Top 20 Earning Web Design Websites
Hello Everyone,
I think the best inspiration to do better in anything, weather it’s your own business or life is seeing someone who has already done what you want to achieve. Today we decided to research and give a educated guess on how much our favorite web design websites earn every month. I first did a post like this back in March on another website of mine called IncomeDiary. I researched the top earning 30 blogs I read and listed them with how they made there money.
How Much Do Top Web Design Sites Make?
Below is our list of the top 20 earning web design sites. Please note that all of the earnings we have put down are an educated guess based on advertising rates, affiliate sales, members, traffic etc, and not fully confirmed by the sites themselves.
Smashing Magazine
URL: http://www.smashingmagazine.com | Monthly Earnings: $58,500
* * * * *
TutsPlus Network
URL: http://tutsplus.com | Monthly Earnings: $54,000 ($24,650 Just From BuySellAds)
* * * * *
37Signals
URL: http://37signals.com/svn/ | Monthly Earnings: $34,300
* * * * *
Freelance Switch
URL: http://freelanceswitch.com | Monthly Earnings: $13,000
* * * * *
WebDesignerWall
URL: http://www.webdesignerwall.com | Monthly Income: $12,000
* * * * *
Authentic Jobs
URL: http://authenticjobs.com | Monthly Earnings: $9,500
* * * * *
Noupe
URL: http://www.noupe.com | Monthly Earnings: $7,000
* * * * *
Abduzeedo
URL: http://abduzeedo.com | Monthly Earnings: $6,000
* * * * *
SixRevisions
URL: http://sixrevisions.com | Monthly Earnings: $6,000
* * * * *
Tutorial9
URL: http://www.tutorial9.net | Monthly Earnings: $5,000
* * * * *
Vecteezy
URL: http://www.vecteezy.com | Monthly Earnings: $4,500
* * * * *
WebDesignerDepot
URL: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com | Monthly Earnings: $4,400
* * * * *
BittBox
URL: http://www.bittbox.com | Monthly Income: $3,500
* * * * *
Smashing Apps
URL: http://www.smashingapps.com | Monthly Earnings: $3,100
* * * * *
Just Creative Design
URL: http://justcreativedesign.com | Monthly Earnings: $3,000
* * * * *
WebDesignLedger
URL: http://webdesignledger.com | Monthly Earnings: $3,000
* * * * *
CSS Remix
URL: http://cssremix.com | Monthly Earnings: $2,780
* * * * *
HongKiat
URL: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog | Monthly Earnings: $2,500
* * * * *
Spoon Graphics
URL: http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk | Monthly Income: $2,400 (Plus Web Design Inquiries)
* * * * *
Creattica
URL: http://creattica.com | Monthly Earnings: $2,300
* * * * *
How They Make Their Money
Making money online is all about testing and experimenting, no one gets it 100% right the first time they try. For example when I first started my main website, I thought the only way to monetize it was with banner advertising. What’s great about some of these websites is that they have taken the typically monetization technique which is adding advertising banners to their website and then they realized there was other ways to add value which in return they could make money. For example FreelanceSwitch has a job board with a designer director and TutsPlus offers a premium membership offer more tutorials and resources.
It is very noticeable that nearly all of the above websites use the BuySellAds service to sell their advertising spaces. BuySellAds basically make it hassle free for website owners to sell advertising, they handle everything including finding the advertise, payments and customer service.
PS. Please remember that SOME of these numbers are just educated guesses and make not be 100% accurate.
PPS. If you have any websites to add to the list, or have a more accurate number then please comment below.
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JohnONolan (3 years ago)
Not convinced on the accuracy of all of those, but still an impressive list!
damu (6 months ago)
me too not convinced!!! It says, it’s just a guess based on different factors though.
Henry (3 years ago)
I would love to see an interview on the process of how Vitaly made Smashingmagazine, what it has become today.
