As a Website Designer, a lot of your income depends on how much work you get, and how much work you can handle.
So finding other ways to make an income that adds to your monthly income or cash flow is key!
Let’s find a few ways that you can start to add revenue streams to your website design business, doing the things you are already doing!
But before we get into this list, I want to emphasize the importance of running your website design business as an actual business. Meaning that you are getting and improving your cash flow, recurring income, and not just big projects every few months that might seem lovely at first, but in reality, you are only making a small % of the total cost.
Remember that the cash flow your website design business generates, is what will allow you to hold on while you get large projects.
At the end of the day, if you want this to become something you can do 100% of your time or your full-time job, you are going to want to make sure it is operating like one!
And just before 2021 wrapped, I was thinking about things I can do to add extra revenue streams to what I do, but the difficult part of it is to spend extra time doing the tasks that I need for this, while I am working on projects!
So I thought about what if...these tasks or revenue streams are made out of things that I am already doing!
So let’s get to our list!
1. Sell elements or templates you are creating
How many times have you worked on a project and had to find resources or a template for something you are doing? This can be like a website wireframe or even a full-blown template.
If you had to do this, imagine how many other people are also looking for a solution like this.
So one of the things you can do is create templates or layouts that you find useful and that would help someone overcome the same challenge you had. Once you have done that, you can create a store using Woocommerce, or even Webflow where you can sell these templates.
If they are small templates, they don’t have to be worth a lot. Just enough to add a few bucks or to pocket. This can help you cover subscriptions etc.
An example of this, was when I built a social media calendar for me to post on social media. I then customized it for a few niches and sold it on my Woocommerce website for about $50USD.
At first, it didn’t pick up too much, but all of a sudden I started to get notifications and emails from people who were buying this. And to show you that it works, the calendar was made for the year 2020, and in 2021 people were still buying this calendar!
2. Share what you do, and make some money from it
Sharing what you do as a designer is probably one of the best ways to drive leads and fill in your pipeline with projects. But you can also use Youtube and other social networks for a lot more than just sharing your work.
You see, brands are looking to showcase their products, so they are looking for people who are on these platforms to partner with, so their products can be seen by more and more people.
Hence, creating a great Youtube or just overall social media influence is important.
These brands can pay you for showcasing their products and doing tutorials on their products.
And since this channel is for website designers, there are a lot of upcoming no-code tools that might be willing to partner with you to get this going.
So this one is one of those tips that can help you to be known for what you do, drive some leads your way, and even make some extra bucks from doing this.
3. Educate others and charge for it
You are creating templates and tools that you are using while you are working, that was step one.
Then you are showing casing this process on Youtube, so that means you are already recording this content, that was step 2.
Now you can take that content and tools you have created and start to create online courses to repurpose this content.
And the beauty of it is that you can set it up once, and use step two to continuously market this course.
I am sure there are many other creatives that you have seen do this. One of the best examples is Ran Segall, who started by working with clients, sharing his process on Youtube and then creating these amazing courses which eventually came to be what it is today, Flux Academy!
Gary Vee, talks a lot about repurposing content. Sort of like from one video you create, you should be able to create about 20 other pieces of content.
4. Mentor Others
If you have done the three ideas before this, you know the idea is to build a fan base per se.
If they are already interested in learning from you about website design or your process, you can also offer one-on-one sessions for mentoring.
You can charge this separate from your course, but since this option requires actual time, you might want to limit your time available for this.
5. Add recurring services to your website design business
Getting big projects is great, but money runs out. So you need to find a way to get recurring income. One of the best ways to do this is to add services to your toolkit that can allow this to happen.
So if you are developing a website on Webflow for a client, you can introduce them to SEO and make SEO a recurring income service you provide. Most SEO projects last between 6 to 12 months. So it will be a great way to get cash flow to...well flow and build up.
As a designer, your clients will most likely never stop needing work. So you can create packages on tasks that do not require a new rebrand or a new website design from scratch.
This will help you build a relationship as well, but also build a revenue stream. So you can do this on an hourly package, to bring in that big chunk of cash right away or you can do this on a month-to-month basis.
If you noticed, these ideas sort of feed from one another...Except maybe the last one, which just feeds from your client’s design and website needs. But at the end of the day, they are not ideas that will require you to do something completely different from what you do in your day-to-day.
Right now, I am working on an SEO SOP that will be the base for my Youtube Series about SEO for Webflow. I can use some of the templates I have created for this as something I can sell or teach others so they can help their Webflow projects rank better on Google!
Now, these are just my ideas! What ideas have you had before? Share them in the comments below!
And if you thought this was useful, hit that subscribe button and like button so Youtube gets to like these videos even more!
I will see you in the next video!
