you have graphic design skills but what is the best way to use them do you freelance
or do you start a business I've actually tried both well kind of but more about that later but
here's what I've found on my journey as a graphic designer firstly the obvious Crux of this entire
situation is that freelancing comes with less risk than starting a business but with less risk it
comes less reward the potential to start here in business is almost Limitless but before you rush
into making a business a faster than Disney trying to make a new Star Wars movie Let's properly look
into this it's 2022 and so if you have graphic design skills then you can potentially make a
lot of money but for me I started freelancing back in 2009 on a platform called people per hour back
then I was a noob when I was selling logos for say 20 30 40 a pop that's right your boy here was just
finding himself in the market and was probably setting himself short but also wasn't making
like great designs as well but here's the thing no matter how good my skills could ever become or how
magical my marketing might get I'm only just one person and so I can only work on a certain amount
of design projects every single week or month that's how starting a business really allows
you to leverage situations by scaling up and expanding one designer working on one project
becomes 10 designers working on say five to ten projects sounds great right the thing is you need
to find people who are reliable and skilled enough to hire which isn't easy there are a lot of fakers
and delusional people out there trust me I've worked with a lot of them and if any of these
people that you hire end up screwing up it would all fall back onto you as the business owner and
So eventually I realized that freelancing just wasn't for me and I wanted to scale things up in
terms of my career and business the route I've taken however isn't one where I've created a
graphic design business hiring other designers to jump on and change the graphic design world I've
adopted more of an entrepreneur kind of route but at the very heart of my path are my skills and my
passion for graphic design if you truly have a burning desire for typography or when you look
at a really great piece of design your eyes widen with all then you can use that in many
different ways to make a lot of money and also to run a business or businesses for example my
logo design e-guide right here which might I add has some really awesome feedback and you guys are
really making use of it but yeah that thing took a lot of work and a lot of time to actually set
up but it was worth it because it's supplying me with passive income day in day out it required my
skills and knowledge of logo designing to write the guide itself and then marketing to advertise
it and actually get people to see it and click it on top of that I need to keep track of every
single sale for tax purposes so as you can see there's a lot to think about compared to just
being a freelancer and you know picking up a job here and there but to me the former is worth it
because now I can work on other revenue streams while that e-guide is just creating passive
income every single day but there's one thing at the heart of my entire Journey that if I didn't
have it it would be a lot more difficult to get to where I am today and that is a social media
Presence at the end of the day it's just free marketing and it's a way to reach hundreds of
thousands of people very very easily is it easy to grow a community like that hell no I've been
building this amazing Community for almost seven years it started by me putting out educational
content and wanting to help the community and that still exists today but I also want to handcraft
other things that I know the community are going to make use of and will actually use in their
workflows day to day and of course on top of that the educational content that I do enjoy making
like this video right here today moving away from that I also sell things on eBay as well but how do
graphic design skills play into selling on eBay well when you post a listing on eBay you need
to have engaging titles and also great thumbnails you need to understand what the buyer wants to see
and what they want to read so it does take some marketing and design skills in that situation
again it's taking those graphic design skills and applying them to different situations to create
new revenue streams this might sound like a lot of work and yeah it pretty much is a lot of work
but there are some hidden perils and dangers as well legal trouble is something nobody ever
wants in their life but as a business owner it can actually come out of nowhere because of this you
should try and create an LLC or limited company this means that any kind of legal issues you come
across will not be targeted at you as a person or individual but more the company you've set up also
go through the proper legalities of trademarking your brand name for example Satori Graphics is
in fact legally trademarked so now I can slap on that cool little r circular icon next to the name
this prevents anybody else using Satori Graphics as a business name or kind of any Revenue stream
and if I recall correctly it was around 800 pounds or about 900 to set up then consider if you want
to actually hire people to work on your business if you mess up or the business fails for whatever
reason those people and their families will likely suffer because of it essentially you have a lot of
responsibilities compared to a freelancer being a business owner or having various different revenue
streams isn't for everyone it often means you'll be working 12 13 14 15 hours per day sometimes
seven days a week burnout is a very real thing and I recently have gone through that myself but after
a break and a few reflection periods I'm good to go again just ask yourself how can you use your
design skills to create a value for people and what do you need to do to allow yourself to do
just that and if you want to watch something else that's really useful linked to today's topic just
click the video on screen and until next time guys design your future today peace foreign