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We explain what functional programming is, with five examples of how you can make your JavaScript more functional in style.
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5 Ways to Make Your JavaScript More Functional
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Original Source: https://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/learndash-review
In this LearnDash review, we’ll be exploring why the WordPress plugin has emerged as one of the most popular tools for educators hoping to share their knowledge online. Though relatively streamlined and simple for beginners to use, LearnDash benefits from a huge variety of features intended to empower today’s online educators.
LearnDash is an award-winning application for the WordPress ecosystem, targeted at anyone who wants to publish a course online quickly and effectively. You can choose whether you want to add some simple educational resources to your existing website, or design a full learning platform with quizzes and immersive training experiences.
Because it’s a plugin for WordPress, LearnDash is a fantastic choice for those who have already begun to build their online presence using the world’s most popular CMS. What’s more, the diverse tool integrates easily with a range of tools already used by business leaders, including Slack, WooCommerce, Stripe, Mailchimp, ConvertKit and many others.
Let’s take a closer look at what LearnDash can do.
LearnDash Review: What is LearnDash
Let’s start by exploring what LearnDash actually is. Introduced in 2013, and created by the Liquid Web company, LearnDash is a comprehensive all-in-one tool for learning management, specifically designed to plug into your WordPress site. This means content creators and educators don’t have to build a new site from scratch if they’re already using WordPress.
The tool provides everything business leaders need to produce an online course, including a drag-and-drop builder, so you can quickly organize content without the need for any coding experience. LearnDash has a rich feature set, which focuses on producing a compelling and engaging learning experience for students, helping you market and sell your courses, and ensuring you can manage your entire workflow in one place.
LearnDash competes with other well-known course creation tools like Udemy, LifterLMS, Teachable, and many others, by giving creators the option to design unlimited courses with their own custom pricing plans, and unique components. You can even integrate with other tools if you want to link your website to webinars, email marketing tools, and other features for training organizations.
There are simple payment integrations with PayPal already available, as well as options to connect to third-party solutions for memberships, subscriptions, and discount courses. Plus, LearnDash also has a fantastic selection of “add-ons” available, so you can expand your functionality whenever you choose.
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LearnDash Review: Features
As mentioned above, LearnDash has quite a comprehensive feature set. On the one hand, this means you should be able to create pretty diverse learning experiences using the platform. However, it could also indicate you’ll need to spend a little extra time learning to use all the features.
Let’s take a quick look at the various features you can explore:
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LearnDash Learning Experience Features
The features offered by LearnDash to enhance the “learning experience” for students are intended to boost your relationship with your learners, and make it easier to engage online customers. Business leaders and educators can create comprehensive online courses using the drag-and-drop ecosystem within WordPress, and there’s no limit on how many courses you can create.
The drag-and-drop interface is fantastic for beginners, as it means you don’t need any coding or programming knowledge to get started. You can simply pull the modules and features you need into the right place, and add your content wherever you see fit.
LearnDash also allows content creators to build their own unique learning portal via focus mode, which means you can provide your students with a distraction-free environment for their education. Dynamic content delivery means you can drip-feed your lessons to students at the pace that makes the most sense, and even require certain videos to be viewed before someone starts a new section.
There’s the option to switch between linear and open progression options, and you can set prerequisites for your courses too. For instance, you might allow some students to only access one course after they’ve completed another.
Perhaps the most compelling feature offered to enhance the learning experience on LearnDash is the dynamic quizzing solution. The quiz and assessment components allow you to switch between 8 question types, create dedicated question banks, and insert video, audio and images to both question and answer choices. Other features include:
Flexible question display, so you can show questions however you like
Randomize to allow you display different questions in different ways
Limits on the number of attempts a students can make to answer correctly
Blocked progression so students have to pass one quiz to start another
Time limits and tracking to see how long customers spend on quizzes
Hints with video, text, and image inserts.
Leader boards for gamification
Certificates and levels upon quiz completion
Answer statistics and dynamic results displays
Question reviews and category scoring
Email results
Compatibility with any WordPress theme
The versatile feature set included with LearnDash also ensures you can keep your students engaged every step of the way. There’s the option to design your own discussion forum where customers can interact about courses, as well as various badges, certificates, leader boards, and course points for gamification among your students.
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LearnDash Marketing and Sales Features
LearnDash doesn’t just make it easy to create your courses and engage your learners, it also ensures you can attract new students to your content too. With this plugin, course creators can choose exactly how they want to promote and sell each course. There’s the option to set one-time purchasing prices, and integrate PayPal, Stripe or 2Checkout into your course for an immediate transaction.
If you need help convincing your customers to buy, you can offer free samples of your content, to provide students with an insight into what they can expect. If you’re offering a range of educational content pieces, or you want to keep students coming back for longer, you can also create subscriptions with recurring payment options. You’ll be able to create course bundles, or apply subscriptions to each course individually, depending on your needs.
Other sales features include:
Custom shopping carts: You can add a shopping cart to your online courses with a free WordPress integration like Easy Digital Downloads or WooCommerce. This allows you to use just about any payment gateway you like, as well as adding coupons, sales, course bundles, tax rules, sales funnels, and custom receipts into the mix.
Memberships: For your most loyal customers, you can create membership accounts in different tiers. Different members will be able to access specific courses and resources. You can also choose to sell memberships for a one-time price, or charge a monthly subscription fee. This gives you more freedom on how you’re going to make a profit.
Course bundles: If you have various courses available with related information, you’ll be able to combine them together into bundles. There’s also the option to run flash sales for different bundles, to give customers access to more tools, or provide them with a discount when they buy multiple courses at the same time.
Bulk access controls are also available, so you can allow customers to purchase licenses in bulk, and grant access to staff members. This is ideal if you’re going to be selling your courses on a B2B basis. There’s even access to built-in reporting, so business leaders can track the progress of their staff.
From a marketing perspective, LearnDash ensures you can attract and nurture your audiences through a range of integrations with leading tools. You can use MailChimp or Convertkit to send automated emails to your customers every step of the way. Plus, you’ll be able to create landing pages so you can collect as many contact details as possible for potential customers.
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LearnDash Administrative and Management Features
LearnDash also makes managing your courses as straightforward and convenient as possible. A comprehensive backend environment means you can track all kinds of information about your learners and courses in one convenient place. You can segment users into groups and sub-groups, and even bring other members of your team into the ecosystem.
You’ll have complete control over how courses and assignments are distributed to each individual user. Plus, your students can log in and check out which courses they can access with their own unique member account. You and your team will be able to approve quizzes, comment on assignments, and even award points to different users based on their progress.
There’s also automated syncing with the LearnDash quiz and assignments tools, and manual grading functionality available for more complex lessons, though this does require users to pay extra.
Detailed reporting tools are also built into the back-end, so you can gather insights into things like how many people are enrolling in your courses, and whether they’re making suitable progress. You’ll also be able to see which of your students are making the most progress, and you can share reports with business leaders accessing your courses for their teams too.
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LearnDash Review: User Experience
LearnDash is great for beginners and all kinds of course creators. First of all, the plugin works seamlessly with WordPress, regardless of what theme you’re using, so it’s easy to get your whole system up and running with no custom coding.
Once you’ve installed LearnDash, you’ll be able to find it within your WordPress sidebar, so there’s no need to jump back and forth between different tools.
There’s integration available with page builders like Elementor, Divi, and BeaverBuilder, so you can quickly customize components of your website and course experience. Plus, built-in editing tools allow you to choose the colors, logos, course display options, and lesson experiences most appealing to your audience. A REST API also allows those with developer knowledge to create custom functionality whenever necessary.
For true beginners, the LearnDash site is packed full of useful documentation, FAQs and guides to get you started. The instructional content will give you a better understanding of exactly how the plugin works and what you can do with it. The plugin also naturally embeds some tutorial videos into your WordPress dashboard to get you started too, and there’s a Facebook group if you want to discuss the experience with other users.
As soon as you launch LearnDash, you’ll gain a link to a mini boot camp, which guides you through the key steps of configuring the plugin and creating your first course. There are videos available to help you understand the features of LearnDash, as well as tips on how to access customer support.
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LearnDash Review: Creating and Configuring Courses
The LearnDash course builder makes it as simple and straightforward as possible to start teaching students in the digital world. You can organize your course content however you choose with the drag-and-drop builder, and add e-learning lessons into the mix whenever. It’s even possible to create the structure for your course then add the lessons later.
Users on LearnDash can use site-wide course creation tools to apply specific settings to every course in their library. For instance, you can decide whether all of your courses require users to have a membership before they can access them.
It’s also easy to implement specific settings for different courses. For instance, the Learndash plugin allows you to define course prerequisites for each lesson, choose who can access the course, and even assign certificates to those who complete the experience successfully. The course points feature also means you can distribute points to customers every time they take a new lesson. The points your users earn can dictate their enrolment options for other courses, so you can ensure people finish certain topics before taking the next step in their online learning journey.
If all this seems like a lot, there’s also the option to allow free access to all of your courses, regardless of your user’s existing points or subscriptions. Other control options include tools which allow you to set how long a user will have access to a course after their enrolment date, and whether their data will be deleted after a certain time.
Lesson Building
The lesson-building tools are extremely user-friendly too. You can choose a template for each lesson, give it a description, and start configuring it through the settings tab, using the same tools you would use for managing your course. Because everything is designed to work with your WordPress website, it only takes a matter of minutes to add new lessons to courses. While building your lessons, you can add all kinds of content, from written text to video, and more.
Plus, you can configure how users move through your courses, by adding forced timers to pages to prevent customers from moving on too quickly, and drip-feeding new lessons to members at specific times, with automated email notifications.
Overall, the various Learndash features available within the plugin, combined with the drag-and-drop course builder ensure anyone can jump into creating an online course with minimal effort.
Advanced Quizzing
One of the best ways to enhance any LearnDash course is with quizzes. As mentioned above, Learndash gives you a number of options for how to set up and deliver your quizzes. You’ll be able to choose from a range of quiz types, then access the “settings” tab to define how the quiz will work.
Aside from setting prerequisites for who can access the quiz, you can also set a passing score, and define whether users will receive points and certificates when they finish a new course.
Each quiz template comes with its own set of questions, and you can choose between multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and essay-style answer options. The LearnDash membership plugin also makes it straightforward to rapidly publish your courses, quizzes, and lessons to your WordPress site, with minimal effort, so you can update your system as often as you like.
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LearnDash Pricing: Your Options
To create a LearnDash course, you’ll need to access a subscription package. There are two options available. You can either purchase the LearnDash WordPress plugin, or use LearnDash “Cloud” to design an entire website with LearnDash already built-in.
LearnDash Cloud is $29 per month with a 15-day money-back guarantee, and comes with domain and hosting included, as well as 15 templates for your website, with various customization tools. The package also includes ProPanel, so you can monitor enrolment and student progress with advanced reporting capabilities. This could be an excellent option if you want to access all the best features of WordPress and LearnDash at once, without paying separately.
If you already have a WordPress site, there are 3 packages available for the LearnDash plugin. All of these also include the 15-day money-back guarantee:
1 Site: $199 per year (access to all features)
10 sites: $399 per year (access to all features)
Unlimited: $799 per year (access to all features)
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LearnDash Review: Verdict
If you’re looking for a convenient way to create your own courses online, while still accessing all the benefits of WordPress for custom site creation, LearnDash is a great choice. The LearnDash LMS environment is brimming with easy-to-use functionality, making it easy for people from any background to start sharing their knowledge online.
New features are also constantly being introduced, so you’re sure to see updates to how LearnDash works to help you engage and empower your learners in the years to come. For full educational institutions, standalone teachers, or freelancers, Learndash is one of the best WordPress plugins around. Thanks to an amazing range of features, you can design a custom front-end experience for all of your students, without much of a learning curve.
However, do keep in mind that while LearnDash does boast excellent ease of use, its varied capabilities could take a while to get used to.
The post LearnDash Review (Nov 2022): An Introduction to Learndash appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.
Original Source: https://designrfix.com/blog/varchar-vs-nvarchar-sql-server
Varchar and Nvarchar are data types in SQL Server. The main difference between varchar and narchar is that the narchar …
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Original Source: https://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/pagecloud-review
The search for the best website builder continues. Sometimes, to truly understand what the industry staples offer, one has to go off the beaten track to explore some of the lesser-known options. Often these boast very similar capabilities and occasionally surprise us with nifty innovations.
So, today we’re looking at PageCloud, a website builder and ecommerce platform that’s been around for some time but maybe hasn’t attracted quite as much attention. We’ll review what PageCloud is all about, whether it’s worth its price tag, and what features you can expect from this intuitive tool.
Let’s get started!
PageCloud Review: About PageCloud
PageCloud was launched in May 2015. While this tool hasn’t captured the public’s eye as much as its competitors like Wix and Squarespace, it has a fair few features to offer and comes with a good deal of customization freedom.
Like other website builders of its kind, PageCloud presents itself as a no-code option empowering beginners to create a website quickly and easily. One thing worth noting is that PageCloud is praised by its customer base for offering frequent updates. As such, the platform is constantly improving and making strides to become a more competitive option.
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PageCloud Review: The Key Features
Here’s a quick overview of PageCloud’s most noteworthy features:
Website Builder
PageCloud makes it easy to design your website. First, you can choose from 69 website templates. These are excellent starting points for your web design. Then, once you’ve picked a template, you can add pre-designed sections to expand your site. For this purpose, there’s a whole library of sections to choose from.
Alternatively, you can choose one of three wireframes. These blank or very simplistic templates enable you to build your website from scratch.
