11 Profitable Small Businesses for Graphic Designer

Are you a graphic designer and want to monetize your skills and knowledge? If yes, you have landed at the right place.

I can understand the frustration that any skilled person feels when he does not know how to monetize from the skill he mastered. And you can never deny the scope and demands of graphic design in this digital and modern world. Nowadays, people are more oriented towards visual beauty, so now it's a perfect era that every graphic designer should do at least a business out of their talents.

Graphic design is a vast niche, and being a graphic designer does not mean that you are merely a designer. As a designer, you can enjoy a lot of success in various related fields as well. For example, if you are a designer, you can also dive into small business ideas such as establishing a printing company or even selling digital arts.

Want to know more about the small business ideas for graphic designers? Here in this article, we will guide you about the business ideas that will convert your hobby into a profitable career.

Below are the top business ideas for graphic designers:

1. Greeting Cards Design & Production.

The trend of greeting cards has never faded. However, it has slightly changed over the last few years. People are now more oriented towards online greeting cards as compared to the printed ones. As a graphic artist, you can sell both printed greeting cards and consider selling the online version.

The best part of this small business is while you were designing the online greeting cards, you might not need to go through the production, which costs you a lot more time. You can create them easily by using the designing tools and publish them online instantly.

This first idea shows that starting small business ideas is very easy and profitable. You can always start designing greeting cards for your online customers or selling the printed cards to the distributors. And the best thing is that you can find tons of customers through social media platforms, and it's endless.

Created by Yuliya Bakulina | https://www.behance.net/gallery/108121017/Happy-Holidays-graphic

2. Website Design & Maintenance Service

The second idea of profitable small business is web design. If you know how to design a website, there's a high chance that you can earn a lot of money. Just a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS coding is mandatory to become a website designer. It is a highly profitable niche, and you should not be missing it. Expert website designers can charge thousands of dollars per project.

Another strategy of growing this small business into a bigger one is that you can retain your clients for regular maintenances. You can provide monthly retainer-based service for regular website updates. While keeping a particular company to retain, you can always find another company to expand your business. If you're getting overloaded, don't worry, you can always invest in more designers to help you.

Created by Tran Mau Tri Tam | https://www.behance.net/gallery/113368267/Wallet-Series

3. Design Cover Pages

Another creative idea of small business is cover page design.Thousands of books are published every single day, whether it's printed or digital. Obviously, a book always needs a cover design. The more attractive the cover design, the more it helps to sell the books. People who write books always want an extremely creative and innovative cover page. And the best part about this small business idea is that you can charge a lot for merely designing a single high-quality page. Also, there's a great chance you will also be asked to design or layout the whole book's content. You can easily keep this business full-time.

Created by Rafael Nobre Studio | https://www.behance.net/gallery/90244931/Book-covers-Fiction

4. Children Book Design

Next, one of the most profitable business ideas is designing children's books. If you can draw or have a certain style of illustration skills, children's books are always one of many great small business ideas. The demand for colorful and attractive children's books is increasing every day. Many publishing and designing companies are always searching for designers who can design custom illustrated books for them.

You can always start this as a small business by keeping in touch with a certain publishing company to provide storybooks, course books, rhyming books, and children's drawing books. And if you have money to invest, you can produce your own books and sell them to the online market.

When it comes to designing creative visual content for children, you should never run short on ideas. There are still lots of possibilities and chances if you want to dive into these business ideas.

Created by İrem Ustaoğlu | https://www.behance.net/gallery/114928483/Monster-Puh-and-Brave-Suzi-%28thaki%29

5. Design & Sell T-Shirts

A graphic designer should always be familiar with T-shirt design and typography. Whether it's custom-made or pre-made, the T-shirt business' trend is always steady everywhere across the world.

You can also start freelancing and find many potential customers who are in search of a T-shirt designer. As a freelance designer, you will be able to find clients from all over the world. For this purpose, you might want to consider advertising your T-shirt designs on social media or freelancing marketplaces.

Another easy idea to start for the T-shirt business is by signing up on print-on-demand websites. These print-on-demand companies usually provide print production, marketing, sales, and customer service while you only have to worry about creating good designs.

Created by Andrea Carveni | https://www.behance.net/gallery/95569599/HUF-GRAPHIC-TEE-CONTEST 

6. Graphic Designing Courses

Starting small business ideas such as graphic design courses will not cost you much money. As a graphic designer, you can easily create beautiful-looking courses to be market online. You can earn a lot of revenue by teaching a few courses such as logo designing, book cover designing, and other designing courses.

