Written By Back to Budgets
Moonlight at a startup
A coworker of mine recently told me that he had joined a startup and added it to his LinkedIn - I thought he was quitting!
It turns out that he made an agreement to work for equity only at the start-up and he let our employer know that he would be working on both projects simultaneously. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that equity on a pre-IPO company can turn into MAJOR rewards if they do well in the future.
I was a little jealous, since I’m always looking for another opportunity to make money and asked him how he found the start-up.
He told me that he went on AngelList, which lets venture capitalists, startups, and people looking to work startups all meet up on this one site (so if you have a lot of money, feel free to do the venture capital investing side of this site instead of the job hunting side).
He puts about 10 hours of work in per week and they’ve begun talks to switch him to full-time with a salary!
With my coworker as proof, you can negotiate your own pay - flat-fee for a set amount of work, salaried, working for equity as a trial and then getting paid if the company takes off, etc. You can also negotiate how many hours you’re willing to work - 10 hours, full-time, somewhere in between, or as needed!
It’s really all about finding the company that is the right fit for you. AngelList has jobs from notable names such as Netflix and Reddit, to smaller companies you’ve never heard of that are just getting started.
2. Start a blog
You’re reading this blog post, right?
Great! That’s proof that blogs are still relevant, even in 2021. People still google things or get inspired on Pinterest regularly and stumble across blogs every day. As a graphic designer, here are some ideas for a blog:
Portfolio of your work
Establish yourself as a professional in your field, showcase your work, and attract interested companies passively by just leaving a contact form, your resume, and a gallery of your work up for people to see
Tips on the digital tools you use
Do you use Adobe Photoshop? Maybe Adobe InDesign? Some other niche tool? I bet people get stuck trying to use these tools that have become easy to you - why not help them out with guided “How To” posts?
Share your creative process
Do you wake up every morning and sketch for a set amount of time? Do you have certain practices, like one-line art sketches, that you do to strengthen your skills? Is their a magazine that you get inspired by their cover art (Consumer Reports, anyone?) or some other podcast, YouTuber, website that you use regularly to up your skills? Let people know!
Consulting
If you have a portfolio of your work set-up, you could add a scheduling option or contact form for consulting opportunities to help businesses improve their graphic design strategy - Squarespace offers scheduling ability built-in!
3. Freelance or consulting
This option is a little less formal than officially joining a startup.
Instead of joining a start-up and having to quit that job whenever you’re ready to move on to another opportunity, you can just apply for small jobs with either a specific end-date or that have a specific end-product to be delivered.
Once the date is reached or final product delivered, you can go on your way to the next project that interests you - no awkward goodbyes or hard feelings required.
Better still, since you aren’t an official employee agreeing to do “whatever work comes up” for as long as you are an employee at the company, you can select specific jobs that excite you and that you’ll truly enjoy. Logo making, advertisem*nt design, consulting on developing products - you decide, and then only apply to those jobs!
Browse opportunities on any of the following popular freelance platforms:
4. Guest posting
If starting your own blog feels like too much work, consider posting articles to Medium instead. It’s a great way to establish yourself as an authority in your field and get paid, too.
Simply sign up to the Medium Partner Program, write a post, publish it, and collect your earnings. By being part of the Partner Program, your articles will be behind a paywall - that is, only paying members can read it. Medium will then take the audience engagement generated by your content and pay you for it.
Even if, like me, you already have a blog - consider it a great way to drive traffic back to your personal site or post off-handedly about content that just wouldn’t fit the theme of your existing blog.
The highest amount earned for a single story in September 2020, according to an article on Medium earnings, was $16,685.50. However, only 6.4% of active writers earned over $100.
If Medium isn’t the site you want to be posting on - no worries. You can still submit your articles to other sites that you admire in the graphic design world and get paid by them for the content.
5. Contribute icons and drawings to Adobe Stock & other sites
I used to think that Adobe Stock was just for regular photos but I was SO wrong. You can get everything from photos, to videos, to audio, and even 3D models!
While I have downloaded and used some photos of simple words in nice fonts on my blog, I was really excited to see icon packs in the photos section available as part of my Adobe Stock plan. I immediately considered all the ways I could use them for my blog.
