Table of Contents
- Most UX designers are broke.
- How to make 6-figures as a solo UX designer:
- 1. Find an idea
- 2. Build your personal brand
- 3. Create multiple revenue streams
- 🔹 Digital products (scale without time)
- 🔹 1:1 Coaching/consulting (high-value, personal touch)
- 🔹 Subscription communities (recurring revenue)
- 🔹 Brand partnerships/sponsorships (leverage your audience)
- 🔹 Client work (the foundation)
- 4. Provide value
- Master the foundation trio (the unsexy success secrets)
- 1. Consistency
- 2. Patience
- 3. Taking action despite fear
- The mindset shifts that change everything
- 1. From employee to entrepreneur:
- 2. From perfectionist to iterationist:
- 3. From competition to collaboration:
- Common pitfalls (learn from others' mistakes)
- 1. Undercharging:
- 2. Overcomplicating:
- 3. Inconsistent messaging:
- 4. Ignoring business basics:
- Want to make six figures as a UX designer?
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Most UX designers are broke.
You know the type: talented, passionate, great portfolios. They can design beautiful interfaces but can't design a business that pays the bills. They're stuck refreshing Upwork, charging $50/hour, and wondering why their design degree didn't come with a "how to make money" manual.
I've been there. Hell, most designers have been there.
Meanwhile, some designers are quietly building six-figure solo practices. Same skills, same tools, completely different outcomes.
What's the difference? It's not talent or luck. It's a systematic approach to the business side of design, something most designers completely ignore.
Ready to stop being the talented designer who's always broke?
I broke it down into 4 steps that turned everything around (after 7 failed businesses and finally making it work on the 8th)
Read more below ↓
How to make 6-figures as a solo UX designer:
1. Find an idea
Most designers fail as solos because they try to be everything to everyone.
The magic happens when four things crash into each other like a perfectly timed four-way intersection:
- Your interests (what gets you excited at 2 AM)
- Your skills (what you're genuinely good at)
- Your experience (what you've learned the hard way)
- Market needs (what people will actually pay for)
Actionable exercise: Create a simple 2x2 matrix. On one axis: "I'm passionate about this" to "I hate this." On the other: "Market pays well for this" to "Market doesn't care." Only pursue ideas in the top-right quadrant.
Note: You'll probably fail 3-7 times before you find this intersection. That's not a bug, it's a feature. Each failure teaches you what doesn't work, bringing you closer to what does.
Example: Take Chris Do from The Futur. He didn't just wake up and decide to teach design. He spent 20+ years running a design agency, failed at multiple business models, then realized designers were starving for business education. His sweet spot? Teaching creatives how to charge what they're worth.
Pro tip: Map out your failures. Seriously. Write down every business idea that flopped, every client who made you want to quit, every project that drained your soul. Look for patterns. Your failures are breadcrumbs leading to your sweet spot.
2. Build your personal brand
People don't buy from businesses. They buy from people they trust.
Your personal brand isn't about having a slick logo or professional headshots (though those don't hurt). It's about becoming the person people think of when they have a specific problem.
Example: Look at Julie Zhuo (VP of Product Design at Meta). She built her brand by sharing honest, vulnerable stories about design leadership failures. Her book "The Making of a Manager" wasn't just content, it was her personal brand in book form.
Actionable exercise: Write down three strong opinions you have about design that most people disagree with. Turn each into a piece of content. Watch engagement skyrocket (even if some people hate it).
The mistake everyone makes: Trying to sound like everyone else in the industry. Cookie-cutter LinkedIn posts about "user empathy" and "design thinking" blend into the noise.
What actually works:
- Share your real opinions (even controversial ones)
- Be consistently valuable (solve actual problems your audience faces)
- Document your learning process (show the messy middle, not just the polished results)
Pro tip: Pick one platform and own it completely before spreading yourself thin. Better to be known on one platform than invisible on five.
👉 The 6-Step Framework to Build Your UX Design Personal Brand:
3. Create multiple revenue streams
Relying on one income source as a solo designer is like playing Russian roulette with your rent money. The most successful solo designers I know typically have 3-5 revenue streams:
🔹 Digital products (scale without time)
🔹 1:1 Coaching/consulting (high-value, personal touch)
Charge premium rates for personalized help. Design audits, career coaching, portfolio reviews. Think $200-500/hour, not $50.
🔹 Subscription communities (recurring revenue)
Build a tribe of designers who pay monthly for exclusive content, networking, and support.
🔹 Brand partnerships/sponsorships (leverage your audience)
Once you have an audience, companies will pay to reach them. Tool reviews, sponsored content, affiliate partnerships.
🔹 Client work (the foundation)
Still important, but shouldn't be your only source. Use client work to fund your other experiments.
Actionable exercise: Choose one revenue stream to focus on for the next 90 days. Set a specific target (e.g., "$2,000 in digital product sales" or "5 coaching clients at $300/session"). Ignore everything else until you hit it.
Pro tip: Start with one stream, make it profitable, then add the next. Trying to launch everything at once is a recipe for burnout and mediocrity.
👉 How To Budget With An Inconsistent Income:
4. Provide value
Most designer content sucks. It's either too vague ("embrace user empathy!") or too self-promotional ("hire me!"). Value-first content builds trust, which builds business. But what does "value" actually mean?
