3) It's 90% skill 10% kit (and that's being generous to the kit).
The kit is probably the least important factor - the studio I worked for in the late 1970's used a Canon "canonet" for weddings......
The canonet was a compact, automatic, rangefinder camera. Nothing special - nothing like Leica quality, but it had one important quality. Because it was a compact, not an SLR, it could synchronise flash at 1/250 or 1/500, making it ideal for using fill-in flash outdoors. This helped prevent green shading to the bride's dress (reflected light from lawns) and meant that we could ignore the position of the sun when setting groups, and pose bride & groom against the sunlight - enhancing the hair.....
Inside the church, the canonet was again ideal because the shutter was much quieter than an SLR - and it could be hand held at low shutter speeds without the shake caused by movement of the SLR's mirror. This was in the days when most churches prohibited photos during the service - but we were always able to sneak one or two pictures with nobody the wiser.
More recently, up until about 5 years ago, I had a very nice part-time income photographing children at nurseries - with a fairly ordinary 35mm SLR - candid poses and ambient lighting - and the printing was courtesy of Jessops - standard mchine printing - and found the parents generally delighted at quality and price. I sold four 7x5 prints for £20 - but when you consider there were on average 40-50 children "snapped" in a day, the maths speak for themselves. 10-15% to the nursery gives them some extra funds and is gratefully recieved.
Rather than the usual "studio" poses, my pictures would have children poking their head through playhouse windows, crawling through hoops, playing with toys. Action and bright colours were key.
The hardest part was getting the nurseries to let me in - not for a security aspect - I had police checks carried out through a local nursery before starting - but because some felt it was a disruption to their day. Still, those that I did get into were glad to have me back each year.
I used to take 6 pictures of each child - have all printed - and sell the best 4 as a package. Of course, with digital cameras, you can delete the bad pics without printing- take the photos and use a laptop to show photos to the parents when they pick up their children- take orders and just print what's ordered.
A very cheap business to set up... Liability Insurance was part of a camera policy from E&L (about £100 a year), no premises needed.
I only stopped due to a knee injury - I could no longer get down to the children's level to take the pictures.
