Side hustles: Here's why I've decided to challenge myself as a freelance designer.
Side hustles, passive incomes whatever you wanna call it…it's the craze these days.
Each day, more and more freelance designers (including myself) are looking for ways to earn more money than the usual client work or full-time 9-5. In the following article, I will discuss a plan of action or challenge on ways how I can earn more from using my design skills.
The one true weapon a freelancer has is total freedom on how to manage their time and work. That can be put to good use to diversify the income streams. There is more than one way to make a buck on the Internet.
Some of these methods may need you to work outside of your comfort zone but they are great ways to help you hone your craft, reflect on your own skills, pick out your weaknesses and strengths and utilize that to increase your income pool.
Here are my 5 side hustles that I will be challenging myself in 2020:
1 - Starting my own blog
2 - Stock graphics
3 - Physical goods
4 - Design contests
5 - Affiliate marketing
1 - Starting my own blog
I've already started doing this but I haven't got it to standard where I can monetize the hell of it. To begin, I will start off by writing about my experiences or design topics I'm interested in.
I'm also take this opportunity to share my knowledge and insights of the advertising industry by probably writing up tutorials and how to be a relevant freelancer within this field. Write about what you know, right?
Now that I've created a blog section on my website, I want to try and monetize it. How? I will do it by introducing adverts which I will display on my website. Let's see how those pay-per-views and pay-per-leads convert into $$$ without compromising the quality of my content.
Guest Post on Various Blogs
Many big design blogs out there are willing to pay you a good buck for your top-notch articles and sometimes even more for well-written tutorials. The payment ranges from a dozen of bucks to hundreds, depending on many factors. Guest posting is a good way of generating extra income, but the effort you put in must be high as well and so I will give that a go too.
Write a Book
Many designers have proven that e-books are a very good source of income. Sacha Greif, a reputable designer in the community reported an income of $40,000 for his latest e-book over a period of a few months, while Nathan Berry reported that his last book made him over $28,000 in the first day alone!
There are various ways to get your book out. For printed versions you can try Amazon Publishing Services and for e-books you can definitely try services like ejunkie.
2 - Stock graphics sites
Selling stock graphics on various markets doesn’t sound like a very easy job but many designers could actually make nice amounts by working on their own products and putting them up for sale.
There are actually various way of selling them, and you can easily choose between a marketplace, or your own web store. Again, creating a web-store isn’t as hard as it sounds, whether you can code or not. You can totally unleash your creativity and create whatever kinds of files you’d like.
Stock items that you can usually put for sale include, but are not limited to: icon sets, photoshop filters, fonts, web layouts, photography – basically anything that you have expertise in creating will do the trick.
And so, I will give that a go.
Here are some sites to check out
Shutterstock - Join Shutterstock's global community of contributors and earn money doing what you love. Get started. Become a Contributor. Create. Produce high-quality images and videos for our customers to download. Submit. Upload your content with our easy-to-use platform, and get tips for success. Get paid . Make money every time your content is downloaded by one of our worldwide customers.
Graphic River - GraphicRiver is part of Envato Market, the creative eco-system with over 35,000 designers creating all the assets you need for your projects.
Creative Market - Creative Market empowers creators around the world to make their ideas a reality. Everything we do is to help them turn passion into opportunity.
Adobe Stock - Gain exposure and sell content to the world's largest creative community. Right inside their favorite apps.
3. Physical Goods
Another way of building a stream of passive income, which has been quite popular in the last years is selling physical goods such as posters, t-shirts, compilation books, book covers or other similar items. There are many creative people out there who are constantly looking to revamp their wardrobe and walls with cool and strange things!
Creativehub.io
4. Design Contests
Design contest websites have been around for a very long time, and many designers out there have gotten their start from there. Websites like 99Designs would pay you well, starting at $249 for a logo design, $599 for a website design and $199 for a postcard or flyer.
The best thing about design contest websites is that there is always work to do. Hundreds of projects are set as open and you have the opportunity to earn a few hundred of dollars for a “design piece”. The bad part is that there are thousands of others like you hunting for the same bounty. You have to really impress the contest creator and show that your work is the best, otherwise you are simply wasting your time working on a project that you’ll never get paid for.
if you have the free time and don't mind if your designs don't get short-listed then go ahead and participate.
5. Affiliate Marketing
Google search engine has made sure that it is harder for affiliate marketers to make money as they did in previous years. But the quick answer for can you really make money with affiliate marketing is “yes” absolutely, you can make money through affiliate marketing even in todays internet world.
How it works?
For a more detailed explanation on affiliate marketing Shopify has a great blog post on the subject.
Conclusion
To conclude this article, I wanted to say that there are a lot of ways of creating a flow of side income, and you never know how this side income will turn into your main source of income or even your main job. Try to put focus on a category that fits you most and start “digging” for your best way to earn yourself a great passive side income.
I challenge YOU to do the same…expand your creative flair into other areas other than client work and GO CREATE & MAKE A PASSIVE INCOME.