How I Earn Money as a Graphic Designer & Online Company
Hey you guys! My name is Kayla and I’m a traveling graphic designer, and today I’m going to share with you my 5 streams of income as a digital nomad.
I wanted to give you a deeper look into the sort of ecosystem I’ve created for myself surrounding the selling of planners and other digital resources, and how that all comes together to fund my full-time travels.
Selling Digital Products on Etsy
My first stream of income is where it all began for me, which is my shop on Etsy – AmmaRoseDesigns. On Etsy, I sell personal use digital tools & resources for business owners, including products like printable and digital planners, social media templates, Dubsado templates, editable Canva templates, and Showit templates.
This is my second largest stream of income, and the great thing about my shop on Etsy is that it’s nearly 100% passive. The most time that I spend on this platform is to answer any messages that I get from customers and doing a few updates a few times a year to keep things refreshed.
Other than that, I’m able to earn a consistent income from products I created years ago, making it the perfect business as someone who needs flexibility while traveling.
Related Post: How I Made $93K Selling Digital Products on Etsy
Selling Digital Products on My Website
My next three streams of income are all earned from my website. After my success on Etsy, I decided to branch off and have more ownership of my company. Etsy is a great place to get started, but you are limited to your branding and overall your business model if you solely use their platform, so what better way to completely own your brand than with a website?
So, the three streams of income earned on my website are:
- Product-Based Transactions
- Service-Based Transactions
- Education-Based Transactions
PRODUCT-BASED TRANSACTIONS
Under my Product-Based Stream of income, I earn similarly to how I earn income on Etsy. I have a collection of digital products that I sell as digital downloads passively, but they’re hosted on my website.
These products include commercial use items, such as my white label planners and my Build-a-Planner-Shop Bundle, and personal use items for planner sellers, like my planner product images and product description scripts.
And, again, under this stream, I essentially set it up and only have to spend time working on it if I need to answer any live chat messages, emails, or if I need to do any updates.
SERVICE-BASED TRANSACTIONS
Also on my website, I have Service-Based income streams, which include my Print Product Project Management services, Planner design services, and also on occasion, I’ll offer consulting services for my loyal clients.
Each of these services are a lot more hands on, as I’m 100% involved in all of my client’s projects. My service-based income streams are by far my largest income stream because I can charge a more premium price tag on my services. And, it’s also one of my favorite sources of income because I get to be the most creative and I feel like I have more of an impact being able to see a project through from start to finish.
So, while not passively earned, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to set up my services to still be flexible with my traveling schedule because I can dictate how much or how little work I want to take on for the month.
Related Post: 3 Different Methods to Designing Printable Planners
EDUCATION-BASED TRANSACTIONS
And the last source of income based on my website is my Education-Based income. This is income that I receive from students signing up to my online courses. I have a total of 3 separate online, self-paced courses and one bundle which combined my three courses together to create the Sell your Way to 1K academy.
This stream of income is also pretty passive, though I may unenroll my courses soon because they don’t quite align with my business model anymore, now that my website has evolved over the past year.
Selling Low Content Notebooks on Amazon
And lastly, my final stream of income is on Amazon. I utilize Amazon KDP as a print-on-demand service to print my collection of journals, notebooks, and grid paper and ship to my customers.
This source of income is my lowest producing income, and though it’s passive, it requires a lot of sales to generate a decent amount of money due to Amazon’s low royalty rates.
From my experience, you would either need a lot of people who are already your loyal customers where you can just redirect them over to your Amazon shop, or make a ton of listings so you can have a better chance of being organically discovered to make a real living with just Amazon KDP.
But, considering it’s passive income and you can literally set it up and forget about it, it’s worth looking into for a little chunk of cash at the end of the month.
5 Different Ways to Make Money Online as a Digital Nomad
And that’s it, you guys! My five sources of income as a traveling graphic designer and digital nomad. I hope this gave you a little bit of insight into how you can make money online so you can pursue freedom and flexibility within your own lives.
And if you’d like to learn more about how to sell planners online, feel free to check out our free ebook – How to Successfully Sell Digital Producs Online – where we’ll go over how to take the planners you’ve designed and turn them into passive income.
As always, thanks so much for stopping by.
Until next time!
