UI/UX Career: Getting Paid What You’re Worth

How to get paid what you’re worth as a UI/UX designer, or as an organization that offers design, without compromising your integrity or values.

Overview

Heads up: this article is a holistic overview of some common problems in the industry as a whole to better explain what both industry professionals and organizations can do to improve their bottom line.

→ I SAY SOME THINGS IN HERE THAT MAY RUFFLE SOME FEATHERS ←

Please know that everything I say in this article is for informational purposes and is not meant to be derisive or offensive in any way, it just needs to be said.

With that out of the way, today we’re going over how to get paid what you’re worth as a UI/UX designer, or as an organization that offers design services, without compromising your integrity or values.

What’s your worth?

Let’s take a step back and look at the big-picture here for a second. As UI/UX, product, and/or marketing designers, even with the vast amount of competition in the global market, your skills are still in VERY high demand.

Similarly, if you are an organization that offers these services and offers them well, you’re still HIGHLY VALUED on the open market. Your competition is more than likely not well-established, and you still have the opportunity to make some serious waves!

Now these numbers are for the U.S., and it can certainly vary depending upon location, but after tabulating the numbers from multiple sources, just being a UX designer ALONE should net you roughly $80k per year on the LOW SIDE.

$80,000 per year on the low-side if you’re a UX designer

That’s average market value, period. Many are paid both higher, and lower than that number, but what this tells us is the floating average for the median designer that we can use to benchmark our value.

Now let’s say that you’re both a UI and a UX designer simultaneously, that number jumps up significantly, normally on the order of about $25–35k per year.

Similarly, if you’re an organization that offers these types of services, you can expect to be making a several million dollars a year or more. This is reflected by just how deep tech reaches into our everyday lives, and how it’s permeated basically every industry.

So let’s talk about how to actually get paid what you’re worth, either as a design professional, or organization, if you feel like you’re not making enough money.

The three reasons for sub-standard pay

If you are not making the kind of money that you want to make as a UI, UX, product designer, or organization that offers these services, there are only three legitimate reasons why that is:

1. You’re in an inconducive location.
2. You’re a sub-standard designer.
3. You’re working for a sub-standard employer.

Let’s go over these in a little more detail.

1. You’re in a bad location

This one is first and foremost because location is still one of the biggest causes of pay that I’ve seen so far.

If you’re in a location that is not conducive to your success as a designer or organization (either low demand or high supply), you’re not gonna get paid what you’re worth.

To put this another way, if there is either:

• No demand, or
• High supply

of qualified designers in your area, or other organizations that offer more or less the same things, the only competitive advantages you’ll have are the ones you create, and not the advantage of being the only game in town.

Since technology has essentially globalized our economy and therefore our competition, this may actually be somewhat less of a problem for you, as in SOME cases you’ll be able to use your location to leverage a strategy known as locational arbitrage.

Suffice it to say that if you’re in a location where there’s high supply or low demand for what you offer, regardless of whether you are an organization or an individual, it can be much harder to get paid your worth.

2. You’re a sub-standard designer or you offer sub-standard services

This one always stings to hear, but I’ve gotta say it because it happened to me: there is always a likelihood that, in any given situation, your skills are not nearly as good as you think they are.

Now that’s not to say that YOU as a person are bad, or that your organization is bad, it’s just to say that if your skills as a designer are not up to what the market expects, you’re not gonna get paid what you’re worth.

The easiest way to remedy that: upskill, upskill, upskill. I will stand on this mountain and sing it until the cows come home, if you’re not constantly upskilling you will be taken out at the knees by other designers who are.

If you’re an organization: HIRE FOR SKILLS AND ATTITUDE. I’m being dead serious, you wanna kill your company faster than anything? Hire people that don’t know what they’re doing. Make sure when you’re doing your hiring that you:

1. Check to make sure applicants have a well-rounded portfolio, and
2. Check to make sure applicants have a positive attitude and a desire to grow in their field of expertise.

This will help ensure your success much more than just hiring the cheapest person that you can find for the job.

For designers: in order to get paid more, it is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL that your skills are not only well-rounded, but are cutting edge in the areas of your expertise. Your pay is based on your contributions, not your seniority, and not “because you deserve it.”

→ High skills get paid more, no matter what. Doesn’t matter the industry, or economy, I have NEVER seen a world-class professional go without work unless THEY decided they wanted to.

Therefore, for organizations and designers alike: aim to be world-class in your offering, and you’ll be setting yourself up for greater success.

3. You’re working for a sub-standard employer OR you’re working for sub-standard clients

This last one never fails to ruffle feathers, but again, it needs to be said: if you’re not getting paid what you’re worth and you’re in a good location for it, and you’re good at what you do, there is a high likelihood that you’re working for a sub-standard employer or sub-standard clients.

Now what do I mean when I say a sub-standard employer or clients? I don’t mean an employer or client that treats you poorly, nor do I necessarily mean an employer or client that treats you well either;

What I mean is an employer or organization that cannot or will not plan appropriately and allocate funding accordingly.

