9 ways designers can generate passive income

There’s more than one way to make great money as a designer. If you’d like to increase your design business’ income without dramatically increasing your workload, keep reading – you’re going to enjoy today’s post.

Start and maintain a blog

My personal favorite way of increasing your passive income is to run a successful blog. Blogging isn’t easy, and if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to make money, blogging definitely is not for you. But if blogging sounds like an intriguing endeavor and an exciting way to make extra money for your design business, GDB is packed full of resources for designers who want to blog.

Sell wordpress themes (or other templates)

A somewhat obvious choice, but selling wordpress themes (or other templates) is a phenomenal way to make money. It may be difficult to design a theme upfront, but it brings you continuous income for the remainder of your design career.

If you’re looking for a place to start selling your themes or templates, I can highly recommendMojoThemes.com. I’ve worked with a few marketplaces and can highly recommend Mojo Themes.

The link above is an affiliate link. If you click through, find them as helpful as I have, sign up, and buy or sell, please email me so I can personally thank you for helping my design business grow. …That brings me to my next point…

Affiliate work

As you saw demonstrated above, affiliate work can bring you some nice passive income as a designer. Affiliate work basically allows you to help other people sell their services or product for a percentage.

In the example above, I get a percentage each time anyone who clicks my affiliate link buys or sells on Mojo Themes. I am always careful to only use affiliate programs for products or services I genuinely believe in – which is a good word of warning if you’re interested in getting into affiliate work.

Sell or Recommend Site Hosting

If you’re a web designer, an easy way to make a few extra bucks on each project is to recommend or sell web site hosting. If you don’t mind managing the hosting yourself, offer to host your clients’ web sites. If you don’t want the headache of being the hosting tech service person, you could always recommend a particular service with an affiliate link like we described.

I personally recommend Dreamhost (notice, I always recommend it with my affiliate link) to my clients because of their super-easy one-click wordpress install and excellent customer support.

Sell photography

This is an area of passive income I have never personally invested time into, but if you’re a photographer, it works great, I’m sure. If you’re anything like me, you have all sorts of photographs sitting on hard drives in your office – not making you any money.

Take time to sort through them, find the best ones, and sell them on photography web sites. Since I have never done this one, I am going to call out all you photography-selling designers. If you’ve made any money selling your photos, please leave a comment and let us know how you did it.

Publish an ebook

If you have a moderately-trafficked blog or web site (or have a blogger who would be interested in selling your ebook) ebooks can be a great way to make extra money on the side.

The great thing about ebook sales is that you only have to create the content once. Then the product can sell for years into the future.

A few options for ebooks include a small ebook for your clients or potential clients about what makes a web site or logo successful.

The nice thing about ebooks is that you’re not only creating passive income for yourself, but your also building credibility for your design business.

Develop an app

If you can develop an application your clients are interested in, it can bring you a steady stream of income for a significant amount of time. Building apps takes time and money, so be sure to research your idea thoroughly.

Some ideas include Chris Coyier’s (from CSS Tricks) ‘Are my sites up?’ web app. It’s a great tool for clients who want to know if everything is working correctly with their web site.

It’s a great idea because it saves Chris time, money, and hassle, and offers his clients a way to verify their web site status.

Design T-Shirts and other Apparel

There are tons of web sites that allow designers to submit T-shirt designs and then take a portion of the sales from each t-shirt sale. If you enjoy apparel design, this may be the source of passive income you have been looking for.

I’ve never personally tried this avenue of passive income, but if you have, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Add-ons

One of my favorite ways to make relatively-passive income is to offer add-ons to your design services. We’ve talked before about upselling your design projects, and offering simple and additional services can really make or break your bottom line.

by Preston D Lee

8 Tips To Work With Better Freelance Clients

Are you happy with your clients? Are they giving you projects you enjoy? Paying enough for your time? Hopefully you answered yes, but I often hear freelancers saying they’d like better clients. I thought I’d offer some ideas to help you build a better client list.

Before we get to those ideas let me say this isn’t a post of client horror stories. Sure everyone has had or will have clients who we’d rather forget. For the most part though, your clients are good and honest people.

However sometimes you feel like there’s something missing in your client list and you’d like to get more of that missing element.

What Makes One Client Better than Another?

Better is a subjective word. There’s no specific set of requirements in some set amount that makes one client automatically better than another. The truth is only you can define what makes a better client for your business.

Your first step in working with better clients is to define what a better client is. Some things that may define better for you:

• Clients with more interesting projects
• Clients that bring out the best in you
• Clients who give you more freedom
• Clients with a greater social ethic
• Clients that pay more money
• Clients you like personally
• Clients you believe in

The list above is, of course, incomplete. There are an endless number of things that can define better for you and the list above doesn’t take into account which items are more important.

The main thing is to realize that only you can define better and you have to define it before you can attract better to your business.

Today’s Clients Predict Tomorrow’s Clients

If I could summarize this post with a single thought it would be the work you do today leads to the work you’ll do tomorrow.

