- Today, I want to talk
about how I make a living
as a freelance graphic designer.
(relaxing music)
There are two different ways that I'm able
to make a living as a
freelance graphic designer.
One, with client work,
and two, with passive income.
So let's start with client work.
Last year, client work made up about
61% of my annual income.
I am a freelance graphic designer
that specializes in T-shirt design,
mainly for the music industry.
That's what I love to do
most for my day-to-day,
and, on occasion, I
sometimes design logos.
But that's how I make
the bulk of my income.
I specialize on T-shirt design
and I brand myself entirely around that.
So the first two words you
see when you go to my website
are T-shirt design.
I don't build websites,
I'm not going to design
your business card,
but I will design your T-shirt.
And because I focus my brand around this
and it's the only work that
I show in my portfolio,
that's how I'm able to
attract those type of clients.
And the cool thing is I get to work
with clients from all over the world.
Sometimes I'm working
with merchandise companies
or just individually with like an artist.
I gather as much info as I can
from a client on their needs
and then I just go to work
trying to make the best design
ultimately for their audience,
something that I know that
they're going to want to buy
and love to wear.
Although the majority of my
time is spent on client work,
it's not always reliable,
and that was especially
when I was starting out with freelancing,
and that's why it's important that I have
to diversify my income and
bring in money from
different income streams.
Which brings me to number
two, passive income.
This is income that I make
on the side of client work.
And in most cases, it's
something that I make once
and then get paid for from then on.
To give you an example,
there is a website called Creative Market,
and I have a shop on there,
where I sell resources for creatives,
like texture packs and T-shirt mockups.
You may have seen a couple
of videos of mine where
I'm actually showing the process
of how I made those products,
where I'm laying out
T-shirts, photographing them,
putting them on the computer, and creating
the product where you
can put your T-shirt,
or your design onto the
T-shirt realistically,
or rolling out the ink by hand,
scanning it on the computer,
and making brushes and that sort of stuff.
Those products were something
that I made originally for me
to personally use in my
freelance design work.
But I know that there
are designers out there
that could find those resources useful.
So I took what I had already made
and just took a few
days to package them up
as sort of an official product.
So now, every month, I get
money from those sales,
and that's sort of a forever
thing, which is really awesome
and really helps with that cash flow.
So, you know, if client
work ever goes slow,
I have something coming in.
And the same concept applies for
if you want to teach and do courses,
or you want to write like an ebook,
or make and sell physical products.
I also have a shop
off my website where I
sell physical products,
but I make little to no money off of it.
It was kind of an experiment
to gain experience on making a product
by hand, producing it,
and then shipping it
around the world.
So I have a couple products,
they don't make me any money.
It was just really cool to make,
and it's really awesome to
sort of connect with people
kind of by hand, because,
you know, I'm hand packaging
all these products by hand
any time an order does
come in, very rarely.
But if you want to check that out,
it's just off my website
or I'll leave a link
in the description below.
So client work is my priority,
and it will be for years to come.
It's what I love to do most,
and I get to work on some
of the coolest projects that
I couldn't have never
have imagined working on.
But these side projects
are kind of like a breath of fresh air.
It's a way where I can
creatively challenge myself
in ways that sometimes
the client work doesn't.
It's always interesting
to see how creatives
make extra money.
You could be selling prints,
teaching, selling courses.
You can have an Etsy shop.
There's just so many ways
that you can make extra money.
So if you're a freelancer
and you make money
aside from your main services
or working with clients,
I'd love to know what else you do.
Leave a comment below.
Or if you're not freelancing
or doing any sort of
passive income projects,
I'd love to know maybe
what your future plans are,
or maybe where you'd like to be one day.
Hopefully, you found
this video interesting,
maybe even a little motivating,
getting those juices flowing
and ideas going for what maybe you can do
with your creative skills.
If you liked the video,
give it a thumbs up
and consider subscribing.
It's completely free and
it's a way that you can make
sure to not miss my next video.
Thank you for taking the time
out of your day to watch,
now let's get back to work.
