{"id":35141,"date":"2016-06-29T05:00:56","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/?p=35141"},"modified":"2024-04-11T03:41:20","modified_gmt":"2024-04-11T10:41:20","slug":"how-to-make-a-living-designing-powerpoint-presentations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/how-to-make-a-living-designing-powerpoint-presentations","title":{"rendered":"How to Make A Living Designing Powerpoint Presentations"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this digital age, there are more ways to make money than ever before. Many of which are possible without even needing to leave the comfort of your own home. You can tutor people, create videos, sell items online, write eBooks and online content for various companies, and so on.<\/p>

However, many people are unaware of amazing monetization opportunities available to them. You might happen to be super skilled at something — like creating Microsoft PowerPoint presentations — and have no idea how much money that skill could get you, if used correctly.<\/p>

\"How<\/figure>

You could be missing out on a veritable fortune. One woman made a whopping $2 million<\/u><\/a> after setting up a company focused on selling presentations online.<\/p>

Sounds too good to be true? Of course, not everyone will become a millionaire from selling PowerPoint templates and presentations. However, you can turn your presentation skills into a serious side hustle business or a full-blown career, depending on how much time and effort you want to invest.<\/p>

In this guide, we’ll explain how it’s done.<\/p>

<\/span>How You Can Sell Presentations and Make Money Online<\/span><\/h2>
\"How<\/figure>

Before we dig into the details of the presentation sales business, let’s cover the basics. You might be wondering why any customer, brand, or business would be willing to pay for a presentation.<\/p>

After all, to designers, PowerPoints and Google Slides are generally easy to make. You might be able to craft, edit, and format slides in minutes, decorating them with graphics and incorporating images, video files, and more. To you, piecing together stylish, informative, and defined presentations is a straightforward task.<\/p>

\"How<\/figure>

Well, not everyone feels the same way. Indeed, many businesses and individuals find the complexity of presentation creation to be simply too much. A customer running their own business without dedicated IT support staff, for example, might not have the time or skill to busy themselves with presentation creation.<\/p>

At the same time, businesses of all shapes and sizes still need presentations. They use them to attract investors, demonstrate their business plans, show off new products, and more.<\/p>

So, just like how many businesses outsource video creation, marketing, and other types of service, many will also outsource presentation-related tasks, too. They’ll turn to proven and trusted creators like you to do it for them. That helps them make sales, gain customers, and sell their brands to their target audiences.<\/p>

<\/span>An Introduction to SlideShare<\/span><\/h2>
\"How<\/figure>

SlideShare<\/a> is amongst the top 100 most visited websites in the world. In addition to that, since the site is owned by LinkedIn, it receives close to 70 million visitors a month.  As a result, many marketers and businesses attempt to divert some of that traffic back to their own sites by creating SlideShare presentations or <\/span>PowerPoint templates<\/span><\/a> in order to catch the eyes of their potential audience.<\/span>
Of these presentations, the ones that are the most popular are the ones that contain very few words per slide, that are <\/span>visually appealing<\/span><\/a>, and that reside within the <\/span>content marketing<\/span><\/a> niche.  <\/span>
Furthermore, the traffic generated from a featured <\/span>SlideShare presentation<\/span><\/a> is often high quality, and thus highly sought after.<\/span>
But there’s just one problem that these marketers face – they are not designers.<\/span>
\"slideshare
^most marketers when asked a design question.<\/span><\/em><\/p>

<\/span>Calling all PowerPoint and Google Slides designers:<\/span><\/span><\/h2>
\"fancy<\/a><\/figure><\/div>
\"plain<\/a><\/figure><\/div>

Something you should know about SlideShare is that the presentations which generate the most traffic are the ones with aesthetically appealing designs (duh). The content itself is the second most important element of a strong presentation.<\/span><\/p>

In other words, people are more likely to click on content that makes use of great spacing, contrasting color schemes and stylish <\/span>font choices<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>
Something like this:<\/b>

Not this:<\/b>

This is where you come in. As a designer, transforming a dull slide like the latter is easy and comes naturally to you. It’s probably so easy that you’ve never even thought about charging people to do it.<\/p>

Well, maybe it’s time you started. <\/span><\/p>

After some research into pricing on Upwork<\/a>, a website many marketers and businesses use to hire remote workers and freelancers, I noticed that some designers charge as little as $8.00 an hour. If this pricing sounds appealing to you for any reason, just note that people on Upwork are generally charging customers a fraction of what they could be.<\/p>

\"How<\/figure>

Some agencies actually charge as much as $5000 dollars a project<\/a> (for ONE slide deck or presentation), or roughly $80 to $100 an hour on the lower end of the spectrum.<\/p>

The median hourly rate in the U.S.A.<\/a> for a freelance graphic designer is closer to $20 to $30 an hour, so even if you were to decide to spend just a few hours a week working on designing presentation templates to sell, that’s a fair amount of extra pocket change! Plus, the fees you’re able to charge will surely rise in the future as you build your portfolio, make sales, and gain trust with customers.<\/p>

<\/span>How to find a gig selling PowerPoint presentations<\/span><\/h2>
\"behance<\/a><\/figure><\/div>

This brings us to our next question: how exactly<\/em> do you find a gig designing PowerPoint templates? Although plenty of marketers write about the need<\/em> to hire a designer<\/a> for these presentations, rarely do they list where<\/em> to find great designers. Most customers will hire someone based off of a personal recommendation. Some will just go to an online brand like Upwork or Fiverr and hire the first individual that crosses their screen. Others will reference your portfolio on known sites like Behance<\/a> and Dribbble<\/a>, so your first step is definitely setting something up there if you haven’t already.<\/span><\/p>

\"How<\/figure>

Chances are if you’re just beginning and haven’t worked with many customers yet, getting a personal recommendation might not be super easy. Instead, start the process by looking at some of the presentations and project templates on SlideShare that are perhaps not the strongest in terms of design. Focus on those with weak transitions, a lack of images and video content, or unappealing, obtrusive aesthetics.<\/span><\/p>

I came across this one<\/a> in my research which I discovered had less than 2,000 views.<\/span>
\"slideshare<\/a>
<\/p>

Here is an example of a presentation that appears to be placing content above design. While the content may be helpful, the lack of styling is a little distracting and underwhelming.<\/p>

Compile a list of a few presentations that could probably use some design love and email the individuals who posted them. Let them know that you’re a freelance designer and you would love to help enhance their presentation for them. State your general hourly fee, but then let them know you are willing to do the first design for them at half the price or for free<\/a>. Get the person on your side and willing to take a risk on you.<\/p>

Most of the time, the person who delivered the presentation will provide personal details, like their Twitter account handles and business websites, so finding an email address shouldn’t be difficult.<\/p>

<\/span>Go meta with PowerPoint templates<\/span><\/h2>
\"How<\/figure>

In addition to creating or adding to your portfolio on Behance and Dribbble, you can create a presentation deck for SlideShare. That way, when you pitch your design skills to different people, you can send them an example of a template you made.<\/span>
\nPossible ideas for the SlideShare in question include:<\/span><\/p>