How I made $95,000 selling presets

So I did the calculation the other day

trying to work out how much I made

from my Lightroom presets,

and even I was surprised

at how much I've made from Lightroom Presets,

considering that

I don't really promote them

in a sort of dedicated fashion.

They're sort of just sat as a side product,

sort of side project sort of thing.

I've done the calculation here.

I've added everything up.

I've made over $95,000

from selling Lightroom Presets.

Before we get into this video,

I've put together a resource,

basically just covering digital product ideas

that you can use to kickstart

your online business.

I'll leave a link to it

down in the description below.

Even when I looked at the number,

I was like, "Wait, is that right?"

But it is right.

I've looked at my sales income on Gumroad.

I've looked at my sales income on Payhip.

I currently have five different

Lightroom preset packages.

I have Lightroom Presets Collection 01,

Collection 02, Collection 03,

and then I also have two iPhone ProRAW
preset packages as well.

So five packages,

and those five packages

have made over $95,000.

That also doesn't include
my iPhone Creator Course.

My iPhone Creator Course is separate.

That is like a sort of guide/course

on basically just

how to get the best out of your iPhone

and the presets also included in that.

So that doesn't even include that.

So I didn't wanna include that because

that's more of like a guy coursey thing.

I just wanted to focus solely on the presets.

$95,000 from presets.

I very much just had it

sitting in the background.

And the reason why

is because Lightroom presets for me

were never really meant
to be a big money-maker.

It was sort of the breadcrumbs

of what I was already doing,

which is taking photos,

uploading them on Instagram and Twitter

and these other places.

I was uploading pictures
of tech and whatever else.

I was also just doing
photography for myself.

So people ask me quite often,

"Hey, Oliur, what would you do
if money wasn't an option?

You had all the money in the world

and you didn't have to worry

about making an income or whatever.

What would you do?"

I'm actually partly already doing it,

which is photography.

I love photography, I love video.

I love anything to do with cameras.

It's just been a personal passion of mine.

A sort of hobby of mine

since before I was making
any money on the Internet.

I remember, you know, picking up

my dad's little Samsung phone

that he had at the time

and had a camera on it,

and I remember taking pictures with it.

And I must have been like

10, 11, 12, something like that.

I'm thinking like, "Man, this so cool."

I can take pictures.

This is so fascinating to me.

I remember being fascinated by it
ever since then.

And I've bought cameras

and stuff along the way.

Just for fun, again,

just out of passion

because I want to take pictures.

And I think to myself,

if I had all the money in the world

and I could do whatever I wanted,

I didn't have to worry about money anymore.

I think all I would do

is take pictures.

I would just travel and take pictures.

It's just what I love to do.

So Lightroom presets for me

were very much just a breadcrumb thing

where I was already using them,

I already had them,

I already put together

my own sort of look for images.

Why not turn them into presets

and just sell them on my website?

And if anyone is interested,

they can buy them.

If they're not, it doesn't matter.

It just doesn't.

It's not gonna make a difference.

I think this is a great example
of selling a digital product

that necessarily doesn't
actually need to have

any sort of brand or face behind it.

As long as you take good pictures,

you share them online.

You don't need to have your face in them.

There don't have to be pictures of you

or anything like that.

As long as you take good pictures,

you share them online, Twitter, Instagram,

and people like your pictures.

You're taking pictures that

people like,

people think look cool,

look amazing.

There are always gonna be people asking,

"Hey, what are your settings?"

"Hey, what camera are you using?"

"Hey, what presets are you using?"

And that's where I sort of saw

the potential to make money from this

because people would ask me,

"Hey, what are your settings in Lightroom?"

And I just bundled them up,

put them in a package,

uploaded them on Gumroad and Payhip.

And like I said, if anyone
is interested in buying them,

they can buy them.

But what I've done over the last year,

maybe two years,

is I've started pushing my presets,

my iPhone presets quite a bit more,

mainly because I'm so interested
in iPhone photography,

my iPhone now has pretty much
become my main camera.