You can drag-and-drop stylable elements such as stock images, shapes, buttons, icons, forms, navigations, (and more) to populate your pages. There are also a wide variety of good-looking gallery options. In addition, you can upload custom fonts, add borders or shadows to elements, and design page layouts using columns, guides, groups, and auto-groups.
You can also access your site’s source code for fine-tuned control. But, of course, you’ll need some coding smarts to make the most out of this!
PageCloud includes various animation effects, like slide-ins, bounces, fade, scale, zoom, jiggle, and more. These are great for drawing attention to a specific part of your website.
All in all, in terms of web design customizability, it offers a service similar to Wix, though maybe not quite as intuitively. That said, one downside is that PageCloud templates aren’t automatically responsive. As a result, you have to create a mobile-specific version of your site, which is time-consuming.
Marketing and SEO
You can optimize your website content for search engines thanks to PageCloud’s lightning-fast load times. You can also customize your URLs, page titles, meta information, heading tags, and redirects.
PageCloud also partners with SemRush for keyword research. Here you can search for keywords to optimize your content for and compare keywords by volume, difficulty, and cost per click. While it’s convenient to do this from within the app, you’ll still need your own Semrush account. There’s a free version of Semrush, which limits you to five keyword searches daily.
When it comes to branding and marketing, you can connect your own custom domain and use PageCloud forms to capture email addresses to grow your mailing list.
PageCloud also offers valuable analytics to help you track your site performance. On top of that, for further insights, it integrates with Google Analytics and Tag Manager.
Blogging
You can build a multi-user blog, making it easy to write as a team. A dedicated writing mode helps you focus on your task without distractions. Other handy blogging features include a word counter, read-time estimator, post scheduling, the ability to edit page titles and meta information, and the option to organize blog content into categories and tags.
Alternatively, you can import your WordPress or Squarespace blog into PageCloud, including all your posts, tags, images, and videos.
Ecommerce
According to PageCloud, you can set up your eCommerce store in just five minutes. You just pick a template, list your products, and PageCloud will handle the cart and checkout for you.
You can create coupons and discounts, manage your inventory, and calculate real-time shipping estimates. pageCloud is also compatible with over 40 payment gateways, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Apple Pay, and more.
If you want to sell services, PageCloud offers contact, booking, and estimation forms. You can also sell digital goods, though it’s worth noting that on the cheaper plans, file sizes are severely limited to only 2MB.
Lastly, you can connect your store to Facebook, Amazon, and eBay for multi-channel selling.
Linkin.Bio
PageCloud provides a free Linkin.Bio tool so you can build a simple link to a page that you can add to your social accounts like TikTok and Instagram!
You can choose a template and edit the design in just a few clicks, including images, social icons, and buttons for all your favorite apps.
You can even display your most popular products directly on your linkin.bio page. However, this requires a PageCloud eCommerce subscription.
Apps and Integrations
Integrate with popular apps to increase the functionality of your PageCloud website. There are widgets for adding images, advanced galleries, video players, social integrations, music players, event management, and more.
Overall there are more than 70 apps, including:
Giphy
Google and Adobe fonts
Google Maps
Google Sheets
Mailchimp
Aweber
Shopify
Shoprocket
Zendesk Chat
Facebook Chat
Google Analytics
Facebook Pixel
Meetup
Eventbrite
Soundcloud
Spotify
Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr
EmbedReviews
Twitch, YouTube, Wistia, and Vimeo
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PageCloud Review: Ease of Use
PageCloud is pretty simple to use. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface allows you to drag elements like text, images, and buttons onto your pages.
You can choose from automatic or manual layouts; with the former, your content snaps into pre-defined columns. Alternatively, you can place items more freely wherever you want.
While editing, you’re presented with helpful video tutorials and a checklist of what’s left to complete on your site. This is great for beginners that need more of a helping hand.
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PageCloud Review: Pricing
PageCloud comes with two types of plans. Website plans and eCommerce plans. Within each, there are several pricing tiers that you can either pay for either monthly or annually. We’ll display annual pricing here, as you’ll benefit from a slight discount:
All premium plans include:
A blog
Over 100 app intgerations
Customizable forms
Source code access
SEO features
Hosting and SSL security
Access to templates and the section library for building and designing your website
The first website plan is the Small Business Plan for $19 per month. This allows you to build one site with up to 100 pages and comes with the following:
Two team members
1,000 form submissions per month
A free custom domain for a year
A free Google workspace for one year
Expert chat support
The Business plan costs $29 per month and allows you to create up to 200 pages on your site. It also unlocks 5,000 form submissions per month and 10 team members.
Next, the Pro plan costs $59 per month and allows you to build five sites instead of one, up to 200 pages each. You’ll also get 1TB of bandwidth per month and priority support. Site migration on this plan is available for an additional price, and you can add other sites for an extra $19 per month.
The eCommerce plans add eCommerce functionality for a higher monthly price. The Starter plan costs $29 per month and comes with the following:
Up to 100 products
The ability to accept donations and sell services
No transaction fees
A free SSL certificate
Gift cards (with 2% commission)
Digital goods with up to 100MB per file
The Advanced Plan for $49 per month unlocks:
2500 Products
1GB storage per digital file
Gift cards can be sold at a 1% commission
Integrations with Mailchimp and automated email marketing
You can sell on Amazon and eBay
You can schedule order pick-ups
Automatic abandoned cart recovery
Product filters and variations
Wholesale pricing groups
Discounts for specific customer groups
Multilingual catalog
You can edit and create orders
Finally, the Unlimited Plan for $89 per month offers everything above, plus:
Unlimited products
10GB per digital file
No fees on gift cards
Point of sale with Square, Clover, or Alice
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PageCloud Review: Customer Support
If you want to contact PageCloud’s team, you can do so via their ticketing system or live chat. Only Pro users get access to priority support which secures faster response times. Chat is available from 9 am to 4.30 pm.
PageCloud has separate help centers for its website builder and eCommerce. Both include articles on its features and guides for getting set up. In the eCommerce help center, you’ll find additional guides on promoting your products, selling on the go with the mobile app, etc.,
There’s also an option to hire a PageCloud pro to build your website for you – you can browse the directory of professionals by location, language, and price.
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PageCloud Review: Pros and Cons
Before we wrap up, here are PageCloud’s most notable advantages and disadvantages.
Pros 👍
Cons 👎
Pros 👍
Your website is entirely customizable, with thousands of pre-designed segments and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor.
Multiple people can work on your site at any given time
You can build up to five websites with the more expensive plan
The templates are relatively plentiful and quite good-looking
PageCloud is frequently updated with new features
Support is, according to customer reviews, quick to respond and very helpful.
You get access to a free linkin.bio tool, which is an excellent addition to your social strategy
Cons 👎
PageCloud severely limits some of its plans, even as the pricing gets more expensive. For instance, you have to upgrade to unlock more pages for your site. Even basic eCommerce features like product variations only become available on the Advanced eCommerce plan.
PageCloud’s templates aren’t automatically mobile-responsive. You might mess up your mobile view if you edit elements manually rather than trusting its automatic column layout.
Most add-ons require you to set up accounts with third-party services. For example, the keyword research feature requires a Semrush account.
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PageCloud Review: Final Verdict
Now that we’ve taken a close look at PageCloud, it’s time to make our recommendations. Overall, PageCloud is a promising, easy-to-use website builder with good customization, a user-friendly interface, and reportedly excellent support.
However, its pricing is more expensive than some competitors, including Wix and Squarespace’s more basic plans. Moreover, all of its eCommerce plans are just as expensive as Shopify. As such, we have to ask ourselves if PageCloud is more worthy of your attention than any other service. Unfortunately, we can’t really find what makes PageCloud special. While it does what it sets out to do quite well, it isn’t particularly rich in features, especially where eCommerce is concerned.
Basic eCommerce features like decent digital file storage or product variations only become available on higher-tier plans. Also, while the editor is intuitive, we think Wix still does drag-and-drop a little better.
As such, we can’t recommend PageCloud; when for the same or even a lower price, you might find another solution with a more robust set of features. For example, if eCommerce is your primary goal, you could get basic Shopify for the same price. Similarly, if you want ease of use and plenty of customization freedom, Wix has some cheaper plans with similar functionality.
Perhaps PageCloud will make more of a name for itself in the future. But, for now, we think there’s a reason other website builders take up more of the market.
Let us know in the comments below what you think. Have you used PageCloud and loved it? If so, tell us why – speak soon!
The post A PageCloud Review: What You Need to Know About This Lesser Known Platform appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.
Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/best-programming-language-for-game-development/?utm_source=rss
Coding languages for gaming have become extremely advanced. We explore the best programming languages for game development in 2022. Read more.
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Original Source: https://ecommerce-platforms.com/epos-reviews/touchbistro-pos-reviews
If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you’ll know that serving diners can be much more hectic than other forms of retail. Your staff has to handle multiple meals, tables, and customers, while working alongside online orders and deliveries, keep the restaurant in order, and offer outstanding service.
…so not too much to balance, right? (note the sarcasm)
Getting orders wrong can cause lots of frustration for customers. However, anyone who has worked in a restaurant knows how easy it is to lose track of an order, a missing ingredient, a special deal, etc.
This is where a reliable POS (point of sale) system for restaurants can be a game changer – especially one that enables your team to access all information from one screen.
TouchBistro is one such POS. Its features help front and back of house staff stay on top of orders and work more efficiently. So with that said, this TouchBistro review will closely examine what this restaurant POS offers, how much it costs, and where its advantages and disadvantages lie.
There’s lots to discuss, so let’s hit the ground running!
About TouchBistro
As hinted at in the intro, TouchBistro is a POS system specifically designed for restaurants and other establishments in the food industry. More specifically, this point of sale system is ideal for the following:
Quick service restaurants
Family restaurants
Fine dining
Coffee shops and cafés
Food trucks
Breweries and wineries
Bars and clubs
Catering
Bakeries
It provides everything these restaurateurs need to streamline orders, manage tables, deliver online services, and improve customer engagement.
At the time of writing, TouchBistro powers over 29,000 businesses worldwide – so they must be doing something right!
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TouchBistro POS Review: TouchBistro’s Core POS Features
TouchBistro’s POS software is an all-in-one restaurant management system offering many features. You can run the app on iPads with the iOS6 operating system (or higher). Unfortunately, TouchBistro is exclusive to iOS, so if you’re an Android user, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Below we’ve listed its core features:
Payment Processors
For the convenience of your customers, you can accept various payment types, including cash, credit cards, debit cards, and digital wallets like Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay. Best of all, its offline mode allows you to take payments without an internet connection.
TouchBistro’s payment partners integrate seamlessly to reduce errors. It integrates with Chase, Moneris, Square, Barclaycard, Worldpay, and TSYS. It also accepts payments from all major credit cards and digital wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay.
Tableside Ordering
Servers can enter customer orders on handheld devices allowing them to spend more time chatting with diners without delaying orders from getting to the kitchen. Servers can easily send orders from their device. They can also receive prompts to highlight upsells and promotions and access features to simplify bill-splitting. Servers can quickly join and split seats, bills, and items in just a few seconds.
Floor Plans and Table Management
Table management software enables your front-of-house staff to monitor where orders are going, which tables are free, and where reservations are placed. In addition, you can build your restaurant floor plan into TouchBistro POS by adding walls, tables, sections, and dining rooms in just a few simple clicks.
If diners wish to switch tables, no problem! You can do so without losing track of who’s having what. These floor plan and table management features enable you to monitor table turnover time to better manage your waitlist. This info also helps you to organize front-of-house staff by assigning servers to busy tables/sections.
Menu Management
You can easily organize your drinks and dishes into a menu inside your POS. This includes categorizing items into premium offers, promotions, and takeout orders. You can even color-code menus to remind staff to highlight specific promotions or upsells.
It’s easy to view takeout and delivery orders separately from dine-in orders. Plus, you can add non-food items like branded merchandise to your menu!
You can also add detailed menu descriptions to help servers answer customer questions. On top of that, servers can accommodate special requests with custom dish modifiers. For example, if a customer specifies they want no salt on their fries, you can add that as a special request.
Staff Management
Staff can clock in and out with just a few taps. On top of that, each team member can have their own login – however, you maintain control access. For instance, you can restrict actions, like menu changes and payouts, to managers or senior employees.
Conversely, managers can track employee activity from anywhere, thanks to data being synced in the cloud. You can also optimize labor costs based on reports on expenses, overtime hours, staff sales performance, and more.
You can also assign customizable staff types. This makes it quick and easy to set different payroll details, simplifying payday. For example, next to a staff member’s name, you can assign job roles, such as:
Manager
Admin
Busser
Bartender
Multiple staff types (for someone who fills numerous roles).
Inventory Management
To help manage your inventory, you can log the recipes your kitchen uses. Then, all menu items containing those ingredients are updated automatically once you edit your inventory after new shipments.
Real-time reporting on stock levels also helps you see which items are going out of date, how much you ordered from each vendor and more. Tracking inventory in real-time also enables you to inform guests before they order if a specific dish isn’t available. This comes in handy for managing customer expectations.
Reporting and Analytics
You can access a wide range of real-time data to make informed business decisions. You can see the following:
Which dishes and drinks are the most popular
Staff performance
The success of promotions
Revenue
The number of customers
Table turnover
…and much more.
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TouchBistro Review: Integrations
TouchBistro integrates with a few other business tools that might be relevant to your restaurant. Its native integrations number 23 and include the following:
Worldpay
Deliverect
Bevchek
Craftable
Freepour
Wisk
marginEdge
Avero
QuickBooks
Shogo
Xero
SageIntact
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TouchBistro Review: Customer Engagement
Above, we’ve listed the features included with TouchBistro’s standard POS system. But it’s worth noting that the company also offers a range of customer engagement tools for more established restaurants.
