Making $378K A Year As A Fiverr Freelancer

i doubled my income overnight and that was crazy to me at 24.25 making 14 or 15k per month is insane you're not even emotionally prepared for it yet my name is alex fasulo i'm 28 years old and i make 378 000 per year as a freelance writer on fiverr.com i lived in new york city for the past six years and i now live in florida my clients vary beyond what you can imagine from large corporations that you've heard of down to entrepreneurs or influencers or people who manage their influencing dog on instagram i've written ebooks for quite a few dogs i've been able to take 60 hours worth of work and kind of squish it down to 40 hours because i kind of have my system down so well i accepted this pr job that paid 36 000 per year i felt so out of place i was so unhappy and i i was crying on my keyboard that i quit and i don't normally quit things and that monday when i was supposed to go into work i just couldn't i could not go back into that place it was the darkest i had ever felt i only had enough money in my bank account to cover my bills for three months so i was thinking oh my gosh if i have to go through this same process again only to get a job that i again hate you know i i can't keep going through this cycle something needs to change after a few days i had interest on my press release gig and i was charging 15 for that and just that interest alone was enough to almost kind of light a fire in me and see okay i am capable of earning fifteen 15 20 a day well what if i could earn 50 a day what if i could earn 100 a day now i'm making 3 000 per month and i can cover all of my bills that first week on fiverr i started to discover that i was capable of earning money on my own without anyone telling me what to do which means each passing day the idea of applying to another job just vanished it just disappeared into thin air [Music] i think i cried i realized i can cover my bills with this like i don't have to go back to a corporate job after about a year of hitting it really hard on fiverr i opened way more services i think i had like 12 or 13 gigs at the time i was ranked level 2 on the site and the site has these levels that allow you to charge more as you advance through them fiverr the company actually reached out to me and asked me to come meet them to film a commercial in greenpoint brooklyn up until january 2018 i was making around 6 to 8k per month which is incredible of course but it was january into february 2018 when i was launched into the double digit realm meaning i was making 13k 14k 15k uh which was essentially a complete i doubled my income overnight and that was crazy to me in 2017 i made 63 000 that year and in 2018 i jumped to making 273 000 which was the craziest jump you could ever imagine it took me a couple years to accept that i was making that money the only thing that i would say i started to spend more on to treat myself was travel experiences and music festivals i'm pretty sure if a financial planner sat down with me they would be disgusted by me and my management of my money but my strategy is just basically if i know i'm making like 15 to 20k i kind of just in my head try and make sure i'm saving at least 50 of it this year i'm definitely going to contribute less to my retirement but i already know my account is going to tell me that i should still contribute something because it helps with my taxable income i can hear them now so i think like most entrepreneurs i have a problem with having my money like locked up in accounts it's just not how my brain works i kind of like to have it at my disposal so if i come up with some like project or real estate investment i want to do i can just grab it i use a cpa like an accountant hands down costs like 1200 dollars it's worth it to [Music] me when you're in a city like new york it's very easy to go somewhere you can drop 200 on dinner and i think it kind of contributed to my desire to move out of new york city which i am now in florida and my food and drinks is probably down to 500 it's not even close to what it was in new york city i wanted to still be mobile and not reliant on flights to go travel and see our country [Music] the craziest thing happened because while so many people were losing their jobs and so many businesses were going out of business so many people were coming online to start selling products and services because that was the only way they were going to make contact with other human beings so they needed someone like a copywriter to help them fill their website their blog their social media posts which led me to having my biggest month that i have ever had on fiverr in may 2020 i made over 36 000 that month which was insane and it was so weird to have that happening while there was so much bad happening in the world at the same time it was a very weird and conflicting feeling i said to her you know hey i have 350k chilling in my bank account you want me to get this house and you can pay me back when you sell the albany house and she said yes i mean sure so we kind of just you know made a collective decision i don't know my family were old school i guess we share our resources and everything for this house my mom put down the 20 000 down payment and then i paid the rest which was 287 000 and we transferred the money out of my bank account to the seller and in full paid in cash you know paid off so i was never really scared but it was definitely very new for me the last two months to live with having 20 to 30k in my bank account instead of 300k that's gonna make me sound full of myself but i just become very used to having a lot of money in my bank account because i've been saving it [Music] this first property i want to buy in southwest florida um it's cheap because it's only a one two bedroom tiny little thing so i'm actually thinking of buying two of them right off the bat one of them i would immediately start to rent out on airbnb and then the other one i would use for myself slash a filming studio because right now i don't have one and i definitely want one set up so i'm more inclined to do youtube content and everything i keep putting off but until i buy that second one i will yeah live in the first one i want to eventually quit fiverr just because i'm again like that classic entrepreneurial type where i get bored and i would love to transition more into a full-time educator with everything that i've learned and kind of phase away from actually writing the blogs and and move more into a role where i'm helping people write blogs i think 22 year old me working a job i hated in new york city making 36 000 per year i could not in my wildest dreams have imagined that this would be me at 28 not for a second did i ever think this would be where i am i did not dream that big women get treated much differently than men if they're posting about the money they earn on tick tock if i post a video showing my receipts as gen z says the comments are flooded with men saying no you don't you know calling me mean term sexual terms or saying oh she made it on only fans i definitely noticed a huge pushback being a woman and i've had all sorts of people write to me and say it's very unbecoming as a woman that you post that money you know you should keep your mouth shut about it so it's definitely hard being a woman doing this but i think it's also forced me to develop thicker skin hey guys i'm going to give you my top five time management tips that help me churn out a ton of work every day got a lot of love too and i discovered that there's so many people out there that do want a freelance they don't hate me for it and they want to learn from me and they want to learn what i know being transparent with what i am earning has earned these people's trust and show them it is possible a girl from a farm in upstate new york did it i can do it too

