You might have thought about ways to make money as a Graphic Designer only by building client websites. Today, we will challenge that idea and help you get creative by showing you 22 ways web designers can use their skills and interests to make more money.
Table of Contents
1. Work for a Web Design Company.
Many people who work as web designers do it because they love design. You need business skills if you want your web design business to do well. If that doesn’t interest you, you could work for a web design company.
When you work for an agency, you can do what you love and forget about the rest.
Pros:
- You spend most of your time doing what you love, which is web design.
- You will learn a lot by working on different client projects.
- You won’t work alone like you would if you were a freelancer or ran your agency.
- You’ll have a steady income that you can count on without the stress of your income going up and down.
- You will get extra benefits like health insurance, a 401(k), vacation time, and other perks as an employee.
- You’ll have a set start and end time, so you won’t have to worry about leaving your work at the office at the end of the day.
Cons:
- You will need to pick which customers you want to work with.
- You will have to work the hours that your boss decides.
- Your actual income will come from this one job.
- You would have more freedom with your schedule if you ran your own business or worked as a freelancer.
2. Get a job as a company’s in-house web designer
As an in-house web designer, your job will be to build and maintain the company’s website. You will only be working on a few client projects in this case. Instead, you’ll be working on the company’s website. This job will have pros and cons, much like working for an agency.
Pros:
- You spend most of your time doing what you love, which is web design.
- You will work in a team, even though the other team members will have very different jobs at the company.
- You’ll have a steady income that you can count on without the stress of your income going up and down.
- As an employee, you will probably get extra benefits like health insurance, a 401(k), vacation time, and other perks.
- You’ll have a set start and end time, so you won’t have to worry about leaving your work at the office at the end of the day.
- You might like working on one website you learn a lot about and can fully master.
Cons:
- You might miss working on different projects for different clients.
- You will have to work the hours that your boss decides.
- Your actual income will come from this one job.
- You would have more freedom with your schedule if you ran your own business or worked as a freelancer.
3. Work as a self-employed Web Designer
When you work as a freelance web designer, you move away from being an employee and toward being your boss. This is the fastest and easiest way to start as a freelance web designer.
As a freelancer, you’ll get all of the benefits that come with the responsibilities you’ll need to take on. You’ll be able to work on projects you love and have to do things like find clients, write contracts, send invoices, and handle all communication with clients.
Even though this means you’ll have to do more work than when you work for an agency, you have a lot of control over the kinds of projects you work on and how much you get paid.
Being a freelance web designer is a great side job or a way to make money if you want to try something new or build up your client base so you can do it full-time.
Pros:
- Can you choose which clients you want to work with and which projects you want to do?
- Set your hours and schedule, whether you want to work part-time, full-time, during the day, or at night.
- You can choose what web design skills you want to use and do what you like.
Cons:
- If you prefer to avoid generating leads or selling, this is a skill you’ll need to learn if you want to do well.
- You must pay for health insurance and other benefits you usually get as an employee.
- Since you are in charge of getting deals, your income may be more unpredictable until you find a system that works for you.
- You will have to keep track of your income, keep books, pay taxes, and do other things related to money.
4. Run a website design company
As a web design agency owner, your main job will be to find new clients and build a team to help you keep up with the work. As the owner of an agency, you can do some of the work yourself or delegate it to your team so you can focus on running the business.
Agency owners often enjoy talking to clients, coming up with a plan for a project, and putting together a team to make the project a success and give their clients outstanding results.
As an agency owner, you will also need to know how to hire the right people and set up systems and processes to manage their work so that all of your clients get the same results when they work with your agency.
Pros:
- Web design agency owners can make a lot of money because their income depends on how well they do their job.
- You decide who your clients are and what projects you take on.
- You can make your business fit your lifestyle, the clients you like to work with, and the work you enjoy most.
Cons:
- You will have to pay yourself and the other people on your team.
- You’ll spend more time running the business than making the designs you like.
5. Focus on a Specific Web Design Service
Many web designers focus on one service or part of web design, which helps them be very successful because they become known for that service. Some companies, for example, offer services like PSD to HTML or PSD to WordPress.
Pros
- Get known for one thing you do in web design.
- Both businesses and other web designers can use your service.
- leads to clients coming back
- Instead of trying to get good at a lot of different services, get really good at one.
- It’s easier to set up processes in your business that help you do work quickly and correctly.
- If you want, the techniques will help you put together a team to do the work.
- Since it’s the same service, you may have to do the same work over and over, even though you’d be working with different websites.
6. Hire someone else to make your website.
By outsourcing some or all of your client work, you can take on more client work without needing to build a big team. You can outsource to freelancers, agencies, or companies that offer a “white label” service. This lets you act as the middle man between the client and the service provider.
For example, web design can be done for you by companies like ManyPixel or SEO Reseller, and you can raise the prices as much as you want.
Pros
- Take on more client work without having to put in a lot of extra hours.
- Get paid more for things you don’t have to do yourself.
- You’ll never have to turn away clients because you’re too busy.
Cons
- Finding the right person or company to work with and figuring out which of their projects will work for you takes time.
7. Make partnerships that make money
Partnerships are not only a great way to get more customers for your web design business, but they can also help you make more money. The goal of a partnership is to find other freelancers or businesses that are a good fit.
If you offer web design services, you’ll get a lot of leads. They need help with the extra web design jobs so they don’t have to turn them down.
You offer services that don’t compete with each other, like SEO or other marketing, and you need a place to send clients.
Pros:
- You can focus more on web design and less on getting leads.
- Offers the chance to work on different types of projects.
Cons:
- If you want to get leads all the time, you can’t say no to as many projects.