Even though I love cameras,

I have all these expensive cameras.

I think I have six cameras right now.

I have like five Sony cameras

and I have a Fujifilm camera as well,

a Fujifilm X100VI.

And I already wanna buy a Leica.

It's just because I love cameras of photography.

But even with all those cameras,

I still use my iPhone,

mainly because the iPhone
is just so convenient, man.

You can just have it always in your pocket,

this thin little device

that's always in your pocket.

And because it shoots ProRAW,

it shoots 48 megapixel pictures,

the quality that comes out of this thing

just blows my mind every time.

And I think to myself,

if I'm taking pictures on my iPhone

and I'm editing them

to make them look more like

they're sort of professional pictures,

again, why not just make some presets

and just sell them online?

It just seemed to make the most sense.

So when Apple released the functionality

of ProRAW on their iPhone, again,

I just thought it made sense to sort of

edit them how I want,

put the presets together, sell them.

And again, because I was sharing pictures

that I had shot with my iPhone,

people were asking,

"Hey, what settings are you using?"

"Hey, what presets are you using?"

So it just made sense for me

to package them up and sell them online.

My ProRAW presets actually,

if I look at my Gumroad, my Payhip account,

let me record screen actually,

so that you guys can see this as well.

So if we look at my latest pack,

my iPhone ProRAW Presets 02,

which I released September last year

when the new iPhone came out,

it's made $8,000.

And then if I look at my iPhone Presets Pack 01,

that's made $20,000.

So the reason why
the iPhone Presets Package 02

hasn't sold as many

is because I have the iPhone Creator Course.

And the iPhone Creator Course

is basically all the presets

bundled up in one price.

And you also get all the settings,

the way I shoot pictures,

all that sort of stuff in one place.

So this has started sort of overtaking that.

I'll be sort of pushing people to here

rather than just buying the presets

because this is better value, right?

You get both the preset packs,
you save money,

and you also get all the settings

and sort of guide on how I edit pictures

and everything like that, all in one place.

So it just made more sense
to just package it up.

Again, I was just taking stuff

that I was already doing,

I was already interested in

and just packaging it up into a bundle.

These are breadcrumbs basically,

and I've heard this time before,

I can't remember
where exactly it's exactly from,

I've heard someone mention it before.

But the idea is

you're just taking things

you're already doing

and then just packaging them up into things

that people can buy

because there are gonna be people

who are interested

in this sort of stuff regardless,

there are always people

who want to achieve the same results

in whatever you're doing.

So this is where it just makes a lot of sense

for me to package up in a bundle like this.

Like I said as well,

the great thing about this is that

this can be completely faceless.

When I upload pictures with my iPhone,

I'm not in those pictures.

It doesn't matter.

I'm uploading pictures

of my travels, of things,

of places where I'm going,

just everyday stuff.

I'm putting it on Twitter and Instagram

and then I'm telling people

in the description

or the link or the caption, whatever it is,

"Hey, check out my iPhone presets,

if you guys wanna get the same

sort of look on your iPhone pictures."

And of course, the same applies to pictures

that I shoot with
my professional camera as well.

The idea is that

I just wanna make it as simple as possible,

as easy as possible for me

to just to make money from something

I'm already doing.

I think to myself as well,

if I were to go all in on this,

I think there is a lot of money to be made.

I know a certain YouTuber,

I unfortunately can't name him,

but a certain popular

photography YouTuber,

who was making $1,000,000 a year

from Lightroom presets,

which is just absolutely wild.

I think some people wil be able to guess

who I'm talking about,

but there's quite a few.

He's not just one.

There are quite a few creators

who are making bank from presets,

creators that you have never have heard of,

photographers you have never heard of,

purely just because
they're good at what they do.

They're good at taking cool-looking pictures,

they're good at editing their pictures

and then they're packaging them up

into a Lightroom preset bundle

and then selling it online.

I know plenty of creators who are doing this,

who are making 20, 30, 40,

$50,000 a month.