Channel: CNBC Make It

Views: 945,373

Rating: 4.9070973 out of 5

Keywords: CNBC Make It, Make It, CNBC, How To Make It, Entrepreneurs, Starting A Small Business, Business Success, Small Businesses, Finance Tips, Career Tips, Work Hacks, Lifehacks, Money Management, Career Management, Managing Business, feverr writer, freelance writer salary, becoming a freelance writer, 300K salary, six figure job, salary raise

Id: hHhYtZV_T9M

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/honeyberry321]

Paying for a house completely in cash with money she made completely from writing?? What a dream. Good for her!!

[u/nutella__fiend]

No disrespect to her, she's killing it, but

1) this is definitely an advertisement for Fiverr, and

2) 99% of freelance writing will not earn you anything close to this income. Writing is a really competitive field. There are a lot of older professional writers and journalists who compete with young gig workers for the same jobs, plus now it's easy to hire a freelancer from abroad for a lower rate.

I mean sure, it may be possible for the top 1% of freelance gig workers to make $400K a year. But let's not kid ourselves, gig platforms like Upwork and Fiverr sell themselves as having a massive pool of readily available cheap talent. The vast majority of companies who utilize these platforms are looking to hire someone for the lowest price possible, otherwise they would contract with a professional agency or bring someone on in-house.

[u/lamelessness1]

1st off I was FLOORED at how much she was making in general as a ghost/copy writer. And then near the end when she was talking about the reactions she receives from men specifically when she shares her business numbers, it was so upsetting to hear the hate she gets which makes influencers don’t.

[u/omalicha-]

I love this for her!!! That salary plus Florida's 0% income tax rate? *chefs kiss*

I didn't even know freelance writers could make that much. I also can't believe she can write 10,000 words in two days, that's so impressive to me.

Another thing I noticed is that her health insurance costs are so high. She can definitely afford it but it's still a shitload of money to pay every month.

Edit: fixed typo

[u/morganlaurel_]

That’s an insane amount of money

[u/muniehuny]

I love this series, but I wish they would interview more people that make 50k and lower(edit: or households that make less that 100k). Their recent video with the Hawaiian family was 10/10.

[u/fillesour]

Anyone else immediate sign up for fiverr after watching this?

[u/lilabell187]

1. Good for this woman 2. love the family supporting and striving for everyone to be in a good spot 3. 2k/mo on food in NYC for one person I about passed out.

—a lowly midwest foodie

[u/atworkkit]

I make less than half of that as a copywriter and thought I was "killing it" ;_;