Consider creating a few packs of your own for the most commonly used icons on the web and sell them online for other people (like me) to purchase!
While I love the quality of Adobe Stock and it’s well known in the industry (ahem - easy for customers to find and trust), there are many other stock photo website options and other sites that cater specifically to selling icons. Iconfinder and the Noun Project are great examples and are both recommended by Icons8.
6. Sell products with your design on them (without owning any inventory or supplies)
If you’ve come up with any patterns, font families, or cool designs in general, consider putting that design on a physical product and selling it.
Don’t worry - you don’t have to hold inventory yourself or buy supplies! There are plenty of companies who will make the item as soon as it’s ordered and ship it to the customer (and handle any returns) for you!
Some good ideas for products that you can print your designs on are:
Clothing on Teespring
T-shirts, masks, hats, & totes
Tapestries
Stickers
Phone covers
Canvas art & posters
Coffee mugs & other cups
Holiday bags & cards
7. Design printables
When I started this blog, I started hearing all about printables. Printables are essentially digital files that people design and sell online for other people to then print at home and use.
People create printables for all sorts of things - budgets, planners, journaling, etc.
If you have a design process that you follow every time you sit down to create, why not make a design checklist printable and sell it? It could be a “am I following or incorporating all the major, relevant design theory principles in this piece?” checklist.
If you have a challenge you like to do to bring out your creative mindset - why not find a way to format it into a printable pack that other people can use too?
Example:
What: Font creation challenge bundle
Bundle challenge description: Write a word 10 different ways each day for a week to come up with a cool new font
What a page in the bundle might look like: Give 10 spaces to write out the word on each page. Set these blank spaces against a cool pattern or theme - you could do the same pattern for all 7 pages (1 page per day of the week) or do a different pattern background for each day. Add a reflection page at the end, for a total of 8 pages in the bundle. Make it even more creative by adding other prompts to the page like a quick warm-up sketch area at the top or a “what’s motivating you/inspiring you today” section in the bottom right corner.
This is just an example that I came up with on the spot while writing - I’m sure if you set aside 30 minutes to think about it, you’d come up with a great, money-making idea!
Selling: Sell it on Etsy or your personal site, sit back, and collect passive income!
8. Create online courses
Creating online courses is an amazing side-hustle because once the course is up and running, it will continue to generate income passively as long as the course information is still relevant and helpful.
As an extra win, it can be a nice addition to your resume that you teach others in the field - establishing yourself as a professional mentor and leader in the graphic design world.
Popular course topics:
Adobe training
Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Graphic Design Basics
Core principles and theory
What does a graphic designer do?
How to get into the graphic design field
Tutorials
Design a pattern collection
Design a custom typeface
Design a poster, album cover, magazine cover, etc.
Popular platforms:
There are so many options for selling courses online that to cover them all in-depth would take its own article. Thankfully, many other people have done the research to tell you about each option in-depth, such as Learning Revolution and Zapier. I highly encourage you to look around before committing to one specific platform! Keep the following things in mind while doing more research:
Branding: what control do you have over branding your content? Do you get your own page with a profile that you can customize to post your content? How much customization is allowed? It’s important that you’re not “just another video” on the platform - make sure people who enjoyed one course from you can find your future courses easily, again and again!
Fees: is it free to list a course on the platform? How do they make their money - online ads or by taking a fee from the sale of your course? Is that fee a flat-fee or a percentage-based fee?
Audience data: how much does the platform share with you about your audience? Knowing these details could help you customize future content around the people who are consistently watching your videos and grow your audience even more. Not having access to this data could have you stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what is and isn’t working.
Average price: look around at videos that are similar to the one you want to create - what are they selling for? Is it an amount you would be willing to sell your course for? Being in-line with the market price or even slightly below will give you a competitive edge in selling your course. Don’t expect to sell a $200 course on a website that consistently sells courses for $25-$40! Even if you see a $200 course - take note of if they’re always on sale for much less.
Popularity of content: different platforms often cater more towards certain types of content and user preferences. Check, if you can, the amount of ratings or purchases of certain courses that are in-line with what you want to create. If you wanted to make a video on the ins-and-outs of getting clients and running a freelance business, but notice those types of videos only get 10 reviews, while courses on the same platform detailing creative processes and tutorials for making art receive 1000+ reviews, that might be the wrong platform for the content you’re trying to create.
