How to get quick, fast cash injections in your design biz

Listen to the CASH INJECTIONS episode of the uncool designer here or read the transcript below. 

$So today I wanted to talk about cash injections, basically ideas and concepts on how to make some quick money in your design business. I know that COVID has really thrown everything up in the air and I feel like there’s two camps of people. There are the people who have been totally run off that feet and booked out, and then there’s the other extreme of people who are really struggling. And I feel like these cash injections today could be some really good ideas for you to implement in your design business, to make some quick cash.

And they’re all not that difficult to do, which is a bonus. So here are some ideas, you don’t have to do them all, just choose the one that feels easiest for you and make it happen. And see if you can make some quick cash in your design business. Now, first up, I think affiliates are a great way to make some quick cash. I actually just hosted a master class on making passive income with affiliate marketing for my Designer Boss Lady squad members. And that squad is a paid membership where you get to hang out with me every day. And I did a master class for those guys about affiliate marketing. Now, the way affiliate marketing works is make a list of all the business tools that you use every single day, the things that make your life easier and better in business. So tools like Zoom, Active Campaign, Adobe, Creative Suite, all those things. Then go to those websites and see if they have affiliate programmes.

And the way affiliate programmes work is you basically promote and market their product. And if someone buys or signs up to use that tool via your link, you will get a kickback of cash. And that my friend is a nice, easy cash injection into your business. So I recommend you make a list of all the tools that you use in your business, go to all the websites and see if they have an affiliate programme to sign up to. Sign up to it, get your personalised affiliate link and create a page on your website that is called my favourite business tools or get my secret weapons. These are the secret tools that I use every day in my business to help it run smoothly and be successful, and then list them all and include your affiliate link. So when someone clicks on it and buys you get a kickback. Now this isn’t a way to make lots of money in one hit, but it’s a really great way to make some passive income, and just having on your website all the time. Check out my affiliates page here. 

So that’s one way to perhaps make some cash. Now, the next one. So as designers, we often come up with multiple logo concepts when we’re designing for clients, and they only choose one. And often they choose the one that we just didn’t necessarily love, but they loved. So this next option is to go back through all of the logo concepts you’ve done over the years and collect all the logo concepts that were never chosen. All the ones that were overlooked, but were still good quality options, and then make those unused concepts pre-made logos. So the work is already done. All you need to do is perhaps go back through it, tweak them a little bit and turn them into pre-made logos that you could then sell on your website for a discounted price.

They would be discounted because they’re basically ready-made and you may just change the colour, and of course the business, same for people who buying it. But it’s a really good way of offering your audience a more cost effective option as well. And it’s a great way for you to make some cash without having to do a whole tonne of work. So that’s a second option. Go back and check out all those are news logo concepts, and create a whole bunch of pre-made logos for sale on your website.

Okay, next up, this is something that worked quite well in my design business. It was a workshop. I think you either have clients who want stuff done right now, or ones that drag things out. And I found this workshop was really good for clients who were really motivated. The workshop I used to host in my design business was called Conquer Your Brand in One Day. So this workshop was a digital workshop via Zoom.

I usually had 5 to 10 clients on the call and I sold the seats for the workshop at a discounted rate. I say discounted, but I’ll tell you why I say discounted, for about 299 Australian dollars. The reason why it wasn’t overly expensive is the conversion rate from this workshop to actually booking in a design bundle was 90%. So it was totally worth me selling the workshop seats for 2.99. So this workshop, like I said, it had 5 to 10 people at a time. We basically went through all of the brand foundational stuff during this day. So we would do a first session, talk about your ideal client, your why, all the important stuff that people often overlook when it comes to branding. And the thing is you probably do this process with every new branding client, except you expect your clients to do it on their own.

This workshop is basically you stepping them through it and doing it in a group setting where you can all bounce ideas and people love it. It makes them feel like they’ve really locked in the foundational stuff before the designing happens. So, that’s an idea, do a full day workshop, sell tickets 299, get 5 to 10 people to sign up. And it makes it worth your while, because the conversion rate from the workshop to design packages will be really high because they would have spent the day with you. They would have seen how clever you are. They would have loved your ideas. They did the work with you, and they will want to book you in to do the design work. So think about what you could do a workshop on. It doesn’t have to be a full day. It could even just be an hour or two.

It could be a social media workshop. Let’s batch out, 30 social media images in your brand style in one hour. Think about what your ideal client needs and provide a solution for that. So a workshop is a really great way to get a cash injection into your business as well.

And finally, my last idea for a cash injection into your design business is to do a bundle sale. Now I know over the years, you have probably created heaps and heaps of pieces of content, content that perhaps you have forgotten about, content that is no longer on your website or being promoted. Now, I want you to go back and have a look for all this content that you’ve created over time. So the content you’re looking for are things like videos, podcasts, cheat sheets, eBooks, workbooks, worksheets, basically anything you’ve created to help your clients and their process over the years. Put them all together and create a name for this bundle.

Perhaps it could be the brand, your business like a boss bundle, or your branding toolkit. Basically all these things that you’ve created over time, put them together, package them up and put a price on them, make it $97 or $67 or whatever you feel comfortable with, and send it out to your email list, put it on your website, promote it on social media. The thing is though, make sure that you are have it available for a limited time only, perhaps you could make it three to four days. The reason why you need to make it a limited time only is people need that sense of urgency in order to buy. And it’s just the way people work. It’s not a trick. It’s not sleazy. That’s just how they work. If you don’t give them a deadline, they’ll just keep putting it off. So if you put together all that bundle, it’s content that you’ve already created.

You may have to spend a bit of time just making sure each of the pieces of content look like they belong together, but that shouldn’t take too much time. Bundle them up and put them on sale. And shout it from the rooftops, even invest in some quick Facebook ads and really, really focus on the sense of urgency. This sale is ending, it’s worth X amount of dollars, and we want to get them to buy, buy, buy. So that’s another idea for a cash injection in your business.

I hope those ideas have got your thoughts flowing and help you think outside the box a bit. There are ways to make quick cash in your design business without having to invest loads of hours creating something new. All of these ideas don’t require you to do anything new, which I think is awesome.

So if you’re looking for a quick cash injection, pick one of these things and make it happen. And let me know how you go. I want to hear about it. Also, don’t forget to sign up for the summit, which is happening in early July and get your free ticket now.