Have you ever woken up one day feeling trapped in a career you used to love?

The stability of a steady paycheck no longer worth the daily dread of unfulfilling work?

Did you suddenly want a career change? I’m talking staring-at-the-ceiling-all-night type misery.

Alex Warneke from alexwarneke.com knows exactly how this feels.

She found herself creatively stifled and financially limited working as a marine ecologist and park ranger. While loving the subject matter, restrictions around income growth, adventure, and location independence nagged her.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that her current path just wouldn’t get her to the life she envisioned.

Despite no prior experience, Alex strategically skilled up and gained Salesforce credentials to increase her income potential dramatically.

Her story offers an inspirational template for others looking to pursue more career flexibility.

Tune in to Episode 590 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:

How Alex was able to increase her earning potential by changing careers
The process Alex took to learn Salesforce through the Talent Stacker program
What a typical day in the life looks like working as a Salesforce administrator and consultant
Common mistakes to avoid on your journey to career change and advancement

Want to learn if a Salesforce career switch is right for you? Take the free 5-Day Salesforce Challenge to find out!

Sponsors

Monarch Money — Get an extended 30-day free trial of the top-rated personal finance app. 

Factor — Get 50% off America’s #1 ready-to-eat meal delivery service w/ code sidehustle50!

Making More Money with a Career Change

Alex was working as a marine ecologist and park ranger, but wanted more freedom and financial independence. She discovered Salesforce—a flexible software platform used by companies for customer relationship management—and saw it as an opportunity.

After going through the Talent Stacker training program and getting Salesforce certified, Alex started putting “Salesforce consultant” on her LinkedIn profile. She was soon flooded with inquiries from recruiters and hiring managers.

Without even applying, she landed a remote consulting role making around $60,000 annually.

As Alex gained experience, she continued moving up and now makes a high six-figure income working part-time hours. She still does some grant writing and science communication as side hustles on her terms.

The key was adding new skills to increase her earning potential.

Discovering Financial Independence

After 2.5 years of traveling North America and abroad for rock climbing adventures, Alex was excited to land a remote Salesforce consulting role. This first job came after completing 4 months of Salesforce training and getting certified while still abroad.

What originally inspired Alex’s career change was discovering the financial independence community in late 2019. After hearing podcasts like ChooseFI and reading blogs from Mr. Money Mustache, the concept of choosing freedom resonated with her.

Alex started with the end goal in mind: wanting location independence to travel and rock climb and worked at the same time.

She looked critically at her career prospects as a marine ecologist and realized she needed to skill up in something new.

Side Hustles to Salesforce

Even though Alex loved learning, she knew going back to school for another degree wasn’t aligned with her goals. She had already gotten a Master’s degree and didn’t want to incur more tuition costs and time invested.

Instead, Alex had been doing some side hustles like technical and grant writing that leveraged her science background.

Though profitable, these alone wouldn’t provide the income boost and freedom she was after.

When Alex heard Bradley Rice and Anita Smith sharing their Salesforce success stories, she was intrigued.

Piggybacking Salesforce Demand

Alex used the “piggyback principle” to tap into Salesforce’s rapid growth. The software was selling so fast that certified talent couldn’t keep up. She strategically gained skills in this validated, high-demand field without needing to build something from scratch.

And that demand is clear as Alex notes, “people are landing jobs every single day.” The Salesforce platform is flexible enough to be customized for companies across all industries. So there is no slowdown in hiring demand in sight.

Salesforce 5-Day Challenge

Alex thoroughly validated the Salesforce career change before jumping in. She started with Salesforce’s free 5-day challenge to understand the landscape. Seeing the engaged Trailhead training community, rising demand, and defined certification path locked her in.

While still working her other job, Alex spent 4 months studying 10-12 hours per week to prepare for the Administrator exam. She credits the Trailhead resources and Talent Stacker’s “ohana” spirit and community for setting her up for success.

Testing the Waters First

Alex took what she calls an “MVP version” approach to their digital nomad life. She did a 3-month trial run traveling in Canada while newly Salesforce certified.

