Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Lab Technician Built a 4000 Monthly Side Hustle in Medical Writing
Transcript
- Lucas: If you work in a hospital lab or a research setting, you are sitting on a goldmine of knowledge that could earn you a serious side income. Today, we're looking at how a full-time lab technician built a medical writing side hustle that brings in four thousand dollars a month. Luna: And we're not talking about some generic content mill either. This is highly specialised writing for medical device companies, health blogs, and even clinical trial summaries. Lucas: Exactly. Our subject is Rachel, a lab tech at a mid-sized hospital in Ohio. She runs routine tests—blood work, urinalysis, microbiology cultures—nothing glamorous. But she realised her day-to-day familiarity with protocols and test interpretations gave her a leg up in a niche that's hungry for credible writers. Luna: How did she even find that niche? I mean, you hear 'medical writing' and you think you need a PhD or a journalism degree. Lucas: She started on Upwork, actually. She pitched herself as someone who could translate lab results into plain English for patient education materials. Her first gig was writing a brochure for a local clinic about what to expect during a cholesterol test. Paid fifty dollars. She took it because she wanted a clip and a testimonial. Luna: Fifty dollars for something that probably took her an hour. That's a start. Lucas: Right. But she didn't stay at fifty bucks long. Over the next three months, she raised her rates as she built a portfolio. The key was she targeted medical device companies—the firms that make things like glucose monitors, blood pressure cuffs, and diagnostic kits. Luna: Why do those companies need freelance writers? Lucas: Two reasons. First, they need user manuals and instruction guides that are clear and accurate. If a patient misuses a device because the manual is confusing, that's a liability. Second, they need marketing content—white papers and blog posts—that positions their product as reliable. But they don't want to pay a full-time copywriter when they can hire a specialist on a project basis. Luna: And Rachel's lab background made her credible for that. Lucas: Exactly. She could read a clinical study and summarise it without getting the terminology wrong. That's harder than it sounds. Most generalist freelance writers will confuse 'sensitivity' and 'specificity' in a diagnostic test context. She won't. Luna: So how did she find those clients? Did she just pitch cold on LinkedIn? Lucas: Partially. She also joined a platform called MedTech Writers—it's a directory specifically for medical device content creators. And she started contributing to health blogs like Verywell Health and Healthline. Those paid less, around a hundred dollars per article, but they were bylines that attracted better clients. Luna: I've heard of those sites. They pay in exposure as much as cash. But it sounds like she used them strategically. Lucas: She did. She spent about six months building a sample library. Then she created a simple website with a portfolio page and a contact form. Once she had that, she started getting inbound inquiries. Her rate went from fifty dollars per piece to about two hundred and fifty dollars per thousand words within a year. Luna: That's a solid jump. But four thousand a month means she's doing a lot of work. How many hours a week is that? Lucas: She averages about fifteen hours a week. That's a mix of client projects and self-study. She says the reading is just as important as the writing—you have to keep up with new FDA approvals and evolving standards. Luna: Fifteen hours a week on top of a full-time lab job. That's a grind. Luna: I can imagine. You've been running assays all day, and then you have to sit down and craft a compelling paragraph about blood glucose monitoring. Lucas: Right. She uses a technique she calls 'brain dump drafts'. She writes a terrible first version just to get the content out, then edits it the next morning when she's fresh. That way she's not trying to be perfect in one sitting. Luna: That's smart. So what's the actual income split look like? Some of that four thousand must be from recurring projects. Lucas: About sixty percent is recurring. She has two retainer clients: one medical device company pays her a thousand per month for two blog posts and a newsletter, and a health tech startup pays her eight hundred a month for product documentation updates. The rest is one-off projects—white papers, case studies, sometimes regulatory summaries. Luna: And those can be huge. I've heard white papers in medical fields can go for two thousand dollars or more. Lucas: Absolutely. Her highest-paying single project was a white paper on sepsis detection algorithms for a diagnostic company. Paid her three thousand dollars. Took her about thirty hours, so a hundred dollars an hour effectively. Luna: That's better than most primary care doctors earn per hour. Lucas: And the beauty is, it's fully remote and asynchronous. She never has to attend a meeting. Everything is email and Google Docs. Luna: But let's talk about the elephant in the room. If you're a lab tech listening, you might think, 'I don't have writing skills.' Rachel didn't either when she started. Lucas: She was a biology major in college and wrote lab reports. That's it. She told me she learned to write for a general audience by reading health blogs and mimicking the structure. She took a free online course from the American Medical Writers Association—they have a short module on plain language principles. Luna: And then she practiced. She even wrote a few free articles for a local health nonprofit to get feedback. Lucas: Exactly. The biggest barrier is confidence, not skill. If you can explain a test result to a patient in simple terms, you can write for a medical device company. It's the same skill, just on a page. Luna: One thing that surprised me: she doesn't do any regulatory or grant writing. That's a whole other beast. Lucas: She deliberately avoids it. Regulatory writing, like writing for FDA submissions, is highly formal and you need to be a subject matter expert with legal training almost. She says the stress isn't worth the pay. She sticks to marketing and patient education content where she can be creative. Luna: Good boundary. So what's her advice for someone in a similar field—maybe a nurse, a med student, or a pharma sales rep—who wants to start? Lucas: Three things. First, pick a very narrow niche within your expertise. Don't be a general medical writer. Specialize in one area, like diabetes devices or oncology lab tests. That makes you the obvious choice for clients. Second, create three sample pieces on spec—just write them for free and post them on LinkedIn or your website. Third, pitch to ten small companies or startups per week. Eventually, one will bite. Luna: It sounds like a long game. But it's a side hustle that actually leverages what you already know, rather than forcing you to learn a whole new trade. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why it works. Rachel's not a writer who learned lab science. She's a lab scientist who learned to write. That's a much stronger position. Luna: And if you're listening and thinking this might be for you, the barriers are low. You don't need a fancy website or a huge following. Just expertise and a willingness to write a few bad drafts. Lucas: Speaking of low barriers—we keep this show completely ad-free. That's a choice we made from day one because we think career advice shouldn't be interrupted by commercials for mattress companies or meal kits. If you find value in episodes like this one and want to support that ad-free mission, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a simple way to help us keep going without selling your attention. Luna: Yeah, we really appreciate every supporter. It keeps the podcast exactly what we want it to be. Anyway, back to Rachel—what's next for her side hustle? Lucas: She's actually considering turning it into a full-time business. Her lab job pays about fifty-five thousand a year. Her side hustle is on track to hit fifty thousand this year. She's thinking about dropping to part-time at the hospital and scaling the writing. Luna: That's the dream, right? To have a side gig that grows into a real alternative. Lucas: It is. And she's being smart about it—she's building a two-month cash buffer before she makes the leap. But it's a reminder that the best side hustles often come from the knowledge you already use every day, but never think to sell as a service. Luna: If you have a specialty, someone out there will pay you to explain it. That's the takeaway. Lucas: That's it. Next episode, we're looking at a high school teacher who started a test prep side hustle that pays three thousand a month, but scaled it by selling digital study guides. See you then.