
Ed Fortunato
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Harlan Rappaport, 27, who turned a side hustle of email marketing into his full-time career. Business Insider verified his earnings with documentation. His words have been edited for length and clarity.
I started working as an investment analyst at a financial institution after college. I liked the company and the people I worked with, but I’d always had an entrepreneurial bug, and my job just wasn’t satisfying that. It was super structured and ran like a well-oiled machine; I needed a little more ownership and a little more chaos.
After about three years, I quit to scale my side business: I’m a full-stack email marketer who creates email campaigns — including email copy, design, development, and implementation — for direct-to-consumer and business-to-business companies globally. I use the platform Fiverr to find clients. My prices range from $100 for a single brief to $3,000+ per month for a done-for-you service.
After five years, I’ve made $833,000 in profit using the platform and love the freedom I have — so much that I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to a traditional job.
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I first made a Fiverr account back when I was a teenager
I was probably bored one day, signed up, and forgot about it. Then, during the summer between one of my semesters at the University of Michigan, I did some email marketing work for my neighbor’s tattoo supply company. After a couple of months of success, I thought, “Hey, maybe I can do this for other businesses.”
But I went back to school and pretty much lost that train of thought for a couple of years, until I was looking for side hustles and new entrepreneurial work, including posting work on Fiverr.
I started by making $5 and $10 gigs. Within that month, I started to get messages from people all over the world, just like, “Hey, can you make me this email?” “Can you help me set my email campaigns up?”
I really tried to overdeliver. A lot of the stuff I didn’t even know how to do; I figured it out through many hours of YouTube, blog tutorials, failing, and fixing things. Eventually, it clicked.
It took years for me to convince myself I was no longer an amateur.
I was always scared to raise my prices
I also got a full-time job as an analyst, which was fully remote due to COVID. Because I didn’t have to commute and I had a lot of time on my hands, I was able to do my freelance work before and after my day job and on weekends.
At one point, I thought, “This won’t be scalable if I don’t raise my prices,” though I was afraid to at first. To someone starting out, I’d say don’t sell yourself short — but understand that you have to get yourself out there. These platforms tend to reward freelancers who have great reviews. Until I’d built up a portfolio, the easiest way for me to stand out was just providing a ridiculously good service for a ridiculously low rate.
Slowly over the course of the first six months, I went from $5 to $10 to $20 to $50 per job, and then to $100 to $250 over the course of two to three years.
Earnings just kept growing; I had supplemental income to help pay my rent and was happy. Within six months, I think I had a $4,000 or $5,000 month, at which point I thought I’d hit the peak of what freelancing could be.
I love the flexibility freelancing provides me, but I’m never truly ‘off’
I used to get really excited about the numbers, but over the last couple of years, I realized it’s more about the freedom I’ve had in my life over the last couple of years as a freelancer.
I don’t miss family events, can travel when I want, and can work from anywhere in the world. I can go on an-hour-and-a-half walk at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. I never really thought about these things when I was entering the workforce, but I couldn’t imagine living without them now.
Freelancing can be brutal at times —you need to be “on” 24/7. My laptop comes everywhere. Part of this is the stress of being solely responsible for my own financial well-being, but it’s also because, on a platform like this, your success is partially subject to an algorithm.
To be ranked first, you have to provide the best quality work and communication, and do it quickly. If you slip, then your income slips.
Building a team has freed me up to work more on the business
I joined and paid for Fiverr’s seller plus program and was connected with a representative to help me optimize my freelancing profile.
After he helped me tweak things like what keywords I used and what my images looked like, I saw the business nearly double within six months to a year.
A few years ago, the volume was starting to catch up to me. I was working all hours of the day and realized I could afford to bring on a couple of people to help me out.
Now, instead of me doing everything, I’m more like a conductor guiding a team of five, some of whom are part-time.
We try to keep it pretty systematized. I’ll have conversations with clients back and forth, then create a detailed brief and upload it to our project management software. Our designer works on graphics and putting designs together, and our developer takes the finished designs and starts working on the code. I’ll then jump in to make edits as necessary. Our project manager will make sure deadlines are being met and pass back finished products to me for a final review and delivery. That’s been a big help.
The most important thing I’ve gained from this whole experience is professional and personal freedom. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to a traditional job like I had before, but if someone is starting a really cool company and there’s something super impactful that I can work on that can get me excited, maybe I’d go back to a “normal” job.
The post I quit my job to scale my side hustle. I’ve earned over $800,000 in 5 years on Fiverr by raising prices and optimizing my profile. appeared first on Business Insider.