Today’s clients will recommend you based on what you did for them. They’re going to recommend you to people they know who are probably like them.

They’ll recommend you based on the reason they chose you and choose to work with you again. If you land a client because you had the lowest price, that client will recommend you as the low cost option.

New leads will choose you based on the work they’ve seen you do in the past. Your portfolio shows them the work you can do and offers proof of your skills. The work you do today is going to help convince others you can do that same work in the future.

If everything in your portfolio is a small site with hand drawn illustrations your portfolio isn’t doing much to convince corporate clients you’re the person for their large and conservative site.

How to Work with the Clients You Want

Essentially it comes down to doing more of the work you want to do in the future as soon as possible. That’s much easier said than done so here are a few practical tips.

Value Yourself

The most important thing is to value what you do. You and I think it’s easy to set up a quick html page, but that’s only because we’ve been doing it for awhile. It’s easy to forget the years of learning that go into creating a simple site.

What you do is valuable and adds great value to your client’s business. If you don’t see that no one else will.

If you want clients to value your skills, experience, and time, you need to value them first.

Learn to Say No

You don’t have to say yes to every client request or demand. Learn to say no.

Clients will ask you to do lots of things that probably aren’t fair to you. It’s not because they’re bad people or trying to rip you off. They’re usually just trying to get the best deal they can for their business.

You generally won’t lose a client because you say no to a 20% discount or because you won’t work over the weekend. Instead you’ll send a clear message that you value your work and time.

Be Selective: Turn Away Bad Projects

There are times when money is tight and you feel like you have to take on any project offered at any price. While there might be times when you have to say yes to stay in business, these times really aren’t that abundant.

Often you’re better off filtering out some clients. Bad business recommends bad business. Taking on a bad project also means no time for the better project that comes in tomorrow.

Turning away business is not easy, especially when there’s a financial need, but turning away bad projects was one of the best things I ever did for my business.

Do More of the Projects You Want to Do

This might sound like a catch 22, but there are ways to do the projects you want even when no one is offering them. You can be your own client. Develop a theme for a popular CMS. Build a site for a new business.

This is also the exception to working for less than your value. Consider if it’s worth a large discount or even a free site in order to shape your portfolio.

A site built for a charitable organization is an easy way to justify any lost revenue. You can consider the lost revenue a marketing expense.

Think of all the example pages and sites you’ve built while learning. Think of this in a similar light. You’re doing free or low cost work in exchange for a portfolio that will help attract the projects you want to do in the future.

Blog About Things that are Important to You

Like a portfolio a blog can show proof of skills. If you can’t work on the projects you want, you can still write about how you would improve similar sites or simply write about things that show you can successfully complete the projects you want.

This is really an extension of the point above. If you’re not currently getting the projects or clients you want, find some way to show you can handle them.

It doesn’t specifically have to be a blog. You can write a book, a white paper, speak at conferences, give away sample code, etc.

Be Selective in What Your Portfolio Shows

You don’t need to show every project you’ve ever done in your portfolio. Be selective. Show those projects that most closely resemble the types of projects you want to take on in the future.

A portfolio isn’t meant to be all your work. It’s meant to be a selection of your work. What you choose to show will affect how people view your ability to work on their project.

Be Where Your Ideal Clients Are

Identify where your ideal clients are most likely to spend their time and then build a presence there.

If you want corporate clients, a small business forum isn’t the best community to join. Do what you can to network with the people you want to work with.

People network with others similar to themselves. Find a way to get into the social circles representing the clients you want.

Build a Brand that Attracts “Better” Clients

Everything you communicate affects your brand. The color scheme of your site, your copy, how you reply to emails, everything. Build a brand that appeals to the clients you want.

Every point above is really one aspect of this one. Figure out what what will appeal to your definition of “better” clients and do what you can to be those things.

Beware though that you may learn along the way that what you think makes for a “better” client turns out not to be all that great when you realize what you have to do to land those clients.

Summary

If you aren’t happy with the clients and projects your freelance business currently attracts don’t get down. Start taking steps right now to attract the clients and projects you want.

First define who those clients are and what those projects will be. You need to know what makes for a better client for you before you can attract that client to your business.

Understand that the work you do today will attract similar work in the future. Who you work with today usually leads to working with more of the same tomorrow.

Be more selective in the work you take on now and the work you show to others. Take incremental steps to grow your business in the direction you want it to grow.

It comes down to having your current business reflect that it’s capable of working with the type of client you want to work with and working more on the types of projects you want to work on.

by Steven Bradley

50 examples of logo design that cleverly use negative space in typography

Logos are symbols used to quickly communicate a brand to an audience, just one small logo design can communicate so much. Many people choose to use letters and typography as the foundation for their logos. However, this can be tricky – you don’t want your typographic logo confused as normal text. If you choose to use text as the basis of your logo, you’ve got to set it apart as an image.

