Designer Boss
Designer Boss
4 Quick Fixes To Increase Your Design Biz Income
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0:04
Welcome to the designer boss podcast, listen, learn, love and level up with the ultimate success guide for web and graphic designers.
0:17
My name is Anna Dower. I'm a cake lover and success slaying graphic design mentor.
0:23
And I'm Emma Kate your personal sensei for mastering the wonderful world of the Web.
0:30
Together, we'll show you how to harness our tried and tested experiences and hard earned lessons while you soak up everything we know about building a successful design business.
0:48
Hey there, you're listening to the design of boss podcast. My name is Anna Dower, and I'm here with Emma Kate. Today, we're going to be talking about the four quick fixes to increase your design business income. We all want more income, right? So today, Emma and I are going to just list off a bunch of ideas that you can implement in your design business today, in order to make more money. Do you want to start off Emm?
1:18
Yeah, sure. So the first one that I have, is potentially one of the easiest. And that is to become an affiliate for products and services and things like that, that you're recommending to your clients already, or potentially buying on behalf of your clients already as well. So there are a bunch of different places that you can become an affiliate for different companies like an easy one is like G Suite, you know, if you're recommending that they set up their emails through Gmail or something like that you can become an affiliate with them. As web designers, it's really easy to become affiliates for hosting companies like SiteGround, or whoever whichever hosting company you use, chances are they have an affiliate program that you can become an affiliate for. I mean, I'm an affiliate for so many different things. But another one that I'm always buying for clients is the website legal pages that they require. So the privacy policy and disclaimer and stuff that every website needs. I am an affiliate for a company called legal 123. And I was purchasing leads for clients anyway, as part of the website packages. And now with my affiliate link, I then get a kickback for each of that. So it just means that you're earning a little bit of money for all these things that you're referring clients to. So you can either be an affiliate, or if you want to go the extra mile, you can become a reseller for a lot of companies as well. But the affiliate model is a lot easier, because essentially you just sign up for the program, become an affiliate, and get your special link. And then you can just start sharing that with clients when you recommend things to them.
2:54
Yeah, and it feels like free money, because it's usually stuff that you use and love anyway, and stuff that you recommend anyway. So it's just like a nice little kickback.
3:05
Yeah, and you can be like, even if you can even have an affiliate link for things like Creative Market. So if you're buying fonts, for clients and stuff like that, you can use that affiliate link. And then it just means that you're just getting that little bit extra each time. Because you're essentially marketing their product.
3:25
And it's good to include a page on your website that is called My favourite tools, or favourite resources or whatever you want to call it. And list all your affiliate links on there. Someone that does a lot is Pat Flynn, he has a huge page of affiliate links. And yeah, it's a good example to check out.
3:50
you have a page on your website like useful tools and so do I. we can even share any of the examples that we have as well. So and you know, the client, we're probably using very similar tools to what a whole bunch of our listeners are using as well. So you'll be able to see the kinds of programs that you can sign up for and chant like most of the time, it's really easy. It's as simple as finding the link on their page on their website, filling out a form and you might even get your affiliate link like right away. So it can be super easy to become an affiliate for a bunch of different companies.
4:23
Yeah. And another way, of course, to increase your income is to increase your prices. So if you're a designer and you feel like you're working with heaps and heaps of clients, but not enough money, chances are it's time to increase your prices. So if you're someone who's working long hours, someone who feels like they've got 20 clients on the go, someone that feels like you'll never get ahead. It's really, really time to increase your prices. I'm a big believer in working with Less clients but making more money. What I recommend you do is sit down and think about how much money you want to earn each month. And think about how many $100 jobs you need to take on to meet that goal, in comparison to like maybe breaking that goal into packages saying, Well, I only need to sell two of these packages per month to hit that goal, rather than working with like 21 $100 jobs. You know what I mean? It's all about just working smarter. And I know it's scary, increasing your prices. And I hear all the time, once people do increase their price. I hear it. I hear this all the time, too. They need even bad Nayeli. They just said yes. Well, I wish I did it sooner. And that's exactly how you will feel too. If you increase your prices, don't base your price on the amount of time a project takes. That's the biggest mistake, you bring way more value than that to the table. So especially now that it's a new year, I think it's a good time to increase your prices.
