How to make 40usd from old photo restoration service.

Photo restoration is an interesting service, I myself have spent hours chasing cracks and creases with clone and blend.

I can't see it as being the type of gig that would do well on Fiverr though I could be wrong. Think about the type of people who might be looking for such a service, they would have to be cluey enough to scan a high res image and be able to send it to you to repair, resample and send back. Who is your target market? Do you have a picture in your mind who they are?

Are they older people with old photos that need repair? Most people these days would be (of course) using digital images but there must be countless of old photos out there that could be re-touched but aren't that important to actually have to hire someone to fix it. I'm guessing most will firstly take it to their local photo hut or photo studio and they would only take the most important shots because I imagine the service would not be cheap.

Have you done keyword research on photo restoration? Is anyone searching? If so, start with the right domain name and do some thinking about how competitive it is and I would say the best chance you might have would be to build a normal site and try to rank in Google for it and rising to the top. Hopefully others might have a better suggestion.

To make a living with photography today you need sales and marketing skills.

Photoshop experts and photographers are a dime a dozen. There's no shortage of them. But you can still do well if you know how to market your services. I do very well as a portrait photographer and I'm not a great photographer. I don't know Photoshop at all. I simply outsource my edits and my digital artists turn my average photos into artwork that people love so sales are easy.

I can show you how to make money marketing portraits. You can hire photographers to take the photos for you and hire Photoshop experts to enhance your images because there is no shortage of technicians.

I've hired photographers far better than me at $25 per hour to photograph clients that I send them but not one of these photographers wanted to show and sell the images. Even after telling them that they could easily earn $100 per hour on the sales end.

There are plenty of good Photoshop editors who will work for $3 to $5 per hour. So I just outsource everything now except the sales and marketing. I don't use clipping services because they cost far more than hiring someone on Freelancer. Hardly a week goes by without a new clipping service calling or emailing me in the hopes they can get my business.


Cheers,
Steve

This sounds like a fab business, Yitbarek.

Not that it matters, but I studied photography as one of my A-Levels. Years later, I'm still enthused with the subject; just wish I had more time to devote to it.

Anyway - back to business. I haven't had time to read the above replies, though I'm sure they're great ones. What I'd suggest you do is keep things simple and grow from that point onwards. Setup a Facebook page for your business and market yourself (for free, obviously) in the local buy and sell groups. You might also consider offering people a small referral fee if they send business your way. This should get you earning money quickly. From that point, consider expanding to beyond your locality.

I hope some of that provides useful. Very fascinating business and I bet you have lots of fun doing it. My mother recently had a picture of my grandfather restored (a picture of him in the Navy during WW2). It was a lovely service and really meant a lot to the family, since it's the only picture we have of him from back then.

Cheers,

Tom

This sounds more like a brick and mortar business to me. The main reason being that, most old photos are hard-copy and not everyone has the ability to give you a digital file. When I did some photo restoration projects for old family photos, I had to ask my family members to send them in the mail because they just couldn't get the quality right.

I think once you figure out how to give accurate quotes, manage payments and get the digital copy in your possession, you'll be on the way to a nice business niche.