Jeremy Mura breaks down six ways graphic designers earn: client work, selling templates, monthly retainers, stock site commissions (20-30%), affiliate marketing (15-30% for software, 1-10% for Amazon), and paid webinars like a $150 one-off workshop.
Hey, Jeremy, here I want to talk about how to make money as a designer in 2020. There's heaps of different ways you can make money and it doesn't matter what country you're from, as long as you're putting in the effort, putting in the time, putting in the work, then you're going to stand out as a designer. But number one is doing client work. So what service can you offer? Can you do brand identity? Can you do logo design? Can you do some graphic design? Maybe print design with brochures and flyers and stuff like that? Can you create websites? This is all within client work. A client service. What can you offer as a service to deliver and create value for a small business? It could be a medium sized business, business as well, to make sure that they're getting a solution from you. So that's number one, it's client work. Number two is products. Is there any way you can create templates? Think of maybe a logo template. Maybe it can be a texture pack, maybe it can be a brush pack. Just keep in mind, some clients might not necessarily need it. So you got to really think, is it for clients or is it more for designers? You really need to think, or maybe it's a DIY person, maybe it's a client you have that has, that uses Canva on their own. So could you create maybe Canva templates for them to use to give their brand, you know, an uplift or to make it easy for them to just input text and content, you know what I mean? So really think about some ways you can create products. Maybe it can be a brand guideline, maybe it could be a template for Photoshop. It could be so many different things. You need to really think outside the box and think how you can create a product and then make sure it has value in it. Don't just make it $1, $2, you know, go a bit higher. Number three is making retainers. For example. You might have a person or a business that uses Instagram. Maybe you can create carousels month. So Maybe you do 10 carousels for $500 and that's what you do every month. So you can come up with, you can come up with a three month or six month contract which says, I'll do this amount of content, you get this amount of revisions. This is the expectations. These are, you know, the rules and everything within that. And you do that every month. And that's going to help you bring in monthly income. It's not necessarily passive income because you're actually actively working and creating the content or the designs or the graphics, whatever it is. It could be graphic banners for websites or whatever, or maybe it's a company that needs lots of logos, you know, but at the end of the day you're, you're creating that every month and it just helps you, you know, bring in money. So it's predictable, you know, every month what's coming in. So that's another way to generate income. Number four is creating graphics for stock sites. For example, if you're an illustrator or maybe you're a vector digital painter or whatever, you can use sites like Freepik and Shutterstock to actually send your graphics or your designs as a contributor. And the amount of downloads you get, you get a percentage or a cut. The commission I think is like maybe 20 to 30%. Usually that's how it is on most of these sites. So that can generate some extra little side income for you whilst you're still doing client work and products and other things. You can sort of use that as a way to generate side income. And it does require some work because, you know, you got to be consistent with it. It won't just, you know, blow up out of nowhere. So but it's just another little bit of, it's just another way to generate some income. Number five is doing affiliates. So if you have a website or maybe you have a social media profile, you can include software that you use. For example Adobe use a creative cloud, you can sign up to their program, you can actually put that link on your website or your social media. So when someone clicks and buys or subscribes, you can actually get a percentage or a cut of that. Typically the industry standard is like 15, 20%, sometimes 30%. Amazon, it's between 1 to 10%. It varies. So keep in mind, find sites that you use. For example, for me, one affiliate I use is Webflow and ConvertKit. That's my email software and that's my website software I use. So including that in my website really helps. So if someone comes along and they're like, oh, maybe they want to use the same thing as me, they can click and if they sign up via my link, I get a little kickback and that really helps me generate some more income. So that's number five, affiliates. And then lastly is doing workshops or webinars. I remember my friend on Instagram recently, she's actually a web designer and she uses Squarespace and she helps like health coaches create websites and all that stuff. And she did a webinar for like 150 USD and it was about was like an hour and a half or two hours and she was actually giving a lot of value. It wasn't sales or pitching. She was actually showing, you know, tips about copywriting for websites. And it was for designers and clients alike, so they both could join or whatever. And that was an extra sighting. Come on top of her client works on top of her other programs she does, but that's one way of generating income via webinar. Think of something you could teach in your expertise. Are you a brand expert? Can you teach something? Maybe it's a certain skill you've learned, you know, whether it be copywriting or colors or, you know, visual hierarchy or whatever, it is something that's going to be beneficial for like small businesses and see how you can teach that in a webinar. If it's a workshop, a physical workshop, there's a lot of sites out there you can actually sign up and you can meet at a physical place. Even you could probably use meetup.com, you know, or eventbrite, you can, and charge like $20 per person and come in with a workshop. Maybe it could be about like logo designing or brand identity hacks or tips, something like that. And when people come, you know, you're teaching them something for an hour or two and it could be like a mini workshop. And that's another cool way to generate income as well. So those are six ways you can generate income as a designer in 2020. So yeah, this is helpful. Let me know in the comments below if there's other ways you like to generate income. I know I've mentioned a few. There's heaps of other ways that I can talk about in another video, but I hope you enjoyed it. Smash the like button and hit subscribe for more design content every week. I hope you enjoy your week. Take it easy.
