How To Make Money From Web Design In 2025

Web design is a versatile and lucrative skill that can provide you with a long-term, full-time career or a profitable side hustle. Whether you’re a seasoned designer or a complete beginner, there are numerous ways to make money from web design.

In this post, we’ll explore ten effective ways to monetize your web design skills. From freelancing and agency work to selling templates or online courses, there’s a niche in web design for everyone. We’ll also explore the benefits of using Divi and Divi Dash to streamline your workflow and boost productivity.

Let’s dive in.

Why Become A Web Designer?

A strong online presence is no longer a luxury in today’s digital world. Businesses of all sizes, from startups to multi-national companies, rely on websites to connect with their target audience and drive growth. This incredible demand paves the way for skilled designers to embark on a fulfilling and lucrative career. Here’s why becoming a web designer is an excellent choice:

• It’s in High Demand: With the internet constantly evolving, businesses need talented web designers to keep up with the latest trends and tech.
• Be Your Boss: As a web designer, you can work remotely, set your schedule, and choose clients. With this type of flexibility, you can achieve a better work/life balance than a traditional 9-5 job.
• High Earning Potential: With the right skills, you can charge competitive service rates. Freelancing, web maintenance, and selling digital products can provide multiple income streams.
• You Can Be Creative: Web design allows you to experiment with different design styles, color palettes, and typography to create sellable designs.
• You’ll Have Marketable Skills: Web design skills are easily transferrable to other fields, such as UI/UX design, digital marketing, and app development. With this skill set, you can open up many career opportunities.

By becoming a web designer, you can give clients a website they can be proud of. It’s a rewarding career that offers personal and financial fulfillment.

10 Ways To Make Money From Web Design

Ready to turn your web design skills into a profitable career? Here are ten effective ways to make money from your talents.

1. Become A Freelancer

Freelancing offers the ultimate flexibility to work on your terms. As a freelance web designer, you can set your rates, choose your clients, and work on projects that align with your interests and skills. Before you can launch your freelance career, there are a few steps you’ll need to take.

Create A Website To Showcase Your Work

The first step is to create a strong portfolio to showcase your skills. Create a professional portfolio of your work on a platform like Behance or Dribble, or create a website to highlight your work. Platforms like WordPress make it easy to create a portfolio, thanks to an abundance of portfolio themes and plugins. Using WordPress to create a portfolio is a great place to start. WordPress is free, good web hosting is affordable (try SiteGround), and you can make your website look any way you want.

Sign Up For Freelancing Platforms

Sign up for freelance platforms once you have a good portfolio ready to share. Some popular ones include Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer, but there are many more. These platforms are highly rated and make it easy to get started. A word of caution, though. Building a successful freelance profile takes time. You’ll likely need to accept some jobs you don’t want, especially in the beginning. After all, the name of the game is feedback. Without good feedback, no one will hire you. Spend some time creating your profile and showcase the top 5-6 examples of your work, opt for quick jobs (especially at first), and be patient.

Network, Network, Network

Another crucial step in becoming a freelancer is to network with like-minded people. Attend industry events, join online communities, and connect with other designers on social media. You can also join Meetup groups in your area to engage in discussions, share your expertise, and build relationships with potential clients and peers. If you opt to make your business using WordPress, there are plenty of online communities and networking events like WordCamp to get you in front of the right people. Regardless of how you choose to do it, get yourself out there!

Market Yourself

Starting a freelance business is about more than just creating a portfolio or online profile. You’ll need to market yourself to be successful. Create social media pages like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to showcase your work, share design tips, and connect with your audience. You can also start a blog! Writing about web design and related topics with well-chosen keywords can go a long way in getting you discovered. Other marketing strategies include creating an email newsletter and optimizing your website for SEO.

2. Start A Web Design Agency

If you’re already a skilled web designer and have been working freelance for a while, you’ve likely built a client base that’s become too big to handle alone. The next logical step in that scenario is to start a web design agency. If you’re passionate about design, development, and marketing, starting a web design agency can be a fulfilling and profitable venture. That said, it takes a lot of steps to accomplish.

Build A Team

Before you can launch a web agency, you’ll need to have a good team in place. Hire talented designers who can create pixel-perfect websites. Look for people with a strong understanding of design principles, color theory, and typography. Start by evaluating people that you already know and trust. Do you have anyone in your circle that could join your team? If not, consider hiring designers and developers on a trial or contract basis from freelance platforms like Upwork. Find a couple of people with strong portfolios and offer them a one-off project to see how they perform.

