8 Proven Ways to Make Money with Photoshop (with income numbers)

I’m sure that at some point, we’ve all considered the possibilities of a creative freelancing career or a job from home- making money whilst pursuing a passion. In fact, whilst making money online can be a slow and stressful process, the potential rewards that you can gain from it can entirely outweigh the drawbacks of the job. 

Yet what stops most people from attempting to make money with [sherpa id=”ec063570″] is the fear that they won’t generate a steady income. But let’s take Passive Owl as an example. He managed to earn almost $5000 for 5 minutes’ worth of work through Print On-Demand Services. 

That’s just one of the many examples of how patience can pay off when it comes to generating a passive income. Small amounts of money add up, and you never know where one simple design could take you.

This article will outline Eight Proven Ways to Make Money with Photoshop and their potential earnings. That would allow you to take the first step on your journey towards a creatively generated, steady passive income.

So let’s make a start!

How can you use Photoshop for a career?

If you’re reading this, you’re probably experienced with Photoshop and you’re thinking about making it your daily job.
You surely know as well that Photoshop is a powerful tool that is used in many different areas. From the movie industry to the small coffee shop using it to create a nice-looking menu, Photoshop became a reference in graphic design over the years.

That is why it offers so many different career possibilities. If you’re looking for a way to use photoshop for your career, you need to know what you like to do with this tool and in which domain you’re good at. Otherwise, you’ll either get bored and fed up quickly with your job because you don’t like it or, you won’t get any contract because you’re not good enough.

Therefore, we made a list of 7 ways to make money with Photoshop to give you a rough idea of the different possibilities. We also briefly explain to you how you can generate an income and how much you can expect for each of them.

If you want to discover more jobs that are related to Photoshop, I recommend you this big article by Zippia that lists 50 different ideas.

1 – Selling Your Editing Skills

One way you can make money from [sherpa id=”ec063570″] is to use your skills to answer job assignments put on sites by clients. Set up a profile, make sure that it looks professional, displays a relevant description of you as an artist, and start applying to assignments. 

Freelancing on these sites, like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, and Guru can be difficult at first. There can be high competition for jobs, and you need to build some reputation across the platform to be a competitive applicant for a client’s assignments.

However, there are ways to build a reputation whilst avoiding these high levels of competition when you first start. For instance, begin with applying to jobs with smaller pay, below $50. After about 10-15 jobs of this level, you should have still earned a considerable amount of money and will have a portfolio to start applying to bigger jobs with.

For the sites in which you decide on the price, start by offering your skills for lower prices and gradually increase them as you become more reputable.  

Another good way to build a good reputation is by always surpassing the client’s expectations, no matter how important the order is. Hopefully, this will see you with great client reviews, which works wonders for your reputation as a freelancer on the site.  Furthermore, satisfied customers will come back and even refer you to other potential customers.

Note that it is a good idea to pick a specific skill to focus on, for example, image restoration or movie poster creation. As you will be up against smaller competition levels, it will be clearer to potential clients what your skillset is. It is important to choose a field you’re comfortable with to have the best results over a smaller amount of time.

2 – Creating Tutorials

Perhaps an even more popular way to make money from tutorials is creating and monetising a YouTube channel. For example, Patreon, a crowdfunding site, can be integrated with your YouTube account, and can allow you to earn money from viewers who become your patrons.

Brand partnerships are another way in which you can monetise your YouTube account, but bear in mind that these are normally opportunities that are offered to more popular users. So, make sure to build a substantial audience before you approach brands and ask for partnerships.

Skillshare is also a great platform to sell premium online classes to people looking for improving their photoshop skills. 

3 – Creating Presets and Actions

[sherpa id=”f7e90470″] – an advantage of this site is that you can set your own prices, and you keep 70% of each sale made. As a popular platform, it provides you with the ability to develop a strong income from the selling of your presets and actions.

• Filtergrade – with this site, which has around 100,000 members, you earn up to 70% of the money made from each sale. A good thing about this site is that it is specific to presets and actions, meaning that a high percentage of site visitors will be interested in what you are selling.

