How the Gig Economy Worked for Sue McLachlan

New Zealand-born mother-of-two Sue McLachlan is pursuing her passion in the gig economy and making a comfortable amount of money after the collapse of her cloth nappy company business. Yahoo Finance reports on how the tides turned for McLachlan.

In 2014, the same week Newcastle-based McLachlan’s nappy company fell apart, her father died, plunging her into a state of depression.

It was then that the gig economy presented itself as a quick solution to her income problems: taking up projects online was something she could do without needing to venture outside.

So she dug deep into her roots to find what she could offer in the world of freelance. It brought her back to her seven years’ experience in radio, which began at 17 years old and had spanned news-reading, on-air presenting and radio sales.

In January 2015, McLachlan set up profiles on a number of online freelance marketplaces, bought some basic equipment to get started, and created a demo reel to show off her abilities.

“At that point, I knew how to speak but I didn’t understand the tech side of it,” she told Yahoo Finance.

Voiceover work – little projects with just a couple days’ turnaround time – was something she knew she could do.

“I put a gig on [freelance marketplace Fiverr] just to see how it would go, and within a couple of months I was getting more work on Fiverr than I was getting anywhere else.”

Most of the voiceover gigs McLachlan gets come from businesses, large and small, who need their phone systems and voicemails recorded. So it’s her voice you hear when you’re advised to “please press one” or “please hold”.

Major organisations such as Telstra, AMP and Beyond Blue are past clients.

As her voiceover work from Fiverr became her main source of income, it gave McLachlan the leeway to increase her prices, get off the dole, stop applying for jobs far beneath her skills and experience, and really make a living out of the gig economy.

Original article by Jessica Yun, Yahoo, June 17, 2019.