Focus On Niche Markets

Instead of catering to everyone, focus on a specific niche or industry. Creating a more focused web agency can help you build your agency through word of mouth, the most effective form of advertising. What will be your focus? Determine whether you want to develop e-commerce, healthcare, real estate, or non-profit websites and go from there. By choosing to focus on a specific niche, you can gain a deeper understanding of client needs, offer specialized expertise, and allows you to target your marketing efforts.

Build Strong Relationships With Your Clients

Building strong client relationships offers more benefits than good customer service. Be responsive and transparent, and be willing to go the extra mile. Additionally, maintain honest and open communication throughout the project. Keep your clients informed about progress, deadlines, and any potential issues. Being available to your clients and offering support will foster a good relationship that could lead to new business.

Starting an agency doesn’t happen overnight, but with the right steps, you can be successful.

3. Build Websites Using Divi

Although we may seem biased, one of the best ways to make money from web design is to design websites with Divi. It’s one of the most powerful WordPress themes in the world, and for good reason. Divi provides unlimited design freedom thanks to its powerful drag-and-drop page builder – Visual Builder. You can create stunning layouts without writing a single line of code. There are over 200 design modules to choose from, including blurbs, image galleries, full-width headers, countdown timers, and more, so you can easily add beautiful interactive elements.

There are also unlimited customization options with Divi. You can tweak every design aspect, from colors and fonts to spacing and layout. Divi has a built-in color management and preset system that allows you to create global color palettes, presets to keep your design consistent, and a layout library to store your favorites. In addition to that, Divi’s Theme Builder allows you to create global templates for every section of your site, including headers, footers, posts, search pages, and archives.

Create Websites Fast With Divi Quick Sites

The benefits of Divi don’t stop with the theme. Other products in the Divi ecosystem can help you create websites fast, maintain them, and improve your workflow. Sure, you can create websites from scratch, but you can also use Divi Quick Sites to create a website quickly. You can do this in one of two ways: using a pre-made starter site or using Divi AI. Both offer the ability to quickly create a website, complete with core pages, content, Theme Builder templates, global style presets, and a menu, in a few minutes. The process involves answering questions about your business, choosing fonts and colors, and determining which pages you want to add.

Increase Productivity With Divi’s Ecosystem Of Products

Divi’s ecosystem of products will help you streamline the website creation process. Divi Cloud is a game-changer for web designers looking to boost their earnings. It allows you to store your favorite layouts in the cloud, making them easier to access for other builds. Storing and organizing layouts and design elements can significantly speed up your workflow, allowing you to take on more projects and deliver them faster.

Another Divi product, Divi Teams, allows sharing and collaborating on designs with clients. Divi Teams can keep everyone on the same page if you want to start a web agency. With Divi Teams, you can easily share all the Divi products you subscribe to – Divi, Divi Cloud, Divi AI, and more. Grant permissions to your team members, share layouts, client information, and more.

By harnessing the power of Divi and its ecosystem of products, you can speed up the design process, increase efficiency, and ultimately boost your income. Whether you’re a budding freelancer or looking to run a full-fledged agency, these tools can help you deliver high-quality websites faster, take on more clients, and charge premium rates.

Get Divi

4. Sell Website Templates & Layouts

One of the easiest ways to profit from web design is to sell pre-made templates and layouts. Selling your creations is a lucrative opportunity to reach a wide audience and generate passive income. First, you’ll need to identify what types of templates you want to sell, whether static HTML templates, WordPress templates, or something else entirely.

Choose A Niche

Start by determining who your ideal customer is. Are they small businesses, bloggers, or individuals? Focus on popular website builders like WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace for the best results. Consider specializing in a niche, like e-commerce, portfolio websites, or blogs.

Design High-Quality Templates

Once you decide on a platform, design high-quality templates that are easy to customize. You’ll also want to ensure that they are mobile-friendly (responsive), especially considering that most people use a smaller device to access the internet. When researching which templates to create, stay up-to-date on the latest web design trends.

