Photoshopping Services as a side income in South Africa?

[OnlyOneKenobi]

I'm a little curious... I see many online articles that suggest people can make a decent side income by offering photo editing and retouching services online.

I might be missing the mark here, but in my experience the average person doesn't seem too keen to pay for a service like this - could it be due to the availability of mobile apps that perform this function for you (some of the apps can do a very decent job)? Or because there are sites that offer some retouching and photo manipulation for free?

I suspect it could also be because the "photoshop services" market is very saturated - so there is a lot of competition in actually landing a gig, irrespective on how skilled you may or may not be...

Any opinions?

 

[saor]

could it be due to the availability of mobile apps that perform this function for you (some of the apps can do a very decent job)? Or because there are sites that offer some retouching and photo manipulation for free?

You can also just post it on a forum and usually someone will help you out for free. Most photo-edits people want are rather trivial and take a few minutes to do, hell we even have a photoshop game on this forum and reddit is full of 'photoshop this' battles where people do edits for the lolz. Obviously much of those are quick silly edits, but even a more difficult edit isn't going to take much time - it seems like a tricky thing to make money from.

Also the 'in South Africa' part is moot. A service like this shouldn't be restricted by borders.

 

[RanzB]

I'm a little curious... I see many online articles that suggest people can make a decent side income by offering photo editing and retouching services online.

I might be missing the mark here, but in my experience the average person doesn't seem too keen to pay for a service like this - could it be due to the availability of mobile apps that perform this function for you (some of the apps can do a very decent job)? Or because there are sites that offer some retouching and photo manipulation for free?

I suspect it could also be because the "photoshop services" market is very saturated - so there is a lot of competition in actually landing a gig, irrespective on how skilled you may or may not be...

Any opinions?

You typically would edit for a photographer or similar type of company, in which case you'd have to be very skilled.

 

[naeem]

For starters you have to compete with the super low india prices. Think R2 per pic for background removal. Cheap as chips for clients, but not much of a viable income for SA citizens.

 

[OnlyOneKenobi]

Also the 'in South Africa' part is moot. A service like this shouldn't be restricted by borders.

Unless you market your service to photographers, estate agents, etc in South Africa...

 

[Urist]

Too many people willing to do it for free, you could maybe look at doing it in bulk for older people. offer to digitize, retoutch and maybe colorise whole family albums.
start with your own family for free, and go on word of mouth from there

 

[NeonNinja]

Fiverr.