Tips for Making Money as a Graphic Designer

Graphic design is an excellent profession because almost anywhere you look today, you will see products of graphic design. Nearly every website has graphic design elements, and every candy package you open is also a result of graphic design.

Some graphic designers might struggle to choose which path of making money out of graphic design to choose, while some of these professionals lack ideas because they are stuck on the thought that they can only work with customers on their projects.

Therefore today, here you will find an inspiring list of simple ways to make money as a graphic designer.

Tip #1: Create Product Designs

If you use a print on demand service such as Printify.com, you can choose between multiple products, create designs for them, and then start selling these items online.

At least 27% of global online sellers are actively using the dropshipping business model to make money.

Some of the most popular items to sell via print on demand platforms are phone cases, t-shirts, hoodies, and mugs. At first, you can experiment with just a few designs and when you figure out what your target audience enjoys the most, add new ones.

Tip #2: Sell Prints of Your Work

Another approach that you can use to sell items as a graphic designer is to create copies of your designs in a local shop or use a print on demand platform.

After you have some copies made, you can sell them on websites like Etsy or build a website of your own and advertise on social media. This way, you will have several designs that will be generating income for many years.

 Tip #3: Create Stickers

 Creating stickers is a fun way to earn some extra money as a graphic designer. You can either have your own line of stickers or design them at your customer’s request.

In order to save money and time, you can use a POD service for printing stickers. This way, all of the orders that your customers place will be transferred directly to the POD service, and they will take care of all the production and delivery.

Tip #4: Sell the Designs on Design Stocks

Many brands and advertising are using design and photo stocks for the base of their own designs. Therefore, you can create multiple designs and fonts and upload them to such websites as Freepik.

You can choose to upload your design that needs payment to use the license for commercial use or create a few free designs for self-promotion on the mentioned website.

Tip #5: Participate in Logo Contests

Even if you are a graphic designer and can make various types of designs, focusing on one niche like creating logos can bring a lot of benefits your way.

First of all, you will be able to improve as a logo designer much faster. More to it, brands looking for a graphic designer to create a logo for their company will likely rather choose a professional logo designer than a general graphic designer.

To land your first customers as a logo designer, you can participate in such logo contests as 99designs or 48hourslogo.

 Tip #6: Teach Online

 Graphic design is a well-paid profession. More to it, as the eCommerce market is constantly growing, the demand for quality visual content is growing as well.

Therefore, if you are a skilled graphic designer, you could start teaching others online or even build your own online course. You would be surprised how many people are interested in learning such skills online rather than studying them at a university.

Tip #7: Create Templates

Designs, icon packs, and fonts are not the only thing you can sell. To generate more passive income, you can start creating templates and selling them. It is up to you what kind of templates you will create; it could be anything, starting from ebook templates and ending with wedding invitations.

These templates are easy to customize; therefore, they are often appreciated and popular among bloggers. To promote your templates more, it is a good idea to upload them as Pinterest posts with a link to your website.

 Tip #8: Design Social Media Content

 Today it is easier to start an online business than ever before. For that, we need to thank all of the online tools we have access to. And with the online business market constantly growing and expanding, the demand for graphic designers is growing as well.

Also, don’t miss the fact that most online businesses choose to be on social media for promotion. Even though they might be creating some of the content themselves, the competition on social media is bigger than it ever was; thus, engaging visual content is very important.