Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Customer Support Rep Built a 12K Side Hustle in UX Writing
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this role that's been quietly booming over the past few years — UX writing. And I think a lot of people don't realise how accessible it is, especially if you're already in a customer-facing job. Luna: I feel like 'UX writer' still sounds like something you'd need a design degree for. But you're saying it's more about empathy and clarity than fancy software? Lucas: Exactly. Today's guest — well, the person we're profiling — is a woman named Priya. She worked as a customer support representative at a mid-sized B2B SaaS company called FieldEdge. Her job was answering tickets all day, and she kept noticing the same complaints: people were confused by the error messages, the onboarding emails, even the tooltips inside the product. Luna: So the product itself was making her job harder. Lucas: Right. She'd spend half her shift explaining what a button actually did. And at some point she thought, why am I not the one writing these words? So she started doing small rewrites on her own time, sharing them with her manager. Eventually, she got permission to rewrite the error messages for one feature — just a test. The support tickets related to that feature dropped by about 30 percent within a month. Luna: That's a huge impact for just changing a few sentences. Lucas: It is. And that proof of concept became the foundation of her side hustle. She took those before and after metrics, built a simple portfolio site with three case studies — all anonymised — and started pitching herself as a UX writer on LinkedIn and Upwork. Her first freelance client was a small HR software company that paid her $500 to rewrite their onboarding email sequence. Luna: What did she charge per hour or per project? Lucas: She started at $50 an hour, which is actually low for UX writing — industry rates are more like $75 to $150. But she was building a portfolio. Within six months, she had four recurring clients and raised her rate to $85. By month 12, she was making about $8,000 a month. Now, at month 18, she's at $12,000 a month, working about 20 hours per week on top of her full-time support job. Luna: That is a serious side hustle. But I wonder — how does she manage the workload without burning out? Support jobs are already high-demand. Lucas: She's very disciplined about boundaries. She does her freelance work in the evenings and on Saturday mornings. She also negotiated a compressed workweek with FieldEdge — four ten-hour days — so she has a full day Friday for client work. And she says the key is that the writing itself is less draining than support because it's creative and she controls the timeline. Luna: That makes sense. And I imagine her day job actually makes her a better UX writer because she knows exactly where users get stuck. Lucas: Absolutely. That's the whole thesis of this episode. Customer support reps, account managers, sales engineers — they have a front-row seat to user frustration. They hear the exact phrasing that confuses people. And most companies don't realise that their best UX writer might already be on payroll, answering tickets. Luna: So for someone listening who's in a support role and thinks 'I could do this,' what's the first step? Lucas: Priya's advice is to start small. Pick one error message or one email that generates a lot of questions. Rewrite it. Show your manager the before and after. Track the impact. That single case study is worth more than a degree in technical communication. Luna: And I guess you don't need to quit your job to test it. Which brings me to something — if this episode has given you a concrete idea or just made you think differently about what's possible, that's exactly why we do this show. If you found it valuable, there's a link where you can support us — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Honestly, even one coffee's worth helps us keep the podcast ad-free and focused on real stories like Priya's. Lucas: Yeah, absolutely. It's a small ask for the kind of inside look we try to give. And we really do appreciate it. Luna: So back to Priya — she mentioned that one of the hardest parts was pricing. What did she do when a client tried to negotiate her down? Lucas: She had a few early clients who wanted to pay $30 an hour. And she said no. Her rule is that she doesn't go below $50, and she always frames it in terms of value: 'If I reduce your support tickets by 20 percent, that's worth thousands a month.' Once she had the metrics from her first project, she could prove it. Luna: That's smart. So the negotiation is really about ROI, not her hourly rate. Lucas: Exactly. And she also learned to scope projects carefully. Instead of saying 'I'll rewrite your entire help center for $5,000,' she breaks it into phases: first the error messages, then the onboarding emails, then the knowledge base. That way she can adjust pricing as she goes, and the client sees incremental results. Luna: I love that. It's low-risk for the client and high-trust for her. Lucas: Right. And the other thing she did that I think is smart — she joined the UX Writers Collective, which is a community and a training program. It cost her about $500, but it gave her a network, feedback on her portfolio, and access to job boards. She says the first client she landed through their job board paid for the course ten times over. Luna: So for someone without a design background, that kind of community seems crucial. Did she have any formal training in writing? Lucas: Nope. She studied business in college. Her writing skills came entirely from writing support tickets and internal documentation. She's a great example of how domain expertise — knowing the product and the customer — can outweigh a fancy degree. Luna: That's really encouraging. What about tools? Does she use Figma or any design software? Lucas: She learned basic Figma — enough to place text in a mockup. But most of her work is in Google Docs and a content management system called Contentful. She says the design team handles the visuals; she just provides the copy and the rationale. The key skill is writing for context: error states, button labels, empty states, onboarding flows. Luna: So it's more about understanding the user's journey than being a designer. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why support reps are such a natural fit. They already know the journey backwards. One of Priya's favourite examples is a button that said 'Submit' — users kept clicking it expecting to finalise something, but it actually saved a draft. She changed it to 'Save Draft' and the confusion vanished. That's not design, that's empathy. Luna: That's a perfect example. So for our listeners, what's one thing they can do this week to test the waters? Lucas: Priya's suggestion: pick the most confusing screen in your company's product — the one that generates the most support tickets. Write a 50-word alternative for the main error message. Show it to a colleague and ask if it's clearer. If it is, take it to your manager. That's your first portfolio piece. Luna: And if you're not in a support role but you're in sales or account management, you can do the same thing with sales decks or onboarding materials. Lucas: Absolutely. The core insight is that every company with a digital product needs better words. And the people who talk to customers every day are sitting on a goldmine of insight. Priya just decided to monetise it. Luna: Alright, Lucas, I think we've given everyone a solid blueprint. Thanks, Priya, wherever you are. Lucas: And thanks to you for listening. We'll be back next week with another real side hustle story — how someone turned a seemingly ordinary skill into serious income.