High-Paying Business Careers For Creatives

You are not exactly what anyone would call analytical; you gain satisfaction from working with your imagination and developing projects and solutions from unconventional angles. Perhaps you have always excelled in arts classes, or you derive enjoyment from collaborative and innovative work. You are a creative.

Fortunately, just because you are creative does not mean you need to resign yourself to a lifetime of low pay. There are many opportunities for creatives in the business space. If you are looking for a stable and sustainable career that puts your creative characteristics to good use, look no further:

Marketing

As one of the most important business fields, marketing is focused on the promotion of products or services. Marketing is essential in the 21st century, and most companies have robust marketing budgets to ensure the development and implementation of strategies that result in more sizable profits. Marketing professionals perform a variety of creative tasks, from designing the details of marketing campaigns, imagining customer personas to organizing content for brand development.

Marketing professionals can aspire to become marketing directors, who are high-level marketing executives earning salaries between $150,000 and $200,000. Of course, some of the highest-paid marketing professionals in the world take home over 7 figures in salary. To qualify for these roles, you need at least a bachelor’s degree in marketing and many years of experience working in the marketing field.

Graphic Design

A graphic designer is a visual artist who uses their expertise to sell products and services. Often, graphic designers work with marketing departments to design logos, product packaging, web graphics and more. Plenty of graphic designers work independently, as freelancers, though graphic designers also find work within graphic design teams.

Any artist can begin a career as a graphic designer without specific qualifications, though a graphic design bootcamp or a degree in graphic design goes a long way toward increasing earning potential. Junior graphic designers might expect an income around $40,000, but experienced and well-known graphic designers easily command earnings of around $150,000 per year.

Web Development

Despite the proliferation of drag-and-drop website design tools, companies continue to rely on trained and experienced web developers for the creation and maintenance of their websites. Web developers boast a mix of creative skill and technical knowledge that allow them to design unique and functional websites as well as other online applications that companies need and want. Most web developers work freelance or as part of a team within web development firms.

Though web development sounds like a highly technical career, creatives are likely to find technical skills relatively easy to master through online bootcamps and other short-term courses. The average web development salary is about $75,000, but working on more advanced web development projects can allow web developers to earn over $100,000 per year.

Copywriting

Almost every text written for a commercial context — such as the text that appears on a company’s website, on product packaging or as a press release for a new service — was almost certainly drafted by a copywriter. Copywriters are paid to produce persuasive, compelling and exciting text to drive some form of engagement or conversion from target audiences.

There is a wide pay scale for copywriting. Non-native speakers, part-time workers and other copywriters with less experience often earn less than $40,000 per year, but it is possible to build a copywriting career that earns over $70,000 per year. Typically, copywriters have degrees in writing-heavy fields, like Journalism or English.

User Experience Design

The user experience (UX) is the complete and total experience a user has with a company’s product, from the first marketing materials they encounter to the way they interact with customer service. Often, UX designers are tasked with improving the intuitiveness of product interfaces, how-to manuals or customer service portals to ensure that customers feel confident in their capability or the care of the company.

Like other business fields for creatives, UX can be learned through online courses and bootcamps. Typically, UX designers work as part of a team with other tech professionals. Depending on credentials and experience, UX designers can earn salaries between $50,000 and $130,000, with the higher end typically reserved for UX directors and other management roles.

You can go far with your creative skills if you know how to utilize them to a company’s benefit. Fortunately, putting your creativity to good work usually does not require years and years of training, so you can launch a lucrative creative business career in no time.