Do you have designs collecting dust?

Every now and again I will have what I call creative bursts and will just open photoshop or my sketch pad and start designing.  It could be a print piece it could be a full web design or even part of a design idea. There have even been times where I will look at a completed design for a client and say wow I have done a great job however I don't think it matches the clients tastes or company theme.  

Most of the time I find myself sticking the designs in some folder either sketched out our graphic files. Months down the line i have either forgotten about the designs or the end up getting pitched during one of my "lets clean my desk" moments. I will save my explanation of a "clean my desk" moment for a later blog post.  

I am not the best to keep focused on things and tend to take an idea run with it until i hit a road block and then a new project comes along. I tend to call those raccoon or shiny object moments where my attention is caught by some new idea.

A few days ago I ran across some really neat ideas from a conceptual design perspective and wanted to finished them but really did not have any reason to as I was not going to use them.  if I cant use them there has to be someone out there who can right?

There are quite a few things you can do with your designs, templates, ideas that maybe someone else may benefit  from.  You could start a theme of the month club on your blog. Get people to sign up to receive one new theme each month just for returning to your site each month to download it.

You could donate them to other blogs as a guest blogger to help gain awareness of your talents and skills.  By being a guest blogger on multiple sites and giving away a free design each month until your stock is gone would give you just as much impact as if you were to place an ad on that blog if not more.

Selling your theme or designs is always an option. Setting up an account at themeforest.net is very simple and takes very little time to start selling.  There are quite a few other places out there that have similar services. Who have you used?

Having a monthly drawing to entice more people to increase your blogs readership / traffic is always a good option.

Now with that being said what are your success stories that you have had in doing one or a combination of these ideas?

Do you do something completely different and wish to share?