How to Get Passive Income for Designers

So you’re a designer, and your brand name is starting to pick up. You feel that your paycheck at the end of every month is not enough, or perhaps there aren’t as many clients as you’d like to be having right now.

Well, what if I told you that you could earn more money besides doing projects for clients. You can start a side business or do things that you don’t need to monitor constantly. By doing that, you’ll get a passive income.

In this article, I’ll give you four different and unique ways to earn extra income regularly. You’ll find that all of it utilizes your experience as a designer, so you should be able to do all of it.

1. Earn Passive Income from Zyro Curated Templates Program

Zyro is essentially a website builder with a user-friendly interface and gives access to plenty of designer-made templates. Now, you might wonder how those templates were made. Exactly what you think, they are made by designers like you. 

To join the designers, you can sign up for the Zyro curated templates program. This means you can create templates for Zyro, and when a paying user publishes a website using a template that you made, Zyro will pay you a certain amount.

Just follow these simple steps to get started:

1. Sign up. Fill in the form, and they’ll get back to you within five business days with more info. Then after a few sessions, you’ll be approved.
2. Design templates. Go creative, all out, and build stunning website templates. You can create as many templates as you want, the more, the better.
3. Get approved. Zyro’s design team will review your designs and decide whether they are good enough for their website.
4. Get your name out there. After a free user uses your templates, it will be featured in Zyro’s template choices.
5. Get paid. As mentioned before, once a paid user uses your template, you’ll get paid.

Best of all, for the most part, you’ll be using Zyro’s easy to use tools, which will make the web design aspect of it much simpler.

Udemy is an online learning platform where you can not only learn and acquire new skills yourself but also build online courses on specific topics and share your knowledge with and teach other people. You can upload videos, PowerPoint presentations, audio files, or even do live classes.

Another great way to earn an income passively is by becoming an instructor and teaching design to other people. Once your video course is up, you make money from recurring sales (although depending on the type of video course, some attention could be required to answer the community’s questions and interact with your students).

Here are some tips to get started:

1. Create multiple video courses. To gain more attention and more income, you should create a few classes. You can record your course with your camera or phone and upload them to Udemy.
2. Post short videos on Youtube. For people to get a gist of what courses you’re teaching, you should publish some short clips from your Udemy course to attract students.
3. Create a long, detailed description. Here, you should take some time to fully explain what will be taught throughout the course, how long it will be, and how many sections are divided.
4. Divide the course into short sections. This is so students can stop midway through if they have other things to do and continue the course when they are ready.
5. Set your course price. It is recommended that if your course is 30+ minutes long, it should be free. If it’s above 1 hour, you can start placing a price tag on your course. 

3. Become an Envato Affiliate

Envato is an online marketplace where people can buy different kinds of digitals assets. It can be from WordPress plugins and themes or Photoshop templates and video footage.

You can make a passive income through Envato by becoming an Envato affiliate. How you make money as an affiliate is by sharing affiliate links on your own content or website, and when a purchase is made from those links, you get a cut of the sale – a commission fee.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Create an Envato affiliate account. Then wait for them to approve of you.
2. Link to Envato. Generate your unique referral link from their site.
3. Share your referral link everywhere. You want people to use your referral link when they purchase something from Envato.
4. Promote Envato products. To get more chances of people using your link, promote some products, and provide your link. You can use your social media or write content for other sites and promote Envato products and use your link once people click on it. 
5. Earn money. Once everything is set up, you can relax and earn money from your referral link. 

4. Create a Print-on-Demand Side Business

This is not a way to earn passive income, but it's a great alternative to make extra income online and, if you have your own brand, it is possible to promote it at the same time.

Print-on-demand means doing a type of business where you offer custom-made designs for items like mugs, t-shirts, and other household items.

The way to earn income through this method is to make the designs and upload them to a site like Printful, then when users buy them, you get a cut of the sale, with no need to stock inventory.

Here are the steps to start the side business:

1. Pick a niche. You can’t design for everyone. Pick a niche where you’re most likely to succeed. The niche you pick should be specific enough to have customers but can also attract new customers.
2. Start creating your design. Of course, here, you have a more significant advantage over others since you are used to designing. You can use sites like Creative Market to create your designs or use other sites that fit you. 
3. Pick a print provider. As mentioned above, you can use sites like Printful. You’ll need to connect your store to it first. When a customer orders one of your designs in a t-shirt, Printful will automatically fulfill the order and send it to the buyer.
4. Promote your store. You’ll need to do some marketing first. You can promote through your social media or engage with your community to promote your new side business.
5. Monitor and improve. Over time, you should see whether your side business is going well or not. You might have to make new designs or adjust prices to keep the customer coming. 

Wrapping Up

Try out these four ways to get a passive income and take a little bit more control over your financial freedom. I hope this article sets you on the right path to finding your new side-business. Good luck.