When you hear the term “side gig,” you might think of earning a bit of extra cash by delivering takeout through DoorDash or petsitting through Rover. But a side gig can also be a gateway to a new full-time income stream.
Read on to learn about three people who turned their side gigs into full-time, six-figure businesses.
[READ: 7 Things to Know Before Starting Your Side Hustle]
1. Derek Jacobson: Search Engine Optimization Consultant
Derek Jacobson is an SEO consultant based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. After college, he began working as an SEO specialist (as a full-time employee) before deciding to venture into freelancing.
“I started freelancing in 2014 initially to increase my income with the goal of eventually doing it full-time,” Jacobson says. “I was already doing SEO for my full-time job so I figured I could do freelancing on the side. I created an Upwork profile and began sending out two to five job proposals per day.”
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It took Jacobson a few months to land his first client but once he did, it got easier. “Having quality referrals and testimonials goes a long way toward building trust with prospective clients,” Jacobson says.
After about a year of moonlighting as a freelancer, Jacobson had doubled his hourly rate and was no longer sending out proposals. He would instead receive five to 10 interview requests per week from Upwork.
At that point, he left his full-time job and took on a 30-hour-per-week contract position that allowed him more time to freelance.
“This was a necessary step to build up enough side income to cover my monthly expenses,” Jacobson says. And it worked. By the end of his second year freelancing, he had earned six figures.
[How to Budget for Taxes as a Freelancer and Avoid an Expensive Tax Bill]
“It took me two full years to hit six figures after starting my side gig. I left my previous job once I was able to replace 75% of my income. I also made sure to have two additional clients lined up for when I left my contract job,” he says.
In 2016, Jacobson founded Emerald Consulting. Over the last seven years, he’s worked with world-renowned brands like Christian Dior, 3M and Adobe and become a top-rated service provider on Upwork, where he charges $150 per hour.
For anyone who wants to build a six-figure income from the ground up, Jacobson says, “My advice is to figure out what you do better than anyone else and create a side gig around that. Figure out where your ideal customers or clients are and do everything you can to land that first gig.”
2. Anna Burgess Yang: Content Marketer and Journalist
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Anna Burgess Yang, a full-time freelance content marketer and journalist based out of Chicago, was an executive at a financial technology company for 15 years.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, she realized she wanted to do something completely different. She ended up leaving her executive role and entering the world of content marketing.
“I’d never heard of content marketing, but ran across a job posting from a marketing agency looking for blog writers. The pay was terrible, but I was permitted to republish the work in my own portfolio,” Burgess Yang says.
After a few months, she had a solid portfolio and was able to land a full-time job at a content marketing agency. But leaving an executive role and “starting over” resulted in a huge drop in her salary, so she continued freelancing on the side to supplement her income.
“My first clients were via industry connections. I took on a role as a freelance journalist at a banking publication with a monthly column and editorial assignments,” Burgess Yang says. “Additionally, when I announced my departure from my fintech job on LinkedIn, another industry connection reached out and asked if I would write for his company’s blog.”
With a new full-time job and two steady freelance clients, Burgess Yang wasn’t seeking more work but was maintaining a steady presence on LinkedIn. In September 2021, a LinkedIn post she published about The Great Resignation went viral. That resulted in her getting two new freelance clients and got her thinking about freelancing full time.
“I began to feel the itch to strike out on my own, though I wasn’t really sure what that would look like or when I would make that happen,” Burgess Yang says.
Shortly after, in October 2022, she lost her agency job.
[How to Prepare Your Finances for a Layoff]
“Instead of looking for another full-time role, I decided to make the leap. I’d been thinking about it for months but kept telling myself the time wasn’t right. Suddenly, I had the opportunity to really give it a go, so I took the chance on myself,” Burgess Yang says.
That leap of faith paid off. In her first year of freelancing full time, she earned $115,000.
“Networking was everything for me. When I announced on LinkedIn that I was going to start freelancing full time and was taking on clients, people immediately reached out to me. This was the result of years of networking and building relationships,” Burgess Yang says.
3. Melissa Ripp: Marketing and PR Consultant
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Melissa Ripp from Door County, Wisconsin, started her marketing company, Peapod, back in 2007.
“It was a way to supplement my income while I was working at a very low-paying (but fulfilling) nonprofit organization as their marketing director,” Ripp says. She also wanted to make sure that marketing services were available to anyone who needed them in her underserved local area.
In 2010, Ripp and her now-husband moved to Chicago where she found herself in a scarce job market. She ended up getting a waitressing job and freelancing while looking for a full-time job.
“That was the first time I really saw that with my three freelance clients, I was actually making just as much as I had in my nonprofit leadership role. That was an incredibly energizing realization, but it was also very scary,” she says.
She ended up getting another full-time job shortly after, as she wasn’t quite ready to take the leap, but continued to run Peapod as a side gig.
By the end of 2017, Ripp decided she was ready.
“I spent the next four months getting my ducks in a row — formally applying for an LLC, getting a business checking account and looking for in-house contract roles that I could apply for while I was building up my business,” she says.
She ended up finding a six-month, 35-hour-per-week contract role that began in May 2018. Her previous corporate leadership role consistently required 50- to 60-hour weeks, so this gave her the free time she needed to make Peapod a full-time endeavor.
To get the ball rolling, Ripp leaned heavily into her network.
“I reached out to everyone I could in my network,” she says. “I must have sent a hundred personalized emails, but they worked. Within my first month of full-time business ownership, I landed three new clients.”
By November 2018, Melissa was freelancing full time. And Peapod had its first six-figure year in 2020.
If you want to build a six-figure income but aren’t sure where to start, Ripp recommends asking yourself questions like:
— What kind of work lights you up?
— What kind of clients do you love working with — not just because they’re in a particular industry, but because of the way you feel when you’re working with them?
— What tasks do you find yourself procrastinating on?
“Asking yourself these questions on a regular basis — especially in that first or second year of starting out — can really help you home in on who you want to spend your time with and what you want to be doing,” Ripp says.
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These 3 People Turned Their Side Gigs Into $100K+ Incomes originally appeared on usnews.com
