Money & Design. How to earn more than 200.000 ₽ if you work alone

The ability to earn is a skill, not an indicator of exclusivity. And any skill is trained. For example, some people are afraid of speaking in panic, and they have to go overboard themselves if professional duties require it. But work does not require you to earn more, and many, having reached a comfortable level, stop. And they do it not according to personal convictions, but because the system says that this is normal.

Despite the popularity of business education, talking about money in design is not accepted. It is possible because a magic halo rises above the designer and many dribblers support him diligently, although the profile popular among designers is not always financially successful.

What if you are not a biohacker

From the science of sales it is clear that you can increase revenue in two ways: sell more or more.
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It’s harder to sell more in the services market, as the time resource is limited, so enterprising designers hire interns and transfer part of their work to them, while they themselves are engaged in sales. So there are studios. Otherwise, the designer at some point will rest on the ceiling, which will not physically allow you to work and earn more (even if you are a biohacker).

The second option is to sell more expensive, and there is one problem. Customers of design services are mostly incompetent, therefore, looking at the picture, they find it difficult to understand why one designer costs twice as much as another. We understand that there is an analyst behind a beautiful picture, whereas, the client does not know this and only compares the visual (in which he, too, does not really understand). In this case, the designer should be able to show professionalism and justify their requests.

But there are companies that understand the importance of design and are willing to pay more. The business of such companies is automated and easily scaled, which makes it possible to invest well in development, since this money will easily be recouped on customers.

I earned the greatest income working with banks, but this does not mean that I recommend switching to Sberbank, although this may not be anything bad. All the best-paid projects for financial organizations, I did in freelancing.



Now I understand that not only thanks to the knowledge of UX / UI customers return with repeated orders. In many cases, not only your professional skills are important (in fact they should be), but also communication and stress tolerance. Customers want to work not only with professional, but also pleasant people.

Orders are already waiting

It is difficult for a designer without a portfolio to find a job, but it is equally important to be able to justify it. My portfolio is small, but it shows good visual skills. Many people focus strongly on the portfolio and forget that large customers do not live on Dribbble / Behance and do not rate the quality of the design by the number of likes.

If you have ever tried to find an employee, you know that the best way to do this is to ask others. Customers also come in, so it is very useful to invest in networking and quality of work, even if the project on finance is not so interesting. Networking does not work right away, but it pays off in the future. One of the most profitable projects, which in 4 days brought me 90 thousand rubles, was received from a person with whom we have not communicated for more than two years.

Business is like a Swiss knife

Design is a business tool and you should not forget about it. Making the project for a big blue bank, an interesting dialogue took place between me and the product manager.

I made a mobile screen with a juicy information cap, but some of the functionality went under the scroll and a representative of the bank told me “Why should I see this? My business is here ”and pointed to the service functionality, which was below and partially hidden. Then I realized that I had succumbed to the imposed patterns and forgot about the importance of following the tasks of the business.

When a client or manager sees that you care about the business and justify every design decision with facts, he begins to trust you and treats not as an artist, but as a partner who is concerned with the success of the enterprise.

Where is my smoothie?

Despite the general negative to the startup industry, joining a new team can be very promising. I think many of you have heard about Statsbot and its founder. Interestingly, Artem Keidunov was one of my first friends in IT. Together we visited several hackathons and still keep in touch. Now, Artem feels rather well, being engaged in the development of his company.



In addition to money, in a young company, a designer always has the opportunity to speak out and be heard. This is the way I choose projects, because besides the prospect of earning good money, you see how your ideas become reality. After all, the result of the designer’s work is not a picture or even a prototype, but a working product.