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It is a lot of people's dream job.
The hard part is that you have to position yourself to get the work. Think about it like this. You need to be contacted by, write proposals for, and land design jobs that other people are also trying to get. You already knew that. But, did you ever look at it this way?
You need to land either 80 $1,000 design jobs, or 40 $2,000 jobs, or 160 $1,000 jobs, or 20 $4,000 jobs .... Producing the work is the easy part. Selling the work is easy unless there is one person that has just any slight edge over you. Getting 40 design job leads a year is hard for anyone to get at any price, let alone at $2k a pop.
Another hard thing for you to overcome is that when a potential client is choosing between you and a guy who will design and build it, if all else is equal, he'll take the guy who can build it over you every time. That means that you need to have some other kind of edge that will overcome that.
The hardest thing to is getting the leads. Particularly getting the right leads. Every landscaper, designer, and would be designer can and does advertise, lists in the yellow pages, and has a website. Why are 40 people a year going to come to you and pay you $2k for a plan? They have to be coming to you because you can't find them fast enough to sustain an $80k gross by looking for them.
I do not think either you or I can just draw plans and gross $80k. You have to oversee construction and make money on project management. You have to be worth it in order to get that kind of work. It adds 10-20% to the client and gives a contractor fits to be managed - uphill battle.
I don't mean to be negative. I'm just trying to be bluntly realistic. It can be done, but it is not as easy as meeting clients and drawing plans.
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