September 26th, 2009
Can Graphic Designers Make Residual Income Online?
Graphics designers are in a hot niche right now and they can make residual income online quite easily if they have the right skills. You may have heard how traditional magazines and newspapers are struggling right? Do you know why they are struggling – because smart business owners are finding that they can get a lot more for their money online. For a fraction of the cost of a single ad in major newspaper they can have a beautifully designed website up and running 24/7 to advertise their business.
So what can a smart graphics designer do to get a piece of the action? Well if you already have design flair you have the most difficult part of the equation down. What you need to do though is make sure that you are familiar with the basics of web technology: CSS, HTML and PHP coding skills will all be a requirement if you want to be able to pitch to an online market.
An online designer should be familiar with current thinking about what does and does not work for online users – sizes of banner ads, colours, overall style and design. You could expand your skill set and bring video creation skills to the mix than so much the better. Video blogging and viral videos are a very popular and innovative to drive traffic to your client’s website.
Which brings me to another point. Although you may not be an search engine optimization (SEO) specialist – you need to at least to have the basics so that your beautiful design is not hindering online searchers from finding the website. You should ensure that the website is not purely flash or graphics – Google and other search engines still can’t interpret a picture of a red fire truck – you have to words associated with the image that will tell a search engine that its a red fire truck! Incidentally this is also good practice because blind people use the web and the same technique will talk them through a site that they cannot see.
Now is an exciting moment to be a graphics designer but its critical that you keep your skills current and you’d be very wise to keep an eye on what is needed to become a website graphics designer -what started off as a bit of part-time income to make ends meet could well become the saviour of your career.