8. Start writing for web design
If you like helping other web designers with your experience and knowledge, writing about web design is a great way to get your name out there and make some extra money.
If you’re interested, read our post about 25+ websites that pay web designers $500+ to write.
Pros:
- helps you become known as a specialist in your field
- Adds to the money your business makes
- Develop your writing skills, and you can make better websites.
Cons:
- Not all of the websites you apply to write for will accept you.
- You’ll need to work at it to be a better writer.
9. Start a blog about web design
If you like writing and want to do more of it, starting your web design blog might be a good idea.
You can share your knowledge, experience, and research about the business, Photoshop, or other design-related tutorials, how-to guides, web design tools and software, and many other topics on the blog.
Pros:
- You can profit from the website in several ways, such as by selling products, services, ads, and more.
- It can make a lot of money in the long run.
- Not a job that needs to work with clients to be successful
- You can plan your days.
- When the blog gets more popular, you can let other people write for it and take paid posts.
Cons:
It takes a lot of writing and advertising before you can make any real money.
To start, you’ll need to build the site, write the content, and promote the site and content to get people to visit.
10. Start making themes or templates
Most web designers, especially those who don’t know how to code or don’t want to, use WordPress themes to build websites.
If you know how to code, creating your website theme or template is an excellent way to make more money.
Pros:
- It can make extra money or money that keeps coming in from theme updates, support, and services.
- You can make a full-time living with a valuable theme, mainly if you can sell it to a specific group of people.
Cons:
- You will have to do a lot of marketing to grow your theme business and income.
- Selling your theme on a marketplace will put you in front of many customers, but you must pay a percentage or flat fee for each sale.
- On marketplaces, themes can be rejected.
- There are a lot of competitors.
- I will have to spend much time helping customers and fixing technical problems.
11. Learn to make plugins
Like developing a theme, you can create a plugin or extension for websites that solve a particular problem. As you work on a website, you may run into situations where you need a function that either doesn’t exist, needs to be solved better, or you have a different approach to taking care of the issue.
Offering free and paid versions can help you get more people interested; some will want to upgrade to the paid version to access more features.
If you do not know how to create a plugin, you can either partner with a developer or hire one to make it for you.
Pros:
- Easy to sell extra services such as web design, plugin customization, and other services
- Can make a full-time living or extra money on the side
Cons:
I will need to spend much time providing customer support and dealing with technical issues.
12. Sell Digital Files
As a designer, you can make and sell different kinds of digital files, such as:
- Icons
- UI assets
- Graphics\sFonts
- eBooks\sDocuments
- Templates in PSD, Ai
- Backgrounds, Patterns, Brushes, Actions
You can start using existing marketplaces to sell your work and later sell on your website.
Pros
- Once the files are made, this can be an excellent way to make money while you sleep.
- Can sell multiple files to the same customer
Cons
- You need to make a lot of sales to make a lot of money.
- You will have to spend at least as much time, if not more, marketing your digital files as you did create them.
13. Create a Web Design Course
You can make sales on your website. An excellent way to ensure sales is to build an audience around a specific topic and then sell a course. Alternatively, if you want to spend less time building an audience, some marketplaces will help bring customers to you.
You can sell your web design courses in some of the following places:
Pros
- Once made, it can be a source of passive income.
- You can generate enough income to replace your income from freelancing or an agency.
Cons
- Making much money can take a while if you start with no audience.
14. Upsell Your Clients
There’s no better way to make more money from web design than to sell more to your current customers—services like maintenance, security, Google Analytics, and website upgrades.
Pros
- Make more money from the clients you already have.
- Give your clients something extra to make them happier and get better results.
Cons
- N/A
15. Sell Relevant Services
As a web designer, one of the best things is that you can sell so many services that go with each other. These services can help a website owner do other tasks that will help their business. Here are some relevant services you might want to offer:
- Logo design
- Print things (brochures, business cards, different graphic designs)
- Social media marketing
- Paid advertising campaigns, like pay-per-click (PPC) ads, ads on Facebook, etc.
- SEO
If you’re thinking, “But I don’t have all these skills,” you can work with others by outsourcing or partnering with others who do this work.
Pros:
- A simple way to raise the average value of a client
- Make more money from each client, whether you do the service yourself or hire someone else.
- Since they’ve already hired you to do web design, persuading them to let you do these other jobs is easy.
Cons:
- It needs time to learn the skills or find the right people to send the work to.
- It can take your attention away from growing the web design service you want to offer the most.
16. Make a group of websites.
The point of building a portfolio of websites is to build sites that make you money over time. You can find sites about anything that interests you here. Buying websites that already have traffic, an audience, and income that you know you can keep or grow is a great way to build your portfolio.
When the websites are related, you can promote one site to those visiting the other site. You can do the same thing whenever you add a new, helpful website to your portfolio.
When building or buying a website for the first time, it makes sense to do the work yourself until 1) the website is making money and 2) you have systems in place to run the website. You can now hire someone to run or manage the website for you.
Pros
- You might use it to generate passive revenue.
- You are free to earn as much money as you choose.
- It can be run and managed by someone else in its entirety.
Cons
- will require time to grow.
17. Make websites and sell them
With the ability to create websites, you can generate starter websites that provide users with ready-made websites. They can use it for their businesses or develop websites, increase their traffic and perhaps even their revenue, and then sell them for more money.
You can be successful with either strategy, so it depends on which one you are more interested in and how patient you are.
Starter sites sell for less because they don’t make any money. Areas that have been around longer and have steady traffic and income will sell for much more. Most of the time, these sites sell for 24X to 30X multiple. To determine the minimum price, take the average monthly income and multiply it by 24. The amount depends on the industry, the quality of the site, and other things.