These come at an additional cost, as discussed in the pricing section.
That said, below, we’ve listed and outlined all these add-ons:
Gift Cards
The gift card add-on allows you to create digital and physical gift cards. Digital gift cards enable diners to redeem discounts from their smartphones. They are easy for customers to forward as gifts to friends and family.
The gift card add-on integrates seamlessly with TouchBistro’s base POS system. So, for instance, you can monitor your gift card’s popularity and revenue generated through POS analytics.
Furthermore, you can make gift cards applicable to specific restaurant locations, customize gift cards with your logo, and adopt different designs for various special occasions, like birthdays or holidays.
Lastly, suppose you combine this add-on with the online ordering add-on (more on this in a sec). In that case, customers can apply digital gift cards to online orders in just a few clicks.
Marketing
The marketing add-on empowers you to create custom email and SMS marketing campaigns.
You can build marketing emails using a drag-and-drop interface and customizable email templates. You can run promotions for first-time guests, lapsed regulars, loyal customers, etc. You can tag customers to target them with offers. For example, you could segment regular fans of brunch and then send them a special brunch offer.
Other campaigns you could launch include enticing diners by sending them a special offer via SMS or email on their birthday (free dessert, free drink, and so on). You should also ping all your customers a 2-for-1 offer redeemable on days you know your restaurant is quiet. Of course, these are just a few of the many campaigns you could design, but hopefully, you get the idea!
This same add-on also permits you to launch a custom-branded web app where guests can subscribe to emails, leave feedback, review promotions, and more.
Finally, you can track the success of promotions by monitoring metrics like revenue, clicks, open rates, and more.
Loyalty
This add-on combines CRM and loyalty features to track your most dedicated customers. With this information, you can reward VIPs with special discounts and promotions to thank them for their continued loyalty.
Diners can automatically earn loyalty points and rewards based on the items they purchase and how much they spend. Where CRM features are concerned, you can record customer details, including more nuanced facts like food preferences, visit history, birthdays, and more.
Reservations
Benefit from a booking system that lets you see who’s coming for dinner and prepare on time. You can accept bookings through your website, the Google waitlist widget, or tbdine.com. The latter refers to TouchBistro Dine. This is a website and iOS and Android app that diners can use to find restaurants wherever they are. In addition, customers can customize their dining preferences (e.g., Thai, Pizza, etc.) and see which restaurants have availability that night.
The reservation software also monitors table status, making managing your waitlist much easier. You can also reduce no-shows by sending reminders of upcoming reservations (with two-way communication), so they can notify you if their plans change.
Lastly, you can add customized reservation notes about individual customers to keep track of special occasions, dining preferences, and allergies.
Online Ordering
As we’ve already hinted, you can add online ordering capabilities to TouchBistro to enable customers to order through your restaurant’s website or social channels. In addition, you can accept scheduled or immediate orders for pickup and/or delivery.
You’ll receive a notification on your POS hardware whenever an order comes in, enabling you to respond immediately.
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TouchBistro Review: Pricing
TouchBistros’ pricing consists of the initial software fee starting at $69 per month for up to two registers.
Depending on your restaurant’s needs, additional fees and hardware costs may apply. Exact prices depend partly on the size of your business, whether you’re a new restaurant or already established, and how quickly you need your TouchBistro POS system set up.
All POS software plans include the following:
Menu management
Reporting and analytics
Floor plan and table management
Staff management
Integrations
Tableside ordering
The prices for the add-ons mentioned above are as follows:
Online ordering, starting at $50 per month
Marketing, starting at $99 per month
Loyalty programs, starting at $99 per month
Gift Cards, starting at $25 per month
Reservations, starting at $229 per month
On top of this, TouchBistro sells hardware systems explicitly designed for restaurants, including a modern iPad and accessories like a terminal, router, kitchen printer, cash drawer, and more. Unfortunately, pricing is only available at a customized quote, and TouchBistro offers no payment plans on hardware.
With so many elements of TouchBistro’s pricing structure, the exact fees remain somewhat ambiguous. So, we advise getting in touch to receive a quote on the services you’re interested in, as well as the cost of hardware.
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TouchBistro POS Review: Customer Support
TouchBistro’s support team is available 24/7, all year round. Phone support is available with lines in North America, the UK, and South America. Or you can fill out a support request online for general queries. There’s also a help center with articles on TouchBistro’s various features and quick references for front-of-house staff and administrators.
TouchBistro Review: Pros and Cons
Let’s summarize the key takeaways from this review. Here are the main advantages and disadvantages of using TouchBistro’s POS:
TouchBistro Pros
TouchBistro offers a broad, comprehensive set of restaurant management features, including seating plans, which similar systems often neglect.
TouchBistro offers 24/7 phone support.
The software operates on local networks, so it doesn’t require a robust internet connection to function consistently.
It’s user-friendly, which makes onboarding new team members quick and easy.
Various add-ons allow for even more features.
This POS is designed explicitly with restaurants in mind.
TouchBistro Cons
Pricing isn’t very transparent on the website, and we can’t find the cost of hardware systems. You need to get in touch for a quote on nearly everything Touchbistro offers to get a clear idea of how the price might compare to alternatives.
Add-ons quickly render the software much more expensive.
There isn’t a free plan.
TouchBistro is exclusive to iOS.
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TouchBistro Review: FAQs
We’ve covered lots of ground, but you might still have questions. So we’ll endeavor to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about TouchBistro:
Does TouchBistro Come With Hardware?
You can source hardware through TouchBistro or elsewhere for an additional price.
TouchBistro is compatible with Apple devices above iOS6. In addition, you can mix and match POS equipment like cash drawers, receipt printers, card readers, and more.
TouchBistro offers hardware setups for small businesses and large venues alike. However, if you buy hardware through the company, you’ll enjoy the convenience of support for your POS hardware and software from one source.
In Which Countries Does TouchBistro Work?
TouchBistro is used in over 100 countries, including Canada, the US, the UK, and Mexico.
Do TouchBistros Plans Impose Long Contracts?
You can pay for TouchBistro monthly and not commit to contracts longer than that.
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TouchBistro Review: Our Final Verdict
Suppose you’re a restaurant owner looking for the best POS system. In that case, TouchBistro offers lots of features suited to your industry.
While add-ons can make the software a lot pricier, we like the variety of products to expand the software according to your needs.
Overall, TouchBistro comes packed with handy tools for restaurants. So, if you’re already operating on iPads, we recommend giving it a go or requesting a demo. Then, get in touch with the TouchBistro team for a quote and more information, and let us know in the comments below how you get on!
The post TouchBistro POS Review: Is This The Right POS For You? appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.
Original Source: https://1stwebdesigner.com/how-to-negotiate-competitive-freelance-rates/
If you’re a freelancer, then you know that one of the most important aspects of your business is getting paid what you’re worth. But negotiating competitive freelance rates can be daunting-especially when you don’t have much experience doing it.
There can be a lot of trepidation when it comes to asking clients for a fair rate, but it’s important to remember that you provide a valuable service and that you deserve to be compensated accordingly.
In this article, we’ll walk you through some tips and strategies for negotiating better freelance rates with your clients, so that you can feel more confident and secure in your work. Keep reading to learn more!
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Know Your Worth
Before you can start negotiating with clients, you need to have a good understanding of your own value. What are your skills and experience worth in the marketplace?
You can use online resources like PayScale or Paysa to research average rates for freelancers with your skill and experience level. Once you have a benchmark to work with, you can start thinking about what you’re willing to accept.
Do Your Research
In addition to knowing your own worth, it’s also helpful to do some research on the client themselves. What is their budget for this project? Are they known for going above market value or below with their contractors?
The more information you have going into the negotiation, the better. Try to find out as much as you can about the client and their history with paying freelancers.
Ask As Many Questions About the Project As You Can
When you’re first approached about a project, it’s important to ask as many questions as possible. The more details you have about the scope of freelance work, the better equipped you’ll be to give an accurate quote.
Some key questions to ask include:
What is the expected timeline for the project?
How many revisions will be needed?
What format do you need the final deliverables in?
Will I be working with anyone else on the project?
What is the project budget?
By getting as much information up front, you can avoid any unpleasant surprises later on.
Start High
When you’re finally ready to start negotiating rates with a client, it’s important to start high. Remember, you can always come down in price, but it’s much harder to go up once you’ve already quoted a lower rate.
If the client counters with a lower offer, then you can begin to negotiate from there. But by starting high, you give yourself some room to work with and you’re more likely to end up at a rate that you’re happy with.
Ask About Expenses
In addition to your hourly or project rate, don’t forget to factor in any expenses that you may incur while working on the project. These could include things like travel costs, software licenses, or stock photography.
Be sure to ask the client if they will be reimbursing you for any out-of-pocket expenses before you agree to take on the project.
Be Professional
Throughout the negotiation process, it’s important to remain professional and courteous. This is true even if the client is being difficult to work with.
Keep your cool and don’t get too emotional about the situation. Maintain a positive attitude and be confident in the value that you bring to the table. If you do this, then chances are good that the client will come around and meet you at a fair rate.
Be Prepared to Walk Away
If the client isn’t willing to meet you at a rate that you’re comfortable with, then be prepared to walk away from the project. It’s not worth your time and energy to work for someone who isn’t going to pay you what you’re worth.
There are plenty of other clients out there who will be happy to pay you a fair rate for your work. So don’t sell yourself short just to land a project.
Get Everything in Writing
Once you’ve reached an agreement with the client, it’s important to get everything in writing. This way, there’s no confusion about what was agreed upon and you have a contract to fall back on if the client tries to cut costs later on.
Make sure that all of the details are included in the contract, such as the agreed-upon rate, the scope of work, and the timeline for the project. Once everything is signed off on, then you can start working and get paid what you’re worth.
Include a Contingency Rate
If you’re working on a project that could potentially go over the agreed-upon scope, then it’s a good idea to include a contingency rate in your contract. This way, if the project does take longer than expected, you’ll still be compensated for your time.
Including a contingency rate is a good way to protect yourself and make sure that you’re fairly compensated for any unforeseen circumstances.
Let the Negotiations Begin
Negotiating better rates with your freelance clients doesn’t have to be a nightmare. By following these tips, you can approach the conversation with confidence and walk away with the pay that you deserve.
Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/help-desk-ticketing-systems/
Help desk ticketing systems are tools for keeping track of customer issues to aid your support teams in resolving them promptly. They help in managing clients, converting customer challenges or issues into positive customer experiences and grow a satisfied customer base for your organization.
With a plethora of help desk ticketing systems in the market, it can be very overwhelming to choose the ideal system for your business. In this article, I’ll shed some light on some of the best help desk ticketing systems out there so you can which is ideal for your business.
1. SysAid Helpdesk Software
SysAid is a feature-rich help desk software to manage customer relations for your brand. You can resolve your customers’ issues faster by cross-referencing tickets with the users and their assets. Plus, your employees can solve common IT issues independently through self-service features.
The most interesting part of this tool is automation, i.e., it sorts, prioritizes, and routes tickets automatically to the related desk, so your customer’s issues are solved quicker. It also allows the help desk to remotely access user machines and generate performance reports through the dashboard.
Moreover, it offers hotkeys to capture your screen and send the video to a ticket in the self-service portal, saving loads of time in dealing with other ticket queries.
Free Plan:
Yes. SysAid offers a free trial on all its Help Desk and ITSM plans with no credit card needed.
Paid Plans:
Prices of each plan vary depending on the number of administrators, assets and modules required. Its Basic and Full Editon ranges from $1200+/yr (500 assets) to $1600+/yr (1000 assets).
2. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is an all-in-one customer service software that can be used by small businesses as well as enterprises. It has a wide range of features and tools to manage customer service.
It is highly customizable and easy to use, which makes it one of the best help desk systems on the market today.
Freshdesk features AI-based tools to help solve problems for your customers quickly and efficiently by automating and streamlining your service processes.
For example, it can auto-assign tickets based on set preferences, and its AI-based bot called Freddy can suggest knowledge base articles. Moreover, you can track performance analytics using its customizable dashboards and reports.
Free Plan:
Yes. Freshdesk offers a free plan supporting 10 agents, email and social ticketing, a knowledge base, and a ticket trend report.
Paid Plans:
Growth and Pro plans for $18 and $59 per agent per month enable automation, marketplace apps, custom views, customer fields, time tracking, and more.
Enterprise plan for $79 per agent per month adds sandbox, approval workflows, email bot, etc.
3. Zendesk for Service
Zendesk is an enterprise-ready help desk ticketing system that offers a variety of features for service organizations. It is one of the oldest and most popular names in the help desk ticketing system industry.
One of its interesting features is the strong cross-channel communication for reaching your customers through their favorite channels such as email, live chat, and social media like Facebook and Twitter.
Zenesk AI-powered chatbots can be personalized and send pre-written responses while the agents are busy solving other tickets. You can configure a knowledge base to allow customers to get help on their issues in a self-service manner.
Its workflows can auto-route tickets per configuration and direct customers to FAQs. You also get in-depth analytics on your service teams through its reports.
Free Plan:
No. Zendesk does not have a free plan but provides trial use of the entire Zendesk Suite Professional plan.
Paid Plans:
Suite Team plan starts at $49/agent/month for unified messaging, automation and workflows, reporting and analytics, apps and integrations, and more.
Growth plan for $79/agent/month offers advanced automation, custom integrations, and more.