There are also dedicated websites
to stuff like this.

I think, again,

a lot of people have the misconception

that this is a saturated market,

that there are already hundreds

of Lightroom presets.

There are already thousands

of Lightroom presets,

why would someone buy
your Lightroom presets?

If anything that actually proves
the market is there.

If there are already hundreds of--
Well, thousands,

tens of thousands
of Lightroom preset packages,

surely the market is there.

Surely there is people who are out there

wanting to buy these things.

And the way I see it is

that it's not saturated

because a person doesn't go out

and just buy one
Lightroom preset package.

Usually, people buy
Lightroom preset packages

regularly every year,

every few months, whatever it might be,

because styles in photography changes.

It just makes sense
to then package those styles up.

Every year there is a different aesthetic,

there is a different style,

there is something else that comes along

that we can replicate,

that people wanna replicate,

that people want to easily
apply to their picture.

It's so easy to sell a different
Lightroom preset packages.

It's so easy to sell different looks

because that's what people want.

I could technically make this

into loads of different
Lightroom preset packages,

even though I sort of bundle them into one.

I could do one outdoor
Lightroom preset package.

I could do a wedding
Lightroom preset package.

I could do a travel
Lighroom preset package.

I could do a product
Lightroom preset package.

That's four different
Lighroom preset packages there,

all tailored to specific things.

And again, because they're tailored

to specific things,

a person who's coming along,

they might be like,

"Okay, I'll just buy all four packages

and I can apply them

to all of my different types
of photography that I do."

And it's not just people who have a camera

and are taking pictures for fun

that are buying these
Lightroom preset packages,

businesses buy them too,

professional photographers buy them too.

They might not necessarily take the preset

and apply it just like you have,

but they can take the preset

and then adjust it,

tweak it to their photos,

their look in the way they want it.

And that's where I think,

again, people don't realise
a lot of businesses,

a lot of professionals

are buying these products.

It's not just your old Joe,

whatever his name is, Joe John Doe,

sort of sitting at home

with his camera,

taking pictures

when he goes out for a walk.

No, no, no, actually those
are the worst type of customers.

The best type of customers are the ones

who are businesses, who are professionals,

who want to achieve a certain look,

a certain aesthetic.

And they know that the only way to do that

is to buy your Lightroom presets.

I also think with a product like this,

it's very easy to make it quite unique

because it's very easy to have

a Lightroom preset package

that is your style,

that has a specific style.

And I think that's specifically

why people buy my Lightroom preset.

It's not because they're necessarily

better than someone else's Lightroom presets.

Not at all.

They're just presets at the end of the day.

They're just some settings for a picture.

The reason why people buy
my Lightroom presets

is for my specific style.

And I think everyone

can build their own specific style

when it comes to Lightroom presets.

You don't even necessarily
have to be a photographer.

There are lots of colourists,

lots of editors in Lightroom

and other programs

that don't take pictures at all.

They simply just edit
other people's pictures,

so you don't necessarily
have to be a photographer.

You can take someone else's pictures,

get your own look, get your own aesthetic,

and bundle that up into
a Lightroom preset package as well.

I think if I were to start again

from the beginning

and I had no other sources of income,

starting from scratch

and I want to build a business like this,

the way I would do it would be--

So this is basically like
a high level way I would do it.

I would, of course, take the pictures,

get the Lightroom presets,

set up the store, set up the website,

have the product on there,

show what the product
can do before and after of the filters.

Just show you what's possible

with the Lightroom presets.

Because the main thing is
you gotta have the store

and you gotta have the product ready.

So this is something I cover
in my onlinecreatorcourse.com,

if you guys are interested.

Basically just about selling
digital products and stuff.

But in there, I basically say

that one of the most important things

is you gotta have the platform,

the products you're selling ready to go.

I'd say that's actually one of the easiest parts

because once you have that set up,

then you start marketing.

And what I would do is

I would set up a dedicated Instagram,

a dedicated TikTok.

I wouldn't even do YouTube
for something like this.