She completed Talent Stacker’s 60-requirement build project to demonstrate hands-on experience.

Alex even created her own nonprofit use case on the Salesforce platform. This allowed her to showcase domain expertise from her previous roles when interviewing.

Within months of announcing her skills online, the job offers rolled in without Alex needing to apply.

Overcoming Roadblocks on the Road to Success

Alex admits that migrating into the foreign realm of Salesforce initially intimidated her. Despite Trailhead’s abundance of free learning opportunities, she felt overwhelmed navigating next steps without guided direction.

Alex also found herself battling ingrained mindsets to “stay the course” in one lifelong career track rather than reinventing herself.

Thankfully, several pivotal mindset shifts empowered Alex to override paralyzing fears and impediments:

Seek Community Support – Attempting to master Salesforce solo quickly proves frustrating. Structured programs, study groups, and coaches accelerate success.
Start Small to Mitigate Risk – Alex tested interest and aptitude before fully submerging into intensive Salesforce certifications. Experimentation builds confidence.
Growth Requires Discomfort – Leaving one’s comfort zone inevitably feels scary and unfamiliar. However, avoiding growth consequently stunts earning potential and fulfillment. Progress trumps perfection.
Apply Existing Knowledge – Alex realized her scientific research background equipped her with easily adaptable abilities including analytical thinking, technical troubleshooting, solution orientation, and aptitude for continual learning.
Ask for What You Want – Understand your worth and don’t fear requesting fair compensation. The squeaky wheel gets the grease!

A Day in Her Life

When working as a Salesforce consultant, Alex spent her days meeting with clients, configuring software for their needs, inputting data, and helping improve their business processes.

She enjoyed continuously learning about the new verticals she supported, whether construction, retail, healthcare, or more. Her background gave her insight into efficiencies for nonprofits specifically.

The Emotions of a Career Pivot

Even though Alex was progressing nicely with Salesforce, leaving marine ecology was extremely difficult after dedicating many years to doing what she loved. It meant decoupling her identity and what gave her purpose.

She had to confront deeper questions like “What do I actually want in life?”

Travel freedom with her husband won out. But a career is never binary.

Alex still takes on consulting projects related to marine ecology, grant writing, and science communication. She just no longer relies on it as her sole source of income.

The Next Adventure

After years traveling North America and abroad, Alex is excited to settle down in the Pacific Northwest for a bit. The area’s combination of mountains, public lands, and community makes the perfect long-term basecamp.

Growth Enables Freedom

You can follow Alex’s adventures moving forward at her website AlexWarneke.com. After years of nomadic living, she is excited to settle down for a bit in the Pacific Northwest.

Alex credits cultivating a “growth mindset” as instrumental to her success and freedom. That means continually pushing past fears and discomforts towards stretch goals.

Alex’s #1 Tip for Side Hustle Nation

“Start small; test it.”

Key Takeaways

1. Fit your work around your ideal lifestyle instead of your lifestyle around your work.

2. Identify in-demand, high-growth skills to “piggyback” on, rather than building from scratch.

Episode Links

alexwarneke.com
Salesforce
Talent Stacker training program
ChooseFI
Mr. Money Mustache
Become a Salesforce Consultant: $225k a Year … Working Part-Time!, with Brad Rice
How I Doubled My Salary During the Pandemic, with Anita Smith
Piggyback principle
Salesforce’s free 5-day challenge
Trailhead
Talent Stacker

Making $10k a month is a meaningful income milestone. That equates to $120k a year — a comfortable 6-figure income.

When I started making $10,000 a month consistently, I felt a lot of pride — like I’d “made it” — and finally had some breathing room in my budget.

In this post, I’ll break down some realistic ways to make $10k a month, both as an employee and as an entrepreneur.

These are based on:

Interviews with over 500 entrepreneurs
Feedback from the 50,000+ members of the Side Hustle Nation community
15+ years of side hustle experience

Ready? Let’s do it!

1. Level Up Your Career

The most important thing to grasp is that your skills — and your income — don’t have to be set in stone.

For example, my brother-in-law went from waiting tables to a 6-figure tech salary after leveling up his skills.

