You don’t need a big idea or millions of customers to make a six-figure income. Micro-hustles — small hyper-specific gigs — are flourishing. And you can make big money with these small jobs.
Why? Because they work. They promise professional completion of one small task at an affordable price. And that works well for everyone. Clients get to delegate a job that they find difficult, burdensome or unpleasant for a relative pittance. And, the freelance “micro-hustlers” are able to tap a passion and use personal experience and loads of practice to dispatch the job quickly and easily.
Earning Big With Micro-Hustles
Consider Cameron Gurr. The 33-year-old Los Angeles resident does resumes. Only resumes. And he earns about $200,000 a year.
“It’s kind of a weird niche that not that many people have heard of,” he says. “But I felt like I was called to do something with writing.”
The thing that makes writing resumes a perfect micro hustle is that it’s tough to write them well. That’s because they have to be compact, formatted, and still tell a compelling story about the job candidate.
Gurr says he helps his clients suss out where they want their career to go. He then creates a cohesive narrative that emphasizes the experience best able to get them the jobs they want.
Finding Your Micro-Hustle
Notably, some people with wildly successful micro-hustles didn’t get there on purpose. When Kelin Ainsworth started consulting on Fiverr, his scope of work was broad. He promised business advice — any business advice — for $5. But it didn’t take the newly-minted MBA long to figure out that he simply didn’t have the range of experience to deliver on this promise.
He and his partner regrouped and realized that what they could do was financial modeling and business plans. This far more limited service spells out the company’s strategy, current finances and financial projections. It’s a largely formatted product that you learn how to do in business school. But having financial models and a business plan is pivotal for firms that need to obtain bank loans and other financing. So there was a clear market need.
Ainsworth’s company, Mikel Consulting, now charges $500 – $2,500 per client and earns between $12,000 and $30,000 per month on Fiverr alone. But Mikel Consulting now gets more than half of its work from other sources, including word-of-mouth and the company’s own website.
When trying to determine what micro-hustle to offer, Gurr suggests that you take some time to think about the intersection of your skills, passions and consumer needs.
“If you can figure out how to offer a product that’s based on your talents and strengths, you’ll be successful,” he says.
Getting started
Yet, for all of their current success, both Ainsworth and Gurr say that getting started is difficult.
While they both recommend Fiverr an an ideal platform to build momentum for a micro-hustle, they also both dramatically underpriced their services in the early months. That allowed them to undercut their competition and get those pivotal early clients and early client reviews.
“We were offering financial modeling for $5 and business plans for $15,” says Ainsworth. “These would take us days of work to complete. But we wanted to make it easy for people who didn’t know us to say yes.”
Adds Gurr: “There was no work-life balance. I was only getting $4 (after Fiverr commissions) for a gig and I would do anything for that. It was relentless hustle in the beginning.”
However, once these micro-hustler’s got a few reviews and started building momentum, they also started raising their prices. Gurr’s cheapest package is now $195. Ainsworth’s is $495.
Automate
Ironically, both say that delivering their services has become far faster and easier than it was in the beginning, when they charged practically nothing. The reason: By doing just one small job for thousands of people, they’ve both come to realize that every job requires certain elements — collecting standard information; answering certain questions; addressing fairly standard concerns. As a result, they are able to automate.
For instance, when Ainsworth started compiling business plans, he interviewed his clients to get the information he needed for the job. That could take hours and multiple follow-ups for the client to pull together all their data.
Now, he just shoots new clients a written questionnaire. When they complete it, he starts the work.
Gurr does much the same thing. Clients get a “welcome” message when they hire him that explains the process and what they need to provide for Gurr to do his magic.
“I have a full-page welcome message that says everything the service is and what it’s not. It’s all baked out upfront,” he says. When clients have a question, “I have a bank of quick replies. All of my messages are pre-made. They have been tested. I only tweak them as needed.”
