How I Wrote My Way to a Full-Time Income in Part-Time Hours

And speaking of 8–5 jobs, that’s not something I’ve ever been built for. I’m naturally a night owl whose energies don’t coincide with having my ass in an office chair at 8 am. No amount of that Miracle Mornings bullshit or entertaining the lies that you have to get your butt out of bed at 5 am to be successful has ever resonated with me or worked, no matter how hard I tried.

As I was thinking about how I might be able to use my writing skills to make more money to pay off debt and maybe, at some point, free myself from working for someone else, a story on my Facebook feed caught my eye. As social media often does, it seems as if the wizards behind the curtain were reading my mind and sent exactly what I needed in that moment my way: an article about a young copywriter named Alex Fasulo making six figures on the freelancing platform Fiverr.

I read it, intrigued. As someone with a B.A. and M.A. in English in hand and a Ph.D. in English I was close to completing, I’ve always enjoyed writing and fancied myself pretty decent at it. In fact, I used to want to be a writer when I was a kid before adults laughed that off, deterring me because “you’ll never make any money doing that.” But if this 20-something young woman could do it, I, at 37 at the time with writing-friendly degrees and writing experience in hand, could certainly find some sort of success, too.

I spent the next three hours feverishly researching other Fiverr sellers on the platform and putting up a profile and my first gigs: social media management, a catchall writing gig, press releases, and editing. I made them dirt cheap, knowing Fiverr works off social proof, so even as an expert writer, I would need to build up reviews before boosting my prices. Those $5 gigs busted my ego, but I was willing to do what I needed to do to get something going.

And speaking of willing to do what I needed to do to get something going, I spent hours online reading sites I liked, press releases, and blogs. I hadn’t actually ever written any of these types of projects for anyone else before launching my gigs. But I guess that’s my audacious belief and confidence in myself and the knowledge that I could Google my way out of anything and learn what I needed to along the way. I think that’s an important quality to have as an entrepreneur, especially when you’re just getting started.

July 11, my first gig came in. It was a 300-word project for a website homepage. I eagerly set out and completed the job within 24 hours and was thrilled to get my first 5-star review. From there, that same client started ordering regularly over the next few months, followed by a few others. I started to get enough reviews to begin incrementally raising my prices.

During my first full month in business, I was able to take in just over $1,000 writing in very part-time hours around my full-time job. Considering how low my prices were, that $1,000 was an excellent haul for my first full month. By July 2019, I had slowly and incrementally started to raise my prices (way too slow in hindsight) and found myself sitting at about $2,200 monthly, still writing in part-time hours. From mid-2019 through mid-2021, I was making about $3,500-$5,000 a month, with room to grow on my prices, but not devoting too much time to actively growing my business or being strategic about my pricing and gig structures. I just plodded along, no real goals for my business at that point, but appreciating the few extra thousand dollars a month.

All that changed in July 2021.

As much as I hate to admit it because I recognize the destruction and pain the pandemic caused, the pandemic was good to me in many ways. An introvert who would love nothing more than to work full-time from home, I was in my element as we pivoted to remote work. I was predominately remote until the Fall 2021 semester when our university moved back to in-person courses and services. I was dreading the move back to entirely in-person work. Inspired by my dread, I began to take a more serious look at my writing and started to see the potential for it to be something big if I was more strategic about my growth. This could be my ticket to full self-employment and extending my work-from-home dream into forever.

In July 2021, I joined Fiverr’s Seller Plus program, a program that gives sellers added support through advanced analytics and meetings with a dedicated success manager to offer insights into my business. I also started to look more strategically at my pricing. For nearly two years before July 2021, I was consistently booked with gigs on Fiverr and having to turn orders away given I was only writing 15 hours max a week to balance my freelancing with my full-time job and my social life. This told me I had room to grow with my prices, given I was booked and my reviews were overwhelmingly positive. Armed with the intent that I still only wanted to write 10–15 hours a week, I endeavored to match my full-time income in part-time hours.

And I did. And my earnings skyrocketed.

I went from making $3,000 in August 2021 to growing rapidly each month to now finishing 2021 by bringing in over $10,000 a month from my freelance writing, with most of my income coming from Fiverr. This trend continued into 2022, where I continued to enjoy growth and 5-figure a month incomes. All of this was done myself. I haven’t outsourced any of my work, I don’t have a team, and I have very little overhead. Though I’m at the point that I want to dabble in some other things, too, so 2023 may require me partnering with some other freelancers to keep my business moving forward and to free up my time.

My growth is the result of a few key factors:

1. Being okay with raising my prices in larger increments when my workload becomes overwhelming.

2. Achieving Top Rated Seller and Pro statuses.

3. Listening to the advice of my success manager and putting it into practice.

4. Redesigning my gigs, especially by creating a more consistent and professional branding across them.

5. Goal-setting each month, challenging myself to earn more than I did the previous month.

I’ve now completed over 2,000 orders on the platform and have over 1,000 5-star reviews. I need to now focus more seriously on my off-Fiverr work. I had some branding work done in 2022, and now I need to translate that into an agency website where I can more easily work with clients off Fiverr and offer additional services like courses, resources, and coaching and mentoring. My goal is to continue copywriting both on Fiverr and off through my website and eventually build a full-scale creative agency. I have plans for e-books and courses to help other copywriters and freelancers. Stay tuned for more on those endeavors.

During the spring of 2022, I had some exciting but scary decisions to make. Given my monthly income freelancing exceeded my university pay substantially every month in 2022, I had to decide if I wanted to keep juggling both. The prospect of quitting my full-time job and focusing on building my business and likely being able to do all of that in less than 40 hours a week always has been enticing since I started on Fiverr, but it’s still scary. I made a healthy salary at the university, and pulling out that safety net was nerve-racking. But I did it. July 31, 2022 was my last full-time day at the university. But I didn’t want to leave the university entirely, as I like the university environment and being connected to campus and the people on it.

With the support of my then-supervisor and current supervisor, I was fortunate to be able to craft a part-time job that I enjoy, mainly teaching a variety of student-success-oriented classes and also assisting with some writing and communications projects. The great thing is, I now can focus on the work I want to focus on at the university, and I’m there because I WANT to be. Not because I HAVE to be for the money.

As we start a new year afresh, I have a lot of audacious plans I want to set into motion. I feel energized and open to all that’s possible. More so than I have in a long time. And I have a spur-of-the-moment decision back in July 2018 to thank for it.