9. Run a workshop
I kept seeing this advice online and the more I thought about it, the more I realized there’s an option for anyone who likes to share their knowledge with others and is comfortable talking to, and leading, a group of people.
While you could do a lot of these virtually, some are better suited for an in-person setting. Maybe tuck this one away for when things get back to normal at the end of 2021 and beyond!
Here are some topic ideas for a workshop:
Getting clients, landing a job, resume building, portfolio building
Calligraphy/typeface workshop
Making a poster, or one poster idea 3 ways
3D print signs like we mentioned above - take them from idea to a physical item in their hand!
Art exercises and practices to inspire creativity and boost skills daily
Key themes and theories in graphic design
Magazine cover challenge
NOTE: you can make any of these more casual and fun by doing it how businesses do paint and sips - wine included or BYOB!
10. 3D print signs
My brother recently bought a 3D printer for my middle-school aged niece for Christmas because she wants to be an inventor. I was AMAZED by the things she was able to create after just a day. It also inspired my sister-in-law to start creating even though none of them have any experience in the art world!
If a middle-schooler and non-art-school trained adult can get up to speed with a 3D printer in ONE day, imagine the things you can make (and sell)!
Come up with a witty saying, 3D print it, and sell it on Etsy for someone to hang up in their house or place on their desk - done!
Amazon’s choice for 3D printers in Janaury 2021 is the Creality Ender 3 Pro 3D Printer with over 3,500 reviews and a 4.6 star rating (78% of users gave it 5 stars!).
11. Make YouTube videos
YouTube is a great place to share content if you don’t want to do written posts or a paid course - as far as viewers are concerned, it’s free! It only costs them a few seconds of their time to watch an ad, which you get paid for.
As your channel grows you can do sponsored content and start selling paid courses elsewhere.
Some ideas for videos on a graphic design channel can be:
Debating controversial graphic design topics
Reviewing and critiquing existing designs and advertisem*nts out in the world
These types of videos seem VERY popular on YouTube lately. I love to watch people like Graham Stephan react to how other people spend their money. This idea is similar to that except you’re reacting to (and critiquing) companies ads/graphic designs. A word of caution though… bad-mouthing a company you may want to work for as an employee or on sponsored content in the future can be risky!
Explaining the core graphic design principles that every graphic designer should know
Explaining how you make money in the graphic design world
How you chose a college/got through college or why you chose not to go to college and what you did instead
How you land clients
How to build a portfolio/resume
Design-along-with-me video where the viewer can have an end-product after the video to show off
Digital tool tips and tricks, such as how to do certain things in Adobe InDesign
12. Design custom typefaces
Brand personalization and recognition has become a big thing in the competitive digital age, opening the door for more business in custom typefaces.
While we may be only subconsciously processing fonts on books, movie titles, and websites, these typefaces were specially selected or even custom created for the brand they serve as part of their overall identity.
There are fonts called Netflix Sans, Google Fonts, and YouTube Sans for the big tech companies, but news companies have them as well. Consider BBC news and their bespoke font family BBC Reith. Apple, of course, has its own font called San Francisco.
Why not try your hand at creating a few custom typefaces for smaller companies and market them to those brands as building their identity? You could also list your custom typeface creation services online on freelance sites.
Once you’re known in the typeface world - you could have a pretty steady stream of niche business!
You could even further differentiate yourself by picking to only do
Movies
Music videos
YouTube videos
Book covers
OR become specialized for certain industry typefaces:
News
Tech
Medical
Knowing the psychology of how different styles impact different kinds of consumers across various industries. People love to hire specialists!
13. Write an e-book
If you’ve been working in graphic design for a few years or have been at a few different companies, you likely have seen certain design campaigns fail and others become huge successes, bringing a lot of positive feedback and/or added revenue to your company.
Why not compile your findings on what works best (and what to avoid) for other people who want to be successful in the field of graphic design?
For more content, you can always include your creative process, how you determine the success of a design, and the different processes new graphic designers can encounter at different companies so they know what to expect if they want to try that line of work.
Note: Be careful not to give away too much information! Check your employment contract for what may be considered confidential information or choose not to name the specific companies you’ve worked for and keep the information general.
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