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

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TutsPlus Network

URL: http://tutsplus.com | Monthly Earnings: $54,000 ($24,650 Just From BuySellAds)

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37Signals

URL: http://37signals.com/svn/ | Monthly Earnings: $34,300

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Freelance Switch

URL: http://freelanceswitch.com | Monthly Earnings: $13,000

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WebDesignerWall

URL: http://www.webdesignerwall.com | Monthly Income: $12,000

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Authentic Jobs

URL: http://authenticjobs.com | Monthly Earnings: $9,500

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Noupe

URL: http://www.noupe.com | Monthly Earnings: $7,000

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Abduzeedo

URL: http://abduzeedo.com | Monthly Earnings: $6,000

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SixRevisions

URL: http://sixrevisions.com | Monthly Earnings: $6,000

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Tutorial9

URL: http://www.tutorial9.net | Monthly Earnings: $5,000

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Vecteezy

URL: http://www.vecteezy.com | Monthly Earnings: $4,500

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WebDesignerDepot

URL: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com | Monthly Earnings: $4,400

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BittBox

URL: http://www.bittbox.com | Monthly Income: $3,500

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Smashing Apps

URL: http://www.smashingapps.com | Monthly Earnings: $3,100

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Just Creative Design

URL: http://justcreativedesign.com | Monthly Earnings: $3,000

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WebDesignLedger

URL: http://webdesignledger.com | Monthly Earnings: $3,000

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CSS Remix

URL: http://cssremix.com | Monthly Earnings: $2,780

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HongKiat

URL: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog | Monthly Earnings: $2,500

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Spoon Graphics

URL: http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk | Monthly Income: $2,400 (Plus Web Design Inquiries)

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Creattica

URL: http://creattica.com | Monthly Earnings: $2,300

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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.