How to Earn Money Designing Advertisements

Coca Cola Ad Poster

Graphic designers who focus on designing advertisements can make a good living. There are plenty of business owners willing to pay top dollar for advertisements that will increase their business and bring in profits. Whether you have a degree in graphic design or not, if your advertisement designs are effective, you can make a lucrative living designing advertisements for local business owners.

Things You'll Need

• Computer
• Graphic design software
• Resume
• Work samples

Instructions

1. Build a portfolio. This will be crucial to your success, especially if you haven't gone to school for graphic design. A portfolio should include your resume and samples of advertisements you've done for businesses. Starting out, you may consider doing a few advertisements for free, simply to build your portfolio. It will pay off in the long run, especially when securing jobs with bigger clients. Many local business owners will be willing to hire you, but national business owners will probably prefer you have a degree. If you have a strong portfolio, you'll have a better chance at bigger accounts.

2. Consider putting your design skills to work for yourself first. Design a website that features an online portfolio of your work, a resume and contact information. You don't need to be a skilled web designer to do this. Most web-hosting services offer built-in tools that make it easy for you to design and build your own website with little or no knowledge of HTML and other web-based skills. Just remember to register a domain name with your web host. This will typically be www.yourname.com or something similar.

3. Design a business card that illustrates your effectiveness in design. The business card will not only be a way for prospective clients to contact you, but it will also showcase your talents and may bring you customers who want you to design cards for them.

4. Start small and work your way up. Visit local business owners and build a small clientele. Approach local restaurants about designing take-out menus for them. Stay away from the larger companies at first. They are usually corporate run and harder to do business with. Hair salons, pet stores and other small, local businesses are plentiful and always in need of cost-effective advertising.

References

• Advertising Design Tips
• Careers in Advertising Design