Where some designers earn over six figures a year, the average wage for a web designer is about $40000 annually. Web designing is indeed one of the most rewarding and competitive fields.
How do web designers make money?
It is the whole purpose of this guide. So, for anyone who loves design and aspires to make more money as a designer – whether full-time or part-time, there are endless options. So, how to earn money as a web designer? Let us find out.
Jump To
- Ways To Earn Money As A Web Designer
- Do Web Designers Make Good Money?
- Fun Facts About Web Designing
- FAQs About How To Earn Money Through Web Designing
How To Make Money As A Web Designer?
Below, we will enlist a few common and unique ways to help you make more money as a designer. Let us address them one by one.
1. Have a portfolio & market yourself well
Want to learn how to earn money from web designing after you have worked on a few projects? Star by making a portfolio website. The website must have a description of all the services you offer. You may or may not show the price.
If you have one or two samples, that, too, can suffice to show to your potential client. When it comes to marketing yourself, it is always quality over quantity.
Also, please remember you must not include something in your portfolio if you are not proud of it. Your portfolio should have only your best work. If your potential client wishes for more samples, they’ll ask for them.
2. Join a company full time
Wish to know how to earn money as a web designer & have a steady income? Naturally, one of the most straightforward methods of making money as a designer is working at a company full-time. So, as a full-time employees, how do web designers make money? Typically, the web designers can choose to join:
A. In-house for a company
You can also consider working as an in-house designer for a company. So, how to earn money from web designing as an in-house designer? You will not be working on client projects but for the employer’s website.
B. Working for an agency
Wish to know how to earn money through web designing conventionally? You can consider working as an employee at a design agency. As part of your role, you will be designing websites for your clients.
Since here, you will be an employee; you merely have to focus on the design work. You do not have to handle any business-related issues like landing a client. How to make money as a web designer working in a digital agency? You will earn a fixed salary every month. Some employers may also offer perks like health insurance and time off. However, the only cons are you will depend on someone else for work and have no control over the projects you work on.
3. Freelance
How to make money as a freelance web designer? Some web designers do not like working under anyone. They want to choose their clients and decide their hours. But, as a freelancer, you have multiple responsibilities.
So, how to earn money online by web designing as a freelancer? You have the flexibility to choose to work with the clients and the ventures you want. Even though your projects will have deadlines, you can always choose the hours you want to work.
Given this versatility, you can consider working full-time or part-time. If you wish to work as a full-time freelancer, it is your primary source of income. However, there is also an option to work with an agency and take up freelance designing projects part-time.
In this manner, there is income stability and a medium to make more money at your convenience. That how to make money as a freelance web designer with your exceptional design skills.
4. Build your course online
Ever wonder how to earn money online by web designing if you are not getting any gigs? You can create an online course about any design or development aspect. There are several topics you can cover:
- WordPress Development
- Logo Design
- Web Design
- Illustrator
- Photoshop
- Or any other design topic of your choice
So, how to earn money from web designing? See, you have two options for selling a course.
You can sell it on your website.
Consider creating courses on platforms like Teachable, and then you can sell them on your website. Alternatively, you can employ a membership WordPress plugin to create a course area to shield your content so only the customers who pay can access your course.
You can sell your courses on a marketplace.
If you do not have a website, you can also opt for popular marketplaces like Skillshare, Coursera, or Udemy to sell your courses. In this manner, you can reach more people. However, selling courses on someone else’s marketplace does snatch away some control, but it can help you popularize the word.
Selling courses online has the potential for a high income. You have so many topics and possibilities, and you can choose to work full-time or part-time at your time and schedule. However, if you do not have an established audience, your income may be limited or inconsistent in the beginning.
5. Sell your plugin design
Like selling a theme, you can also create an extension or plugin for the website and tackle their particular concerns. How do web designers make money selling a design? Such opportunities come your way when working for a client on their website, and they need a function that does not exist.
If not, you can directly market and sell your plugins at a premium or free. It can help attract interested people in more premium services from you.