Professional plan for $99/agent/month offers skill-based routing, customizable dashboards, etc.
Enterprise plan for $150/agent/month offers a lot more, like customizable workspaces, shared dashboards, etc.
4. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is an all-in-one help desk ticketing system that helps customer service teams to manage customer requests and improve the overall customer experience. It offers many features and tools for support agents and managers to provide exemplary service and gain customer service insights.
Zoho Desk is a perfect fit if your business is already using the Zoho Suite. Nevertheless, it is a multichannel help desk system integrating email, live chat, phone, social media, etc., under a single interface.
Moreover, you can create a self-service portal for your customers with FAQs and tutorials (aka knowledge base). Its dashboards and reports provide insights into service performance.
Free Plan:
Yes. Zoho has a free plan supporting 3 agents, email ticketing, customer management, a knowledge base, macros, and more.
Paid Plans:
Standard and Professional plans for $20 and $35/agent/month, respectively, offer social channels, public knowledge base, assignment and workflow rules, dashboards, integrations, etc.
Enterprise plan for $50/agent/month offering Zia (AI-powerpert), live chat, custom functions, validation and layout rules, etc.
5. ProProfs
ProProfs is a help desk ticketing system that provides a way for companies to manage their customer service and support. It is designed to work as a simple and efficient tool for customer service departments to manage customer issues or tickets.
ProProfs is an enterprise product that was designed with the goal of providing a user-friendly interface for both the customer and the company.
Additionally, ProProfs supports a lot of automation options for speeding up the process of solving customer tickets. You can configure it to auto-assign tickets in a round-robin fashion and set up pre-written responses for improved response times.
Also, there’s an option to create a public knowledge base to help customers self-service on common issues. Its real-time reports help measure and improve performance.
Free Plan:
No. ProProfs does not have a free plan, but it provides a free trial for 15 days.
Paid Plans:
Plans start with its Essentials plan for $15/user/month, offering effective support with shared inboxes and essential help desk features.
Premium plan for $20/user/month supports unlimited inboxes and an advanced feature set including ticket routing, child tickets, white labeling, etc.
Enterprise plan adds more like custom automation and integrations, Single Sign-On (SSO), etc. If you need live chat, it costs an extra $5 per plan.
6. HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot Service Hub enables you to create tickets, assign tickets, and take action on tickets as a team. It is designed to be flexible enough to meet the needs of any organization and supports collaboration between customer service and other teams on solving tickets.
HubSpot’s Service Hub lets you create a knowledge base for agents as well as customers, enable live chat for quick communication, and add automation features to speed up ticket resolutions. In addition, you can connect various channels under one shared inbox including email, live chat, etc.
Free Plan:
Yes. HubSpot has a free plan that costs you nothing but limited features.
Paid Plans:
HubSpot Service Hub’s Starter plan starts at $50/month/2 users with features like – live chat, shared inbox, ticket pipelines, automation, repeating tasks, etc.
Professional plan starts at $500/month/5 users with features like – offering ticket routing, knowledge base, customer portal, service analytics, and more.
Enterprise plan starts at $1200/month/10 users.
7. HappyFox
HappyFox is a help desk ticketing system that provides a better way for customer support to manage the flow of incoming tickets. It has a simple and intuitive interface that makes it easy for customers to submit tickets and get the help they need.
HappyFox also provides powerful features such as workflows, ticket routing, integrations with other tools, customizable templates, etc.
It helps you to manage customer inquiries, requests, and problems. It provides an easy way for both customers and employees to report issues or request assistance from other teams.
Create a knowledge base and a community forum to help your customers with the tool. Its AI assistant can help with managing workflows, chatting with customers, and improving support.
Free Plan:
No. HappyFox does not offer free plans or a free trial. However, you can request a demo, and the support team will see if one can be created for you.
Paid Plans:
Mighty plan costs $39/agent/month, offering omnichannel tickets, knowledge base, Single Sign-On (SSO), etc.
Fantastic plan costs $59/agent/month for multi-branding, custom ticket queues, etc.
Its Enterprise and Enterprise Plus plans for $79 and $99/agent/month offer even more: asset and task management in Enterprise and agent scripting and all-time reporting history in Enterprise Plus.
8. Jira Service Management
Jira Service Management helps teams work together, stay on top of issues, and deliver great customer experiences. It is designed to manage the customer service and support needs of organizations of all sizes.
Using this tool, customers can submit tickets through many channels such as email, phone call, chat, web portal, and social media as well.
It helps you categorize and prioritize tickets, create custom workflows for different types of requests, and set up escalation policies for specific types of requests.
Jira Service Management offers dashboards and reports with all the information about the tickets in one place, helping you to analyze the performance of your service teams to drive efficient customer support.
Free Plan:
Yes. Jira Service Management’s free plan supports 3 agents, unlimited customers, configurable workflows, analytics and reporting, knowledge management, etc.
Paid Plans:
Standard and Premium plans for $20 and $45/agent/month offer cloud support team, service status pages, etc.
Enterprise plan offers more features like Atlassian Analytics, Atlassian Data Lake, etc.
9. Kayako
Kayako is a help desk ticketing system that can be used to manage customer inquiries and requests. It provides a ticketing system to track customer issues and helps in resolving them.
The good thing about Kayako is that it can be integrated with third-party applications like CRM or project management tools so that the information of the customers is automatically updated in other systems as well.
Kayako helps drive customer satisfaction and provides insights on improving customer service and has a web-based interface as well as compatibility with mobile devices. The software is available as an on-premise solution or as a cloud-based solution that can be accessed from anywhere at any time.
Free Plan:
No. Kayodo does not support free plans but does come with a free 14-day trial for their paid plans.
Paid Plans:
Kayako has a simple pricing structure wherein it offers all features in a single plan for $60/agent/month. It does feel a bit costlier compared to other tools on this list, especially if you have a small team.
10. Mojo Helpdesk
Mojo Helpdesk is another cloud-based service that provides an easy and intuitive way to manage customer requests. It supports shared inbox with multiple channels such as chat, email, phone support, and social media, allowing your customers to get help using their convenient method.
Mojo Helpdesk allows lets you monitor tickets in real-time and keep track of what they have done for each customer inquiry. It also integrates with many third-party applications such as Slack, Jira, Zendesk, and more.
Free Plan:
No. Mojo Helpdesk does not have a free plan. However, you can try it for free for 21 days.
Paid Plans:
Team plan costs $14/agent/month, offering ticket tracking, self-service knowledge base, custom forms, unlimited automation, time tracking, custom views, Single Sign-On (SSO), etc.
Business plan costs $24/agent/month and offers escalation rules, advanced security, phone support, and more.
Enterprise plan for $34/agent/month offers more features like advanced reporting, extra quotas, sandbox, etc.
Bonus: Vision Helpdesk
Vision Helpdesk can assign employees and agents to handle tickets, set up schedules, and track responses. You can create ticket templates for different types of requests, monitor ticket statistics, and set up schedules for support agents. It also offers an online live chat function for customers.
Vision Helpdesk provides a centralized place for all help desk tickets with simple workflows based on rule-based triggers. It also includes features for speeding up the process, such as auto-sending notifications, gamifying ticket handling, and a shared knowledge base to help boost customer support.
Free Plan:
No. Vision Helpdesk does not have a free plan. A 30-days free trial is available.
Paid Plans:
Vision Helpdesk offers five plans with a varied set of features starting with Starter Help Desk at $15/agent/month.
Its Pro Help Desk and Satellite Help Desk plans cost $25 and $30/agent/month.
Pro Service Desk and Ent Service Desk plans cost $40 and $60/agent/month, respectively, with extra features. If you are looking for live chat, too, it requires extra licensing.
The post 10 Best Help Desk Ticketing Systems appeared first on Hongkiat.
Original Source: https://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/black-friday-cyber-monday-deals
Black Friday is a glorious day for shopping! Most retailers offer up to 40% off of some of their best-selling items- saving you plenty of dollars on the season’s must-have products.
Of course, we all know Black Friday and Cyber Monday are great times to cash in on sweet online deals. However, most people assume this only pertains to physical products like electronics, homeware, clothes, etc., But on top of that, you’ll find tons of ultra-low deals on first-rate ecommerce, marketing, and retail-related software platforms too!
These solutions can be game changers if you’re considering starting an online business or want to improve your current workflows. So, here, we’re going to cover some of the best software deals, from marketing and content creation to web hosting and website builders – we’ve got you covered.
So, for this 2022 Black Friday and Cyber Monday, why not invest in software to help you achieve your goals for the new year?
We’ve done the hard work. Now, all that’s left to do is scroll through some of the best deals that you won’t want to miss.
Let’s dive in!
What are The Best Black Friday Deals for Ecommerce Businesses?
Shopify
At the time of writing, Shopify is running a fantastic three-month deal with a three-day free trial.
It’s easy to opt in to. Simply enter your email, and you’ll get a three-day trial. After this, you only pay $1 a month for the first three months. This deal only applies to the Shopify Basic or Starter plan. With the Basic package, you can launch a fully-fledged online store, sell unlimited products, and accept customer payments. It also includes web hosting, access to an intuitive ecommerce store builder, integration with four inventory locations, marketing automation, and abandoned cart recovery – to name a few of its extensive features!
» Get The Exclusive Deal «
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SiteGround
86% OFF standard price
Prices starting from $1.99/mo + 80% OFF Site Scanner
Start: Nov. 18
End: Dec. 4
» Get The Exclusive Deal «
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Sellfy
This Black Friday, Sellfy runs a massive discount with up to 80% OFF (with a secret, surprise deal on Cyber Monday).
Start: Nov. 21
End: Nov. 28
» Get The Exclusive Deal «
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Clickup
Clickup: 20% off Unlimited and Business Plans for one year.
Promo code: CYBERUP
Start: Nov. 22
End: Dec. 02
» Get The Exclusive Deal «
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Cloudways
Get 40% off for 4 months
Promo code: BFCM4030
Start: Nov. 14
End: Nov. 30
» Get The Exclusive Deal «
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Signnow
signNow offers 20% off on annual plans through November 30th
» Get The Exclusive Deal «
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Semrush
40% off: Semrush Guru + 500 extra keywords to track
Save up to $695
Offer ends: Dec 4th
» Get The Exclusive Deal «
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Podia
Both new and upgrading users can lock in 15% off their paid plan for the next year.
Start: Nov. 22
End: Nov. 28
» Get The Exclusive Deal «
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Revolut
3 months Revolut Premium subscription trial.
» Get The Exclusive Deal «
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Are You Ready to Make The Most Out of These Black Friday/ Cyber Monday Software Deals?
There are lots of software deals to choose from, making it hard to know for sure whether you’re getting the best fit for your business. But, hopefully, this round-up has helped you whittle down your options- especially if you want to start an online store or optimize your workflows for the new year.
For eCommerce, Shopify’s deal is definitely a standout. The usual price for a Basic Shopify plan is $19 a month – so suffice it to say that paying just $1 a month for the first three months is a pretty good deal. Alternatively, suppose you’re not a fan of Shopify and just looking for web hosting. In that case, there’s always Siteground, offering a whopping 80% off!
We also like Clickup and Signnow’s deals for better workflow management. For example, with Signnow, you can ensure all your contracts, invoices, and documents are signed on time from the convenience of one place. Whereas, with Clickup, you can arrange your and your team’s schedules and projects from start to finish.
So, what will you invest in this Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Let us know what you go for in the comments box below!
The post 10 Best Black Friday / Cyber Monday Deals on Software in 2022 appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.
Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2022/11/27-best-small-business-ideas-for-designers/
Designers have a wide range of lucrative career options.
This resource puts together some of the best small business ideas to help chart your career path.
It covers the market size, earning potential, estimated startup cost, the target audience, and the value they bring to the table. You’ll also learn how to launch the business, the required training and licenses, and a few companies already killing it in the space for your inspiration.
So, let’s begin.
