongoing mentoring.

These will require more on your part than the other options I mentioned in this video but may be more rewarding in the long run.

I’ve only scratch the surface of extra ways for you to earn money as a freelance filmmaker but I hope you found this video useful.

If you have any questions or maybe even suggestions of your own, let me know in the comments below.

If you’d like to see more videos on low budget cinematography and filmmaking in general you can subscribe here or carry on watching one of these videos.

I look forward to seeing you next time, take care!