All you need to do is start thinking about what you are going to teach online. A basic tutorial is a great starting point and slowly goes deeper into intermediate or expert courses.

Online courses are always in high demand. People are increasingly searching for good information products.

7. Restaurant Menu Design

Restaurants are significantly in need of more enticing and visually attractive menu design. People love to dine in at restaurants that have beautiful menu cards. These F&B companies will do anything to make their customer happy. The best part about this business is that it will not cost you even a single penny, and you can easily start it by working at home.

If you are going for this type of business ideas, consider often go to places and spread your business card. Try having small talk with the manager about how you can help build a good restaurant menu and the importance of a good menu, etc.

Created by Aleksandr German | https://www.behance.net/gallery/103907379/Autumn-menu 

8. Video Editing

Billions, even trillions of videos, are being uploaded on the internet every single day. Even on Youtube, people upload more than a million videos in a minute. I'm sure that we all know the importance of video and the demands for society.

Whether it's a publishing company or an individual vlogger, I'm sure they will need a video editor who can help edit the videos' outcome in the desired manner. If you're going to start this business with clients, try to consider going to freelance marketplaces. There are many potential clients there, and you can start from small projects.

The founder of Tetra Films, emphasizes the potential for graphic designers in video editing: "With the immense volume of videos uploaded daily, the demand for skilled video editors is higher than ever. Leveraging production services by Tetra Films, even freelance graphic designers can capitalize on this need, starting with small projects on freelance marketplaces and gradually building a profitable business."

If you don't want to work with a client, you can always start your own video or vlogging channel. This way, you need to understand how to market your videos online. If you know how to promote yourself online, you can easily scale up these business ideas into much profitable businesses by providing sponsorships and advertising.

9. Video Thumbnails Design

Another great idea for creative small business is providing video thumbnail design service. Just like the book cover design business, thumbnails are the online version of cover design. Youtube and other video-sharing platforms are getting saturated with time. On every single topic, you can find thousands of videos published online. Your design service can come to the role of designing powerful thumbnails for their videos.

As a graphic designer, you can easily create a thumbnail in no time. On the other hand, businesses have now realized the importance of great thumbnail designs to attract people to view their published content.

Created by Josh Georgeff | https://www.behance.net/gallery/101766335/Youtube-Thumbnailsz

10. Marketing Collaterals Design

Marketing collaterals could be any designs and prints that are related to marketing purposes. It could be flyers, brochures, cards, banners, etc. And every business on the planet cant function without its marketing. That is why marketing collateral production is one of the best possible profitable small business ideas. Marketing designs are never-ending. It is updating every single day. Because of this, you could easily find ways to earn money by providing design for its marketing requirements. Furthermore, you can earn more by providing print production services. You can upscale the printing cost to the client, or you can always ask printing companies for commissions. Overall, it's one of the most scalable business ideas you can start.

Created by Mohamed Samir | https://www.behance.net/gallery/33842780/Acribia-branding 

11. Packaging Design & Production

Lastly, another great idea for small business is packaging design and production. A fitting and attractive package is the essence of every business. If you can provide great packaging services that fit your clients' products well, you can earn a good level of steady income. There are 2 phases in packaging design. The first part is the design phase, and then the second part is the production phase. The design phase can be quite challenging as it's a phase of deciding which designs are good enough for production. Within the design phase, you will only earn a certain amount of money through the design service. But with its print production, you can scale up this small business to earn multiple profit easily.

Once the design is final, you can consider providing the production service to your client. Following the second phase, you will earn a particular profit margin for each produced packaging quantity. Furthermore, clients could ask for repeat orders. If clients are satisfied with the outcome, they could ask you to further produce the packagings from time to time. This way, you don't need to redesign anything. You only need to give the printing company a call for further production. Packaging production is one of the most profitable small business ideas you could think of.

Created by Alexandra Necula | https://www.behance.net/gallery/111398097/Moujan-Lusso

Conclusion

These small business ideas we mentioned above are the best options if you are likely to start from zero. It cost almost no money, but it can be developed into a huge business providing high steady incomes. But whatever option you chose, there will always be competitions. Try to always put extra hard work into whatever you do and be better than the others. It's always harder in the beginning. But once you went through the hardcore phase, there always comes a rainbow after every storm.

I hope you can always enjoy the business journey. If you have any comments, you can leave them in the section below. Cheers!