Table of Contents
Online Course for Designers and Animators
Target Audience and Value
Motion Design Courses
Product Design Courses
Graphic Design Courses
User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) Design Courses
Fashion Design Courses
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Graphics Design Business Serving Brick-and-Mortar Outlets
Target Audience and Value
Ice cream shop
Landscaping Business
Catering Business
Food Truck Business
Pet Sitting
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Graphics Design and Animation Coach
Target Audience and Value
Personal Training and Coaching
Graphic and Animation Coaching for Design Teams
Online Courses
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
WordPress Themes and Website Templates
Target Audience and Value
WordPress Themes Development
Site Templates Development
Landing Page Templates Development
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Email and Newsletter Templates Creator
Target Audience and Value
Themeforest Email Templates
Fiverr Email Templates
Creative Market Email Templates
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Fonts
Target Audience and Value
Envato
Fiverr
Corporate Clients
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Graphics Templates and Marketing Collateral
Target Audience and Value
Brochures
Business cards
Flyers
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Presentation Template Designer
Target Audience and Value
Marketing
Pitches
Key Notes
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Custom T-Shirts and Screen Prints
Target Audience and Value
Custom T-Shirt Design Marketplaces
Fiverr
eCommerce Store
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Comics
Target Audience and Value
Comic Artist
Comic Book Letterer
Color Flatter
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Sewing Patterns and Fashion Designs
Target Audience and Value
Fashion Designers
Online Marketplaces
NFT Fashion Marketplace
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Wrap Designer
Target Audience and Value
Auto Shops
Car Owners
Marketplaces
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Videographer and Video Editor
Target Audience and Value
Marketplace
Portfolio Website
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Online Freelance Designer
Target Audience and Value
Marketplaces
Freelance Website
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
NFT Artist
Target Audience and Value
NFT Creators
NFT Marketplaces
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Event Designers
Target Audience and Value
Corporate Organizations
Event planners
Catering Services
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Extended Reality Designer
Target Audience and Value
XR Developers
Marketplace
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Photographer and Photo Editor
Target Audience and Value
Event Planners
Marketplace
Commercial Photography
Stock Photography
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Sell Coloring Books
Target Audience and Value
Children’s Coloring Books
Adult Coloring Books
Teenagers
Teach People to Create and Sell Coloring Books
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Products and eCommerce Packaging Designer
Target Audience and Value
Brick-and-Mortar Retail outlets
eCommerce Stores
Marketplaces
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Publish Books and eBooks
Target Audience and Value
Amazon
Apple Books
Online bookstore
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Printing Press
Target Audience and Value
Businesses
Political and Social Campaigns
Authors
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Website Design Services
Target Audience and Value
Local Businesses
Charities
Marketplaces
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Graphic Design Academy
Target Audience and Value
Design Teams
Image Credit: Medium
College Students
Graphic Designers
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
YouTuber
Target Audience and Value
YouTube Ads
Sell Merchandise or Courses
Sponsored Videos
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Newspaper, Magazine, and Catalog Design Agency
Target Audience and Value
Newspaper and Magazine Companies
Marketplaces
eCommerce and Retail Businesses
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
Online Drawings and Handcrafts Sales
Target Audience and Value
Offer Custom Art
Start Online Craft Store
Sell Your Drawing Online
How to Launch
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Example of Businesses in this Space
How to Choose the Best Business Ideas as a Designer
1. Online Course for Designers and Animators
The demand for digital designers will grow by 23% until 2031—faster than America’s 5% average occupation growth rate. And the market for online courses will grow at the same speed to reach $198 billion in sales by 2030.
Also, 87% of managers said hiring more UX designers is their organization’s top priority.
Earning potential: $19,500 to $135,000 annually (or $69,900 average).
Top marketplaces: Udemy, Udacity, Skillshare, LinkedIn Learning, Thinkific, Alison, AppSumo, CyberU, PluralSight, and self-hosted options.
Estimated start cost: $8,000 to $36,000.
Target Audience and Value
Create and sell online courses based on your transferable design skills. Let’s explore five options:
1. Motion Design Courses
Students pay about $85 to $600 for motion design courses.
And students can recuperate their investment quickly since motion designers earn between $58 to $300 per hour.
2. Product Design Courses
Jaguar C-X16 Design. Creative Commons.
Product design courses are between $85 to over $4,000.
Product designer roles pay about $115,000 annually. And finding employment is easy, as over 70% of hiring managers have increased their designer hires.
3. Graphic Design Courses
Art Director and Graphic Designer Peter Cocking, on utilizing white spaces. Creative Commons.
Top-earning graphics designers earn about $43 an hour or $90,000 a year. So, you can sell this online course for $85 to $15,000 per student.
4. User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) Design Courses
Pixabay image
UI/UX online course creators usually take $85 to $2,500 per student. And students who become top earners take home up to $174,000 a year or $84 an hour.
5. Fashion Design Courses
Wikimedia Commons
Fashion designer courses cost $40 to $4,000.
However, top designers earn over $90,000 a year. So your students can get outsized value from their investment.
How to Launch
Launch your online design course in seven steps:
Find a simple course idea
Outline the course
Create the first module
Build your sales page and join marketplaces
Create your thank you page
Write your sales emails
Launch your course
Most people get stuck in the ideas phase. Instead, find a simple course idea based on your skills and launch it.
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Course marketplaces have unique education requirements. So check the publisher requirements of the platform you want to launch the course.
However, most marketplaces do not require special certifications to launch a design course.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Adobe After Effects: Complete Course from Novice to Expert by Louay Zambarakji.
Courses from Motion Design School.
2. Graphics Design Business Serving Brick-and-Mortar Outlets
Graphic design for brick-and-mortar outlets can be a quick way to start your small business for designers. These businesses use graphic design services to create marketing collateral, like flyers, presentations, and brochures, to send brand messages to their audience.
The increasing demand for designers drives consistent global graphic design market growth, currently valued at around $43.4 billion.
Earning potential: $35,000 to $66,000 per year (or $47,921 average)
Top marketplaces: Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer.com, SolidGigs, and self-hosted options.
Estimated start cost: $2,000 to $10,000.
Target Audience and Value
You can provide graphic design services to countless small businesses, and some of them include:
1. Ice cream shop
Image credit: Fiverr
You can create packaging designs and logos for those planning to own ice cream shops. The top Fiverr designers charge around $25 per project, while some value their services up to $260 per project.
2. Landscaping Business
Image credit: Fiverr
Most landscaping businesses need graphic designers to help with custom 3d Landscape concept design and illustrations for their client’s properties—some designers on Fiverr charge around $180 per project and up to $480 for premium service.
3. Catering Business
Image credit: Fiverr
Catering business logos on Fiverr costs $5 to $100 per project. However, some top designers charge up to $450 for premium services.
4. Food Truck Business
Image credit: Fiverr
Professional food truck and trailer wrap designers on Fiverr charge $25 to over $100 per project. You transform the designs into formats such as AI, JPG, and PDF to provide multiple use options for the business.
5. Pet Sitting
About 70% of U.S. households own a pet. That’s approximately 91 million households, nearly ten million more than the population of Germany, the EU’s largest population, making a pet business lucrative.
You can design logos and marketing materials for pet-sitting and dog-walking businesses. The standard rate on Fiverr is between $5 and $100.
How to Launch
Start your graphic design small business in six steps:
Build your portfolio by offering free designs
Name your graphic design business
Build a basic website
Create social media accounts
Join top graphic design marketplaces
Build your email lists and run ads
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Starting this new business doesn’t need special certifications and licenses. However, pursuing certifications like Adobe Certified Associate and other courses on Udemy and Coursera can advance your credibility.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the small businesses making waves in this space are:
Landor & Fitch.
Polar.
3. Graphics Design and Animation Coach
Graphic design and animation coaching is one of the best small business ideas to start as a designer. Consider this career path if you’re curious about designs and motion graphics and are passionate about teaching.
Employment for professionals in this field will grow by 5% from 2021 to 2031, as fast as the average for all occupations.
Earning potential: $79,153 average compensation per year.
Top marketplaces: Udemy, Coursera, Alison, Fiverr, and self-hosted options.
Estimated start cost: $0 to $15,000, depending on whether you run the coaching business from home or the office.
Target Audience and Value
Let’s explore some of the coaching services you can provide:
1. Personal Training and Coaching
Image credit: Iveta Karpathyova Studio
One-on-one graphics and animation coaching via Zoom is in high demand. You can sell your training and coaching service on your website or online marketplaces. Some personal trainers charge about $650 for a three-month-long session.
Most non-marketplace users often charge more. For instance, Iveta Karpathyova, a graphic design personal trainer, takes about $2,000 for eight hours of private one-on-one instruction.
2. Graphic and Animation Coaching for Design Teams
You can use RFPs to find companies who want to train their in-house design teams in 2D or 3D animations. Also, you can target companies that use graphics to boost user engagement, like UX professionals.
Austin Saylor is an example in this space. He earns up to $10,000 from his training program for graphic design teams.
3. Online Courses
Image credit: Udemy
You can create online courses and sell them on marketplaces like Udemy, Coursera, and Alison if you don’t have the resources for one-on-one coaching. For instance, some animation courses on Udemy cost between $20 to $139 for old students or between $14 and $24.99 for new users.
How to Launch
Start your graphic design and animation coaching small business idea in seven steps:
Get professional training
Develop your business plan
Design your coaching courses and certificate of completion
Set your coaching fees
Set up your payment methods and plan your business finances
Choose a coaching business name
Create a logo and your brand identity
Set up your coaching website and social media presence
Design your marketing plan
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Once you possess transferable design and animation skills, you don’t need special training, certification, or licenses to operate a graphic coaching business. However, getting certification training will advance your qualification and give you the confidence to train people.
Some options include:
Parsons Motion Design and Animation Certificate
Montgomery College Digital Animation Certificate
The University of Tokyo Interactive Computer Graphics
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some businesses offering graphic design and animation coaching services are:
Austin Saylor
Iveta Karpathyova Studio
Falcon Visuals
4. WordPress Themes and Website Templates
A WordPress theme and website template development business is one of the most lucrative small business ideas for designers.
The WordPress platform controls nearly 65% of the CMS market share and powers 43% of all websites. That’s a staggering 82 million, meaning there are about three times more WordPress websites than the number of web developers worldwide.
Shopify comes a distant second, powering only 3.5% of all websites. However, WordPress has over 11,000 themes. As a theme developer, you can tap into this lucrative market.
Earning potential: $12 t0 $12,000 per theme or template
Top marketplaces: Envato, Creative Market, and Codecanyon.
Estimated start cost: Premium WordPress theme builders costs between $99 to $200
Target Audience and Value
Some of the most successful business ideas or markets to explore in this field are:
1. WordPress Themes Development
Image Credit: Themeforest
Bestselling themes on Themeforest cost $39 to $69, while the most expensive options go for $6,000 to $12,000. Also, Fiverr developers charge up to $1,000 for custom WordPress theme development.
2. Site Templates Development
Best-selling site templates on Themeforest cost between $12 to $49. The high-priced ones go from $200 to $1,000. The price range for popular themes on Creative Market is the same as on Themeforest. However, the most expensive options range from $520 to $5,000.
3. Landing Page Templates Development
Landing page creation is a lucrative business because of its high demand for lead generation. The best-selling landing page templates on Themeforest cost $12 to $39, while the expensive ones go for $59 to $118, making them affordable.
How to Launch
Launch this new business idea with these simple steps:
Pick a niche
Develop your business plan
Set your pricing
Plan your business finances to understand the overhead costs involved
Design your themes and site templates on your computer
Develop the theme with premium theme builders like TemplateToaster or outsource to freelance theme developers.
Create a free version of the theme
Test your theme or site templates
Join a marketplace and sell your theme
Promote your business with paid ads
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You don’t need special training, certification, or licenses to build a successful career as a theme developer. In addition, some theme builders don’t require coding knowledge.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some theme developers on Fiverr and Themeforest are:
Zainshabirdev
Scrn
5. Email and Newsletter Templates Creator
Email template development is another good business idea to explore.
There are over four billion daily email users, sending and receiving more than 306 billion emails daily, making it an effective channel to reach and engage customers. Also, data shows that 37% of brands are increasing their email budget.
As an email and newsletter templates creator, you can design beautiful templates for small and medium-sized businesses that can’t afford an in-house design team, digital marketing services, and marketplaces.
Earning potential: $10 to $150 per project
Top marketplaces: Themeforest, Fiverr, Creative Market, and self-hosted options.
Estimated start cost: $0 to $200
Target Audience and Value
You can offer your service on several marketplaces and your website. However, these options provide the most straightforward way to make it big in this field.
1. Themeforest Email Templates
Themeforest’s top-rated email templates cost about $8 to $116. Most of these templates have between 100 and 1,500 sales, indicating high demand for Themeforest email templates. The most expensive option currently costs $117 for the regular license and has sold over 100 copies.
2. Fiverr Email Templates
Demand for Fiverr email template creators is also pretty high. The best-selling professionals take between $10 to $25 per project. However, hand-coded responsive HTML options go as high as $80.
3. Creative Market Email Templates
Creative Market has over 1,500 email templates. The popular designs go for $10 to $39, while the most expensive templates cost between $50 and $150. Most designs are for MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and Constant Contact platforms.
How to Launch
Launch your email and newsletter design business in these few steps:
Pick a niche and develop your business plan
Set your pricing
Design your email and newsletter templates
Test on different devices such as desktop computers, mobile, and iPad
Join marketplaces and sell your templates
Create a logo and business website
Join popular social media and build your online presence
Market your business
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You don’t need special training or licenses to create email and newsletter templates. Instead, strong customer relationships and positive reviews are what you need to thrive in this field.
Example of Businesses in this Space
You can build a profitable business in this field. Let’s see a few of the successful ones for your inspiration.
SendX
Stripe
6. Fonts
Typography is one of the financially rewarding home business ideas for designers.
Custom fonts allow businesses to create unique brand identities to stand out from the crowd. As a result, this space holds limitless opportunities for typographers.
For instance, IBM paid over $1 million annually to use Monotype’s warhorse font Helvetica before developing its IBM Plex typeface.
Other companies like Netflix, Airbnb, and SAP also invested in custom fonts and typefaces to reinforce brand messages and save on licensing fees. So you might want to explore this small business idea. You can also structure it as a consulting business.
Earning potential: $30 to $300,000 for bespoke font
Top marketplaces: Envato, Creative market, Fiverr, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $200 to $1,200
Target Audience and Value
The best target audience for this small business idea is brands that want to create a unique identity to differentiate from the competition. Some of the places to sell your service are:
1. Envato
Envato has an extensive library of over 30,000 stunning fonts and types.
Many small business owners and online businesses use the marketplace to find unique fonts. Envato users with an active subscription can download the fonts for any project and marketing campaign.
The individual plan costs $16.5 monthly, while the team plan is available at $10.75 per member. The enterprise plan requires a custom quote.
2. Fiverr
Fiverr is a great place to start a typography business as a beginner. Small business owners and online businesses use it to hire affordable typographers. The platform currently hosts over 2,000 custom font services.
Typographers on the platform charge between $10 to $30 for custom fonts. The top earners take home over $60 for premium services.
3. Corporate Clients
Experienced typographers can explore this option.