6:13
Absolutely. And I think I think I just thought of then is someone think you probably posted in your group or something don't hurt at one time where it's like, a client is not paying you for the hours it takes you now they're paying you for the 10 years of experience that you have or whatever that might be. So yeah, you shouldn't just be basing it on Oh, it's only going to take me half an hour, I can't charge that much. It's like it's only going to take you half an hour because you've learned how to make it only take you half an hour. That's exactly right. Yeah, so definitely charge your value more. So then, for your time. And just based on my experience, increasing my prices to I was exactly like those designers scared to increase my prices, thinking I'm gonna lose all these clients and stuff. And most of my clients stick around, don't care about it, some of them might question it, but then they still stick around anyway. And then there might have been one or two that have dropped off, but they're not the clients I wanted to work with anyway, they're looking for a really cheap designer, and that just wasn't me anymore. So it definitely makes your life easier when you're not dealing with those clients that obviously don't value you and value what you bring to the table. And then it means you're working with less clients that really value you. And you're probably earning more two, you're definitely not earning less. So yeah, it's worth just even trickling them up to that's what I've sort of done over time. Potentially, you can, like I've increased package prices and stuff like that, obviously, for new clients, but I might keep my old clients on the older rate for a little bit longer and give them warning, like tell them I'm going to keep you on this rate for the next three months or something and then it's going to increase like you're doing them a favour. So that's worked out really well for me as well.
8:03
Yeah, do it increase your prices. And it's not a tattoo. Like it can change. If you increase your price, and you don't, you know, get a great response. After a month, I changed it. It's not a tattoo, but I guarantee your wish you did it sooner.
8:23
Yeah, definitely. Another one I had on my list was to upskill. So an easy way to sort of increase your income is that you've already got all these clients that are coming to you for you know, whatever your main service might be. But if you can offer them something else that you do as well, they don't have to go somewhere else, they don't have to find another designer or a person they have to build a business relationship with, they can just come to you for that, then that's just a huge way to increase the amount of income you can earn from each particular client means you need to work, you only need to work with less clients to earn more money. So a good example of this is say if you offer you know, logo design and branding than adding extra services, like, you know, Facebook graphics or MailChimp, setup or things like that can just add those extra things to your packages, and you're increasing the amount that you can offer to a client. You can also like I have a lot of designers that are obviously they've just been doing sort of graphic and print work. And then they want they have heaps of clients. And this happened to me as well had heaps of clients coming to them saying, can you build me a website too? And they were like, Well, no, I can't. I don't know how to do that. So that's what I've worked with a lot of designers that are upskilling in that area so they can now more than double the amount of income they earn from new client because they can not only do their branding and logo and all that stuff, they can now build them a website as well, which turns into not only more money in the short term, but more money in the long term. With all that sort of recurring revenue that you can get from having website clients as well. So definitely look at things that you can do that you enjoy doing that you want to add to your as a service offering. Like, I used to do MailChimp, setups and stuff, I realised I hated that. So I don't offer that anymore. So it's worth trying different things to see what you like. And then just adding those extra services that maybe you enjoy doing and your clients are going to want from you as well.
10:29
Yeah, and I will just help you flesh out your packages more, and therefore charge more for the packages. And like Emma said, make sure it's something that you love, not just something you think you should do. So it could even be as simple as learning how to make those animated GIFs for Instagram, or email signatures, or you know what I mean? Think about what you can add to your already existing services to add more value and then charge more for it. The final idea I had was to sell already existing content. So that means perhaps you have a whole bunch of content that you've created for clients in the past, maybe a bunch of instructional videos, bundle them together and sell it as an E-course, or sell it as a mini e-course. Another thing that you can do with already existing content is perhaps go through previous logos, and find all the logos that didn't make the cut, the logos that clients didn't buy, and then sell them as pre-made logos. These are ways that you can boost your income, have them for sale on your website and let them just take over in the background. It may not make a massive difference to your income, but it will over time just having those little amounts trickling in. And I know we've all got loads of content, I know I do. Use it, don't feel like you need to create new content in order to sell us the stuff you already have. Yeah, and just have those ticking along in the background.
12:08
Yeah, and you can sell them as even like, you might have instructions that you've written for clients or things like that, that you can just turn it into a pretty PDF and have it for sale. You know, I've found I had so many instructions, I'd written just for myself to remember how to do things. And they're so easy to just like, put isn't like an ebook or PDF thing that people can download and buy it for five bucks. You know, like, it doesn't have to be a lot of money, some of the things but it can work out that, you know, it just all adds to income over time. And it's sort of a set and forget kind of thing too, which is what we all want. Yeah.
12:43
And those little things often turn into stepping stone products, where perhaps they may feel comfortable spending $10 on a PDF or whatever. And then once they receive that, realise that you know what you're talking about, it can often mean that then they'll come back and book a design package for you. So it's really win-win, I think.
13:07
I think there's some great ideas there and they're definitely all ones that I have tried in the past and have all increased my income.
13:14
So do it. implement those four quick fixes to increase your design business income and let us know how you go. Thanks for listening to the Designer Boss Podcast. We'll catch you next time
13:35
You've been listening to the designer boss podcast with Anna Dower and Emma Kate. If you'd like to learn more about us and our upcoming digital summit for graphic and web designers, head to our website designerboss.co