Being a Full-Time designer can be tough at times, you get times where clients just don’t have the money to pay you right away or you go through a patch where you don’t have enough client work to keep your bills paid and may even have to rely on credit cards from the UK.

However, there is a solution, a few in fact. Designers are creative people who love to create things, so why not create things and put them to good use? I have listed 10 Ways a Designer can make some Extra Money each month, putting in effort towards these different things can get you pretty far and well known in the design industry and it will definitely earn you some extra money.

Sell Stock Photography Online

If your’re a designer I am sure you have a camera, so why not put it to good use then. Go out and take some photos of things or places, their are loads of things you can take pictures of, just use your imagination. When taking the photos think of shots that you would purchase to use for a design or get printed at a Printing Company, the idea is to photograph something useful that everyone would be able to use. You can Sell Stock Photography Online via some of the services I have listed below:

iStockPhoto.com

Shutterstock.com

Dreamstime.com

These are just 3 Sites I mentioned where you can sell Stock Photos Online.

Start your own blog

Now you might be wondering how does making money involve having your own blog? The truth is you see thousands of blogs on the net, you even check out some of them daily for news and inspiration or new resources. Do you think these guys blog for free? No, some of the top blogs make tons of cash each year by just blogging. The way guys make money out of blogging is via Advertising, Google Ad sense, Affiliate Linking, Text ads and more. You might be thinking you can’t generate a lot of money through just advertising, think again Techcrunch.com generates about $200,000 Monthly through Advertising Banners. Check out What Top Blogs Earn for a general idea of what the popular bloggers make in the the industry. Looking at those stats just shows you that there is so much open potential in the blogging-sphere, yes of course it will take a lot of dedication and determination to achieve half of what the top blogs have achieved but, everyone has to start somewhere. Why not start right now? I have listed a few guides below that will guide you in the right direction to start your own blog.

IncomeDiary – Guide to Creating your First Profitable Blog

Encourage Blogging – Starting your First Blog

ProBlogger – Starting your First Blog? 29 Tips, Tutorials and Resources for new Bloggers

There is a lot of Blogs around the net that offer advice to start up bloggers, I just found these more useful than the others.

Design Themes or Templates and Sell Them

Web Designers will thrive in this section, why not design a custom theme or template and sell it via a online store? There are a lot of guys designing simple templates and selling them online and making a few extra bucks each month that pay off small things and then their are some guys that make a living out of selling Themes and Templates. Its a pretty big market out their with a lot of talented people but,  Put in some effort into the themes you design and I can give you my word, you will be well rewarded. The popular Theme Market Places I have Listed below where you can Buy and Sell Themes and Templates.

Wpthemarket.com

ThemeForest.net

Templamatic.com

There are still a lot of sites out their where you will be able to sell templates and themes.

Create Icons, Psd Templates, Vectors and Sell Them

The typical graphic designer uses icons on a regular basis, now for those designers that don’t have the time to design their own icons, they purchase their icons from Graphic Market Sites, this includes Layered Psd Templates, Vectors, Illustrations you name it. Thing is their are so many designers world wide that buy premium resources from graphic market sites that if your items were to sell often you would generate a fairly large revenue. Could it hurt to take some extra time and create a few decent items and put them up for sale on a market site? I don’t think so, just put in some effort and your set to sell some items, you can just leave the items on sale and see what happens with them from there.

GraphicRiver.net

GraphicLeftovers.com

Cutcaster.com

Their are other places to sell your resources too.

Write Tutorials for Tutorial Sites

How about that, you get paid to write a tutorial for a tutorial site. You just have to remember that they don’t accept every tutorial that comes their way, it has to be unique and high quality to get published by the authors of the site. Their are numerous sites out their that you could write for and get paid by but, I will only be listing the top three paid Tutorial Sites. The Tutsplus network has a few category sites that you can write tutorials for and all of them pay the same, I will only be listing Psdtuts in this section though. You can access the rest of the Tutsplus Network sites via these Tutsplus links. Check out the Tutorial sites below and get writing.

