Income Generation for Web Designers
“Be yourself, stay lean, and rock whatever market you decide to tackle.”
Aside from bespoke Web design services, there are viable methods for Web designers and other Web professionals to generate income. Let’s explore those that equally line up with a passion-driven sense of creativity.
Develop Templates, Wireframes, and/or UI Kits
Regardless of your technical background, you can create & sell website templates/themes, wireframes (i.e., templates with minimal styling and an emphasis on layouts & content), and/or UI kits (for prototyping different design versions of a website [or even the user interface of an eventual app]). Coding from scratch is an option, but thanks to the no-code movement (spanning the last decade or so), you can develop either or all of these with one of the many platforms at your disposal. For proprietary/closed systems, you’ll naturally need to focus on their customer base exclusively (as opposed to including them as part of a general marketplace), but we digress.
App Creation
Applications, while complicated in their programming structure, can likewise be developed by use of no-code platforms today. Of course, these won’t be website-building systems; rather, they’ll tackle the complex issues surrounding the development of apps for various purposes across a multitude of industries and relevant devices. If you can organize your ideas in order to simplify a common problem and/or deliver a cohesive solution to that problem, this may be a route worth considering.
Niche Services
Custom Web design is, essentially, a niche service in and of itself (and can naturally be niched [i.e., sub-categorized] further), but there are other personalized services… some of which proving to be more profitable than the former. These can range from one or more of the following:
Consulting; working out an in-depth, extensive strategy or plan of action for properly structuring content and other elements within large (often enterprise-grade) websites, for example.
SEO; search engine optimization is still alive & well today, even (if not more so) due to the advent of AI-generated content that, for the most part, needs to have its sources (i.e., websites and, more specifically, associated Web pages) listed and linked to (as in the case of PR link-building, the other half of SEO as a service).
Mobile Site Development; many legacy websites aren’t responsive by nature, nor can they be easily transferred to another, more modern platform given their size (i.e., amount of content)… therefore, a workaround of creating a mobile-optimized version (whether separate/native, or responsive by means of adding CSS media queries [likely the better/quicker of the two options]) is sometimes necessary.
Be an Expert
Positioning yourself as an expert (not exclusively an influencer) is a key component of both becoming a market leader and differentiating yourself as a Web professional. With regards to the latter, it’s important to know that you don’t need to offer everything to everyone; in fact, it’s not recommended. Even tech giants that seem to dominate every known virtual/digital space started out (and sometimes revert back to) targeting a smaller and/or more closed market. You can and likely should do the same, especially at the onset. Either way, be yourself, stay lean, and rock whatever market you decide to tackle.