Creating bespoke typefaces for corporate clients may cost up to $300,000. First, however, you’ll need to demonstrate your value by building a strong portfolio and understanding how to craft a pitch, an offer, and a closing.
How to Launch
Typographers are in high demand. Start your typography business in five types:
Design your fonts
Build your website and plan your marketing
Join marketplaces and sell your fonts
Build your prospects list
Send custom font design proposals to prospects
Market your business with paid ads and on social media
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Typography is one of the most lucrative home business ideas for designers today. You can start this small business without special certifications and licenses.
However, taking typography courses on Udemy and other learning platforms can help you master your art and design better fonts.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the businesses in this field are:
Typotheque
Fontfabric
7. Graphics Templates and Marketing Collateral
Marketing collateral is media and graphics materials organizations use to support their sales efforts and advance their brand messages.
It includes anything from brochures, business cards, and posters. These materials give prospects the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions.
Creating them as graphic templates lets people customize and use them as they wish, enabling a much larger potential audience size. For example, as a marketing collateral designer, you could also run a consulting business as part of your larger offering.
Earning potential: $10 to $1,300 per project.
Top marketplaces: Envato, Creative Market, Fiverr, and self-hosted options.
Estimated start cost: $200 to $1,200 to get a good computer.
Target Audience and Value
The target audiences for this small business idea are social media managers, cleaning services, brick-and-mortar stores, and dog-walking businesses.
Also, targeting profitable niches like small business owners, personal training businesses, and property managers can lower your customer acquisition and overhead costs.
Let’s examine some graphic templates and marketing collateral you can design for clients.
1. Brochures
Image credit: Envato Elements
Brochures are some of the most widely used marketing collateral.
Creating them as customizable graphic templates and selling them on marketplaces like Envato and Creative Market allows you to attract many users.
You can also offer custom brochure design services on Fiverr. Designers on the platform take between $10 t0 $150 per project.
2. Business cards
Image credit: Envato Elements
Custom business card designers on Fiverr charge between $10 to $640 per project. Some premium services go for as high as $1,300. You can also sell on Envato to earn money from users’ subscription fees.
3. Flyers
Image credit: Fiverr
Flyers are another in-demand marketing collateral. Nearly 50% of surveyed companies said that door drop campaigns are essential to their marketing strategy.
Offering custom flyer design services to these businesses can help you make it big as a designer. Pro-verified designers on Fiverr make between $100 to $495 per project.
Their premium packages cost as much as $1,295.
How to Launch
Launch this small business idea with these six steps:
Get a nice laptop and internet connection
Create an actionable business plan
Define your target market and ideal customers
Build your portfolios
Join marketplace
Create a sales page to attract non-marketplace users
Join social media platforms
Promote your business through paid and organic marketing channels
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You need special training or a license to start this business at home. However, an impressive portfolio will help you land high-paying clients more quickly.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the businesses in this field are:
Trpeski Design
Brand Design
8. Presentation Template Designer
Creating an entire presentation deck from scratch can be challenging for non-designers.
As a result, 79% of presenters use pre-built templates to find inspiration, streamline their workflow and create stunning presentations in a few minutes. So this is an excellent business idea for designers.
You can explore opportunities in this field to shore up your income and build a flourishing career.
Earning potential: $90 to $6,000
Top marketplaces: Envato, Creative Market, Fiverr, etc.
Estimated start cost: You can start the business with just a computer. It costs between $200 to $1,200 to get a good one.
Target Audience and Value
Businesses in high demand for presentations, like landscaping businesses, property managers, startups, and consultancy businesses, are your targets. Also, executives and busy business people need you too.
Others include personal trainers, social media managers, and cleaning businesses.
Let’s explore some templates you can start with and what each brings to the table.
1. Marketing
Image credit: Envato Elements
Marketing presentation templates do the heavy lifting for salespersons, enabling them to create their presentations and slides quickly. Your presentation design agency can charge between $90 to $6,000 per ten slides.
However, selling on marketplaces enables you to access a ready market with minimal marketing efforts.
2. Pitches
Image credit: Fiverr
A beautifully designed pitch deck helps startup entrepreneurs to make a lasting impression on potential investors. So they often prefer to use templates to create theirs or outsource the project to professionals like you.
You can join marketplaces to reach potential clients more quickly, and there is a lot of money to make from those platforms. For example, pro-verified sellers on Fiverr earn between $100 and $1,500, while premium packages can go for as much as $3,000.
3. Key Notes
Professional keynote presentations from pro-verified designers on Fiverr are between $360 and $650 for the basic package. Non-pro-verified professionals on the platform price their service between $10 to $200.
Presentation design services hourly rate on Upwork ranges from $20 to $95. Some charge as high as $130 per hour.
How to Launch
A presentation template design business is a great business idea to pursue as a designer. You can launch yours with these six steps:
Buy a good computer with enough graphics card
Create a business plan
Define your market and ideal prospects
Build your portfolios
Create your website and join marketplaces
Plan your marketing strategies
Launch your templates
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You don’t need any special training, certifications, or licenses for this small business idea. However, an impressive portfolio and many positive customer reviews will do.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Let’s examine some professionals in this space.
24Slides
BrightCarbon
9. Custom T-Shirts and Screen Prints
The high demand for customized wear makes custom T-shirt design a thriving enterprise. Future Market Insights estimated that the market size of global custom T-shirt printing would exceed $3.5 billion in 2022.
Furthermore, they believe it will grow by 9.7% CAGR over the next ten years to reach over $9 billion.
Earning potential: $5 to $1,200 per project and up to $1 million a year.
Top marketplaces: Teespring, Zazzle, CafePress, Redbubble, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: You can start a custom T-shirt design business with $0 from home if you already own a computer and internet connection.
Target Audience and Value
Build your business for these audiences:
1. Custom T-Shirt Design Marketplaces
Image credit: Teespring
Joining and selling your designs on custom t-shirt marketplaces like Teespring (now, Spring), CafePress and Zazzle is your best bet to hit the ground running immediately. T-shirt designs on Teespring can cost as much as $49.99.
2. Fiverr
Pro-verified custom t-shirt designers on Fiverr take home between $125 and $450 per design. Premium packages can go for as high as $1,200—other gigs in the category cost between $5 and $30.
3. eCommerce Store
An eCommerce store for your custom designs lets you control your marketing and the ideal audience you want as customers.
You can also connect the online store to print-on-demand platforms like Printful to run a full-fledged online t-shirt business. There is no limit to how much you can make from this business. Some sellers earn up to $10,000 monthly.
How to Launch
Follow these six steps to launch this business idea:
Find a t-shirt niche
Create your t-shirt design
Join marketplaces to sell your designs
Create an eCommerce to promote your business
Connect your store to print-on-demand software to drop-ship your custom-printed wear
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You don’t need any special training to thrive in this space. Getting many positive customer reviews and referrals can help advance your business.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Many designers are in this space, offering custom T-shirt design services to individuals, groups, and local businesses. Some of our top picks for your inspiration are:
Custom Ink
Mandem
10. Comics
Comics are graphic novels. It’s popular among kids and teens. Fortunate Business Insights estimated that the comics market size will reach $12.81 billion in 2028, up from $9.21 billion in 2021. It grew by a staggering 12% in 2020.
Analysts believe it’ll grow at a CAGR of 4.8% from 2021 to 2028.
Earning potential: $63,167 per year for comic artists and about $210 per project for comic artists and color stylists.
Top marketplaces: ComicConnect, Subzero Comics, and LiveAbout
Estimated start cost: $200 to $1,200 to get a good computer
Target Audience and Value
Comics are lucrative when you build the business around these audiences:
1. Comic Artist
Image credit: Cbr.com
You can try your hands here if you can create attractive graphics and illustrations for comic books. Professionals in this field typically earn over $63,000 a year. But they vary from city to city. For instance, San Francisco, California comic artists take home over $95,000.
2. Comic Book Letterer
Advanced skills in color flattering can also help you get something tangible out of this space. Some professionals in this field earn between $5 to $25 on Fiverr. The verified professionals take between $100 to $210 per project.
3. Color Flatter
Color-flattering services on Fiverr are in high demand. Most color stylists on the marketplace charge between $5 and $40. As a verified professional, you may earn up to $100.
How to Launch
Comics are another successful business idea you can consider as a designer. It’s not expensive to launch, and you can run it 100% from home.
Start your own business in these few simple steps.
Pick a niche and define your market
Develop your business and marketing plan
Set your price
Join marketplaces to sell your service
Create a website to target off-marketplace audiences
Promote your business
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You don’t need special certification or licenses as a comic artist. However, professional courses on Udemy and other learning platforms can advance your skills.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some professionals in this field are:
Jorge Jiménez
Image credit: Cbr.com
Freyady
11. Sewing Patterns and Fashion Designs
The U.S. 2022 fashion design market size stands at $2.9 billion. Data shows that the market size declined by 1% between 2017 and 2022. However, analysts believe the value will grow at 0.9% in 2022.
Earning potential: Earn up to $130,000 annually.
Top marketplaces: Fiverr, DressX, Replicant, Dribble, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $200 to $1,200 to get a good computer
Target Audience and Value
Set your sights on these markets to make it big in this field.
1. Fashion Designers
Creating and selling your designs to top-rated designers is one of your best bets to earn big from this small business idea. Most bespoke wears cost several thousand dollars, and many designers won’t mind paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for your designs.
2. Online Marketplaces
Image credit: Fiverr
Joining marketplaces will save you a lot of marketing costs, and there is also money to make from the platforms—top professional stylists on Fiverr earn $100 to $300. You can also sell your designs on Dribble.
3. NFT Fashion Marketplace
Image credit: Replicant
NFT digital fashion marketplaces like Replicant are reimagining fashion designing businesses, allowing anyone to try on a digital garment.
They are a new and growing trend. Jumping in right away lets you secure a space before it gets saturated. And the digital fashion business is financially rewarding.
For instance, the best-selling digital garments on Replicant cost around $35, while the most expensive digital fashion wearables sell for as high as $68.
How to Launch
You can launch this business idea in these steps:
Pick a niche and define your fashion style
Develop your business and marketing plan
Create a physical version of your NFT
Choose and blockchain for your NFT and set up your digital wallet
Select an NFT marketplace
Create a business website to promote your digital fashions
Join social media to improve your online presence
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
The fashion design business doesn’t require any special training, certification, or licenses.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the businesses in this space are:
Olivia Goodall
Trend Miles
12. Wrap Designer
The wrap design business is one of the most profitable business ideas to start as a designer.
Several organizations and individuals wrap their vehicles for branding and aesthetic purposes.
In addition, a vehicle wrap is cheaper than a painting, driving its demand in the U.S. The global automotive car wrap film market was $4.9 billion in 2021.
Analysts estimated it will grow at a CAGR of 22.2% from 2022 to 2030.
Earning potential: $21 per hour
Top marketplaces: Wrap Stock, Fiverr, Design Hill, Upwork, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $200 to $1,200
Target Audience and Value
Wrap design small businesses can target:
1. Auto Shops
Many auto repair shops in the U.S. offer car wrap services. You can create and sell your designs to them. They charge clients between $2,500 and $5,000 to wrap their vehicles, so it’s fair to expect some money from them for your design.
2. Car Owners
Top-rated custom wrap designers on Upwork charge between $30 and $50 hourly rates. Several have earned $10,000 to $60,000 creating and selling bespoke wrap designs on the platform.
3. Marketplaces
Image credit: Wrap Stock
You can upload and sell your designs on marketplaces like Wrap Stock.
Here, you don’t have to worry about marketing or running ads. Instead, the platform handles every aspect of the process, enabling you to focus on creating stunning designs.
How to Launch
Launch this wrap design small business idea in these steps:
Pick a niche
Develop your business plan and sales processes
Create your designs
Turn your designs into templates downloadable in different formats
Join marketplaces to sell your design templates
Create a website to promote your business
Offer custom design services
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
This small business idea doesn’t require special training, licenses, or certification. However, building your portfolio and generating positive reviews can advance your credibility.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the professionals in this space are:
Inflamez Designs
Sean P
13. Videographer and Video Editor
About 87% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
YouTube, the world’s largest online video-sharing platform, has over 122 million daily users. They watch over one billion hours of content each day. Every minute, creators upload more than 500 hours of videos. These make video editing a lucrative business.
Earning potential: $49,496 average base salary per year
Top marketplaces: Upwork, Fiverr, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $250 to $1,020 for professional video editing software yearly subscription
Target Audience and Value
Let’s explore some ways you can earn money with your skills:
1. Marketplace
Image credit: Fiverr
Most video editors sell their services on Fiverr, Upwork, and other talent marketplaces. They charge between $10 to $40 per gig on Fiverr and an hourly rate of $10 to $25 on Upwork. You can join both marketplaces to maximize your options and reach a wider audience.
2. Portfolio Website
Create a portfolio website to target non-marketplace audiences and sell your service. It lets you take charge of your marketing, build your customer list and manage your customer relationships 100%. The median hourly rate of video editors is $20.
How to Launch
Videography and video editing are profitable business ideas. Launch yours in these simple steps:
Pick a niche and your target audience
Write a business and marketing plan
Buy video editing software
Join marketplaces
Create a website to promote your business
Run ads and market your service
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
This small business idea doesn’t require special training and licenses, especially if you want to run it from home. However, getting professional video editing training and certification can help you become a better video editor.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some businesses in this field are:
Tasty Edits
Replayed
14. Online Freelance Designer
The freelance industry currently contributes about $1.4 trillion to the U.S. economy. With over 58 million people offering freelancing services in the country, analysts believe it will grow to become the U.S. majority workforce.