Michael (3 years ago)
Hello Henry,
So would I, Vitaly did confirm over a year ago to do a interview and after waiting for a year he emailed me saying he could do it.
Michael
Paul (3 years ago)
Interesting, though I believe some of the figures are on the low side. Really should make more effort myself on my own websites. I did see you flitting about Twitter for info. Another decent little article by you all the same.
Matt Mickiewicz (3 years ago)
Tutorial9 is for sale on Flippa and lists its revenue as $5000/month, so great job on the estimate:
http://flippa.com/auctions/70473/Tutorial9-net—Top-Site-in-Niche-Looking-for-Suitable-New-Owner
Bidding is currently at $46,000 !
Andy (3 years ago)
Matt, You should buy it!
Michael (3 years ago)
Hey Matt…
I know of Davids website, may put in a bid in the closing hours.
Michael
PS. Just sent ya a email.
Michael (3 years ago)
Hey Keith…
That is exactly why I tell teachers they should teach online. So easy to take a skill and offer it online like SmashingMagazine has done with web design.
Thanks,
Michael
James Paden (3 years ago)
I don’t want to disclose exact figures, but my web design firm directory makes quite a bit more than some of these sites. I started Xemion back in 2005 and it’s been steadily growing sense. Just throwing my hat in the ring
Absolutely great list and post, thanks!
Michael Garmahis (3 years ago)
My guess is that SmashingMag became popular by outsourcing their posts (or most of them). Just try to write some kind of “top 50″ post and you’ll see how much time does it take. SM publish such posts very often.
Second, some of these top web design sites are part of the same network so there’s no problem with promotion. They just promote each other content on social networks and their own sites.
Third, most of the posts are not original. I’ve seen a lot of complaints from small blogs about stealing their ideas. That means that yesterday small blog published original post which remained unnoticed and day later it goes viral from ‘Top Blog’ just without any link to original.
Sean Hodge (3 years ago)
Hey,
Even though these are educated guesses, and don’t discuss the costs involved with running these sites, I still like this post a lot as it inspires people to blog more about design, which is great. Thx.
John (3 years ago)
Great post. I really like where you have been going recently. Covering the business side of the web design niche is very interesting to me. Keep up the good work.
Best,
John
mersi (3 years ago)
Nice post and thanks for the free article on how to become rich..always a pleasure
I am surprised that the Vandelay Design Blog is not on this list, because it is pretty popular and good..although maybe I missed it…I haven’t had my shot of coffffeeeee yet.
Will read the 7-day course and damn it (can I say this…) I will be on this list next year
Alberto Villalobos (3 years ago)
For me 700 USD would be good haha
Clemente aka kreativeKING (3 years ago)
Outstanding the amount of revenue great blogs make. I hope to make my blog that popular soon. $500/ month from just blogging would be great in my opinion for myself lol.
Good Article
Karthikkumar (3 years ago)
you have a nice site and it looks like you have the potential to do it. go for it bro !!
warzazi (3 years ago)
Great article !
ps: the new design is awesome !
Uday (3 years ago)
Great info on blogging and design.
Charlotte (3 years ago)
Great article and, of course, nice to know there’s hope for us all to make some money!
Brian (3 years ago)
Stunning how much you actually can earn on a blog.
But smashingmagazine is so good, no wonder why.
Carson Shold (3 years ago)
This is awesome! My friend and I just started a blog called The Happiness Machine, and are making it a long-term goal to get up on this list!
We are trying to make a niche of our own, too. Instead of just focusing on web design, “Our goal is to educate people as to how media functions as a marketing device, how people receive it, and how and why it is made. Essentially, we’re here to teach people media theory and production.”
I hope you guys can stop by and check it out (just click on my name) – we have a new post coming up a little bit later today!
Cheers
Michael Lynch (3 years ago)
You’ll see The Happiness Machine (www.thehappinessmachine.com) on this list in the next few years.
Alex (3 years ago)
Very interesting article!
