Welcome to Designer Life. I'm Chris Nutbeen, designer, founder and digital product maker. I host the Framer London meetup and my biggest revenue sales have been from products based on Framer.
Setting the scene
I don't have a dramatic back-story on how digital products changed my life, like you, I'm still figuring it out, but, it is working.
In 2009 I was a freelancer designer. I grew into a small agency and killed myself building that business. I made good money, but it was hard work. I still run Nuttifox, it's just a lot more balanced now + getting clients is much easier - see below.
For years I had created digital products for clients to help them generate leads. It never occurred to me to sell them until covid hit and the agency work went quiet.
My first product was a guide on marketing ideas, which I created for my agency to get us through that period, the next was a Framer template for Notion creators.
These products combined made me $2.8k in the first month. This was enough validation to invest more time into it.
After covid, I made things a lot leaner with client work. I switched to a subscription offering and increased prices for one-off projects. I reduced the team to 3 people and focused mostly on Framer and AI Development.
Freelance
That's when I found Contra.
The hardest thing about balance in life, is that to achieve it, things can become very unbalanced, so you might feel like you are going backwards, but you're not.
There are many reasons why I love Contra, but the two that are the most important are.
Reason One
I still needed to do client work while I was building up the digital product side, but, I needed this to be easier. No expensive campaigns, no long nurturing pipelines, no fighting to be seen and a real demand for my services.
Contra was the only platform out of many, that actually delivered. But more than that, their approach to helping freelancers is completely different, focusing on empowering you, than profiting from you. This is evident by the amazing community they have built, the fantastic Contra team and the all-round vision of Ben - "Humans are not resources"
Reason Two
In order to build digital products, I needed better quality clients. If I was going to put in the work to build the Designer Life I wanted, I would have to earn more for less time, so I had more time to reinvest.
That mean't clients would have to have a reasonable budget, have investors or be enterprise, and that's exactly what I found on Contra.
Designer Life?
A play on words, as a designer, I'm designing my Life - curating the future based on the decisions I make today, to find balance and ultimately replace 100% client income, with scalable product income.
I will always work with clients, I love the design challenge of launching new things. But a 100% gig business is not a forever modal I want, it's hard work.
A quick list of what you can expect:
Experiences and interests
What is making me money, and what isn't
Articles, videos, images and whatever else inspires me
Tech, gear and apps that I recommend and use everyday
Upcoming Stuff
JourneyOS
JourneyOS is everything I wish I had when starting my product Journey. What to build? Where to Sell? How to Sell? etc etc. But it's more than just education, it's an operating system designed to support you in all the ways that matter.
We are beta launching in a couple of weeks. I'll post about it on X.
Framer London
The next Framer London meetup is just around the corner on the 10th July. A friendly space to come and meet, talk about design, see the latest from Framer and enjoy some bites, beverages and a bit of swag.
What I've learnt building products
Focus long-term
I know I said I made 2.8k in the first month, but not all months or products perform well. It's a marathon, not a sprint, so reinvest some money to enhance your creativity. This might be Contra Pro, UI libraries, visual assets or better tools. I used most of that money to make my next products even better.
Don’t overthink it
In my agency we live by a simple principle, ship fast and iterate. So many creators are stuck in 'research' phase, scared to take a step forward. I do very little research.
I've been in the industry long enough to have an educated guess as to what will work, but when I commit, I aim to ship something within 1-4 weeks and test it with real people. Only then can I gauge whether it will work and what needs tweaking.
Unfollow trends
Following trending topics will get you views and grow the channel. But don’t get too hooked onto the trend. Clickbait doesn't survive long-term and you don't want a reputation for it. I’d rather have 100k community of passionate creators who are actually interested in my content, rather than 1 million who watch a video and never took action.
Sum it up, Chris!
Thank you for reading this far, following editions will not be as long as this.
Here are some snippets for the first edition:
One of my favourite desk products is analog, by Ugmonk. While I love tech and software, honestly this is the best for focusing my tasks for the day and is beautifully made.
Yes it's one of my products, but I honestly use it all the time. I created FrameGen with my good friend Omar to generate AI images in Framer when building templates or client projects, soon this will generate video.
I created an Interactive Gameboy in Framer to test it's limitations. The challenge was it had to be 100% in Framer (no Figma), No Code and it had to work. It's a good way to explore nested components.
I'm a big fan of music, it helps me stay in flow state when crushing those tasks. I have the Edifier R1280DBs speakers with a Douk Audio Tube Amp, which gives a great rich tone.
More in the next edition
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