A career path as an online freelance designer lets you have a slice of the pie.
Earning potential: $25 to $150 per hour
Top marketplaces: Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer.com, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $200 to $1,200
Target Audience and Value
An online freelance design offers limitless opportunities to designers. The small business idea will stay true to its potential when you build it around these target markets:
1. Marketplaces
Joining a marketplace gives you instant access to ready-to-buy customers—beginners in this space charge between $10 and $80 on Fiverr. Pro-verified experts earn up to $800. Upwork graphic designers take $14 to $95 per hour.
2. Freelance Website
A website lets you create a unique brand identity for your graphic design business.
It also allows you to approach your prospects directly, control your pricing and scale your business over time. The $20 to $150 average industry hourly rate is encouraging, and you can charge more as your business advances.
How to Launch
Action the steps below to launch this small business idea.
Pick a niche and define your ideal clients
Create a marketing and business plan
Build your portfolio
Set your price
Join marketplaces
Create a small business website
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
A freelance graphic designer doesn’t need any special license or training. However, acquiring advanced design and marketing skills improve their odds of having a successful career.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the top professionals in this field are:
Dimi Designs
Gaurav C.
15. NFT Artist
NFT lets owners prove authorship and authenticity, future-proofing digital assets. It’s one of the latest in-thing today and a trend that is not dying off soon.
The value of the global non-fungible token market was $4.6 billion in 2021. Analysts estimated that the market size will grow at a staggering CAGR of 23.9% between 2022 and 2028 to reach nearly $20 billion at the end of the forecasted period.
Earning potential: $96,643 average annual salary (the top 10% earn about $360,000 yearly)
Top marketplaces: Fiverr, Upwork, OpenSea, SuperRare
Estimated start cost: $200 to $1,200 for a computer with a sound graphics card
Target Audience and Value
Let’s examine some target audiences for your NFT art business.
1. NFT Creators
Create unique NFT art collections and sell them to NFT creators with the metadata. You can sell the service on Fiverr and Upwork. NFT artists on Fiverr charge between $40 and $150 for basic packages, while those on Upwork collect up to $5,000.
2. NFT Marketplaces
Image credit: OpenSea
You can mint your art on NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, SuperRare, and others if you’re uncomfortable selling them to third-party NFT creators. The opportunities in this space are limitless. For example, some NFTs on OpenSea sell for as high as 19 ETH floor price.
How to Launch
Launch this NFT art small business idea in these few simple steps:
Define why you’re going into the business
Pick a niche
Join marketplaces to sell your art
Set up an Ethereum wallet If you wish to mint your arts
Find a minting platform that meets your needs
Mint and sell your NFT arts
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You don’t need any special training or license. However, you can take online NFT minting courses on Udemy, Coursera, and other learning platforms to master the art.
Also, the business doesn’t have special license requirements.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the professionals in this field are:
Nyolings
Shallu N
16. Event Designers
Event designers work with planners to help them put details into their decorations. However, unlike planners focusing on event logistics and ensuring everything is on schedule and running smoothly, event designers transform the space and bring clients’ visions to life.
Earning potential: $43,977 median annual salary (the top 25% earns up to $50,000 annually0
Top marketplaces: Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer.com, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $300 to $3,000 to start the business from home. It’ll require a laptop, project management platforms (for example, ClickUp), and virtual event design software (3D Event Designer).
Target Audience and Value
Segment your audience, targeting these markets:
1. Corporate Organizations
Most organizations and companies hold at least one corporate event, such as annual general meetings, award ceremonies, and product launches. You can work with them to plan out the design and decoration. Payment is usually per project, and it’s encouraging.
2. Event planners
Image credit: Harpers Bazaar
Partnering with event planners is your odds-on-favorite to ensure a steady supply of gigs. So, you don’t need a big marketing budget. Most event planners are already entrenched in the system and can quickly put something on your plate.
3. Catering Services
Catering services are another solid option to explore. Most caterers want to know how to set up their buffet and other items to ensure a seamless workflow. You can create multiple floor layouts of the event space to show them ways to arrange their stuff.
How to Launch
Launch a successful event design small business idea in these six steps:
Define your target audience
Buy project management and virtual event design software
Create virtual event designs to show off your skills
Join marketplaces
Build your websites and create social media accounts
Collaborate with event planners
Market your business to build your clientele
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
This small business idea doesn’t require any special training, certification, or license.
However, professional certification and training in project management can make you a better event designer. Also, you’ll need a strong customer relationship, positive reviews, and a referral network to thrive in this space.
You might not need special licenses to run the business from home.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the businesses in this field are:
Encore Event Design
Mindy Rice Design
17. Extended Reality Designer
Extended Reality (XR) is the catch-all term for all immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR).
Mordor Intelligence predicts the XR market valued at $26.05 billion in 2020, will grow at a staggering CAGR of 62.7% between 2021 and 2026 to reach $463.7 billion. A career as an XR designer can bring a lot to the table.
Earning potential: $106,097 average salary per year.
Top marketplaces: Unity Asset Store, Unreal Engine, Oculus Rift Store.
Estimated start cost: $62 to $23,200.
Target Audience and Value
Who is your target audience in this space? First, let’s examine the top two and what you can gain from them.
1. XR Developers
Image credit: The Academy of International Extended Reality
You can have a lucrative career as an XR designer, working with extended reality developers to create cutting-edge XR applications for forward-thinking businesses.
While designers focus on figuring out the “whys” and ‘what’s” of the projects, developers’ interests rely on transforming them into a reality.
Typical XR designers earn around $106,000 annually. The more experienced hands go home with over $215,000 each year. So you’re getting in early on an industry poised for rapid growth.
2. Marketplace
Selling your XR assets on specialized marketplaces like Unity Asset Store, Unreal Engine, and Oculus Rift store lets you access a ready market, minimizing the efforts you need to put in to build your clientele.
You can also list on Upwork to diversify your income. For example, XR designers on the marketplace earn $20 to $85 per hour. Some designers have earned over $500,000 selling their skills on the platform.
How to Launch
These steps can help you launch this XR design small business idea:
Pick a niche
Write a business plan detailing the market opportunities you wish to exploit
Register your business if you’re renting an office space
Acquire XR hardware and software
Create your marketing plan and launch your website
Join marketplaces to sell your service
Hire and train your staff, including a social media manager and digital marketing professional
Collaborate with XR developers
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
This Extended Reality design small business idea doesn’t require any special licenses.
However, you’ll need specialized training and certifications to advance your credibility and credentials. Some of the top-rated in the industry are
Unity Certified User Program
Professional Certificate in AR/VR and 3D Graphics
Professional Certificate In Unreal Engine Foundations
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the professionals in this space are:
Jalaj S.
Or Fleisher
18. Photographer and Photo Editor
The photography business is competitive, and you can build a sustainable career, even while working from home, with the right skills.
The future outlook for the industry looks promising.
Analysts expect the global market size to reach $44.07 billion in 2025 from $32.92 billion in 2020, meaning, in three years, the global photography business value will be more than half the Serbian GDP, a country of over seven million people.
Earning potential: $29,230 to $109,760 per year (the average base annual salary is $60,298)
Top marketplaces: Fiverr, Upwork, Pixabay, Shutterstock, Getty Image, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $10,000 to $15,000.
Target Audience and Value
You can work with these people as a photographer and photo editor:
1. Event Planners
Image credit: Expert Photography
Event planners can guarantee you steady gigs. Working with them means you don’t have to worry about prospecting, writing proposals, and closing clients.
Some professional photographers charge between $75 and $300 per image, while experienced ones may earn up to $1,000.
2. Marketplace
Marketplaces like Fiverr and Upwork are other excellent options for beginners. For example, photo editors on Upwork take home about $20 to $100 per hour; some have earned over $250,000 since joining the platform.
3. Commercial Photography
Image credit: Expert Photography
Commercial photography is one of the most lucrative options in this field. The professionals here earn between $800 to $5,000 per day. The licensing fees often start from $250 and may get as high as $10,000.
4. Stock Photography
You can start a stock photography website or join already established stock photo websites like Shutterstock to sell your photos. Monthly subscriptions on Shutterstock cost between $49 to $479. The platform has paid over $1 billion to contributors in the last 15 years.
How to Launch
Launch your photography and photo editing business in these steps:
Find your niche and target market
Pick a nice location if you wish to run a brick-and-mortar business
Register your business to legalize it
Open a business bank account and set up accounting for the business
Check with local authorities for the necessary permit
Get photo editing business insurance
Purchase photography equipment, gear, and photo editing software
Create a unique brand identity for the business
Develop your business website and add your business to social media
Build your portfolio
Join marketplaces
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
This business model doesn’t require special training, licenses, or certifications.
However, investing in professional courses can help you become better at what you do. Online courses are a great place to start. For example, you can check Udemy and Coursera for top-rated photography courses.
When creating a website for your business, consider taking marketing and customer relationship courses to improve your client acquisition skills.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the businesses for your inspiration are:
Seatown Photo
James Maher Photography
19. Sell Coloring Books
A coloring book is one containing line art for coloring with the crayon. It’s a healthy way to relieve stress, calm the brain and help the body relax.
The adult coloring books market peaked between 2014 and 2017. It sold over 12 million books in 2015, up from one million copies the previous year.
Although on a decline today, exploring options in this field can be lucrative.
Earning potential: $10,000 to $40,000 monthly
Top marketplaces: Amazon, Lulu, Etsy, and self-hosted options.
Estimated start cost: $200 to $1,200 for a good computer
Target Audience and Value
Create and sell coloring books online. You can begin with some of these marketplaces:
1. Children’s Coloring Books
Children’s coloring books are popular on Amazon. A quick search shows over 80,000 results—the top-rated books on the marketplace cost between $5.99 and $12.
2. Adult Coloring Books
Lulu is an online self-publishing book company. Creating and selling coloring books on the platform lets you reach over one million monthly visitors. They also handle inventory and fulfillment. A paperback coloring book on Lulu sells for up to $16.
3. Teenagers
Teenagers use coloring books, and you can target teen themes that attract that audience. These books typically cost $8 to $38. You can even publish digital versions of these coloring books.
4. Teach People to Create and Sell Coloring Books
If you’ve found success creating and selling coloring books, you can teach others how to do it. Typically, these courses cost $14 and $50 and can attract over 5,000 students.
How to Launch
Follow these steps to start selling coloring books:
Pick a niche
Write and design your book
Decide on whether to self-publish or use publishing companies
Format and edit your book
Design the cover art or outsource to freelancers
Sort the copyright and ISBN
Set the pricing
Upload and sell your book
Promote your coloring books on social media
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Selling coloring books doesn’t require any special training or certification. You don’t also need special licenses to run this business.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the professionals in this field are:
Michelle Lawrence
Karen Sue Chen
20. Products and eCommerce Packaging Designer
Product packaging designers develop eye-catching labels and product packages that meet safety and packaging regulations. In addition, they often work closely with the marketing team to create designs that reinforce the brand’s messaging.
Analysts expect the market size of packaging design services to reach nearly $32 billion in 2030, up from $21.9 billion.
Earning potential: $37,000 to $80,000 annual base salary (the average salary for packaging designers in the U.S. is $51,000 yearly)
Top marketplaces: Fiverr, Upwork, 99Designs, and self-hosted options.
Estimated start cost: $62 to $23,259.
Target Audience and Value
Getting gigs is the most challenging aspect of this business. Some sources you might want to explore are:
1. Brick-and-Mortar Retail outlets
Image credit: Johns Byrne
Approach and pitch your packaging designs to nearby brick-and-mortar stores. Also, run paid adverts to reach more businesses and direct them to your website to schedule a discovery call—a typical packing designer charges between $80 to $100 per hour.
2. eCommerce Stores
Image credit: PakFactory Blog
Many eCommerce stores fulfill their orders. Work with them to design custom packaging to ship their orders. You can reach them online via paid and organic promotions.
The $80 to $100 hourly rate is the competitive fee for designers in this niche.
3. Marketplaces
Product packaging designers on Upwork take between $20 to $100 per hour. Also, pro-verified designers on Fiverr earn $500 to $1,000 per project. So, there is so much money to make from this channel.
How to Launch
Start your product packaging design business in these simple steps:
Study the different product packaging needs to understand your audience’s needs.
Select a niche for your business.
Build your portfolio.
Set your price.
Determine your positioning for differentiation.
Establish your brand identity.
Join marketplaces.
Create a website and join social media platform.
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
This business idea doesn’t require any special certification and training to start. However, obtaining packing training, licenses, and certificates can set you apart from competitors.
So consider these options:
Certified Packaging Professional (CPP)
Certificate of Packaging Science (CPS)
Certificate of Mastery in Packaging Management (CMPM)
Also, check with local authorities for necessary licenses.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some businesses and professionals in this space are:
Johns Byrne
Paul Virian
21. Publish Books and eBooks
Publishing books and eBooks is an excellent way to monetize your design skills.
A career as an author is financially rewarding, and the future also looks promising. A report by Technavio shows that the electronic books market will grow by $6.93 billion between 2020 and 2030.
Also, published books don’t have recurrent expenditures. So you have nothing to lose exploring your options in this field as a designer.
Earning potential: 70% on every book sold on Amazon Kindle
Top marketplaces: Amazon, Lulu, Apple Books, Kobo, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $0 to $4,000.
Target Audience and Value
You can write books based on your transferable skills, case studies, or the latest trends. Some of the platforms to self-publish your work are:
1. Amazon
Amazon receives over two billion monthly visits, making it the biggest platform to self-publish books and eBooks. Most books on the marketplace are available at $2 to $30. So, some authors earn between $5,000 and $8,000 each month.
