6 ways how to make additional money as a designer

You are a great designer. Design is your passion, hobby, and job. You already work in a great office but you feel like you could do more. In this article, we have compiled 6 ideas you can do as a designer to earn some extra money and learn some new skills in the process. Let’s dive in!

Pick up some extra shifts!

An easy way how to earn extra money as a designer is to just have more clients or projects. Use well-known platforms to promote your services and get more clients. Platforms you can use are, for example, Upwork or Fiverr. You can also put an ad on Facebook. Just remember, if you are already working a full-time job and money is not tight, choose to work with projects you find fun and interesting. Having side hustle clients is also a good way how to pick up new skills and try your hand at different designs.

Print on demand shop

Create breathtaking designs and print them on t-shirts, hoodies, canvas, and tote bags. And voila! You have yourself a print on demand business. It is really easy and convenient – you just need to create the designs and set up an e-commerce shop, and print-on-demand supplier will do the rest – print the items and even ship them. No extra hassle for you! You can just put your creativity to work and enjoy the fruits that your designs are bringing in.

Consult

Consulting is great! You get to judge someone else’s work, have coffee, talk, sound smart and you don’t have to do any actual design work. This is a perfect gig for someone who is already well accomplished in the field and who likes to chat with people. If you don’t really consider yourself a people person, better skip this option. There are plenty of other options for how to make additional money that doesn’t involve small talk and dealing with people who no nothing about designs.

Printables

This is a fun one! If you are an organization nut and a designer, you can create lots of cute printables and sell them online, for example, on Etsy. Printables can be for anything – grocery lists, everyday planning, holiday planning, writing down acknowledgments, reflection, etc. People love a cute planning tool and printables can be of them. The best thing about it – you create it once, list it online, and then almost just forget about it! You don’t need to tweak anything, just send out the same file to all of your customers. They are happy, and you are happy! A win-win situation.

Create emojis and stickers

People love expressing their feelings through emojis. And since every big brand now has its own emoji sets (Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Android, etc) other companies and smaller brands also want to get into the action and have custom-made emojis just for their clients and employees. You can create sets of emojis and stickers and sell them online. It is a great idea to create emoji and sticker packs for different themes – Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Women’s day, etc. as well as create non-festive ones for everyday use. Have fun with it!

Pass on your knowledge

If you love talking to people but you don’t want to consult, pass on your design knowledge to new designers and design enthusiasts. Create a course or offer a learning center to create one for them. You can also make a course for Skillshare or other learning platforms. If you enjoy a live audience – host a workshop! There is definitely lots to learn from you, don’t be shy, share your knowledge!

In conclusion

These are just six ideas of what you can do as a side hustle. But be sure, there are more options for how to earn extra money as a designer. Just keep looking, get inspiration and earn that extra cash!