It seems that everyone of us re-discovered that each dollar is important and, as a normal effect, we are more moderate when it comes to finances. It’s a good idea but it is dangerous because you could go too far with this mentality. Personally, I believe that no one will become very rich only by being very avaricious; in order to be rich, it is mandatory to take high risks and, most important, to work day and night.
A huge disadvantage of working as web designer is the fact that, no matter if you are employed into a web design company or a freelancer, the payment received is related to the number of projects finished. It is nothing new but taking into account that a day is still 24 hours long even for designers, it’s clear that he must work harder to gain more money. It may be a solution to raise your wages but some clients will give up to your services and select another competitor.
Briefly, a web designer’s income depends on the hours spend effectively working; if you want to go on a trip, the monthly income will lower. Fortunately, there are many and efficient solutions to escape from this trap. The economists catalogued the revenues by the modality of gaining money into two categories:
-active income, it adds in the payment received from effective work (i.e., you must create the layout of a website in a week period and the payment is 500$ – it is active income-, if you don’t realize it, you won’t receive the payment).
-passive income, represents the payments received for multiple sales of items or for every activity that doesn’t suppose the effective presence or work of a designer.
The definition seems a little bit too complicated but it’s only the appearance. More pragmatically, passive income is when you get money even if you stay. Here are some methods to enlarge your palette of income types; I will highly appreciate any contribution of the readers.
Sell WordPress themes and other templates
I was amazed when I found out that a designer received 50,000$ by selling a wonderful Word Press theme. It’s true, it is an amazing theme but 50,000$ is a much more than motivating amount of money. Therefore, it won’t be a waste of time to try selling some of your Word Press works. The selling Word Press themes industry has developed enough to make this idea really interesting. It is simple: you create a stunning layout, code it clean and it’s impossible not to find some clients to enjoy your work.
Sell e-books
The e-books are very common these days and you should benefit from it. It may be a nice activity for any skilled web designer: he leaves the layouts to do and Adobe Photoshop and writes his opinions about a specific topic of web design. In this way, he relaxes, help some newbies interested in his thoughts and obviously, the writer receives some money. It sounds very simplistic, but writing a good e-book is a difficult job: in few pages you must wisely compress useful (keep in mind, useful) information in an accessible language. Another important aspect of writing and selling an ebook is the marketing; if you create it and keep it on your hard-drive, you won’t gain not even a cent.
Sell various small items needed for layout (buttons, icons, textures)
Every web designer created across time various items as buttons, textures, gradients etc. Instead of keeping or deleting them, a more practical and profitable solution is to sell these (perhaps before it is better to adjust and reevaluate their value). Once again, the Internet offers multiple marketplaces and you should try this method. The prices are very low but you may sell your works multiple times therefore pay attention to your abandoned creations. Don’t expect to buy a new penthouse in Ibiza from your sold textures but it is better to gain some dollars than nothing.
Sell photos
It is not strictly design related but usually, the designers are also passionate about photography and it may be another source of passive income. I am sure that you have taken lot of cool photos and keep these with no purpose. A solution to help other people needing images is to sell them. The prices aren’t very high but a good picture will always be appreciated. Much more, you are able to upload and sell countless images… Is this enough to consider this as an available solution to receive some extra money? Personally, I think it’s a solution.
Buy and resell hosting domains
If you are confident in your long time vision, another source of passive income is to buy various domain names and resell these with higher prices. It is a real industry, somehow build on jobbery but the profits of some players are amazing. Anyway, I recommend thinking twice before making investments in this field; experience and good luck are mandatory.
Provide hosting services
The next two types of income are situated at the frontier of passive and active types of revenues but, in the end, it has no relevancy, what really matters is to gain money. Providing hosting services isn’t rocket science but you should be very carefully, any issue is very important for the website owners and they will instantly chose another provider. Once again, it requires good skills and experience.
Maintain a blog
Having and maintaining a blog is a very challenging activity but the financial recompense is good enough to mention in this post. The work invested is enormous and your will never finish making the design better and the content more appealing. Depending on the case, some months after launching, it is monetized and the blogger is recompensed for his endeavors. Unfortunately, if you want to gain more money or to obtain a constant payment it is necessary to post frequently. A blog is unbelievably difficult to grow but it is incomparably more difficult to maintain a good number of loyal visitors.
I hope that this post will be useful for you and wish you’ll become rich.
