Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Freelance Writer Built a 5000 Monthly Side Hustle on Substack
Transcript
- Lucas: So you're a NICU nurse—you work twelve-hour shifts in a high-stress unit, you're exhausted, and you decide to start a Substack newsletter. That's exactly what Jenna Ortiz did, and within eighteen months she was pulling in about five thousand dollars a month from paid subscribers. Luna: Five thousand a month on top of a nursing salary? That's not just pocket change—that's a real second income. Lucas: Right. And the thing is, she didn't quit her day job. She wrote maybe four to six hours a week, mostly on weekends. Her newsletter was called 'The Neonatal Beat'—focused entirely on the realities of neonatal intensive care from a nurse's perspective. Luna: That's incredibly niche. I can see why parents of preemies would be interested, but how did she find enough of them to build a paying audience? Lucas: That's the key question. Jenna started by cross-posting short threads on Twitter—now X—specifically about what it's like to care for micro-preemies. She'd share a detail about kangaroo care or how a one-pound baby's skin is so fragile you have to use specialized adhesives. Those threads got retweeted by parenting accounts and medical blogs. Luna: So she used Twitter as a discovery engine, then funneled people to Substack. Lucas: Exactly. Within three months she had about two thousand free subscribers. At that point she started offering a paid tier at eight dollars a month or eighty dollars a year. The paid content included deeper dives into specific conditions, behind the scenes stories, and eventually a private chat for parents of preemies. Luna: That private chat is smart—it creates community and makes the subscription feel worth it. Lucas: Totally. And here's the number that stood out to me: eighty percent of her paid subscribers came from a single post she wrote about her own experience as a parent of a preemie. She disclosed that her first child was born at twenty-eight weeks, and she shared that story raw—no medical jargon, just a parent's perspective. Luna: That vulnerability probably built trust. People could see she wasn't just a nurse giving clinical advice; she'd lived it. Lucas: Yeah. That post went viral within the preemie parent community on Facebook. It got shared in parent support groups, and within two weeks her paid subscriber count jumped from about fifty to over five hundred. She was charging eight dollars a month, so that alone was about four thousand dollars a month in subscription revenue. Luna: But Substack takes a cut, right? Ten percent? Lucas: Yeah, Substack takes ten percent, plus Stripe payment processing fees of about three percent. So of that four thousand, she netted around thirty-four hundred. But she also had about sixty annual subscribers at eighty bucks, which brought her total monthly average to around five thousand before fees. Luna: So after fees she's looking at maybe forty-two hundred a month. Not bad for four to six hours a week. Lucas: And she kept her day job. For her, the side hustle was never about replacing her nursing income—it was about having a creative outlet that also helped other families. The money was a bonus. Luna: I love that mindset. I think a lot of people get into side hustles thinking they need to hit a certain number to make it worth it, but Jenna's story shows you can start small and still have an impact. Lucas: If today's episode gave you a concrete idea for your own side hustle—or just helped you think differently about what's possible—these shows stay ad-free because of listener support. If you want to help keep that going, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, even a small contribution makes a difference. It's how we keep bringing you stories like Jenna's without interrupting you with ads. Lucas: Okay, back to Jenna's strategy. The other thing she did was she never made the newsletter feel like a chore. She set a rule: she would publish once a week, every Wednesday, no exceptions. That consistency built a habit for her readers. Luna: And she didn't burn out. A lot of newsletter creators try to publish two or three times a week and then quit after a few months. Lucas: Right. Jenna told me she spends about an hour drafting on a Sunday evening, then another thirty minutes on Tuesday night polishing and scheduling. Total time per week: under two hours of active writing, plus maybe another hour engaging with comments and the private chat. Luna: That's sustainable. And it means she's not sacrificing sleep or patient care. Lucas: Exactly. And she didn't invest any money upfront. Substack is free to start. She used a free Canva template for her logo and header image. The only cost was time. Luna: What about the content itself? How did she keep finding things to write about week after week? Lucas: She kept a running list on her phone. Whenever she had a patient interaction that taught her something, or a parent asked a question she thought others might have, she'd jot it down. By the time she was three months in, she had a backlog of thirty post ideas. Luna: So it's really about mining your daily work for content. You don't need to be a 'writer'—you just need to be an expert who can share what you know. Lucas: That's the core insight. Jenna isn't a professional writer. She's a nurse who writes. And that authenticity is exactly what her audience wanted. Luna: For someone listening who wants to do something similar but in a different field—say they're a plumber or a teacher or a software engineer—what's the first step? Lucas: I'd say start by identifying the question you get asked most often at work. For Jenna, it was 'What is it really like for my baby in the NICU?' For a plumber, it might be 'How do I know if that leak is an emergency?' For a teacher, 'How can I help my kid with math at home?' That question is your niche. Luna: Then test it on a free platform—Twitter, LinkedIn, maybe even a free Substack—to see if people actually engage. Lucas: Yes. Jenna spent two months on Twitter before she even created her Substack. She wanted proof that people cared about what she had to say. Once she saw that some threads got hundreds of likes and dozens of replies, she knew there was a market. Luna: And she didn't try to be everything to everyone. She stayed hyper-focused on NICU nursing. That's why her conversion rate from free to paid was so high—something like eight percent, which is strong for a paid newsletter. Lucas: Eight percent is double the industry average, actually. Most paid newsletters see three to five percent conversion. I think her high rate came from two things: first, her audience was extremely targeted—parents of preemies are desperate for reliable information. Second, she offered a genuine community, not just content. Luna: So if someone is listening and thinking 'I could do that'—what's your advice on pricing? Eight dollars a month seems low but reasonable. Lucas: I think for a niche audience, seven to ten dollars a month is the sweet spot. Low enough that it's an impulse buy, but high enough that a few hundred subscribers can generate real income. Jenna could have charged fifteen dollars, but she might have lost half her subscribers. At eight dollars, she kept the volume high. Luna: And volume matters because once you have a community, you can also offer other products—like a digital course or a consulting package. Lucas: She actually started doing one-on-one parent consultations through the newsletter at a hundred and fifty dollars an hour. That added another twelve hundred dollars a month on average. But she didn't push it; she only offered it to paid subscribers who asked for more personalized help. Luna: That's a great example of scaling without overextending. She kept her core focus on the newsletter, and the consulting was a natural add-on. Lucas: So the takeaway here is: you don't need a huge audience. You need a dedicated audience. Jenna has about fifteen hundred paid subscribers now, and that's enough to bring in five thousand a month. She's never had a post go viral beyond that initial one. Her growth has been steady, not explosive. Luna: Steady is sustainable. And that's what most side hustles need to be—something you can keep doing alongside a full-time job without burning out. Lucas: Exactly. Jenna's story is a reminder that the best side hustle is often the one hiding in plain sight: your own professional knowledge.