Freelancing and productised services

The claim

“I Quit My 9-5 & Went From $0-$10,000/Month in Just 90 Days With Freelancing” (first line; the tweet continues)

@Mike_Scully_, 14 September 2023, 123,571 views¹

“If you’re unemployed, research TEACHING ENGLISH as a FOREIGN LANGUAGE. Learn how to teach English online, to foreigners. “Easy” way to make money online & create a job for yourself.”

@penuelist_, 30 August 2023, 381,729 views¹

This page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted.

The sums

Marketplaces such as Fiverr and Upwork keep a cut: Fiverr pays the freelancer 80% of each order².

The worldwide average for a paid hour, in a 2019-20 survey of about 300 freelancers, was $11.20²⁴. At that rate $1,000 a month takes 89 hours, and $10,000 takes 893, more than a month holds (our sums)²⁴.

So $1,000 a month is part-time work, once a freelancer is winning jobs. On a marketplace, $10,000 a month needs roughly $60 to $100 an hour with a full book of work. That is about two to three times what clients now typically offer in Upwork job posts, by one tool vendor’s own tally (our sums)⁷⁴.

Most of the $10,000 claims are about clients found directly, not on marketplaces, though the 90-day tweet does not say where its clients came from¹. We found no data on what such clients pay or how long the first one takes. That route is untested here, not refuted.

What happens to most people who try

Neither Fiverr nor Upwork publishes how many of its freelancers earn anything⁶¹⁵. The counts we found are old, from before AI tools.

A 2021 Oxford Internet Institute study estimated 163 million freelancer profiles worldwide²³. About 12 in 100 had ever got a job, and about 3 in 100 had reached ten jobs or $1,000 in total (our sums)²³. It counts profiles, including abandoned and duplicate ones, so someone who bids steadily has better odds²³.

Fiverr’s active buyers fell 21.9% in the year to June 2026⁵. Its annual report says AI tools have hurt demand for “simple and low-skilled services”⁶.

Teaching English is real work, with a low ceiling on the platforms we read. Cambly pays tutors $10.20 an hour²⁵.

The upside

• Established skilled freelancers. A survey of 3,000 skilled American workers, paid for by Upwork, found that those who only freelance reported a median income (the middle person’s) of $85,000 a year³². It is self-reported, and low earners were left out before the middle was taken³².
• Two press profiles. CNBC profiled a marketing freelancer with over $366,000 in Fiverr sales across seven years⁴⁶. It also profiled a resume writer who reached $2 million in lifetime sales after starting in 2014⁴⁷. Both figures are sales before Fiverr’s fee, both articles are from 2021, and neither says CNBC checked payment records⁴⁶⁴⁷.
• Checked revenue. TrustMRR, a list that reads revenue from payment accounts, shows service businesses taking $11,000 to $232,000 in 30 days⁴⁸. These are sales, not profit, from businesses with staff or contractors that chose to be listed, and we did not open the listings⁴⁸.

No source measures what newcomers earn in their first year. For those who get established, a realistic good result (our estimate) is some hundreds of dollars a month in the first year, then around $2,000 a month in sales for a seller at Fiverr’s top level, each from one person’s own report³⁹⁴². We found no checked case of a newcomer reaching $10,000 a month in 90 days.

What it takes to compete

• A skill businesses already pay for. The platforms’ reports say demand is moving from simple tasks to complex work⁶³³. Fiverr’s rules bar delivering “generic, unmodified, or reused AI-generated output”¹². Skilled work that uses AI is the part the platforms say is growing³³.
• Time. The two profiled sellers describe one to three years before real income⁴⁶⁴⁷.
• An audience, for direct clients. The one tweet that explains this route assumes more than 2,000 followers, unpaid work first and posting five times a week⁷⁶.
• Cost. Little cash: Upwork’s bidding tokens cost $0.15 each¹⁷. The real cost is unpaid time²⁴.

How to tell early (our suggestions): after about 20 to 30 well-aimed proposals, has anyone replied? One vendor’s unchecked analysis found about 11 proposals per hire, counting only jobs that hired someone²². Only 40% of postings hire anyone, so the real number is higher²². Do clients come back?

Who else makes money from it

Fiverr takes 20% from the seller and also charges the buyer a fee on top²⁵. Together it kept 28.0% of what buyers spent in the year to June 2026⁵.

Six of the 14 tweets show nothing for sale in the tweet, and they hold about 74% of the views (our sum)¹. @Mike_Scully_ posted the 90-day tweet three times, each offering a guide by direct message¹. On 10 October 2026 the profile linked to a sign-up page for a free training, with no price shown⁴⁹. We did not sign up or see the guide.

One copywriting course costs $997 and headlines “up to $6,000 a month… in just 8 weeks”⁵⁴. Its own disclaimer says its figures “should not be considered average earnings”⁵⁴.