For six years, Alex Fasulo didn’t own a car. The Brooklyn-based freelance writer, who finds work via Fiverr, didn’t need one to get around. But when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S., Fasulo scaled back on how often she took the subway, opting for rideshare services instead.
“My Uber and Lyft spending was out of control,” she tells CNBC Make It. “It was coming to around $2,000 per month. Being in Brooklyn, you have to go over the bridges to get into Manhattan, so it’d be $30-$40 each way, every time I would go out.”
The 28-year-old eventually decided to invest in a car — and was able to pay for it in cash.
“I bought a yellow Jeep Wrangler in September 2020 in cash for $50,000,” Fasulo says. “I’m obsessed with it. I love it to death. The pandemic inspired me to get one because I wanted to still be mobile and not reliant on flights to go travel and see our country.”
Fasulo was able to afford such a big purchase thanks to her lucrative career. She earns $378,000 a year through jobs she does on Fiverr Pro, the higher-end version of the platform where freelancers offer their services worldwide.
Currently, Fasulo primarily does ghost writing and charges her clients $1,000 for a 10,000-word e-book.
“In any given week, I write up to three e-books for clients,” Fasulo says.
Being a freelancer allows Fasulo to work on a variety of different projects and topics, which keeps her from getting bored.
“One of the most entertaining elements of what I do is that no day is the same,” she says. Her clients vary from large corporations to people managing their influencer dogs on Instagram.
The variety keeps things interesting. “I’ve written e-books for quite a few dogs, and that’s why I still am able to do what I do every day,” she says.
Fasulo earned over $36,000 in May 2020, her highest-earning month ever.
“While so many people were losing their jobs and so many businesses were going out of business, so many people were coming online to start selling products and services because it was the only way they were going to make contact with other human beings,” Fasulo says.
Fasulo saw a surge in businesses hiring her to write content for their websites and widen their online presence.
Now, Fasulo and her Jeep are onto the next adventure: After living in New York for six years, she just moved to Florida, where she plans to buy her first house.
