Jessica Herring, 37, never quite had a plan for her career. She met her first husband young and had her son at 20, but the relationship "wasn't healthy," she says. The two ended up getting divorced in 2019, with Herring never having gone to college or accruing many technical skills.
"I found myself in a predicament where, here I am, in my 30s, and I don't have a college diploma, I have little work experience," she says. "I was like, how am I going to take care of my kid?"
Herring had dabbled with graphic design for fun on the side. While working as a teacher's aide at a local school in September 2019, she decided to try offering graphic design packages on Fiverr. A longtime video game lover ― "it's my favorite hobby," she says ― she started designing images that would say things like "be right back," "offline," and "starting soon" to be used while gamers were live streaming.
Eventually, she started upping her services and began making videos for them. By the time she was laid off from her teacher's aide job in September 2020, she was making significantly more editing videos. She's now making between $5,000 and about $12,000 per month on the site, depending on the time of year. To date, she's made more than $215,000.
Here's how Herring was able to build her full-time video editing business.
'I've had cooking classes, I've had yoga classes, I've had Zoom meetings'
Among Herring's favorite gaming sites is Twitch, on which players livestream their games to an audience.
Around April 2020, she got an email from Twitch saying gamers could now offer trailers for their individual channels. She'd long been dabbling with video editing on Adobe Premiere as a hobby, and realized, "that's going to be something," she says. "I'm going to jump on that." She added a Twitch trailer editing package on her Fiverr page and the requests started pouring in.
She then added general video editing services on her Fiverr profile as well. "I've had cooking classes, I've had yoga classes, I've had zoom meetings," she says of the service.
Most recently, in 2022 and by request from clients, Herring added social media video editing. "I do the TikToks, the [Instagram] reels, the [YouTube] shorts," she says. All are typically 60-second videos and span the gamut of Pokemon card unboxings to explanations of crypto.
Her weekly breakdown is about "90% regular video edits," she says. "And then I would say, like, 9% social and maybe 1% Twitch channel trailers." She offers voiceover gigs on the site as well. Those haven't gotten as much traction but one of her 2023 resolutions is to start doing more of that work.
'I'm happy working long hours'
As far as hours go, Herring puts in the time.
Depending on the month, she usually works 7 days a week, editing from the time she gets up in the morning to a few hours before bed (usually between 8 and 12 hours per day). But she's happy with the balance she's struck. "I get to do something I love," she says. "I'm happy working long hours."
Plus, the level of comfort they live in as a result of her business is thrilling and new. Herring has remarried and she, her husband and her 16-year-old son now live in Florida.
"I grew up in poverty," she says. "This is the first time in my life I can buy something and I don't have to budget for it. If I need something or if I want to spoil my son, I can do that." As an example, for Christmas this year, they bought him 22 board games, a new wardrobe, a PlayStation 5 and various games to go with it.
"He literally was like, 'Are you kidding me? You did not have to do this,'" she says. "I was like, 'just open your presents, kiddo.'"
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