Why One-Man Design Subscription Agencies Are Meant To Fail

I’m generally quite active on Design Twitter.

A bit too much for my own good, as that place is an echo chamber of anything that’s new in town.

For example, Bento UI Grids were all the rage in 2022–23.

And the latest trend in town this year is One-Man Design Agencies!!

Not that fancy ?

Well, they now come with — unlimited revisions for a fixed price!!

Or basically, the same old retainer model being sold with a new marketing twist.

Again, I’m not the type to shit on others who are working hard to make a living.

That’s not my goal here.

However, there are fundamental issues with the new subscription model that nobody wants to discuss.

And before any more designers jump onto the ship of overworking/overcharging (depending on how business savvy you are) their clients…

I wanted to put forth some practical reasons why such business models are destined to fail and are unscalable in the long term.

Time is limited

This should be common sense, but somehow isn’t.

“Breaking news!! hustle merchant discover laws of physics”

We only have 24 hours in a day, which won’t expand, thus delegating tasks and hiring employees to work for us is a very common practice.

Ya know, capitalism.

But how will you do that when you are doing everything…alone ?

And that’s your entire brand, that is how you market yourself.

You’re getting clients who are tired of running around in lengthy processes with traditional agencies…

And now you’re expected to do all that on your own in a limited time as a single person to not dissatisfy them.

One man isn’t enough

Because the truth is, most of them aren’t one-man but hire NDA contractors.

There’s a certain amount of clients one can physically work for before they’re burnt out.

But in this business model, that isn’t an option — you have to constantly be available and deliver smallest of changes.

You also have to grow the business, which takes time, due to which you after a point won’t be able to work for all of the clients equally.

Quick maths — you can have 10 clients to serve at a time, but the time remains the same when you expand to 30 clients.

You simply can’t scale without breaking through, or maybe just give up on flashing your MRR stats.

Churn rate is too high

This came to my notice after someone broke down DesignJoy’s business numbers on Twitter.

That guy who came up with this model’s idea, read it here.

But the crux was, that all your clients would stop the subscription once they had their work done.

And in most cases, that’s likely to happen anytime between 1–3 months of them being onboarded.

They aren’t going to stay around forever, of course, or else they can just hire somebody in-house.

Now this correlates to my older point where I mentioned you have to focus on growing the business — because the existing clientele isn’t going to stay forever.

“bUt ThIs aPpLiES tO oTheRs tOO” — I know, but your churn rate is way higher than other traditional agencies.

Think hard anon.

Output is, low quality

Phew, working for like 10 clients and giving all of them equally great results ?

Don’t know man, but sounds a bit too much for a human to manage.

This leads to these agencies producing very generic and templatized work, that is low quality.

But mind you, these clients pay a hefty amount too, they deserve better work for the buck.

Not happening though, you’ll likely be served a flat design that’s a mix match of 5 different viral designs from Pinterest.

Because quality takes time and effort.

And what do we lack here ? yeah.

Unlimited, really ?

I don’t provide “unlimited” revisions to any of my clients.

And you shouldn’t too.

Many designers have pointed this out in the past, because you’ll attract scope creeps who have 0 regard towards professionalism.

Imagine you onboard a client thinking they will likely exercise your UX offerings, but now they also need social media assets designed.

Something you weren’t aware of during the early stages, and should be charged for separately…

But you have to just do it because — you do everything for a flat fee without asking questions, habibi!

But here’s a small workaround…

For every minor change, like changing text colors, now you make them a ‘request’ which you only respond to when other ‘requests’ from separate clients are completed.

But you won’t be clarifying how much time others are taking up, thus increasing the delivery timeline, which later will increase the revenue as the client is subscribed for longer.

Easy peasy.

To each their own.

And hey, if you are able to crack this model and scale it properly — then I’m more than happy for you.

But maybe sharing the struggles would be more helpful than sharing Stripe screenshots ? (which can be faked easily)

Or is it not going to generate leads and build a brand due to the lack of shock value…

Since reality is more morbid in nature. Upto you to decide.

Hi there 👋🏻 I’m Sharanya — a freelance UI & Web designer writing about design and documenting his journey.

Currently booking projects — let’s chat.

Check my digital products on my shop.

Find me on Twitter, Dribbble & LinkedIn!

Why One-Man Design Subscription Agencies Are Meant To Fail was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.