Graphic Design as a Subscription Model
TheFutur on youtube(Business advice for Creatives/Designers is the gist) recently had a guest on who is the guy behind DesignJoy.co (https://youtu.be/8vwgUwgH2Js), and he is running a successful one man design agency, where clients sign up for a monthly fee with unlimited designs (within the limits of one project at a time, return times between 1-3 days). Currently his monthly fee is a bit more than $5000, and he said he had roughly 25 clients, he started lower but raised his rates multiple times when he couldn't scale more clients.
I think I could run the same kind of operation, I've got the skills from when I used to be a graphic designer, maybe limit myself to only 10-20 clients to start, charge maybe only $300-500 a month and raise rates as I get too busy. Maybe I will.
I don't see any reason other agencies couldn't do the same, or start the same, or even that it has to be limited to Design. I could see personal trainers creating a similar model, or even developers or anything else that depends more on the value of what is created rather than the amount of time or effort was used in it's creation.
Anyway, I thought it was an idea worth sharing, and I wanted to see the thoughts of the indiehacker community as well.
Whatever new thing we think of doing, there will always be some competition in one way or another. But that should not stop us from doing what we want to do or build.
However I want to add one more usecase for you which I personally have dealt with.
Here's the case.
I am a developer who can design things using html css but I am not expert in high fidelity design created using figma or xd or sketch or illustrator.
Imagine a case where I want to hire a graphics designer for 10 designs each month for my social media profile. In that case, I don't think this subscription model will work out for me unless there is a low budget model which provides 10 designs per month with multiple iterations becuase not everybody wants unlimited designs or iterations.
So if you are starting out, I would urge you to consider any low budget plan as well to make your new business more diverse.
Hey, Michael. I was also shocked when I heard his story and especially his success points on this path. But honestly, I connect it to the chance, almost 80%. Because having clients willing to pay +5k$ for a certain amount of work sounds nonsense in today's world. Let me explain it like that:
Providing design service based on only online meetings to get tasks is called "remote working". Today remote graphic designers could get approx 2-5k$ monthly; which this workstyle includes a couple of daily meetings for tasks, department meetings to talk strategies, monthly meetings and etc.
But if you are working on a project based on briefs, it is called "freelancing," as we know. And as a freelancer, I don't know anybody who can get 5k from just one company monthly.
So, could anybody explain to me why SAAS based design service model would be successful in this environment where designers(I mean quite good ones) can provide cheaper services? I can only say "chance" as an answer.
Some of the fundamentals probably don't change like finding a niche to get some early traction. I've worked across design and dev and in both instances those first few clients were harder to get when we were trying to service all comers and when you have a good niche it tends to be easier to increase your pricing. You're probably on top of this already but just dropping the thought.
Just like he said in the video, he aims to combine the benefits of an agency and a freelancer while removing the negatives such as meetings, contracts, and inconsistency. That's a great solution!
Technically, anyone who does a freelance job can change it to a subscription base.
He also mentioned that web developers, for example, will find it harder to do such a thing, but I personally spoke to someone who offers $150/mo to local businesses he finds on Yelp, and he had 89 paying clients at the time I spoke with him which was about 6 months ago.
That’s really cool but how about finding clients? Would you run ads? How about targeting those clients?
Hi Michael, I think you could, just give it a shot.
I learned a lot from Brett at DesignJoy; I followed him on Twitter and watched his youtube. It gave me the confidence to start my own design (DesignBear) and development (CodeSquad) since I have backgrounds in both areas. I don't have any clients yet, I have launched the website and payment system.
I think the key here is to market yourself with this model instead of the traditional freelancing approach. You won't be competing with big names or established players, but you can find your own niche and build up your marketing and relationships. In the beginning, 90% of the work will be focused on marketing and targeting your audience. Sure, there are a lot of new players in the market, but that's the same case with traditional freelancing. So go start it, man!
There are a lot of 'unlimited requests' services out there. Unlimited design, unlimited copywriting, unlimited wordpress/webflow maintenance. See: https://www.failory.com/blog/unlimited-design-services
How would you position yourself against the competitors out there?
I actually tried to start something similar myself but failed to gain traction; guess there was too much competition out there :)