In addition, several Side Hustle Nation members have piggybacked on the popularity of Salesforce. It’s a customer relationship management tool used by organizations from non-profits to Fortune 500 companies.

Brad Rice, a freelance Salesforce consultant, described the typical career progression like this:

Starting out – $65,000-80,000 a year
3 years experience – $100,000-120,000 a year + bonuses
5 years experience – $130,000-150,000 a year + bonuses

Check out this free challenge to see if a similar path is right for you:

2. Build a Helpful Website

Google is the world’s leading answer engine. If you can answer the questions people are typing in, you can build a great side hustle from it.

Side Hustle Nation has tons of examples of creative website businesses, but a few worth mentioning are:

Scott Keller’s bird watching blog
Raffaele Di Lallo’s house plant blog
Andrew Fiebert’s gift ideas website

All of those started as side projects and all are now 6-figure businesses.

Naturally, there’s a learning curve to publishing content online, but it can be extremely lucrative and time-leveraged.

Here’s my free 6-part video course to getting your site online quickly and affordably.

3. Find a Virtual Job

FlexJobs is the leading work from home jobs site.

With over 50 career categories, FlexJobs has pre-vetted jobs ranging from entry-level to executive and freelance to full-time. Looking for remote work could open up higher earning opportunities than in your local market, or you could stack a flexible part-time position on top of your day job.

There is a nominal monthly fee to access their listings, but you’ll earn that back (and then some!) with one job.

4. Sell Printables and Spreadsheet Templates

One of the most interesting side hustles I’ve come across is selling printables.

These are digital files you upload to a marketplace like Etsy. Think:

budget templates
chore charts
habit trackers
meal planners
intake forms
wall art
and more 

And the best part? When someone orders, the file delivery happens automatically.

On The Side Hustle Show, Rachel Jones explained how she earned $10,000 a month from her portfolio of printables.

If you have an eye for design and can be quick to act on trends, this can be a great side hustle without needing to leave your home.

Similarly, Emily McDermott built a cool remote side hustle selling spreadsheets on Etsy. She specializes in budgeting templates, and has sold over $250,000 worth of them!

5. Sleep Consulting

Sleep consultants like Jayne Havens help exhausted parents create a plan to get their babies and toddlers to sleep through the night. Since this is a major pain, rates are often $400-600 for a 2-week intervention.

And you can do it all remotely, supporting multiple clients at once. 

Jayne established credibility inside some parenting Facebook groups, and quickly scaled to $10k a month.

Check out the Center for Pediatric Sleep Management to learn more.

6. Start a Productized Service

Where there’s pain, there might also be profit…

That was the case for Pete Mockaitis. Pete was seeing some traction with his podcast, but was struggling to keep up all the off-air tasks — the show notes, the editing, the social media.

But if he was struggling with it, he reasoned other podcasters must be feeling that pain as well. So Pete created Podcasting Pro, a niche drop-servicing company that now does $10k a month in recurring revenue.

The company sources talented audio editors and writers, and sells those services to other podcast hosts. This model is something that will work in just about any niche where you can outsource tasks remotely.

7. Custom Offers on Fiverr

Fiverr is one of the most popular freelance marketplaces in the world. It’s free to create an account and set up your first “gig.”

Browse around the categories for inspiration as to what kind of service you could offer.

The real magic on Fiverr is in creating custom offers and building long-term customer relationships. Long-time Fiverr seller “AnarchoFighter” put it this way: “It’s easier to take a customer from $5 to five-figures than it is to take someone from $0 to $1.”

He was the first freelancer to close a $10,000 job on the platform.

8. Teach an Online Class

On The Side Hustle Show, Jade Weatherington shared how she was earning $10,000 a month teaching group classes on Outschool.

Her primary focus? Middle school English writing classes and the 5-paragraph essay.

Remember those? Apparently still a thing 🙂

Outschool is a peer-to-peer education marketplace that focuses on students ages 3-18. The platform has courses on nearly every topic imaginable — even video games!

9. Weight Loss Coaching

Nagina Abdullah turned her weight loss blog, MasalaBody.com, into a side business that consistently posted $10k months.

