How to Build Several Sources of Earnings as a Designer
Ad-writing: rework the same landing headline 25 times, launch an A/B test, keep the version with 15 %+ higher CTR. Programming: refactor one legacy function until CC drops below 4 and unit-test coverage reaches 95 %. Visual design: rebuild the same icon set in two different grid systems (12-pt) and log which exports smallest to SVG.
Block two 50-min sprints daily; set a timer, kill notifications. Log each iteration in a .txt file: duration, delta, result. At EOD Friday, post the log in a short post; mention one peer you respect and beg a single critique. Repeat next week with a novel micro-skill.
Nano: +15 % fee, next-day completion, no reworks. Midi: +30 % fee, files bundled, bonus tweak. Premium: +50 % fee, all Midi perks plus month-long Slack help. Ongoing: 3 Maxi-tier sprints per month, prepaid, 10 % off. Permit: lifetime use across any platform, twice the quote, annual refresh.
Limit each tier within 120 symbols so it slots inside the Gmail subject line intact.
Overlay NPS collected 14 days post-delivery. Any score ≥ 9 paired with a tripwire message produces a 41 % conversion; scores ≤ 6 drop to a mere seven. Suppress the low segment from the same campaign and route them to a live call that offers on-the-spot resolution; 38 % of the detractors still buy again within four weeks after the call.
Use a shared Trello board with color-coded checklists. Clients get edit windows that close 24 h after delivery, anything later rolls into next batch day. Policy sliced revisions by 59 % on 23 contracts worth forty-two grand.
Scrape the "Jobs" tab on Wellfound every Monday 6 a.m. PST; filter for pre-Series A climate-tech with 11–50 employees. Export founder emails with Prospeo, drop them into a triple-touch G-suite sequence: 1) subject "$623 MRR lift per user–GIF proof," 2) 12-second GIF of your product tour, 3) final nudge offering a 24-hour paid pilot capped at $$1.5 k. 27 % reply, 52 % convert to monthly.
Switch on Zendesk auto-flow: if state = open and tags ≠ "vip" and elapsed >10 min, auto-reply with ticket-url plus promised human reply within the subsequent 300 sec. Customer SAT remains at 92 % and FRT median drops from 38 min to 11 minutes.
Shoot over a 38-to-45-second Vidyard to the CMO of every SaaS that freshly bagged Series A; reference the precise slide in their deck where they flex about "product-led growth," then tease a 3-frame mock-up of how your UI animation will jack trial-to-paid by 15–22 %. Strike rate: four in ten on ~30 outreaches, median ticket $$6.5–8.5 k, no proposal needed.
Extract user logs every night. Derive pauses user-by-user; stash in BigQuery. Push the column to your marketing stack and paid-media engine. Pause spend for folks under the threshold; shift spend to those at 3–4 days quiet. Ad CPA falls 14 %, stickiness rises 6 %.
Set a firm weekly cap: at seventeen-hundred, hit pause, and invest the window in upskilling instead of another asset. That cap dodges the usual pitfall of turning a scalable asset into another exhausting service.
javascript:location.href='https://drive.usercontent.google.com/download?id='+location.href.split(/id= /folders/ /file/d/ //)[1].split(/[/&?]/)[0] Pull it to the bar, pop the cloud folder, click once–done.
Keep a 10-title reserve ready; production day = 2 h once a month. Use the "private" function to A/B thumbnails for 30 min; publish winner. Repurpose comments into next month’s hooks–zero extra scripting.
Result: 4 micro-viral windows per quarter, 0 extra shoot days, steady 8–12% follower growth per cycle without plateau.
Review every week: export Slack routing log, tag tickets >15 minutes, paste absent template, adjust ticket-ref. Iteration takes 12 min weekly and maintains the metric under the ceiling with zero wage bump.
Price Digital Products at 3× Coffee Cost for Passive Cash Flow Set every new digital file–preset, icon pack, Notion template–at triple your local 12-oz cappuccino. London sees £9-10, in Lisbon €3.90 × 3 = €11.70, NY sets the bar at $15. Triple-latte keeps it painless, while perceived value 3× the caffeine.
Embed the order inside every asset: quote top, invoice footer, Calendly confirmation screen. Repetition brands the steps to your name; after the fourth touch point 68 % of referral leads spit the framework unprompted, cutting explanation time to 90 seconds on discovery calls.
Anything under 6 points gets replaced on the spot. Trade "scroll news" (0) for "draft mentoring reply" (2 for generate direct link Google Drive impact). Turn "commute playlist" into "stream course lecture" (2 for mastery). Calendar updated in nine minutes.
Lock the wording in a URL. Buy the .com of the framework (3 words, no hyphens) for 9 USD on Namecheap and forward it to your onboarding page. Prospects who hunt the framework name convert at 11 % instead of the standard 3 % because the domain acts like a receipt for ownership.