HOw much do you earn from designing?

I am making around 30 an hour or so.
Yet the market is getting bombarded with workers, but not enough work to go around.

So i noticed its hurting my bank account

 

I don't want to post a direct link to my own site in the content area of this post, However, I did write a short article for aspiring designers explaining the basics on where/how to build a portfolio & client list as well as Why/how it benefits a new designer.

You can view the article simply by clicking my first Sig link "Webmaster Mafia" once the page loads look in the "Latest News" area under the header. Then Click "Building a portfolio & client list step #1".

I don't get into too much detail, but I do provide sound reasoning & about 13 different places to obtain work

Hope it helps, Good luck

 

When I was freelancing it was around £60 - £70k ($140k) a year, but I’d had a number of jobs working in many different design agencies prior to that, working my way up from Junior Designer to Design Manager where I was responsible for all the other designers.

That’s one mistake a lot of new freelance designers make, they come straight out of college and then decide to go freelance. I learned a great deal more from other people than I did getting a degree. Work with other designers for a while, it’ll do you the world of good. Nearly all my clients I have now I poached from past employers.

Just to point out I’ve been doing this for 15 years (I started on Photoshop 2.5) and I have my own company with 5 other designers. Don’t really know what I earn now, I just pay myself a wage so I don’t get raped by the tax man

 

Scorpion - surely you'd earn more if you did work for people that don't want dark designs too? Seems a strange business model to me really! Do you do other sites too or strictly dark ones?

 

i make 1000$k + every month. (soon it will be more)

getting work from DP is not good idea. too much composition people give very cheap offers so it can hurt your skills. yeh but if you are beginner u can start from DP for exp. Even when i started last year i was giving 5$ job lolz. but now my skill improved and i got creative mind and i know i will be making more money soon.

 

hehe any of you masters here has the time to train a complete graphics newbie? I mean I don't have much money to pay for training, but if it's somewhere like $25-$50 per month, I will probably be able to come up with it, in the hope to be able to earn as much money as you guys in the near future but i'm more comfortable with fireworks and gimp than photoshop...

 

its all about interest my friend. you really don't need any one to teach you. I still remember when i was in school i started playing with photoshop and today i am know a lot. open photoshop play with different tools. also search for tutorials. it is easy to learn photoshop. but all you need is good experience so u can start making beautiful stuff

 

Funny you should ask, actually the Term "Dark Design" was simply a target keyword campaign for search engine traffic, which boosted my organic free quote request rate for a while

Once others caught on what I was doing the term became more competitive & I ended up relying on the term "Dark Website Design" there after for a few months & eventually, the same thing happened due to competition.

I suppose If I kept up on the off-page seo aspects I would still be contending, it's just hard to find the time to run a continuous SEO campaign while designing. SEO is an ongoing process & very time consuming.

And yes I do more than dark design. My portfolio's have very little dark design projects in them & are mostly other Market areas. I'm actually working on my next SEO Marketing campaign for a Sub-domain I'm designing (I wont be releasing what my target is yet though to keep my competition at a minimum at first)

I agree, I could have more work, though I stay rather busy as it is now & all my bills are paid. I wouldn't want to over do it & then not be able to handle the work load. DP may account for 5% of my business, Not much. Most my business is Repeat/Referrals <<~~~ That's the bread & butter.

All the other campaigns I do (Like DP in my spare time) is simply for added (PR) Public Relations. Retro activily adding to my growing satisfied client lists.

Just as an example, I received 9 PM's (so far & counting) from these 2 recent logo entries of mine requesting quotes for custom work. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=789759&page=2 & this one http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=786537&page=2 (I think this contest's going to be abandonded), out of the 9 contacts so far, 5 said my prices were to high, 2 are saving up & will contact later (so they say), & 2 have paid for work already. so even if I don't win either contest I posted, It was still worth my time entering Quality work, simply for the (PR) Public relations aspects.

No telling how many visited my sig links due to my entries, but I'm sure it's substantial.

 

in my 4 months of freelancing my minimum earning a month is 100+ dollars ..

 

I'm working for a startup company in Seattle and right now we have a high demand of flash banner ads.
What we do for our clients? We provide our clients with a large gallery of banner ads and an online tool to customize flash banners instantly.
What we do for designers? Let them open their store online free to sell banner ads, animations.

Website - AttractiveBanners.com
For Designers - AttractiveBanners.com/community.html

 

Not enough. I'll tell you that.

 

If you want to learn the technical side of things i.e. how the programs work, I suggest you go to www.lynda.com. If you don’t want to pay for them I suppose you’d find them on a good torrent site. Do the DVD tutorials and I guarantee you’ll be better than most designers in no time. I’ve got just about every tutorial on Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign , Dreamweaver. Deke McClelland is a master of Photoshop.