How a Side Hustler Makes 7000 Monthly as a Freelance TikTok Ad Creator

Lucas: Jenna is 29, lives in Austin, and she makes seven thousand dollars a month creating TikTok ads for direct to consumer brands. She started in 2020 with zero video editing experience. Luna: Zero? She just jumped in cold? That's kind of terrifying and impressive. Lucas: Completely cold. She had a background in retail management, not media. But she noticed her friends were glued to TikTok during lockdown and thought, I could probably figure out how to make a ad that sells things. Luna: So how did she go from zero to seven grand a month in — what, five years? Lucas: She started by making ads for a friend who ran an Etsy shop selling handmade candles. The ad got a hundred thousand views and actually drove sales. That gave her the confidence to pitch a few small brands on Upwork. Luna: And now she has five clients, including a sustainable fashion label and a meal kit company. That's a solid roster. What does she charge? Lucas: She charges a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars per ad, and she produces four to five ads per month per client. That math gets you to seven thousand pretty quickly, especially once you have repeat clients. Luna: So the key is recurring revenue, not one-off projects. How does she structure the work? Lucas: She has a three-stage process. Stage one is research — she watches thirty to forty competitor ads and trending TikToks in the brand's niche, then writes a script that hooks in the first three seconds. Luna: Three seconds? I've heard some experts say you have one second now. Lucas: Jenna targets three seconds for a direct-response ad, because she needs time to set up the problem. She'll start with a visual like someone struggling to open a clamshell package, then cut to the solution. Luna: Okay, that makes sense. So stage two is production. Lucas: Right. She shoots everything on her iPhone 15, uses a cheap ring light, and edits in CapCut. She says most of her clients don't want high-production value — they want it to feel native, like a user post. Luna: That's a huge shift from even five years ago when brands wanted polished spots. Now they're chasing authenticity. Lucas: Exactly. And stage three is optimization. She posts the ad to her client's TikTok account, then monitors first-day view-through rate and click-through rate. If it's not performing, she'll tweak the hook or the call to action. Luna: What's the biggest mistake she sees beginners making? Lucas: She says the number one mistake is putting the call to action at the very end. In short-form video, you need to tease the action halfway through, then restate it at the end. Otherwise, people scroll away before they see it. Luna: That's a simple fix but probably game-changing. How does she find clients now? Is she still on Upwork? Lucas: She stopped using Upwork after the first six months. Now she lands all her clients through cold outreach on LinkedIn. She sends a short direct message that includes a link to her portfolio of three ads, and she personalizes every message. Luna: What does she say in the message? Lucas: Something like, 'Hi, I noticed your brand recently launched a new product. I created a similar ad for a competitor that got fifty thousand views. Can I send you the breakdown?' That's it. She says she gets a response rate of about one in five. Luna: One in five is incredibly high for cold outreach. That's impressive. Lucas: It's because she's offering value up front. She's not asking for a meeting. She's offering to share data. Luna: I love that. And this is related to something I've been thinking about — we spend a lot of time on this show talking about side hustles that help people earn extra income. And we keep these episodes free, no ads, because we believe this kind of practical career information should be accessible. Lucas: That's been our philosophy from day one. If these conversations have moved your work forward even a little, and you want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a simple way to keep the show ad-free. Luna: Yeah. And it really makes a difference. Okay, back to Jenna. She's building a business, but she also has a full-time job, right? Lucas: She does. She works a nine-to-five in digital marketing for a mid-size company. Her side hustle is strictly evenings and weekends. She caps herself at ten hours a week. Luna: Ten hours a week for seven thousand dollars a month — that's effectively one hundred seventy-five dollars an hour. That's insane. Lucas: It's a great hourly rate, but she didn't start there. Her first few ads she charged three hundred dollars and they took her fifteen hours each. She just kept refining her process. Luna: So the real lesson is iterate. Start small, learn fast, raise your rates as you get faster. Lucas: Exactly. And she also has a system for managing scope creep. She includes two rounds of revisions in her flat fee, then charges one hundred dollars per additional revision. That keeps clients from sending endless feedback. Luna: That's smart. What tools does she use besides CapCut? Lucas: She uses Canva for thumbnails and text overlays, and she swears by a tool called TrendTok to track trending sounds and hashtags. She also uses Google Sheets to track her pipeline. Luna: And what's her advice for someone listening right now who wants to start this week? Lucas: She says pick one product you genuinely like, buy it, film a fifteen-second ad from your phone using only your own reaction. Post it on TikTok as a test. If it gets even a few hundred views, you have a portfolio piece. Luna: That's so accessible. No fancy gear, no editing skills required upfront. Lucas: Right. The barrier to entry is basically zero. And once you have three decent samples, you start the LinkedIn outreach. Luna: I wonder if this model works for other platforms, like Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts. Lucas: Jenna says TikTok is still the highest converting for direct to consumer because the algorithm is better at surfacing ads to interested users. But she has one client who repurposes her TikToks to Reels and sees decent results there too. Luna: So it's not an either-or. It's a create once, distribute everywhere model. Lucas: Exactly. But she focuses her energy on TikTok first because that's where the organic virality potential is highest for new accounts. Luna: And the brands she works with — are they all in consumer goods? Lucas: Mostly, but she also works with a B2B software company that sells to small businesses. That ad is more educational — like 'three ways to automate your invoicing' — and it works because the format is the same. Luna: That expands the market a lot. B2B companies are increasingly advertising on TikTok to reach younger decision-makers. Lucas: She says the key for B2B is to make the ad feel like a tip video, not a commercial. So the hook might be, 'Stop wasting time on manual data entry.' That hooks the pain point immediately. Luna: I think the big takeaway here is that you don't need a fancy background to start. You just need to understand the platform and the psychology of the scroll. Lucas: And the willingness to send that first cold message. Jenna says her first five LinkedIn DMs got zero replies, but the sixth one turned into a client that she still works with today. Luna: Persistence plus a low-cost way to create value. That's a formula that works in a lot of side hustles. Lucas: It really is. And with TikTok ad spend projected to grow thirty percent this year, the demand for creators who understand the format is only going up. Luna: So if you're thinking about it, the time to start is now. Thanks, Jenna, for sharing your playbook.