Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Freelancer Built a 10K Monthly Side Hustle in UX Audit Consulting
Transcript
- Lucas: If you've ever opened an app and thought, 'Who designed this? Like, did anyone actually try using it before shipping?' — you might have the makings of a side hustle that pays ten grand a month. Luna: That's a very specific number. You have someone in mind. Lucas: I do. Her name is Priya — she's a product manager at a mid-size SaaS company in Austin. And about two years ago, she started doing UX audit consulting on the side. Now she pulls in about ten thousand dollars a month, working maybe fifteen hours a week. Luna: Okay, so 'UX audit' — let's define that for someone who's not in tech. What exactly is she selling? Lucas: She sells a usability review. A company — usually a B2B software firm — has a product that's maybe clunky or has a high drop-off rate. They hand her access, she spends a few hours clicking through every flow, and then she writes a report: here are the seventeen things that confuse users, here's the fix, and here's the expected impact on conversion. Luna: So she's basically a fresh pair of eyes. But why would they pay her and not just ask their own designer? Lucas: Two reasons. One, their own team is too close to it — they've looked at the same screen for six months and they stop seeing the friction. And two, Priya has a framework she developed from her day job: she scores each issue by severity and by effort to fix, so the client gets a prioritized roadmap. That's the value-add. Luna: I like that. It's not just 'this button is ugly' — it's 'this button costs you three percent of your trial to paid conversion, and here's a mockup of the fix.' Lucas: Exactly. And that's why she can charge two to three thousand dollars per audit. She targets mid-market B2B companies — the ones that have between fifty and two hundred employees, usually post-Series A or Series B. They have product-market fit but they haven't invested heavily in UX yet. Luna: How did she get her first client? That's always the hardest part. Lucas: She started on Upwork, which I know sounds like a race to the bottom. But she did something smart: she didn't bid on generic 'UX designer' jobs. She searched for 'usability audit' and 'conversion review' — niche terms. Her first project was a two-hundred-dollar flat fee to review a landing page for a small CRM startup. Luna: Two hundred bucks for a landing page audit — that's practically free. But I bet it built her portfolio. Lucas: Exactly. She delivered a five-page report with annotated screenshots. The client loved it, gave her a five-star review, and that review became her calling card. Within three months she had three repeat clients from that one project. Luna: And she's still a full-time product manager? How does she manage the time? Luna: That's a clean model. And I'm guessing the skills transfer directly from her PM role — she already knows how to think about user flows and prioritize feedback. Lucas: Hundred percent. She told me the biggest unlock was realizing that her day job had already trained her to do this. She just had to repackage it. She created a template for her reports — it's basically a modified version of the product specs she writes at work. So the marginal effort per audit dropped after the first few. Luna: I want to talk about pricing for a second. She charges two to three thousand per audit. How did she arrive at that number? Lucas: She tested. She started at five hundred, then a thousand, then fifteen hundred. She found that at two thousand, clients didn't blink. At three thousand, they asked a few more questions but still closed. She said the sweet spot for her market is around twenty-five hundred for a full product audit — meaning the entire SaaS app, not just one feature. Luna: And what does a full audit include? Walk me through the deliverable. Lucas: She spends two to three hours familiarizing herself with the product — she signs up for a trial or gets a demo account. Then she goes through the three most critical user journeys: sign-up, core feature usage, and billing or settings. She records her screen and takes timestamped notes. Then she compiles a PDF with about fifteen to twenty findings, each with a screenshot, a severity rating, a proposed fix, and an estimated impact on a metric like retention or conversion. Luna: So it's essentially a consulting deliverable, not just a list of bugs. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why companies pay. A typical in-house designer might take two weeks to produce something similar. Priya turns it around in five business days. Speed is part of the value. Luna: I can see the appeal for a startup that's about to raise a round and wants to clean up the product before investor demos. Lucas: That's actually a big chunk of her client base. She's done audits for three startups that were preparing for Series A pitches. One of them told her her report directly influenced the product roadmap for the next quarter. Luna: Okay, so for someone listening who thinks they might have this skill — maybe they're a product manager, a UX designer, even a front-end developer with an eye for usability — what's the first step? Lucas: Do a free audit for a friend's startup. Or audit a popular app and post the findings on LinkedIn. Priya's first client came from a LinkedIn post where she audited a well-known project management tool and published a thread of the top five issues she found. It got shared around, and a founder reached out. Luna: That's a great strategy — it shows your process without needing a client yet. Lucas: Right. And the barrier to entry is almost zero. You don't need any certification. You just need the ability to notice friction and articulate it clearly. If you can do that, there are hundreds of B2B companies out there that will pay for your perspective. Luna: I love this episode because it's a reminder that your day job skills are often more marketable than you think. You don't have to learn something completely new. Lucas: Absolutely. And on that note — and this is a little meta — but running this show is actually a similar kind of side hustle for us. We put these episodes together because we genuinely enjoy digging into stories like Priya's. And the reason we can keep doing it without ads or sponsors is that a small group of listeners chips in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, and we never want to make that feel like a pitch — it's just the honest reality. The support from listeners is what keeps this ad-free and allows us to spend the time researching and producing these conversations. Lucas: Exactly. So if you've gotten value from the show and want to be part of keeping it going, that's how. No pressure at all — we're just grateful for anyone who listens. Luna: And speaking of value, back to Priya — she's now thinking about turning this into a full-time consultancy. She's at the point where the side hustle income matches her salary. Lucas: That's the dream, right? But she's being smart about it. She's not quitting yet. She's building a buffer of six months of expenses and slowly transitioning clients to a retainer model. Her goal is to have ten recurring clients paying five hundred a month for a quarterly check-in audit. Luna: So the side hustle becomes the main hustle — but only when the numbers make sense. Lucas: Exactly. Priya's story is a great example of how a specific, in-demand skill combined with a simple business model can generate serious income without burning you out. And the best part? Anyone with a product or design background can start tomorrow. Luna: That's a good note to end on. Thanks, Priya, for sharing your playbook. Lucas: And thanks to you for listening. We'll be back next week with another side hustle blueprint.