Gopal Raju (3 years ago)
Really interesting!
Gopal Raju
productivedreams,
twitter.com/gopalraju
roc21 (3 years ago)
Very good article, we have to learn from them
Oliver (3 years ago)
Definitely an impressive article and interesting to see how much these websites manage to make. Great article as always and keep up the good work.
Derrick (3 years ago)
Great List. I am inspired. I am about to start a new blog here in Africa. I hope to be profitable.
Good luck to all website owners….We need money
Cheers!
Me (3 years ago)
Typo in first sentence: think the best inspiration to do better in anything, weather it’s your own business or life is seeing someone who has already done what you want to achieve.
Should say whether. Unless you’re talking about snow.
I also disagree with this sentence. True inspiration is figuring out how to do something that hasn’t been done yet. Looking at other work may get creative juices flowing but there are many other ways to do that.
Bjorgvin (3 years ago)
Interesting article indeed.
You might also want to take into account affiliate programs that some of these sites promote. I can say for myself that I earn more through affiliate promotions than BuySellAds. So in a nutshell, these site’s earnings can be much higher in reality.
sunil (3 years ago)
when i will come into this list ?
http://www.myhtmlworld.com
sidd (3 years ago)
Excellent. I think u r the best
webinky (3 years ago)
Personnally I found the numbers very disappointing
even for big names such as SmashinApps or WebDesignerDepot the numbers are under 4K
Alex Vorn (3 years ago)
Hi! Great article, I see that you just calculated the money the make on banners but what about site that don’t use banners such as woothemes.com or themeforest.net ???
Andy (3 years ago)
We took an educated guess
Alex Vorn (3 years ago)
I don’t understand what you mean…
çileklisüt (3 years ago)
Waaauuuwww!!!
)
Patricio (3 years ago)
How much webdesigndev.com? xD
Sara (3 years ago)
Very interesting and informative article, thanks for sharing and best of luck
clickforwebdesign (3 years ago)
would like to suggest http://www.clickforwebdesign.com/ for this category
Sadie (3 years ago)
This is a good article, I always use blogs as more of a value ad than an actual way of making money, we often outsource content which I imagine a lot of these sites do, would be really interested to see the profit margins of these sites minus, development, advertising, content writing etc but good article non the less
Tangy Media (3 years ago)
Very inspiring list – the common knowledge that ‘Content is King’ is alive and kicking as we move into 2010. Nice article
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Deepak Oberoi (3 years ago)
This is a Great Source of Inspiration. I am building my website and got inspired a lot by looking at monthly Incomes. One day my website dMarkWeb will be amoung this list and I hope on Top
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junemarkm (3 years ago)
Thanks for sharing with us. It helps us to improve our designs in creating a sites.
Anjul tomar (2 years ago)
you must buy a private helicopter with you earning’s …………
very much impressed with you ……………………..
Respect
Texture Plus (2 years ago)
nice roundup…and numbers LOL. I wish i would be on that list…well, maybe one day
Gadget news (2 years ago)
Wow. That’s really an impressive income.
Nahid (2 years ago)
What about toxel.com?
shane (2 years ago)
Just read the top tech blogs visitor and earning
http://techshrimp.com/2010/11/20/how-many-visitors-do-top-technology-websites-drive-and-how-much-do-they-earn/
SCX (2 years ago)
wow… interesting infos, could be dreaming to see all that earnings… wonder how to make it…. btw good inspiration for all of us…
need a thousand brain to get listed
Paarth (2 years ago)
great infos and inspirations hope any of my site start earning like same
Edwin (1 year ago)
Great list of resources, im a regular on Vandelay and Creattica. Thanks for sharing.
Michael Thomas (1 year ago)
Nice article, it is cool to see how much those websites are making. I am planning a few websites with Google adwords, do you have any tips for good places to get paid for advertising?
iqbal (1 year ago)
wow that is lot of mony