Choose A Marketplace

You can sell templates and layouts in several places, including Theme Forest, Template Monster, or a personal website. If you are a Divi user (and you should be), you can sign up to be a creator on the Divi Marketplace. The payout in the Marketplace is higher than other vendors, paying you a hefty 70% of every layout or child theme template you create. Of course, there are some design guidelines you’ll need to follow, but as long as you’re using good UI/UX and design principles, it’s not too difficult to get in. The Divi Marketplace provides a great way to get your design in front of hundreds of thousands of people and offers the opportunity to make good money.

5. Create & Sell Courses

Creating and selling courses is another way to earn money from web design. You can easily turn your web design skills into a lucrative side hustle. You can teach a wide range of topics, from beginner-friendly HTML and CSS to advanced WordPress development and popular website builders like Wix.

Which Platform To Choose

You can use plenty of online platforms to create, market, and sell your courses, including Udemy, Skillshare, Teachable, YouTube, or your website. If you choose to create courses on your website, you can use WordPress, Divi, and a learning management system (LMS) plugin to set it all up. Creating an LMS website with Divi is pretty straightforward and will allow you to showcase your skills and get paid handsomely for it.

What Should You Teach?

As a web designer, there are plenty of course ideas to consider. You could teach a beginner web design boot camp that covers the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, and basic web structure. Alternatively, you can focus on WordPress and teach users how to build, customize, and maintain WordPress websites. If you’re a Divi whiz, you can explore the theme’s advanced features and provide a deep dive into its customization features.

Here are a few other ideas to get those creative juices flowing:

• Mastering E-Commerce: Guide learners through creating an online store with platforms like WooCommerce or Shopify.
• Web Design for Non-Designers: Provide practical tips and tools for creating professional websites without coding knowledge (Divi would be the perfect subject for this).
• Accessibility Design: Teach users how to design accessible websites for people with disabilities.
• Web Design for Small Business: Provide web design tips and strategies for DIY small business owners.
• User Experience (UX) Design: Explore user-centered design principles to create intuitive and engaging user interfaces.
• Mastering AI in Web Design: AI is one of the hottest trends in design, thanks to the plethora of tools coming onto the market. Choose a few of the well-known ones (think Framer, Wix, and Webflow) and provide insight on how to use them to create and improve designs.
• Focused Courses on Adobe Creative Suite: You could teach newbies how to use Adobe XD for mockups, Photoshop or Illustrator for creating visual assets, or Dreamweaver for old-school HTML website design.

Whatever you decide, remember to tailor your course content to your target audience and their specific needs. By offering high-quality, informative, and practical courses, you can establish yourself as a respected creator in the web design industry and generate a sustainable income.

6. Offer Web Design Maintenance Services

Maintenance is incredibly important, although it’s not the coolest way to make money from web design. Websites require constant care and attention; bad actors can exploit or even destroy them without it. By offering web design maintenance services, you can provide exceptional value to your clients and secure a steady stream of recurring income.

What Does Web Maintenance Involve?

When considering offering web maintenance services, here are a few services you can provide to your customers:

• Regular Updates: Keep the website’s content fresh and up-to-date by writing blog posts, creating a content calendar, and periodically revising all main page content.
• SEO Optimization: Provide SEO optimization by conducting keyword research, writing meta descriptions, image alt tags, short and long-tail keywords, and off-page SEO.
• Technical Support: Provide support for common technical issues or any “fires” that pop up. If you’re a Divi user, Divi VIP can help you stay on track with technical assistance in 30 minutes or less.
• Security Updates: Perform regular server-side and WordPress updates to keep bad actors from infiltrating your sites.
• Plugin & Theme Management: Keep WordPress plugins and themes up-to-date and optimized.
• Backup and Recovery: Employ a good backup plugin like Updraftplus to capture regular backups to easily restore your site if something goes wrong.

Use Divi Dash To Manage Unlimited Websites

Divi Dash is a game-changer for Divi subscribers (in case you need another reason to join the club). It’s a powerful site management tool that allows you to effortlessly manage unlimited WordPress websites, including non-Divi ones, from a single, centralized dashboard. Save valuable time by performing tasks like bulk WordPress core, plugin, and theme updates, or automate the process by creating a maintenance schedule to update them at the time of your choosing.

Divi Dash isn’t just about plugin updates; it’s a comprehensive client management tool. You can store essential client information directly within the platform, including contact details and notes. By assigning websites to specific clients, you can streamline your workflow and eliminate the need for multiple spreadsheets or notebooks to stay on track.