And all I would do

is upload pictures that I've shot.

And I would do before and afters.

I would do things

like shot on iPhone

and then I would show pictures

that I've shot on my iPhone
with these presets.

And then at the end of the video,

or at the end of the carousel on Instagram,

I'd put check out my Lightroom presets,

link in the description.

And I would just keep doing that.

I would post like every single day

or multiple times a week.

You can also post the same pictures,

you can post the same images,

but just bundle them up in different ways.

So let's just say you went to Japan.

I went to Japan in October last year.

I took so many pictures.

What I could do is I could bundle that up

into loads of different types
of content styles.

So I could do something like--

All the pictures I shot on my iPhone in Japan,

all the pictures I shot
on my mirrorless camera in Japan.

The Japan Aesthetic.

Before and after pictures in Japan.

So that's four different post that I could do.

Another one I could do maybe some like

my favourite pictures from Japan,

my favourite restaurants in Japan,

my favourite architecture in Japan,

and it's all just pictures,

that's all it is.

I'm just bundling them up in different ways.

And this is the way

I would probably market it
if I were solely just marketing

my own Lightroom presets

and wanting to make money

from Lightroom presets.

And maybe some sort of
iPhone photography

or camera photography course
or something like that.

You would just do that consistently.

I would do that consistently

for a year.

Just to see what happens,

because again, it's completely faceless.

You don't need to have a face.

You don't even need to have a profile picture
of you on your profile.

Your profile picture can just be
a random icon or logo or whatever,

and you can even name the profile,

Mastering iPhone Photography,

or Mastering the Instagram Aesthetic

or something like that.

Or like Photography Aesth-- I don't know,

you could just call it whatever you like,

any brand, anything.

It just doesn't have to be actually you

on the branding itself,

it can be something
completely, entirely different.

And you can just start marketing it constantly

because then I also think

this is the advantage of

not having something
personally tied to you.

When you're reposting stuff,

when you're just constantly,

just marketing
your products and stuff,

your personal brand isn't being hurt then,

you have something there

that is just done

completely sort of naturally and organically,

and it's tied to a completely separate brand.

So it doesn't matter how often you post,

it doesn't matter how little you post,

as long as you're marketing
your own products

and you're consistently

sort of marketing them,

this is the way I would do it

completely organically

without any paid marketing

or anything like that.

Now of course, at the beginning,

when you're starting from scratch,

you're most likely not gonna have
any followers or anything.

But the Instagram algorithm

and the TikTok algorithm are so good

that if you do post good stuff

and you post stuff that's interesting,

it's naturally gonna be shown
to other people.

I think a lot of people fall
into this trap of thinking

they already need a following.

When I was posting pictures

and making money
from sort of presets and stuff,

I didn't have a big following at all.

I actually grew the following

alongside the products.

And I actually had the products,

I don't know, maybe like

a few months or a few years

into sort of doing this stuff properly

because before that I was kind of

just posting on Instagram for fun.

It wasn't really serious.

And then when I sort of started

taking it seriously, thinking like,

"Oh, how can I make money from this?"

That's when I was like,

"Oh, actually, you know,

I could probably grow
quite a few followers from this."

And I remember with Instagram

when I was posting regularly on Instagram,

I was gaining like
10,000 followers a month,

which is just insane.

Now I don't really care
about Instagram or anything like that

because my...

The direction of what
I wanna do has changed.

But I do think to myself, man,

if I just had to focus

solely on selling Lightroom presets,

I would make Instagram profile, TikTok profile,

post every single day

for months, a year,

have a store set up,

have a website set up,

and just sell, just sell constantly.

Tell people this is what you can do
with your iPhone.

This is what you can do

with your mirrorless camera.

These are the great
best settings in Lightroom.

This is how to achieve
the dark aesthetic.

This is how to achieve

the wedding aesthetic.

This is how to achieve

the holiday aesthetic.

All these different things.

There's so many different ways

you can market this sort of thing.

This is also what I'm sort of good at.