6. Sell stock graphics
Websites always need templates and stock graphics. It is almost always hard for a small business owner to afford a professional web design. So, if that is the case, they can consider buying stock graphics.
How to earn money from web designing through this channel?
You can simply create stock graphics and templates. Beyond bringing you some extra buck now, you can continually resell the stock graphics. So, you work on them once, and they can fetch you profit for several years.
7. Become a web design writer & start a blog
Blogs can be a fantastic medium to attract new clients organically. How to make money as a web designer with a blog? If you can create a well-written, full of information blog, it can help educate and entertain your existing and potential customers.
Beyond writing, how to earn money as a web designer from your blog? You can include ad banners, affiliate links, or share sponsored content. However, this is after your blog gets big and has sufficient traffic.
Many designers make their blogs so big that they can start a whole business. When you begin a blog, please remember that it can take a while to see some return on the investment.
8. Selling themes
How to earn money through web designing selling themes and templates? It is one of the most profitable ways to earn money, even while you sleep. Designers and developers can typically make millions by merely selling themes and templates.
So, if you are proficient in WordPress and PHP, you can create WordPress themes and sell them online. There are marketplaces like Envato Elements, ThemeForest, and Creative Market, wherein you can sell your themes and templates.
9. Icons, vectors, and fonts
Designers can also make good money by selling digital files like:
- Icons
- PSD templates
- Backgrounds, patterns, brushes
- UI assets
- Graphics
- Fonts
- eBooks
- Documents
You can trade your digital files on a known marketplace or on your website.
- You can sell multiple files to one customer.
- You can also sell one file to many customers.
10. Provide hosting services with designing
It is an excellent medium to make more money as a web designer, especially if you have an agency. So, how to earn money online by web designing + hosting? In addition to offering a web design service, you can also consider hosting the client’s website on your server.
So, now the client will no longer have to worry about managing or hosting sites. You can shop for a cheap reseller hosting plan and host all your client’s websites to save money.
You can make up for this cost by charging the clients a yearly hosting fee. It can be profitable because reseller hosting plans come cheap, and you can host several websites in a single plan.
11. Upsell with Web maintenance and web security
Do you want to make more money as a designer? You can either increase the number of clients you work with or make more money from every client. Here, we will discuss the latter.
It is the best-suited option if you do not have too many clients. Since you work with a few clients, you can consider offering them ongoing services. In this manner, you do not have to continue looking for new clients, and you’ll always have a source of money.
Some of the best ongoing services include website updates and maintenance, creating graphics for the client’s social media, handling their social media, general VA services, and managing advertising accounts.
Some big companies do not have the time to do all these tasks themselves. So, they can outsource them from you.
12. Flip sites
We are all familiar with flipping shows on the TV, wherein a producer invests in a distressed property for a low price. The new owner will fix the property and make it visually appealing. It can add to the property’s value, and you can then sell it at a higher price. The same holds for flipping websites. So, how does it work?
You can invest in a website for a low price. Then, work on this website to boost the footfall, conversions, and revenue. Now, you can resell the website. There are two sources of how do web designers make money:
- You get to keep the revenue earned during all the months you owned the website.
- You get the difference in the price as profit.
It can be an excellent medium to earn money as you do not have to work with clients. You can decide the work hours and make money as you build the website. The only low here is it is often time-consuming to build traffic and earn revenue.
13. Set up your own company or agency
It is quite simple to understand how to earn money as a web designer after starting an agency or a company?
When you run an agency, your roles and responsibilities change. Your primary objective is to bring in new clients and formulate a team who will cater to all the workload. You can either handle a part of the task or have your team do it all for you while you run the agency.
As a company owner, you will communicate with clients, get newer clients on board, strategize on the project, and bring together a team to work on the projects and bring good returns and results.
You have to be very particular about the people you hire because it will decide your company‘s success. There is a massive earning potential in this stream, and you have absolute control of the clients you choose to work with.
