Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / Building a Six-Figure Side Hustle in Podcast Production
Transcript
- Lucas: So Luna, I was digging into a story this week that felt tailor-made for anyone who's ever edited a friend's podcast as a favor and thought, wait, people pay for this? Luna: Oh, that's the exact thought I had when I first realized podcast editors exist. Who is she? Lucas: Her name is Megan, a marketing manager in Austin, and she turned a side gig editing podcasts into a twelve thousand dollar a month business. What's interesting is she didn't start with any audio engineering background. She just knew how to tell a story from her marketing work and learned editing on YouTube. Luna: Twelve thousand a month? That's not a side hustle, that's a second salary. How long did it take her to get there? Lucas: About eighteen months. She started in early 2025, and by mid-2026 she had seven recurring clients on monthly retainers. The key shift for her was moving from one-off edits to ongoing production packages. Luna: So what does a typical package look like? Is she just cleaning up audio or full production? Lucas: Full production, actually. She does editing, show notes, timestamping, and even some social media clip creation. Her base package for a weekly episode is around eight hundred dollars a month, and she tiers up from there depending on how many extras the client wants. Luna: Eight hundred a month per client, seven clients, that's five-six. Where does the rest come from? Lucas: She has three clients on the premium tier at fifteen hundred a month, which includes video editing for YouTube and audiograms. So that's forty-five hundred right there. The other four are on the eight-hundred-dollar plan, which brings her to thirty-two hundred. Combined, that's seventy-seven hundred. She also does occasional rush jobs and project-based work that fills in the gap. Luna: So the real money is in the recurring retainers, not the one-offs. But how did she land those first few clients? Cold outreach or referrals? Lucas: Both, but she swears by a very specific cold pitch. She would listen to an episode of a podcast she wanted to work with, then send a two-minute voice memo to the host via LinkedIn with three specific suggestions to improve the show. Not a generic 'I can edit your podcast' email. Luna: That's smart. It shows she actually listens and understands their show. Did she get a lot of responses? Lucas: She said her response rate was about one in ten, but the ones that replied almost always led to a paid trial. She'd edit one episode for a discounted rate, and if the host liked it, they'd often sign up for a monthly package. Luna: That's a classic land and expand. But I'm curious about the workflow. How does she manage to edit, say, seven episodes a week while holding down a full-time job? Lucas: She's religious about batching. She does all her editing on Saturday mornings while her husband takes their kid to soccer practice. She blocks four hours, and she can knock out two or three episodes in that time. The rest of the week she spreads out show notes and client communication in the evenings. Luna: Batching is such a lifesaver. I've heard other freelancers say the same. But does she use any fancy tools to speed things up? Lucas: Nothing too exotic. She uses Descript for the initial pass, which lets her edit by deleting text, and then she goes into Audition for fine-tuning. She also uses a template in Notion for show notes, so each one takes her about fifteen minutes instead of an hour. Luna: That's smart. Templates are underrated. But I'm wondering, with all this success, has she thought about quitting her day job? Lucas: She's thought about it, but she's holding off. Her marketing job provides health insurance and a steady paycheck, and she likes the creative contrast. Plus, she says the side hustle has actually made her better at her day job because she's learning new tools and storytelling techniques. Luna: That's a good perspective. And it's a real risk to go full-time freelance, especially with the economy the way it is in 2026. Speaking of which, I know a lot of our listeners are in similar positions, thinking about turning a skill into extra income. And you know, if you've found this episode helpful in thinking through your own career moves, we'd love your support. It's what keeps this show ad-free and lets us keep bringing you stories like Megan's. You can support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Even a small contribution helps. Anyway, back to Megan — she mentioned some mistakes she made early on. Lucas: Oh, yeah, she was open about the pitfalls. The biggest one was underpricing at the start. She was charging fifty dollars per episode for the first three months, which worked out to about five dollars an hour once you counted the time. She only raised her rates after a friend told her she was being ridiculous. Luna: I think everyone starts there. It's so hard to know what to charge. What was her breakthrough moment? Lucas: When she realized she wasn't selling editing, she was selling time and reliability. She framed her packages around the value to the host, like 'you get your episode published by Wednesday without doing anything.' That shifted the conversation from price to convenience. Luna: That's a great reframe. I bet that resonated with a lot of podcasters who just don't have the time. So what's her advice for someone who wants to start this today, in August 2026? Lucas: Her top tip is to edit for free for three different shows first, just to build a portfolio and get testimonials. She did that for two months, and those samples were what she used in her cold pitches. She also says to niche down. Don't just be a podcast editor; be a podcast editor for solo entrepreneurs or for true-crime shows or whatever you enjoy. Luna: Niche down, get testimonials, and then charge what you're worth. That's a solid formula. And she's proof it works, twelve thousand a month in less than two years. Lucas: Exactly. And the best part is she says she still works less than twenty hours a week on it. So it's not about grinding yourself into the ground; it's about building systems and client relationships that scale. Luna: Systems and relationships. That's the takeaway I'm jotting down. Thanks for bringing this story, Lucas. Lucas: Anytime. And if this episode got you thinking about your own side hustle, we'd love to hear about it. But for now, that's our story.