The prevalence of the internet in our modern era has given so many opportunities for everyone to make some money. You don’t have to be tied to your only workplace anymore, as the internet offers so many places for you to make extra money, such as through selling your own fonts. Thanks to the internet, people can easily find side gigs that can boost their income more than ever before.
Selling Fonts on the Internet
However, this can only be done if you know where to go and what to do! Creating fonts by yourself isn’t going to be enough—you need to know where to sell them and to whom you should promote your fonts. Even more, luck definitely plays a role in determining your success in selling your own fonts on the internet.
Even more, selling fonts on the internet requires some persistence, too. While anything requires a bit degree of luck to make them work, without persistence, you won’t get your goals anywhere.
So, how can you make money from selling your own fonts? Read more below!
How to Do It
Start the Career Professionally
For graphic designers out there (which might include you), becoming a type designer is a promising field for building their careers. Not only this field of career will hone your designing skills, but it can also expand your portfolio and give you access to opportunities you’ve never known before.
However, much like any other career, you need to have some things to be actually good at what you’re doing. At least you need the following if you want to start this professional career:
- Have a basic education in graphic design (to make your work in this career way easier)
- Have a genuine liking for letterforms and calligraphy forms in general
- Highly interested in the smallest details of all fonts
- Won’t get tired of learning the history of design (and types) to know the origins
- Capable of using graphic design software for your work
- Can find inspiration from pretty much anything for your work
- Able to work by yourself before you work with the others
- Ready to invest time and money to actually succeed in making money from this career
- Have the guts to compete against millions of other designers
By having all of these qualities, then it’s relatively safe to say that you’re set for selling your own fonts in this industry. But we’re just starting now.
Educate Yourselves!
No, we’re not being demeaning here by telling you to educate yourself! As much as learning how to design fonts by yourself is great, getting some additional education and know-how to do it won’t definitely hurt at all.
There are two ways to educate yourself in the world of font design, such as through formal and non-formal education. The former can usually be done by enrolling as art students in reputable universities or art academies that specialize in font design. Going to these respectable institutions will solidify your educational background’s reputation as a font designer.
However, it doesn’t mean that the latter option is worse than the former one. Learning non-formally can be done by using websites that specialize in font design. Since they’re curated by professionals, you should do your best to heed their explanation and experience in this field of career.
Sell the Fonts Independently
Now that the educational part’s over, how can you make money by selling your fonts? There are several ways to do it; the first one is by selling them yourself.
To do this method successfully, you need to properly invest time, money, and patience as you’re working as an independent seller. Combined with having a good marketing plan, you can get full revenue from selling your own fonts and be able to build a high amount of trust with loyal customers.
Sell Them Through Resellers
If you don’t have time to build your business empire, consider asking for help from resellers to sell your fonts. In fact, by doing this method, you can focus on designing new fonts while the resellers focus on marketing your fonts.
Moreover, having access to new market segments is a major benefit of using resellers to sell your fonts. Since they have so many channels, who knows what kind of customers will flock to buy your fonts?
However, be careful in choosing the right kind of resellers for your fonts! Resellers with dubious reputations won’t shy away from reaping some extra profit from the agreed commission fee if you’re not being careful and assertive on your fonts.
Because of that, do careful research on the resellers that you’re going to cooperate with to ensure that the commission fee and your final revenue are reasonably decided and earned.
Use Foundries
If not using resellers, then you can ask for help from foundries for selling your own fonts. What is a foundry? In the world of typography, a foundry is an organization that regularly publishes new fonts and designs typefaces.
Almost like the resellers, the foundries will take care of your fonts’ marketing and publication to the customers while you focus on making new fonts. However, there is a catch in asking for help from the foundries to market your fonts.
While you still get the revenue from the fonts’ purchase, you need to pay the commission fee to the foundries as well since they do all the marketing kinds of stuff and whatnot.
The bright side is you can have the opportunity to gain some passive income anytime your fonts are purchased by the customers. By being exposed to more and more people, you can start selling your own fonts to customers even beyond your original market target.
Conclusion
By doing all of the above, selling your own fonts seems genuinely possible now. While any of the methods above are perfectly valid, you need to pick the one that suits your business plan the most. Interested in other articles about the world of fonts? Visit our blog right now here!