Seven Tricks to Higher Instructional Designer Salaries

1. Make yourself diverse and marketable. Create a professional blog and portfolio to showcase your work and knowledge. Make sure you have a LinkedIn profile and add the links to your blog/portfolio. Post frequently on your blog!
   
   
2. Increase your knowledge in software, web apps, learning platforms, learning theories and models, and programming languages. Update your resume so you can get the job you truly deserve. Add your LinkedIn URL to your resume.
   
3. Take a position as an hourly contractor instead of a salary employee. Generally speaking, you can make more money as a contractor. Of course it has it draw backs but it's hard to resist a $23k per year increase in pay even if you have to get your own healthcare because there are many affordable plans available. Plus, many contracts can be 1 year or longer and can have extensions. You can even get hired full-time from the company, eventually. Cons are no paid holidays, vacation time or sick time. Pros are pays a lot more, can start soon or quicker than a salaried position, and can turn into a salaried position.
4. Move into a specialized area such as corporate training, medical device training, or technical training. In my experience, the field of education did not pay as well for an Instructional Designer. Now, I develop technical training in Articulate Storyline 2 and it pays a lot better. I also find developing technical training more interesting, less political (no deans, chairs, or provosts to contend with), and overall more enjoyable.
   
   
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5. Take on part-time additional contract work. At one point I had a full-time job in addition to a part-time contract position. It was hard to keep up with both but I enjoyed the extra income while it lasted. The part-time position paid $50 per hour!
   Here are some links to contract work:
   
   • Indeed: http://www.indeed.com/q-Contract-Instructional-Designer-jobs.html
   • Remote Instructional Designer Positions on LinkedIn: http://www.indeed.com/q-Remote-Instructional-Designer-jobs.html 
   • Remote Instructional Designer jobs on Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.com/Job/remote-instructional-designer-jobs-SRCH_KO0,29.htm
   • Simply Hired: http://www.simplyhired.com/k-contract-instructional-designer-jobs.html
6. Teach for an online college part-time in addition to your full-time job. Many community college, small colleges, or online colleges need qualified reliable instructors. If you have a master's degree, you can teach at the Bachelor's level. If you have a doctorate degree, you can teach at the master's and doctoral level. When I taught, I made $3000 per semester. the first semester can be challenging but make sure to copy all your responses and grading comments and you can modify and reuse them each term.
7. Write and teach your own courses for a teaching site such as Udemy or Teachable. This can be hard to find the time to do in addition to your full-time job, but once it's created it can be fairly easy to maintain and profit from.
   Here is a link to 15 Platforms you can publish and sell your own courses on from Jeff Cobb: http://www.learningrevolution.net/sell-online-courses/