I think I've realised that my skills

do fall into this,

figuring out different
ways of marketing things.

And a lot of this stuff I cover
in Online Creator Course,

if you guys are interested.

And a lot of the stuff

I also cover in my Online Creator Course,

trying to figure out different ways to market,

different ways to sell things or whatever.

Marketing is definitely

one of the most important things.

But please

don't fall into the trap of thinking

that you need lots of followers.

If you're someone who thinks

that you need lots of followers, honestly,

you can do it without lots of followers.

You can build the following alongside

selling the products.

Because if you're not already

making stuff,

if you're not really creating stuff,

if you're not sharing value,

why would people follow you

in the first place?

It doesn't make any sense.

The whole reason you get a following

is because you're providing
something of value.

Whether it's a free product or a paid product.

Don't fall into the trap
of offering free things.

I see a lot of creators do this.

A lot of creators make this mistake

of offering stuff for free

at the beginning

because they think
it's the way to get followers.

But the problem with that is that

you then only gain followers
that are interested

in free stuff, in free things.

There are a few creators out there

who have done this

and they have been hurt badly by it

because their audience has turned on them.

They build this audience off of free stuff,

offering free stuff,

offering whatever it might be.

They're offering videos, presets,

jsut whatever products for free.

And then as soon as they start

having a premium product,

something they're charging for,

their audience goes ballistic

because the audience feels betrayed.

They've just built the wrong audience,

the right audience,

the right customers, the right people

who you want

aren't the millions of followers,

the hundreds of thousands of followers.

They're actually the few key followers

that see the value

in what you have to offer,

that see the value in your services

or your products.

So do not make the mistake of trying

to offer free stuff to gain a following.

Numbers are vanity.

Numbers are nothing.

And this is something I've learned
is very, very important

over the last like year, two years,

that the follower count

is actually nonsense.

I know people who have
only a few thousand followers,

yet they make 10, 20, 30, 40,

$50,000 a month.

The follower count does not correlate

to how much money you make.

Unless, of course,
you're some famous celebrity

with 50 million followers

on Twitter or Instagram or something like that.

Obviously, that's a different level.

But you can 100% make
an extra thousand dollars a month,

extra $5,000,

$10,000 a month, $20,000 a month

with a following of less
than 10,000, 5,000,

100,000, whatever it might be.

That's just me rambling.

I really like doing these sorts of videos

because I feel like I can just lay out

everything that I'm thinking

a lot more casual.

I also feel like--

I don't expect these videos

to get viewed by millions of people.

Like I said, I don't care

about getting millions of views.

I actually just care about helping people,

trying to figure out how to

sort of figure out how to make money

online from digital products

because it's what I've done.

And the way I see it

is that the rising tide raises all boats.

There isn't a finite
amount of money in the market

to make money from digital products.

The market for digital products

is gonna keep growing.

It's gonna keep growing massively

over the next 10, 20 years,

because more and more

things are becoming digital,

especially with AI coming in.

That's another thing,
I just completely realised,

you could use AI to make your presets.

You could tell AI be like,

"Hey, I want you to help me edit my photos

to look a certain aesthetic.

Can you do it for me?"

I probably should have covered that

at the beginning of the video.

That probably makes a lot more sense.

Now that AI tools
are just making it so much easier

to make things and sell things,

to setup things.

Yeah, you could use AI to do this.

Even if you're not a photographer or whatever,

and you just wanna sell these products,

you could do it.

I don't see what's wrong with that.

Some people might be like,

"Oh, you use AI to do this,
that, and the other."

And I feel like F those people, man.

They're not the ones you care about.

They're the ones that want you
to stay in the trenches.

They're the ones

who don't want you to make money,

which just is silly.

It's so dumb that people are like that.

And I just think it's so silly.

Anyway, make sure to check out

some of my other videos.

I've done a video on how I made $50,000

from an iPhone wallpaper pack

and to build and sell a digital product
in a weekend.

Hopefully, you guys enjoyed it.

Follow me on Instagram and Twitter.

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