4 – Earn Money by Creating and Selling Fonts

Much like selling presets and actions, selling your fonts can seem, at first, an intimidating and difficult process. With a large audience already generated, making sales can be easy, whilst selling products without a direct audience can be a lot harder. 

But selling fonts, even without a direct audience, can still be done, and can allow you to earn a significant passive income, with hard work and dedication. You can sell your fonts via either a foundry (a publisher or vendor) or a reseller.

• FontSpring – you get to keep 70% of the money made from sales of your fonts, which is a reasonable rate. However, since this is a foundry, you agree to a contract that prevents you from selling your fonts anywhere else.

• MyFonts – on average, font owners earn around 50% of the money made from a sale. This site is a reseller, meaning that it sells fonts from a variety of foundries.

• [sherpa id=”f7e90470″] – this site is not specific to fonts but can be a useful platform from which to sell fonts, letting you keep 70% of the money made from each sale.

5 – Make Money by Creating Website Themes

A client, whose website is one of the most important aspects of their marketing process, will most likely be willing to pay large amounts of money for a website theme that suits their company.

Keep in mind that coding skills are mandatory when creating website templates. The templates that you create can then be sold on a variety of platforms, such as the following: 

• ThemeForest – as one of the largest sites of its kind, ThemeForest allows you to set your own prices and sell themes (typically for WordPress) to clients.

Commission rates are dependent upon your gross sales. So, the more you sell, the smaller percentage of profit they take. For example, after you have made $75,000 worth of sales, the author fee will be reduced to 12.5%. 

• MojoThemes – this platform allows you to choose how you sell each individual item- exclusively or non-exclusively (in other words, whether you will only sell the product on that site, or if you will also sell it from other platforms).

If you choose to sell exclusively, you will begin with keeping 50% of the money generated from your sales. This rate increases as you generate more sales, until after $2000, at which point you will be able to keep 70%. 

If however you opt for non-exclusivity, your percentage of the sale is set at a static 50%.

6 – Creating and Selling Designs on Print on Demand Sites

7 – Selling Mock-Up Images

Another great way in which you can make money with [sherpa id=”ec063570″] is by making and selling mock-up images. The demand for these is becoming increasingly high, meaning that there is lots of money to be found in the industry.

So why is the demand for these so high? Well, mock-up images are used in so many cases- from producing advertising material, to presenting a new product idea, or displaying a new software idea on a screen.

Whilst there aren’t many specific sites that are dedicated to allowing you to sell mock-up images, there are lots of more versatile platforms that are popular amongst mock-up designers. 

• [sherpa id=”f7e90470″]: this online marketplace is home to over 20,000 mock-up images. For every sale you make on the site, you keep 70%.

• Etsy – this is also a site that is very popular amongst sellers of mock-up images, currently selling over 50,000 designs. A huge benefit of selling on Etsy is that they only take 5% of each sale, meaning that you can earn significant amounts of money.

8 – Sell your own Images

Even though you don’t specifically use photoshop for it, selling your images on stock websites can generate an interesting side income. Nowadays, you want to differentiate yourself from the competition by creating either original content that will fit a specific niche or by creating top quality and high definition images.

Indeed, stock images websites like Shutterstock, Fotolia, 500px, istockphoto, Adobe Stock, are rejecting a lot more images than before, because of their quality standards.

Personal tips:
Once you get your first images accepted and published, you want to keep updating new ones as often as possible. Pay attention to the keywords you chose, some have more competition than others. You want to start with themes that are more specific and therefore have less competition. Once you get a certain amount of sales and reputation, you can start producing images for larger and more searched terms.

Don’t limit yourself to just one website. Even if they propose special rates for exclusivity, it’s not worth it.

If you want more information about selling stock images, have a look at this ultimate guide Photoworkout created.

To conclude…

To conclude, there are so many ways in which you can make money from Photoshop, by using your skills to generate either an active or passive income whilst doing what you love. 

Whilst the low income that many designers experience upon starting out can be discouraging, substantial amounts of money can be earned with perseverance, dedication, time, and hard work.

Remember that nothing happens overnight and that no matter how much you’re earning, at least you’re doing a job that you enjoy.