Divi Dash offers even more powerful features. Optimize your website’s database by effortlessly removing unnecessary post and page revisions, trashed items, and spam comments. Each website you add to Divi Dash has a dedicated dashboard, providing valuable insights into key performance metrics like WordPress, PHP, and MySQL versions, critical and static CSS information, max post site, PHP memory limit, and more. This granular level of information allows you to make informed decisions and ensure your website’s optimal performance.

7. Offer Web Hosting

Offering web hosting for your clients has several benefits. You can generate additional income from hosting fees, provide support and maintenance, and establish yourself as a one-stop shop for all things web-related. That said, it all starts with the right hosting.

Leverage Reseller Hosting

There are several types of web hosting, including cloud, VPS, and reseller hosting, that you can use to house your client’s websites. However, reseller hosting makes the most sense, especially if you want to white-label your services. The best reseller hosting providers allow you to offer hosting as if it were your brand. What does that mean, exactly? It will enable you to customize hosting plans based on the specific needs of your clients and add your branding to client areas, invoices, and more.

Recommended Hosting Providers

Several reseller hosting providers, including SiteGround and Cloudways, are great options. SiteGround offers reseller hosting plans starting at $44.99 monthly, with discounts usually available. With SiteGround, you can host unlimited websites with free business email accounts, unlimited databases, backups, a content delivery network (CDN), white-labeling, staging, and more.

Cloudways is another good reseller hosting option. It offers a more modular approach than traditional hosting, which means you can purchase what you need when you need it. You can select the amount of storage, RAM, and other resources you need without breaking the bank. As your business grows, you can easily increase those resources and never skip a beat. Some of Cloudways features include staging and cloning, excellent security, and collaboration tools for clients and your team members. Plans start around $96 a month for 160GB of storage and 5TB of bandwidth, which is good enough to house as many websites as you want.

8. Sell Brand Kits

Offer branding solutions that set your clients’ businesses apart. Create logos, eye-catching business cards, and full brand kits suited to their needs. Whether working with a small startup or a large corporation, you can provide various pricing options to fit any budget.

Leverage industry-leading tools like Adobe Illustrator, Canva, or Looka to craft high-quality designs that leave a lasting impression. You can help your clients establish a strong brand presence and attract more customers by providing a consistent brand identity.

9. Become A Web Design Consultant

If you’ve been in the web design business for a while, consider offering your services as a consultant. Freelance platforms like Upwork allow you to create consultations for 30-60 minutes where people can hire you to provide valuable guidance on:

• Web Design Best Practices: You can offer insights into effective design principles, user experience, and accessibility.
• Website Audits: Offer to conduct a thorough website audit to identify areas for improvement, such as performance, security, and SEO.
• SEO Optimization: You can help clients optimize their websites to rank higher in search engines.
• Content Creation: Advise clients about the type of content their website should focus on based on its niche.
• User Experience Design: Guide clients on enhancing website usability and user satisfaction.

Charge consulting fees based on your expertise, the project’s complexity, and the value you provide. By offering strategic advice and actionable solutions, you can position yourself as a trusted advisor to your clients.

10. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way for web designers to earn extra cash. You can leverage your expertise and audience to recommend relevant web design tools, plugins, and hosting providers for your clients and followers. As a result, you can earn commissions on sales generated through unique affiliate links.

A great way to do this is to share your experiences and honest recommendations on your blog. You can highlight the benefits of using specific products and how they can enhance client websites. Start by installing a good affiliate plugin on your website, such as Pretty Links. With Pretty Links, you can create, manage, and track custom URLs for affiliate marketing. It lets you shorten long affiliate links, brand them with your domain, and track their performance.

A passive income stream through affiliate marketing can boost your earnings without additional work, making it one of the easiest ways to make money from web design.

Unleash Your Web Design Potential & Earn A Living

Web design is a versatile field that can turn your passion into profit. Whether you prefer the flexibility of freelancing, the structure of agency work, or the passive income of selling templates, there’s a path for you.

Divi empowers you to create stunning websites, engaging online courses, and beautiful layouts. By mastering it, you can unlock new opportunities and achieve financial success.

Remember, the key to success lies in continuous learning, staying up-to-date with the latest trends, and providing exceptional customer service.