How to make money as a web designer with own company?
There are multiple services you can offer at your company. Some of them are:
- Logo design
- Card design
- Brochure design
- Billboard design
- Books and e-books
14. Keep brushing up on your skills & stay relevant.
Several new trends come and go in the web designing field. So, keep brushing your skills, stay relevant to stand out from the competition, and earn good money.
15. Be a one-stop solution.
Some people like shopping at the big stores where they can find everything. They will not have to communicate with different people to get the work done. Such shops may not have the top selection or the lowest prices, but they will offer everything a buyer needs.
Of course, you may wish to be a specialized store with top-end choices, but if you are a one-stop solution, it will help you make more money. So, beyond making websites, you can offer additional resources like coding service, writing, offering SEO choices, and hosting. The customers appreciate this ease of materializing all their demands in one place, and it can fetch you more income.
Related: Web Designing Interview Questions and Answers, Best Web Design Books, Top Responsive Web Design Courses
Do Web Designers Make Good Money?
You now know how to earn money as a web designer, but did you know how much do designers make. Working as a web designer is an incredibly creative profession. However, the primary motivation behind working as a designer lies in the money you make from it. While many web designers make six figures a year, some make an average compensation of only $40000 per year.
If you want to earn a top buck in the market, you must know how to operate a company. Unfortunately, several designers understand the job well but do not know how to run a company. However, to be a good designer and earn good money, you should know how to:
- Find a customer
- Understand the customer’s requirement
- Retain customers
- Expand customer business
Fun Facts About Web Designers & Designing
Now that you know how to earn money from web designing, here are some interesting facts to know about web designers and web designing.
- The audience’s average attention span has decreased from 12 seconds to only eight seconds.
- Forty-eight percent of customers relate a company’s credibility to its design.
- Seventy-five users access the web via their mobiles.
- Text-heavy content can be great for SEO, but it can hamper readability. So, designers should break down the text into bullets and numbered lists.
- A designer should study the demographics before creating a website. It helps understand user behavior.
- Forty-seven percent of users wish for the website to load in two seconds.
- 7 out of 10 customers find the company via a blog.
- Half of the referral site visitors use the navigation menu.
- Every day, about 2.9 billion Google searches are executed.
- Exit popups can be beneficial.
- Eighty percent of visitors will bounce if your site disappoints.
- Video content has a better reception by about seventy-three percent.
- On average, visitors take only 30 seconds to form a perspective after the page loads.
- Forty-four percent of users find the company’s contact information helpful.
- Color theme can amplify website recognition by eighty percent.
You might also like to read about web designing challenges and their solutions.
FAQs About How To Earn Money Online By Web Designing
Ques 1. Is Web Design a good side hustle?
Ans. Yes, web designing can be an incredible side hustle. There are several reasons for it. Below, we will address a few of them:
- There is a plethora of work available in the market.
- You can get an excellent hourly rate.
- You can learn new skills as you go
- There are multiple-related skills you can offer to boost your income.
- It can become your full-time business as you go.
- You will get paid for your time and effort. So, you can make a good amount of money.
- You have flexible working hours.
Ques 2. How much money a web designer makes?
Ans. You now know how to make money as a web designer with all the mediums listed above. Now, the next question is, how much money do designers make? A designer can make around $50,000 – $55,000 per year on average in the US.
The average rate is between $23-25 per hour if you work hourly. However, in reality, the money you make as a designer depends on several factors, like demand, niche, and expertise.
Ques 3. Is Web design good for freelancing?
Ans. Yes, web design can be an excellent source of supplementary income. If you are creative, web design can be a good side hustle. Freelancers usually make an excellent hourly rate. Over time, you can grow this side hustle into a full-time income. Read above guide to know how to make money as a freelance web designer.
Ques 4. Is web design a Good career in 2022?
Ans. Given the surge in technology, the growing number of online businesses and the vast number of sources and mediums to earn money, web design is one of the top career choices in 2022.