Real value looks like:
- Honest takes on industry trends and tools
- Actionable insights people can use immediately
- Behind-the-scenes looks at your actual process
- Problem-solving content that addresses real pain points
Actionable exercise: For the next month, post one genuinely helpful thing every day. A quick tip, a tool recommendation, a lesson learned. Track which posts get the most engagement and double down on those topics.
The secret sauce: Stop trying to impress people and start trying to help them. Impressive content gets forgotten. Helpful content gets bookmarked, shared, and remembered.
Pro tip: Follow the 80/20 rule. 80% value, 20% promotion. If you're constantly selling, people tune out. If you're constantly helping, they lean in.
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Master the foundation trio (the unsexy success secrets)
The most important parts of building a six-figure solo practice have nothing to do with design skills.
1. Consistency
Success isn't about viral posts or overnight breakthroughs. It's about showing up consistently for 1,000+ days. This is where most people quit, right before things start working.
The math is simple: 1% better every day for a year = 37x improvement. But consistency is hard when you're posting to crickets for months.
2. Patience
Building a personal brand takes 2-3 years minimum. Building a sustainable business takes 3-5 years. Anyone promising faster results is selling you something.
Case study: Seth Godin posted daily for 20+ years before becoming "an overnight success."
3. Taking action despite fear
Every successful solo designer I know was terrified when they started. Fear doesn't go away, you just get better at acting despite it.
Actionable exercise: Commit to one small action every day for 30 days. Post one design tip, send one outreach email, write one paragraph of a blog post. Track your streak and watch momentum build.
Pro tip: Set a "minimum viable consistency" goal. Maybe it's one post per week or one newsletter per month. Pick something sustainable and stick to it religiously.
The mindset shifts that change everything
1. From employee to entrepreneur:
Stop thinking in terms of hourly wages and start thinking in terms of value creation. A $5,000 strategy session isn't expensive if it saves the client $50,000.
Pro tip: Use the "10x ROI rule" for pricing. If your work will save/make a client $10,000, charge $1,000 minimum.
Create a simple ROI calculator: ask clients "What's the cost of NOT solving this problem?" Then price at 10-20% of that number.
👉 Why a Business Mindset is Essential
2. From perfectionist to iterationist:
Ship early, ship often, improve based on feedback. Your first course/product/service will suck. Launch it anyway.
Pro tip: Set a "good enough" deadline. Give yourself exactly 2 weeks to create version 1.0 of anything…template, course, service offering.
When the 2 weeks are up, launch it regardless of how "ready" it feels. You'll learn more in one week of real feedback than six months of perfectionist tweaking.
3. From competition to collaboration:
Other designers aren't your competition, they're your community. The most successful solos actively help others succeed.
Pro tip: Start a "referral circle" with 3-5 designers in adjacent niches. When you can't take a project, refer it to them. When they're overbooked, they refer to you.
Set up a simple shared Slack channel and commit to sending one referral per month to the group.
Common pitfalls (learn from others' mistakes)
1. Undercharging:
The fastest way to kill your business is charging amateur rates. If you're not occasionally losing projects because of price, you're too cheap.
Pro tip: Use the "3-quote rule." For every project, give three pricing options:
- Basic (your minimum viable price)
- Premium (2x basic)
- Deluxe (3x basic with extras).
→ Most clients pick the middle option, instantly doubling your rates. Track your win rate, if it's above 80%, you're too cheap.
2. Overcomplicating:
Simple beats complex every time. One clear offer beats five confusing ones.
Pro tip: Write your service offering on a sticky note. If it doesn't fit, it's too complicated.
Test this: can a 12-year-old explain what you do after reading your website? If not, simplify until they can.
3. Inconsistent messaging:
If you can't explain what you do in one sentence, neither can your potential clients.
Pro tip: Create your "elevator pitch formula": "I help [specific audience] achieve [specific outcome] through [specific method]."
Example: I help SaaS startups increase user activation by 40% through redesigned onboarding flows." Practice until you can say it without thinking.
4. Ignoring business basics:
You're not just a designer anymore, you're running a business. Learn basic accounting, marketing, and sales.
Pro tip: Master one business skill per quarter.
- Q1: Learn basic bookkeeping (use Wave or FreshBooks).
- Q2: Master one marketing channel (LinkedIn or email).
- Q3: Practice sales conversations (record yourself pitching).
- Q4: Systemize everything you learned.
→ Don't try to learn it all at once.
Want to make six figures as a UX designer?
Here's what nobody tells you about making six figures as a solo designer: it's simultaneously easier and harder than you think.
Easier because the path is clear. Build expertise, share value, charge appropriately, diversify income.
Harder because it requires skills they don't teach in design school: sales, marketing, business development, financial management.
The transition from employee to entrepreneur isn't just a career change, it's an identity shift.
For those who embrace the challenge, the rewards go far beyond financial. You get to work on projects you actually care about. You get to build something that's entirely yours. You get to help other designers along the way.
The tools are available. The market is there. The blueprint is proven.
The only question left is: Are you ready to bet on yourself?
Start today. Start small. Start scared.
But start.
Whenever you're ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
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4. Job Sprint Course: Stand out in an unpredictable job market by building a memorable personal brand and a killer job search strategy.
