Making Money Online with Graphic Design in 2022 - Everything You Need to Know
I started my graphic design journey in 2013. Since then, I've worked on various projects, both for personal enjoyment and as a side hustle. Nowadays however, I rarely work as a freelance graphic designer, and I will also warn you that graphic design is not for everyone.
Roadmap
1. Learn The Skill
There are countless free resources online to learn graphic design. I taught myself through YouTube tutorials. Skillshare is also an excellent paid alternative if you want structured courses. Graphic design apps require technical ability, and it may take some time to master your workflow, which is why it doesn't have a 5/5 rating. Speaking of apps, although the most used is Photoshop, there are plenty of free options. Photopea and Pixlr are both free and powerful online photo editors.
2. Build portfolio
In the beginning, building a portfolio usually involves working for free. I used to make background designs for YouTubers, then DM them with my design, completely unprompted and for free. After a while, I had built up a nice portfolio. You can upload your portfolio to websites like Imgur for free.
3. Find customers
| Graphic designers get paid with | Graphic designers find work in |
|---|---|
| Hourly rates | Freelance platforms: Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer |
| Fixed-price projects | Job boards: LinkedIn, Indeed |
| Salaries | Industry-specific job boards: Dribble |
| Retainers | Directly: YouTube, Twitter, Reddit |
A lot of people make money online with graphic design, but because it is quite easy to learn, it's also very competitive. In order to find work, you typically need to build up a portfolio of quality work. This means you usually have to work for free in the beginning - which is what I did for a long time. Also, in the beginning, graphic designers have to seek out customers, as opposed to customers seeking out them. It is only once you market yourself, build your reputation and make yourself an authority in the graphic design space that customers come directly to you.
4. Marketing
The goal of marketing is either to market a product, service or agency that will ultimately used in step 5, or you can market yourself, such that customers seek you, rather than you seeking them. One way to do this is to upload speed-arts to YouTube - which I did personally. Another idea is to upload your relevant graphic designs to their respective subreddits. For general posts, you can post to /r/art or /r/graphic_design. People who see your artwork there may contact you asking to license it. That happened to me after I posted there. Another idea is to make art and post it on twitter, directly targeting communities where that art was inspired by.
5. Scaling
It is not straightforward to scale an online graphic design career/business. The main problem is that most graphic design projects are directly tied to one brand. An author can write one book and sell it to millions of people, but graphic designers usually create one piece of work for one person or organization.
An exception to this is stock images/graphics, like icon-packs or templates. Stock images are designed without a specific project in mind, and can be licensed to many people. Another example is printables, like calendars, stickers or quotes. NFTs are also scalable because you can easily mass produce them by creating variations of the same image and sell them. Another way to scale is creating a graphic design agency and hiring people, such that your (agency's) output can increase.
Is it worth it?
Graphic design is a good option for making money online as a side hustle, however, it will be hard to make it a full time job, and even harder to scale to become a large business. If you're strictly looking for a passive income stream, there are probably better options.
Ratings
A great thing about graphic design is that each step of the progression is rewarding on their own, without needing to progress further. You can learn the skill and build up a portfolio (step 1 & 2), never make any money, and it will still be very rewarding. It can then function as a supplementary skill. If you want, you can start making finding customers and marketing yourself (step 3 & 4) as a freelancer. You can repeat these steps over and over if you want, and never have to stress about scaling a business. Yet the option to scale (step 5) is still there if you want to try.
Supplementary skill
Graphic design is a great supplementary skill. Combine it with writing, and you can create visual books (or articles like this one). Or use it as a baseline skill for learning motion graphics/animation, which in turn can progress into video production.