2. Apple Books
Self-publishing on Apple Books lets you target a wide range of Apple device users, including CarPlay and Apple Watch. Apple has sold over two billion iOS devices, and over 100 million people use Macs worldwide. So the Apple Book brings so much to the table.
3. Online bookstore
You can sell through your website if you drive enough traffic to the online store and fulfill your orders. Your online store allows you to set your price, control your messaging, target your ideal audience and manage your customer list.
How to Launch
Follow these steps to turn this small business idea into a reality:
Pick a niche
Choose a topic and write your book or eBook
Edit your book or hire a professional editor
Design your book cover or outsource
Format the book or hire a freelancer
Choose a self-publishing platform and upload your book
Create an online community for your books business
Hire a social media manager and digital marketing services to promote your books
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You don’t need special training or certifications to start a book or eBook publishing business. However, getting and flaunting them can boost your credibility and show off your expertise. Also, advanced book publishing and formatting courses can help you create better-looking and attractive books.
You can find and take these courses on Udemy, Coursera, and Alison.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some designers in this space are:
Debbie Millman
Ellen Shapiro
22. Printing Press
The printing business is financially rewarding. About 25,000 U.S. companies are into commercial printing. They generate nearly $900 billion in revenue annually, more than the Saudi Arabian GDP and almost half that of Italy—the EU’s third-largest economy.
Earning potential: $65,000 for operators to $100,000 a year.
Top marketplaces: Yelp, Craigslist, Nextdoor, and Yellow Pages.
Estimated start cost: Industry leaders reported spending $146,000 to $400,000.
Target Audience and Value
Set up your printing press to target these audiences:
1. Businesses
BluSky ETO
The global commercial printing market is lucrative and has impressive long-term growth potential. You can have a slice of the pie by providing printing services to businesses like marketing collateral, catalogs, magazines, product labels, and packaging.
The U.S. has over 10 million companies, so you always have options.
2. Political and Social Campaigns
Image credit: ABC News
Thousands of political and social campaigns happen in the U.S. yearly, making campaign posters and signage printing a thriving business.
The 2022 market size for printed signage alone is $33.9 billion, and analysts expect the number to grow at a CAGR of 2.8% to reach $40.08 billion in 2028.
3. Authors
The number of books published yearly in the U.S ranges from 500,000 to one million, excluding self-published authors. In 2021, the country sold over 826 million physical books, that’s nearly three books per citizen on average. So you can earn big printing books.
How to Launch
Launch your printing shop in ten steps:
Define your target market and develop your business model
Rent office space in a nice location
Register your business to make a legal entity
Open a business bank account and set up accounting for the business
Check with local authorities for the necessary permits and licenses
Secure a business insurance
Purchase and set up the equipment you need for the print shop
Create a logo for a unique brand identity
Develop your business website and join social media platforms
Develop your marketing plan and run promotions
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
A printing press doesn’t require any special training and certification to start.
However, you should comply with OSHA requirements and regulations. Also, check with the local authorities to learn other necessary environmental, health, and safety requirements.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the businesses in this space are:
RRD Printing
Taylor Printing Solutions
23. Website Design Services
The 2022 total number of web developer and digital interface designer jobs in the U.S. is around 200,000.
However, Statista believes the number will reach 229,000 in 2032, while the total number of web developers and designers will grow to 205,000, so there’ll be enough jobs to go around.
Earning potential: $3,000 to over $75,000 per project.
Top marketplaces: Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer.com, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $62 to $36,061.
Target Audience and Value
Model your small business web development idea around these markets to have a home run.
1. Local Businesses
Image credit: Unsplash
Small businesses and eCommerce stores drive the growing demand for business websites. A web development agency’s custom services cost between $15,000 and $30,000. But more complex site design projects can go as high as $75,000.
2. Charities
Image credit: Unsplash
Charities are another excellent option for web designers. Most of them need simple websites. So you’ll be looking at making $2,000 to $5,000 per project as a freelancer. And you can command up to $30,000 if you’re an agency.
3. Marketplaces
Verified professional web designers on Fiverr walk away with $100 to $5,000 after each project. They priced some of their premium packages up to $12,000.
Web designers on Upwork charge between $25 and $150 per hour for their services.
How to Launch
Follow these steps to start a web design agency:
Define your target market
Rent an office space if you wish to run an out-home agency
Register your business to make it a legal entity
Secure a business insurance
Choose a business name and create a unique logo
Develop your business website and set up social media accounts
Build your portfolios
Create a marketing plan and run promotions
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
Once you have the requisite skills, you don’t need special training or certification to launch a web design service. However, enrolling in project management certification courses can help you seamlessly manage your workflow and customer expectations.
Other necessary certifications are:
User experience and usability courses to build sites with frictionless navigation
Search Engine Optimization certifications for search-friendly designs
Conversion rate optimization courses to create high-converting websites
Graphic and 3D animations to create stunning graphics
Example of Businesses in this Space
Check out these businesses to see what other people are doing in this space:
MWD Web Design Inc.
Colton J.
24. Graphic Design Academy
A graphic design academy might cost you an arm and a leg, but it’s lucrative, as most soft skill training centers.
Data shows that the global soft skill training market reached over $24 billion in 2020, and market analysts believe the number will grow by a CAGR of 12.3% between 2022 and 2027 to reach $47.2 billion in 2027.
Besides the financial rewards, a career as an instructor can be fulfilling. You should consider this career path if you have a passion for teaching or other transferable skills to share with others.
Earning potential: $39,000 to $93,000 yearly total pay (average salary is $56,438 per year)
Top marketplaces: Yelp
Estimated start cost: $14,491 average startup cost for skills training center
Target Audience and Value
Some of the target audiences for this business idea are:
1. Design Teams
Image Credit: Medium
Approach nearby businesses and show them how your training program can help advance the skills of their design team and save the company money. Then, negotiate your pay based on the value you are bringing to the table and what you think the business can afford.
2. College Students
Image Credit: Ms. Magazine
College students are excellent targets for graphic design training skills. Reach those that are interested in acquiring graphic design skills with paid ads.
You can run foundational, undergraduate, and postgraduate programs to cater to all categories of students. For example, some training schools charge up to $40,000 for postgraduate graphic design degree programs.
3. Graphic Designers
Professional graphic designers are always looking for ways to advance their design skills. You can target this segment with professional certification programs or bootcamps. You might also partner with reputable certifying bodies like Adobe to offer their certification programs.
How to Launch
Follow these steps to launch your academy:
Develop your training programs and modules
Set your training fees and payment plans
Rent a training center in a good location
Register your academy
Secure the appropriate licenses and insurance policy
Design your training center to set the right ambiance
Create a logo for the business
Design a website with online learning features to cater to out-of-location students
Set up your social media presence
Develop your marketing plan
Hire and train your staff
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You’ll need a license to run a degree-awarding training center.
Also, it would help if you had more than transferable graphic design skills as an instructor. Your students expect you to have professional certifications and specialized training from recognized bodies.
Some top options are:
Adobe Certified Associate
Graphic and Digital Design Certificate (Parsons School of Design)
Udemy or Coursera professional graphic design and animation courses
Master’s degree in graphic design
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some graphic design training centers are:
The New School
Certiport
25. YouTuber
YouTube is not just a video-sharing platform. It’s also the second-largest search engine after Google. Over 2.6 billion people use the platform once a month. They spend about one billion hours daily watching five billion videos.
A career as a YouTuber is financially rewarding but never a walk in the park.
Identifying your target audience and creating content that addresses their pain point is the most straightforward to succeed in this space.
Earning potential: $80 to over $55,000 monthly.
Top marketplaces: YouTube.
Estimated start cost: $150 to $1,100.
Target Audience and Value
You can target prospective graphic designers or designers with your video. Some ways you can monetize your YouTube content are:
1. YouTube Ads
Joining the YouTube partner program is the most popular option for monetizing YouTube videos through YouTube ads.
However, to qualify, you’ll need to rake in at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 video watch hours in the past year. Then, you can earn between $2 to $12 per 1,000 views.
2. Sell Merchandise or Courses
Another way to monetize YouTube videos is by selling merchandise. If you don’t have any physical product, you can promote your design courses before or after your YouTube videos and drop the purchase link in the video description.
3. Sponsored Videos
Image credit: Fran Patrillo.
Influencer marketing is reimagining how brands connect with their customers. YouTube is the second most popular platform for influencer marketing. Join the train if you have a large and engaged following.
Several brands can pay you $500 to $10,000 to recommend their products. Some may even pay up to six figures for a YouTube campaign if they are sure of the results.
How to Launch
Follow these steps to launch a career as a YouTuber:
Understand your audience and find your niche
Create a YouTube channel and brand yourself
Decide on the monetization strategy
Invest in good camera and gear
Acquire video editing skills and video editing software if you don’t want to outsource
Develop your content calendar
Create your first video and upload
Optimize your video for search engines
Run YouTube to promote your videos
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You don’t need special training, certification, or licenses to become a YouTuber.
However, taking video editing courses can save you a lot of money. Also, if your business model centers on teaching your audience design skills, you should acquire professional certifications in the field to advance your credibility.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the designs YouTubers making a wave in the industry are:
4 The Creatives
Graphic Island
26. Newspaper, Magazine, and Catalog Design Agency
The global digital newspaper and magazine market, valued at $34.2 billion in 2021, will grow at a CAGR of 4.2% between 2022 and 2028 to reach $45.6 billion. The industry looks promising. You can register your agency and run it from the comfort of your home.
Earning potential: $35,000 to $67,000 base salary per year (the average is 48,289 yearly)
Top marketplaces: Fiverr, Upwork, Legit, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $2,300 to $5,200
Target Audience and Value
Some of the target audiences for this business are:
1. Newspaper and Magazine Companies
Image credit: Envato
Partner with newspaper and magazine companies. Offer to handle their designs to save them the cost of maintaining a full-time in-house team. Working with them can guarantee you a steady supply of jobs. Negotiate your pay per page or project.
Some magazine designers charge $50 to $90 per page.
2. Marketplaces
Join marketplaces like Fiverr and Upwork to build your client base and portfolio incrementally. You can earn between $10 to $55 by selling your service on Fiverr. Some designers on Upwork charge about $30 and up to $750 per project.
Catalog designers on the platform earn between $20 and $100 per hour.
3. eCommerce and Retail Businesses
eCommerce brands and retail businesses are your largest audience. Most of them use product catalogs and magazines to spread their marketing messages.
You can approach them for custom designs or target them with customizable templates on your websites or third-party template marketplaces like Envato or Creative Market.
How to Launch
Follow these steps to launch this business at home:
Identify your target market
Choose a name and register the business
Get business insurance
Buy design software
Create a website and set up social media accounts
Hire and build your remote team
Design newspaper, catalog, and magazine templates to build your portfolio
Join marketplaces
Promote your business
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
You don’t need special training, certification, or licenses to run this business model. However, you can find relevant professional courses to advance your skills.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the professionals in this field are:
Corey F.
Luis L
27. Online Drawings and Handcrafts Sales
You can build a sustainable career selling custom drawings and handcrafts art collectors. Statista projected that the global arts and crafts market will grow from $35 billion in 2017 to $50.9 billion in 2024.
Besides the tempting financial rewards, the business lets you express yourself and bring your imagination to life.
Earning potential: $12.5 to $49.84 per hour (the average hourly rate is $20.97)
Top marketplaces: Etsy, Shopify, Fiverr, and self-hosted options
Estimated start cost: $200 to $1,200 for a personal computer and software.
Target Audience and Value
Build your business around art lovers. It helps you lower acquisition costs and maintains a high conversion rate. Some small business ideas in this field are:
1. Offer Custom Art
Image credit: Yasmeen A
You can make a lot of money creating custom art for clients. Since they’re tailor-made and provide personal significance and uniqueness, most collectors will be okay with paying more to have them on their walls.
Commissioned paintings from experienced artists cost $100 to $10,000.
2. Start Online Craft Store
Image credit: The Indian Express
An online store for your craft business lets you transform your passion and creativity into a business. Moreover, it’s lucrative so that you can earn a good living.
Candle making, jewelry, and headbands are some craft business ideas for your inspiration. Others include embroidery, home decor, sculpture, and decorative pillows.
Also, sell your crafts on Amazon, Etsy, and other marketplaces to reach more people.
3. Sell Your Drawing Online
Image credit: Artmajeur
Create stunning hand-drawn images and sell them on art marketplaces like Shutterstock and iStock. Also, sell on your website to cater to non-marketplace users.
Additionally, license your art to businesses for commercial use. It’s where the money is. You can make between $100 and $10,000 from licensing fees.
How to Launch
Follow these simple steps to launch your online drawing and handcrafting small business ideas:
Identify the gap in the market—decide what you’re going to sell
Define your target audience and pick a niche
Name and register your business
Create a logo and brand your business
Design your website and set up your social media
Create sales pages and join marketplaces
Plan your supply chain and order fulfillment
Make your crafts or sample drawings
Promote your business
Required Training, Certifications, or Licenses?
This business model doesn’t require special training, certification, or licenses. However, check with local authorities to learn what applies in your area.
Example of Businesses in this Space
Some of the design businesses making it big in this space are:
Cedar and Sail
Artisaire
How to Choose the Best Business Ideas as a Designer
We have explored some of the best small business ideas for designers. When you start your journey, choose options that match your passion and career objectives.
And remember to use this resource to start on the right footing.
Featured image via Unsplash.
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