By day, she worked for a large consulting company. With a busy work schedule, a young family, and limited time to work on her side hustle, Nagina had to be very smart about her marketing and pricing.

After struggling with her weight for all of her adult life, she finally hit on something that worked and dropped 40 pounds!

She started her blog to share recipes and tips, and began offering one-on-one and group coaching programs.

10. Real Estate Investing

Being a landlord is a very common side hustle, and one that can generate cash flow and long-term wealth.

For example, my friend Dustin Heiner was able to retire in his 30s, thanks to his portfolio of rental properties. When we spoke, his collection of houses was generating around $15,000 a month in cash flow. 

The drawback is that real estate isn’t always as “passive” as proponents make it out to be. As any homeowner will attest, houses and properties don’t exactly maintain themselves.

That’s why personally, I prefer more hands-off real estate investments. For example, with Fundrise, you can invest into a diversified portfolio of commercial properties, starting at just $10.

Disclosure: I’m a long-time Fundrise investor and affiliate partner. When you join through my referral link, I earn a commission. Opinions are my own.

11. Vacant Land Flipping

Almost every seasoned landlord will have a horror story about tenants, toilets, or termites. One real estate side hustle that avoids all those problems is raw land flipping.

How this one works is you:

Find distressed land owners, often through country records and direct mail.
Make them a cash offer for their property.
Re-sell the land for a quick cash flip or low monthly installments.

Following that process, Roberto Chavez built his land flipping business to $10k a month in his first year.

To learn more, check out the free land investing launch kit.

12. Mobile Home Investing

Mobile homes make a compelling real estate niche because initial investments are much lower than traditional single family homes.

My friend Rachel Hernandez made her first mobile home purchase for $3,600 and re-sold it for $10,000 on a lease-to-own contract. These days, she earns around $10,000 a month from her mobile home investments

13. Sales Copywriting

Daniel Throssell was an electrical engineer working 12-hour shifts on a remote island off the coast of Australia.

He stumbled upon copywriting as a side hustle, and landed his first jobs on Upwork. “Because I had no experience, I just resolved to out-prepare my competition, and overdeliver on all my jobs,” Daniel explained.

Within a year, he was charging $200 an hour for his work — and left the engineering job behind.

Here’s a great free resource to get started: Your 9-Step Blueprint to Making Money as a Writer

14. Video or Audio Tutorials

By day, Bryan Orr helps run an air conditioning company in Central Florida, and by night he’s a father of 10. Yet somehow he’s found the time to create the super-popular HVAC School podcast in his spare time.

Tasked with training technicians at his day job, he had the idea to put the material into an on-demand audio format. On a whim, he decided to publish the content online and make it available to a wider audience.

“It just exploded. I never thought there would be an audience like the audience that I found,” Bryan said.

As his audience grew he started negotiating sponsorship deals with large companies in the HVAC niche.

In under a year, he’d built an email list of over 7500 subscribers, generated more than 500,000 podcast downloads, and was earning $11k a month in sponsorship revenue.

15. Social Media Management

Another side hustle idea — especially for writers — is to manage Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

These are still primarily “writing first” platforms, meaning if you can craft compelling hooks and threads, you can help other business owners grow their following.

For example, Pete Macleod (@petecodes) turned this into a $10k/month business. Creating Twitter and LinkedIn content was something he enjoyed doing anyway, and began offering it as a service to other content creators.

You may even be able to enlist Chat GPT for help!

The Best Way to Make $10k a Month: Your Turn

This post shared real life examples of people earning $10k a month or more — sometimes on the side from their day job.

Which path seems most exciting and doable to you?

There are no right or wrong answers.

The most important thing is to take action toward your goals and commit to getting better and learning more every day.

Serious About Getting to $10k a Month?

Start Your Free $500 Challenge. My free 5-day email course shows you how to add $500 to your bottom line.
Join the free Side Hustle Nation Community. The free Facebook group is the best place to connect with other side hustlers and get your questions answered.
Download The Side Hustle Show. My free podcast shares how to make extra money with actionable weekly episodes.