Tutorial9 – $150 – $300 per Tutorial Published

PsdTuts – $150 per Tutorial Published

Gomedia – up to $300 per Tutorial Published

Like I said Tutsplus has other categories too and there are a lot of other blogs that pay for tutorials too.

Write Articles for Other Blogs

This is one way to stay updated and make some cash and get known around the blogging industry. You should see if you are able to get a few articles published with top blogs, you name will spread like wildfire if your article is really worth the read and contains some killer advice and content. There are tons of blogs that allow guest posting and pay for you to write for them, can it get much easier than that? Choose your niche that you would want to write for. Do some research on the top blogs in that niche and write a few articles, by few I mean 3 or 4. Take your time with the articles and do some quality research, make the article worth a read. Supplying a blog with a decent well planned article has a almost 100% chance of getting posted, and if the article gets posted you get some money. I would recommend guest blogging as it doesn’t only get your name out their, it also generates a lot of traffic for your blog or website that you have. I listed 3 Blogs below that pay for quality articles. There are much more blogs out their that pay for quality content, so don’t just get stuck with these 3.

Workawesome.com

Freelanceswitch.com

b5Media.com

A good article to check out for paying blogs is – 26 Sites that pay you to blog

Provide Training and Write How-To’s

There are a lot of people out there that are interested in what we do as designers and would pay large amounts of cash to learn and develop skills like we have. Why not offer Training programs to people that want to learn how to use photoshop or illustrator, what could be more beneficial than teaching others skills that you know? They will gain more respect towards you once they see what you actually have to know to even start in this field. We aren’t talking about respect at this moment its just a mentioned fact. You could train people or you could Write How-To’s for different websites that pay you to explain how to do certain things in certain situations. The sites you could write for are listed below.

Tutor.com

eHow.com

Videojug.com

There are a lot of How-To Networks you just have to search for them and post away.

Write a E-Book and Sell it Online

You must probably think what am I on about now, well if you have some spare time everyday take that time and write yourself a e-book that explains how to setup a complete blog from start to finishing, including the smaller details. You could do that or you could write a book about SEO, how to double your monthly traffic by using a few simple tips from the e-book. You can write about anything really, just do your research and make sure you write something worth reading in the end. Bringing out your own e-book won’t only generate income for you it will build up a great following of subscribers and twitter followers etc. I have listed 3 posts below that will help you out with the e-book matter.

Probusinessmatter.com – Write an E-Book in 14 Days

Copyblogger.com – How to Write an Ebook that Sells in 2009

Remarkablogger.com – How to write an E-book that doesn’t Suck

The Internet is full of guides explaining how to write E-books, if you aren’t satisfied google is your friend.

Explore Job boards

Exploring job boards could be of great help to you, their are so many in the design industry with so many jobs, that you won’t be bored sifting through. You have Blogging Job Boards, Design Job Boards, Social Media Job Boards and more. The thing about job boards are that you can decide for what job you want to pitch or apply for which makes it really useful when deciding what you want to do at the time. The services on the different boards are also clearly marked out and displayed with awesome layouts. Getting new jobs on job boards doesn’t only mean extra cash, you are building a relationship with another client that could refer you to others in the future, “If you did a good job of course.”

Problogger – Blogging Job Board

Freelanceswitch – Design Job Board

Coroflot – Design Job Board

There are a lot of job boards online just look for them.

Resell Hosting Services

There are a ton of services available that will allow you to resell hosting. You can easily have this as an addon to your customers and make a profit each month or a one time upfront kickback. You want to be careful with this though, taking on reseller hosting will add extra work for you if you are offering it as your hosting. If the site goes down or there is some other hosting-related trouble you had better be prepared to provide that customer service or you could ruin your relationship with your client for something that is beyond your control. I have listed 3 Hosting Solutions below that are really reliable resellers.

Site5.com – Reseller Hosting

Greenresellerwebhosting.com – Reseller Hosting

Hostgator.com – Reseller Hosting

There are hundreds of hosting services out there, these are just my top 3.

That concludes my 10 Ways A Designer Can Make Some Extra Money, hope you enjoyed it see you in the comments.

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