— OR —

A client or group of clients that is cheap, difficult, and unwilling to properly fund a project. You feel like you need them? FIRE THEM, I can tell you from experience they aren’t worth your time.

For designers: this has to do with year-over-year, and necessary ROI vs actualized margin within the company you work with.

I can essentially tell you right now that if you’re not getting regular performance reviews and raises where you’ve earned them, then the company you work for is not planning ahead for its future success.

For organizations: If you don’t pay your people what they’re worth, your top talent will leave for somewhere that does, and then you’ll be forced as an employer to try and make less competent people pick up that slack.

This leads to a viscous cost-cutting cycle in which you’re not charging your clients enough, you’re in a race to the bottom, and your entire organization suffers as it asphyxiates from a lack of funds.

DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU! Pay people what they’re worth, avoid turnover, and increase your profits through innovation and value-stacking rather than cost-cutting on the consumer-side (don’t worry, we’ll touch on that more here in just a minute).

It’s all about branding & offer

If you ever want to know what the difference is between a high-paid designer and a low-paid designer, it’s their branding and their offer.

What will help you make the money that you want to make is the ability to articulate, stack, and deliver value in a way that you can clearly communicate.

This goes for people and for companies, because guess what? Companies are just groups of people working to make money together! That’s it!

So whether you’re a designer, executive, director, or owner, this next part is for you.

Perception is everything; raise your prices

However you present yourself is how the world is gonna take you. The tone you come off with, the visuals, what you associate yourself with, and your delivered outcomes all play a role in how the market perceives you.

If you want to get paid more, you can’t come off like the cheap option, and the best way to avoid that is to RAISE. YOUR. PRICES. Raise them.

“Why would you tell me to do that, Nick? What if I price myself out of the market? What if nobody wants to pay that kind of money? What if-”

Stop.

Price is a communicator of quality. You aren’t cheap, because you’re not cheap.

If people want cheap they can go to Fiverr. You’re not Fiverr, and trust me when I say that you don’t want people to think you’re Fiverr, that comes with it’s own connotations, and it will attract both cheap and difficult clients.

More information on that here:

You also aren’t Walmart, nor are you Amazon, nor can you afford to compete in areas where you haven’t vertically integrated, so the bottom line is this:

→ Present yourself professionally, as world-class if possible, and raise your prices.

Credibility & social proof are key

Once you’ve done that, you need to understand that your skills and value offering(s) on an individual or organizational level, are only as good as your credibility.

Credibility and social proof are at the heart of what persuades an employer to hire you, or a customer to buy from you, out of anyone else in the world.

1. Gather and post testimonials,
2. Ask people for honest reviews,
3. Ask for interviews with publications, got to the media,
4. Announce new projects,
5. Be as transparent as possible without jeopardizing your trade secrets, and above all
6. Remember that word-of-mouth is STILL and will FOREVER BE your best friend in terms of marketing your products and services.

Make value the heart of your pitch

This last part is key because after everything else, you have to deal with your deliverables; that is the things that your employer or client is looking for you to deliver for them.

This part is all about outcomes, and all outcomes have specific values attached to them.

I have a whole article that goes over this, but suffice it to say that whatever your pitch is, you have to make sure that it’s rooted in value.

These values can be expressed as such:

1. Emotional value — how you help people feel
2. Utility value — what you help people do
3. Convenience value — how easy you make the process for them

YOU MUST satisfy these values in order to have a compelling offering, and to help you get there, I have linked my absolute favorite video by Alex Hormozi that goes over how to actually craft what he calls a grand-slam offer.

So what does this all mean for you?

Let’s bring this home.

For design professionals

1. Check your location and move to a better spot if you have to.
2. Upskill constantly to stay fiercely competitive.
3. Raise your prices, ask for more money, and don’t be afraid to walk away from a bad deal.
4. Make sure you have a preponderance of evidence in terms of both credibility and social proof that you can deliver for employers.
5. Make sure that you can clearly articulate your value, and appeal to the needs of your employers effectively.

For organizations that offer design services

1. Check your location and move to a better spot if you have to, never be afraid to pull out of a bad location.
2. Invest heavily in innovation, vertical integration, and the hiring of high-skill, good-attitude employees. This will keep you on the leading-edge and send a clear message to your competition that you’re playing for keeps.
3. Raise your prices, and I mean RAISE THEM HIGH. You want to use your prices as both a signal and a filter for the types of clients that you want to have. Don’t settle for cheap/difficult clients when you can do far better.
4. Make sure you have a preponderance of evidence in terms of both credibility and social proof that you can deliver for your clients/customers because BELIEVE ME THEY WILL BE LOOKING FOR IT.
5. Make sure that you can clearly articulate your value, and address the needs of your clients better and faster than your competition can.

Lastly, if you have questions, I am here. Feel free to drop me a comment or a message on LinkedIn and I will do what I can to respond ASAP.

I love you guys, great job making it through this article, and as always we’ll see you next time. Keep designing! :D

Nick Lawrence | designwalkthroughs.com