If you’re tired of the generic ways of making money as a graphic designer and want an eye-opener on how to make money as a graphics designer in Nigeria, This article is for you.
Graphic design is arguably the most commonly talked about skill in Nigeria. In this article, you will briefly learn how to make money as a graphics designer in Nigeria.
How To Make Money Online as a Graphics Designer in Nigeria
1. Start Freelancing Online
The normal way freelancers make money with their skills is usually by finding local Clients in their region to offer their services to.
This however isn’t a reliable way of making money as a graphics designer as it can get really hard to book local Clients on a regular basis.
On the other hand, Platforms like Fiverr and Upwork allow you to freelance online and get a consistent stream of clients to your graphics design business.
These platforms are completely free to use and you’ll get paid in dollars which is an added bonus.
Freelancing is so easy to get started with. You only need your existing skillset to be successful with freelancing.
So if you are ready to start freelancing online in Nigeria, here are some resources to try out.
2. Start up an Agency Online
This is a step further toward making money with your graphic design skill.
An Agency is a team-style business model defined to help clients get a certain result. With your Graphics design agency, you’ll no longer have to do all of the work yourself.
You simply hire a team of experts to help deliver graphic design services on your behalf while you oversee the outcome and make the finishing touches.
How to Start a Graphics Design Agency
a. Choose a specific niche/genre in graphics design.
Trying to be that agency that offers all forms of graphics design services might work but the odds for success are a lot lower.
Choose a certain aspect of graphics design to focus on, this could be just NFT Design or Cartoon, brand, or poster design.
The reason this works is that businesses that need specific services as listed above will find your Niche agency a lot more attractive than a generic graphics design agency.
b. Build a website for your agency
This will be the home of all your services and the place you refer all your potential leads and clients to.
Your website needs to be professional and fully functional. With a website, you can list your graphic design services and have visitors book your services directly on your website.
This is very essential for every graphics design agency as it will enable you to be able to get clients 24/7.
c. Build a team
The reason it’s called an agency is that usually, it has more than one person in on the project. You will need a team to handle service delivery and marketing for your agency.
Feel free to outsource functions remotely on Upwork and Fiverr. For these platforms, you will need to hire out to:
- A marketing and sales team: These groups of people will help in marketing your agency in the various ways possible.
- A team of other graphics designers: These people will help complete projects on your behalf hence making this business model completely passive for you.
3. Create Templates and digital products.
If you’ve completed a lot of design projects, you’ll definitely have a library of amazing designs.
This third strategy entails you uploading your design templates to different websites that allow you and making passive income whenever someone buys a license to your templates.
In my opinion, this is the most fulfilling way to make money as a graphics designer since you don’t have to trade your time over and over again to get paid.
Instead, you’ll simply need to make the designs once, upload them in an editable format to the different platforms that allow you, and subsequently get paid when anyone buys your designs.
Selling digital products online is an extremely rewarding way to make money as a designer.
If this side hustle sounds appealing to you, here’s an article to learn how to sell digital products in Nigeria.
Examples of platforms you can upload your designs to include:
- Envato
- Creative Market
- Creative Fabrica
- Design bundles
- Hungry jpg
4. Get a Graphics design job
Most small businesses need the services of a professional graphics designer.
These businesses can be in-house or Remote Type businesses. Nevertheless getting a job as a graphics designer in Nigeria is a monetization strategy that offers the most security.
With other methods, you might have months where you get no clients at all, but with a job, you’ll always get paid your salary, and that is a guaranteed amount of money to pay the bills every month.
5. Sell an Online Course
Truth be told, ¼ of Nigerians when told to learn a skill always think of graphics design, this, therefore, opens you to a blue ocean of a large market to monetize.
If you’re confident about your graphic design skills and you get people asking you to teach them graphics design every now and then, you need to create an online course.
Package everything you know about graphics design into a step-by-step course and sell it whenever people bug you about learning graphic design.
Again, this strategy is hands down passive and you’ll only have to create the courses once and sell them whenever someone demands it.
You can use Google Drive to store your course files and get paid directly to your bank account. Just record yourself and talk above a screen while you create design projects.
6. Print on Demand
This is a little less known hustle, especially in Nigeria, but it’s another way to make passive income with your design skill.
Popular marketplaces like Redbubble, Merch by Amazon, and Etsy allow you to create designs and slap them onto different products like T-shirts, stickers e.t.c
You make a commission from the sale whenever a customer buys a sticker or something else from your store.
You don’t have to worry about shipping the product over to the buyer as these marketplaces take care of that.
This strategy is completely passive once you create the designs and build your store, this is because these marketplaces have millions of monthly customers shopping for apparel.
Print on demand is a free side hustle to start and you could make 5 Figures in the royalty if you create designs people want to buy on their apparel.
Watch this tutorial to learn how Print-on-demand works and how you can create designs for t-shirts, mugs, and much more for free.
Conclusion
The button line remains that as a graphics designer, there’s one skill you can’t joke with. DIGITAL MARKETING.
Most of all these business models require some form of marketing, that’s why we filmed a really simply mini-course to help beginners like yourself get started with digital marketing. Take the Free course here.