Typography is the art of the letterform and typographers closely analyze and carefully craft every detail of each character – even the negative space, called the counter. We often ignore and overlook the counter space because that’s not what we normally read. However, the counter can offer some rich forms and creative opportunities that warrant a closer look.

Here is the list of logo design great examples

This logo design cleverly uses the image of its namesake to form the first two letters. The u is positively outlined as the handle of the umbrella and the m is cleverly outlined in the positive space underneath the umbrella.

Even without the words underneath, you’d know that the company behind this logo does something with electronics. The plugs cleverly outline the E in the negative space.

Again, Wiesinger Music hints to their services through making their typography into an image. The counters of the font act as the black keys on a piano.

Two Giraffes plays with the counters of the 2 and makes them into giraffes. Their simple logo design communicates their company name.

These three logos all utilize the counters of the A by filling them with different images that reflect their services or their name.

Egg in a Spoon took advantage of the counters that already exist in the e and made some minor tweaks to make it look like an egg in a spoon. I would even question if these folks didn’t see the shape in the e first, decided that it looked like an egg in a spoon and named their business after the logo.

Elefont

Effective Sports

By incorporating a small bit of negative space, Free & Equal is able to communicate both aspects of their company name.

AG Low is a construction company. They’ve cleverly formed their typography to look like the walls of a floorplan. The negative forms here act as the open space of the hypothetical blueprint.

French Bakery

Gecko

Mosleep

Human

Conception

Hammer

Some logos use the images that represent their names to carve out space in the letters. This both visually and textually communicates the brand.

Salmovac, a fish vaccination company,  used two fishes swimming around each other to create an S in the negative space.

Guitar necks just happen to fill a white box to make a T for Troubs, a music business.

Xmas

This font was carefully chosen for its counter space. The knife in the negative space of the a fits right in with the rest of the narrow counters of the rest of the letters.

By placing the two ls closely together, the negative space halfway completes the image of a gift. By adding a little bit more white space, the image is complete.

Gulp noticed that the negative form created by the U looks like the punching bag in the back of our throats and capitalized upon it for a very smart logo design.

Eat Innovations uses images to connect the counters between the e and a. The counters within the e also interact with one another. Notice how the negative space in between the a and t parallel the two letters, making for a pleasing streamline effect.

Treacy Shoes hugs the t and s here to form the shape of a shoe in the negative shape that the two letters create. Notice here that the choice of font was integral to create this form. Another font wouldn’t have made as good of a shoe.

Straight Up sandwiches the negative U form between the straight up arrow and the P.

The arrow here just happens to positively form the U and negatively shapes the P.

Etfi cleverly fits all four letters into a rectangle of space. It’s almost too perfect that the counters of the E and T create an F and I.

The i fits in the counters of the f and t.

Notice how the negative space between the E and x create an arrow, subliminally implying that FedEx will get your shipments moving. The font choice here was pivotal to create this shape. Very few other fonts could have fit together to make the arrow. One of the best logo designs for sure.

The negative space of the arrows here conveniently create the H. Again, this font was carefully chosen. Imagine this logo done with a serif font – the result would not be so elegant.

The counters of the d and p are joined together through a red cross, which is fitting for this clinic.

The counters of the D and O are connected through the negative shape of a bone for this brand named Fido.

The counters that run through all three letters here cleverly form a shovel.

This logo and branding is clever on many levels. “Doug” sounds like “dug,” and there is a shovel in the counter space of the u, which is all too appropriate for this landscaping company.

The negative space that runs halfway through all of these letters form the crossbars for more than half of these letters.

It’s not that the Is are missing, but rather they’re being formed in the negative space. This is mainly accomplished through the rest of the letters being squeezed up right next to each other.

Other logos use other letters as the counter space of another letter, as seen here in Peter Ryan’s logo. This is useful if you have several letters in your logo.

Franz Bernard

In order to fit the b and o together, Black Observer had to choose a font that had rounded glyphs.

Anthony Lane

Elena Alexeeva

Edge Board hints at an edge just by shaping the negative forms in the E and B and blending them together. It’s both an optical illusion and an effective logo that communicates two letters.

Warranty Direct’s logo is doing many things at once. The positive red form is both a W and a human figure. The negative space is shaped as a wrench, which points to what sort of services Warranty Direct provides.

Mouse Universe uses its initials to creatively draw the picture of a mouse.

Through carefully chosen font and the addition of that half egg shape at the top, Panda Communications manages to draw out a panda in the simplest way.

By turning the letters on their sides and positioning them carefully, Black Cat could make the Cs into the watchful eyes of a cat.

Kihoku is a Japanese brand and the negative space here effectively forms the Japanese flag.

Recognizing typography as a collection of images, many people turn to letterforms when creating their logos. However, these letters must be differentiated from normal text. One way to go about this is to utilize the negative space of the glyphs. There are even many ways to go about this particular method. Some have used images in place of the standard counters while others have used other letters. Some use images to create letters in the negative space. Regardless of the method, among other logo design tips, using negative space can make a logo much more effective and clever.

by Mirko in Featured, Graphic design, Inspiration