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I have a bachelor’s degree in film production, a master’s degree in graphic design, and I subscribe to some pretty expensive graphic design software every month. But do I really need any of that? The answer is no. Hey, guys, welcome back to my channel in this video. I’m going to be answering a question that I get asked all the time. Which is how can I create an online service business from anywhere? I want to be, and my suggestion is graphic design because you really don’t need a degree to do it, and you don’t need a lot of investment to get started. [MUSIC] I’m going to be telling you how all you really need. Is this really easy to use free program called Canva? I’ve already created some videos on this channel. For different ways, you can use Canva like how to make a virtual business card, a digital vision board. And how to turn your wi-fi password into a really cool QR code. But if you want to learn how to start a business as a graphic designer using Canva, that’s what I’m going to be talking about in this video and some things that you need to know. The first thing I want to address in this video is that some people say that there is an over saturation of graphic designers in the marketplace. And what I want to say is that this is kind of true, but it’s also not true because there’s so many different types of graphic designers out there, so you don’t want to just go into the marketplace and say hi, I’m a new graphic designer. I have no experience. You want to establish yourself as a graphic designer in a specific type of design, a specific type of product or service that you think you’ll be good at. Maybe you only do restaurant menus. Okay, there’s so many different things you can do, so you need to niche down your graphic design business in order to stand out in the marketplace. So the next thing we’ll talk about is that Canva is a good free graphic design tool, but it doesn’t have everything that every kind of graphic designer needs, for example. If you are an illustrator, you’re not going to be able to illustrate anything in Canva. It’s not for that. There are a lot of ways that Canva does fall short, and you will start to learn that once you start to have different ideas and go and try to execute them in Canva, and you’ll learn that you just can’t, But it does have some specific tools for specific kinds of design that I’m going to be talking about later in this video. The next thing to talk about. Is this objection? Where if your clients know that you are doing graphic design in Canada? They might think that your work is a lower quality or that they could just do it themselves and that is just so wrong. What people need to understand is that Canva is not just a template factory where you just plug in your business name and it spits you out a logo. They have tools like that, but what Canva really is is a software to do graphic design. You can do all kinds of things just from a blank canvas, not using any template at all. So when you become a graphic designer using Canva, you need to be able to communicate to your clients that what they’re paying for is not something that they could do themselves, and it’s not just you plugging in their information into a template that is not what I am suggesting that anyone does because the result is that everyone’s going to end up having the same logo designs the same menu designs and you need to be able to make something that is unique for your customers. Otherwise, they’re not getting a very good value and they literally could do it themselves, so here are some different niches. That would be really good to design in canva. I would suggest you look into resume redesigning menu, redesigning business card, designing, slideshow, design, ebook design, logo, design, flyers and posters, greeting cards, infographics. And there’s a bunch of other things that you can design in Canva, but before you decide to launch a business play around with Canva and see what kinds of products that you would be comfortable designing using that interface So Canva is a free program, but they also have a paid subscription program, which I personally subscribe to, and I do highly recommend it, and here’s why, especially if you’re going to be starting a graphic design business, you want to have all the capabilities that you can use on Canva, It’s really affordable. I think it’s only 12 a month. You’ll get so many extra features if you upgrade such as being able to upload custom fonts any font that your client needs, you’ll be able to access all of the stock photos and videos for free. You’ll be able to export as a video file. You can’t do that. In the free version, you’ll be able to export your PNG files with a transparent background which you can’t do with the free program. So if you’re going to be doing any kind of logo design, you have to be able to export the logo with a transparent background that way, the client can use their logo on any kind of background and not have the white or black behind it, so that’s really important for logos and my favorite feature by far of Canva Pro is the ability to save your designs as templates and templates have become a very profitable part of my business and passive income, So Canva has all these free templates, but I used canvas platform to create my own templates that are not available for free in the Canva marketplace and that are for a different, specific kind of purpose that doesn’t exist in the free Canva template marketplace. So I sell these templates on my website and on fiverr and people get a link to edit my template that I created on Canva, so I’m able to make passive income by selling something that I already designed and different People are able to customize it for their businesses, and I sell this to clients who can’t afford hiring me as a graphic designer directly so that they can have the file the base file and they can customize it and make it look exactly how they want it to. So if you want to add passive income into your graphic design business, then I highly recommend using Canva and creating templates. There’s also ways to create templates on other platforms, such as Photoshop and illustrator and indesign, but canvas templates are really easy for other people to edit, and that’s why I like selling templates on Canva, Plus it’s free for them to use the software rather than if I was selling a Photoshop template, then someone would have to subscribe to Photoshop in order to use the template they bought from me, so I’d have to pay for my template and paper Photoshop. When people buy my templates, they only have to pay for the template and canva is free So anyways, going back to your business, so all in all. I definitely recommend upgrading to Canva pro. If you are going to be starting a business using Canva, it’s the least you can do and pay for as a business expense, and I’m pretty sure you’re going to make more than 12 a month selling graphic design services online. I also want to talk about some things that Canva cannot do, and here are some reasons that I subscribe to other graphic design programs, such as the Adobe Creative Cloud on the Adobe Creative Cloud. I use Adobe Indesign and Adobe Illustrator, and what’s good with Adobe Indesign is its functionality for making books, for example on Canva. You can’t make every single page. Put the page number at the bottom. You have to manually go and type out every single page number, and that’s a little bit annoying versus on indesign. There’s a function where you can go and add page numbers to every page and it’s already done for you. Another thing that Canva can’t do is it can’t make PDF forms that are interactive, so that means if you want to have a checklist or a form put into your PDF document. You can’t save that into your PDF document when you use Canva, but you can do these things in Adobe Indesign and finally another feature that I really would like to have in Canva. Is that on canvas so far, they always change things up, so you never know, but when you make a slideshow, you can’t make every bullet come down one at a time. They have animation features where everything comes down in the beginning of the slide. But you can’t make it go one by one, so these are just some limitations with Canva, and I bet you, they’re going to be changing these things in the future because they always come out with new features, for example, before you couldn’t make videos in Canva, and now you can, so you really never know how they’re going to improve, so that’s why I recommend getting to know Canva now and then staying updated on any new features that they roll out as the platform gets more and more advanced so anyway, if you are looking to have an online graphic design business, I highly recommend practicing on Canva. You can definitely practice using their templates and then start making your own designs Once you get an eye for what looks good. I have a master’s degree in graphic design, which I got at a really great design institute in Italy. I think it was worth every penny, and it was a great experience, but I really just don’t need that because there are so many online courses out there where you can learn graphic design principles. You can practice it hands-on by using platforms like Canva and all in all, you can actually get started with your graphic design business tomorrow. If you wanted to, so if you happen to be interested in learning more about how to start your own graphic design online business, then just go to my website and click in the freebies tab, and then you can download some more free resources that can help you get started. Thank you for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed, and I will see you in the next one. Bye-bye wait. Wait before you go. Please hit the like button and subscribe to my channel for more videos on creative projects, business travel and living your best lifestyle. Okay, you can go now, thank you. [MUSIC].