$5,000 in a Weekend Taking Aura Photos - My Side Hustle Nation Feature (Plus What's Happened Since)
Last year I sat down with Nick Loper on Side Hustle Nation and broke down the whole thing - the numbers, the margins, the $5K weekend, the accidental licensing business, all of it. The episode has since racked up over 30,000 views, which still kind of blows my mind, because when we filmed it I was still figuring out what I was even building.
A lot has changed since then. More on that at the end.
But first - the part of the interview I get the most messages about.
The numbers, because I know that's why you're here
In my first six months doing aura photography, I made $70,000.
I charge $44 a session. My hard cost is about $1.50 to $2 per print - I print on a Polaroid mounted on a postcard from Staples. The profit margin is genuinely wild. My entire setup fits in a rolling cart. Setup and teardown takes 20 to 45 minutes. I have never worried about my equipment breaking.
My first popup: around 30 sessions.
My second popup: about 50.
The country music festival I mentioned on the show: I sold out on day one. Ran out of film. Did a little over 100 sessions, left early. Came back the next day and did about 100 more.
After booth fees and revenue share, that was roughly $5,000 for a Friday and Saturday.
One of the women I photographed at that festival booked me for her wedding the following year - 300 guests, aura portraits as a wedding favor. Another check with a comma, from one conversation at a booth.
How the business actually works
The setup is simple. Biometric readers go on someone's hands. They track electrical signals - every thought you have is a synapse firing, electricity moving around. My software reads that data and translates it into color frequencies in real time, rendering a 20-second video of someone's energetic field around their body.
We watch the video together. We talk about the colors, the movement, where things are concentrated. We find a frame where they look great and the field looks beautiful, and I print it for them on the spot. The whole session is about 10 minutes.
I coded the software myself in Python. No AI involved. It's not a filter. It's not a ChatGPT wrapper. It's actual biofeedback data, translated artistically.
The old school aura camera - the AuraCam, which is the industry standard - hasn't been updated in about 40 years. It's between $7,000 and $20,000. It uses Polaroid film, so you wait 10-15 minutes for a single static photo to develop. The parts are no longer manufactured. I know photographers who went out of business because their camera broke and there was no way to fix it and no money for a new one.
Mine produces video. Fits in a backpack. I can troubleshoot it because I built it.
How I got started without much of anything
I reached out to local boutiques and metaphysical shops and offered to pop up. Some didn't charge me at all - they were excited to offer something new on a Saturday. When they did charge, it was usually a flat $50-70 for several hours, which meant I only had to take two photos all day to break even.
I did First Fridays - the art walk nights in downtown Bend. I collaborated with a watercolor painter who would paint someone's portrait in their aura colors. I sat next to tarot readers at more mystical events and next to completely unrelated vendors at farmers markets, where being the "oddball" booth actually works in your favor - people get curious.
My early marketing was embarrassingly minimal. A social media post. A local newspaper ad that still generates inquiries months later. The occasional "tell a friend and get a free session." Mostly word of mouth, which is both the slowest way to grow and the most validating thing in the world.
The one thing I did intentionally from day one: I focused on the experience, not the deliverable.
You're not selling the Polaroid
I used to work at Starbucks when I was 18, right when they introduced the policy of writing customers' names on cups. I've also spent a lot of time thinking about SoulCycle's early model - the idea that before anyone was going to show up to a weird spin studio behind a morgue, the experience had to feel transformational from the second you walked in. The smell, the lighting, the way the receptionist greeted you by name and asked about your kid's baseball game.
What you're selling is how you make someone feel.
In my booth, that means: every person who sits down gets my complete attention. I forget they're at a busy festival. I focus entirely on how to surprise and delight them. Not because it's a tactic. Because people are deeply, genuinely craving connection right now, and if you can offer them even 10 minutes of feeling truly seen, that's medicinal.
More than half the people who sit with me apologize before we even start. "Oh no, you're going to see the devil on my shoulder." "I yelled at my kids this morning." "I feel like I'm going to break your camera."
And then their field shows up, glimmering like a gemstone, and I get to show it to them.
I got an email after one session that said "I didn't even know this was the medicine I needed." And honestly, all I did was take her picture and tell her she was rad. Which was just the truth.
The story I tell most often
At my second popup, a group came in together - couples, kids, eight adults. A woman sat for me and her field looked pretty typical except for one thing: a small ribbon of white over her solar plexus. Low. Almost at her abdomen.
At that point in building the software, I had run it thousands of times on myself. I had never seen white populate that way, in that location, on an adult. So I said honestly: "I've seen this color in kids and animals, but I've never seen it on a grown-up in exactly this spot. I don't know quite what to make of it."
She told me at the end of the session that she was 12 weeks pregnant.
Her husband was the last in the group to sit down. His dominant aura color? Green. The same green that had ribboned over her solar plexus.
The whole group started cackling.
“The aura paternity test” they said :).
The licensing part I didn't plan for
When I started, I had no intention of licensing the software to anyone. But inquiries kept coming in - healers, event vendors, people who'd experienced a session and wanted to bring it back to their own communities. A woman in Utah asked me to come do a popup at her shop. I told her very kindly that I was not going to Utah. But I offered to teach her instead.
That was the catalyst.
I built out a full guide program: a Slack community, a pricing guide, event templates, scripts for reaching out to markets and boutiques, examples of how to research a new city and identify collaboration opportunities. Everything I'd learned in my first year plus my 15 years of event industry experience before that.
The license is a fraction of the cost of the old school camera. Monthly subscription that covers ongoing software updates. Guides set their own prices, their own hours, their own offerings.
When we filmed the episode in October, I had just launched the program.
Since then: 25 guides. Active, thriving, running their own practices across the country.
And here's something I want to be clear about: I'm still one of them!
Even with 25 guides in the network, I haven't stepped away from doing sessions myself. Honestly? The profit margin on being an aura photographer is better than onboarding someone into the guide program. That's just the math. But more than that - I genuinely love this work too much to give it up. The moment of connection, the confession booth, the look on someone's face when they see their own field for the first time. I will never stop wanting to be in that room with people.
I do remote sessions regularly and show up for special events in person when they call to me. Not because I have to. but Because it's the whooole point.
The guides carry the network. I carry the practice. That balance feels exactly right :).
What's available now
If you want to experience a session: remote readings are available at Soma Lumin no matter where you are. A lot of the people booking me are in Ohio, the Great Lakes, the South - people who experienced a session at a festival and then figured out how to find me from home.
If you want to become a guide: you can learn more and apply at somalumin.com/guide. Use code HUSTLE for $100 off.
And if you haven't listened to the original episode yet: find it on Side Hustle Nation here.
Summer Ray is the founder of Soma Lumin and the developer behind the world's only real-time aura videography system. She is based wherever the van is parked.
