Voice artist Amanda Elgie joins this edition of Stretching Your Dollar to talk about how she turned a side gig into a lucrative business. 

Voice artist Amanda Elgie joins this edition of Stretching Your Dollar to talk about how she turned a side gig into a lucrative business.&nbsp;

Wake Up With Cheddar

Stretching Your Dollar: How to Turn a Side Gig Into a Lucrative Business

Welcome back, everybody. I'm Hannah Do and I'm Chloe a now it's time for stretching your dollar and like so many people, our next guest felt inspired to make some career and life changing changes. During the pandemic, Amanda turned her love for acting into a lucrative voiceover side business while also working as a full time, a full time job as an academic advisor. Now she's here to share how she did it, Amanda. Welcome. Hi. Thanks for having me. We love having you. So you've always loved theater and acting since you were a child. Why did you finally decide to get into voice acting? That is a great question. Uh I had wanted to do it for so long and I think I had the same uh back in 2020 pandemic meltdown that everybody else had of like, what am I doing with my life? What do I want my life to look like? And so I just, I went for it and I, uh you know, I started coaching, I started kind of learning what I was doing uh and just got started. That's so incredible. And uh we know you used an online marketplace called fiber. For this part of the reason you started was to help to pay for your uh daughter's college. So, what was that process like? And were you ultimately successful? Yeah. So um getting on that platform uh was really easy. Uh I put up some gigs. I kind of learned what I was doing. I started to get clients and then it snowballed from there. Uh And I started making enough that I could definitely save for my daughter's college. Uh, and even a little bit more. Congratulations. Yeah. Really? Yeah. And people as, you know, sometimes start their side hustles just for the love of it. But has the work been extremely lucrative and enjoyable for you? Yeah, I think it's both. I did, it did not start out lucrative. I will say I didn't just kind of, uh, throw something together and start making money. It took a while to build a client base and to really understand what I was doing. Uh, but now I definitely, uh, am able to kind of transition to doing a lot more of this work. I'm so glad you said that because I think a lot of people think it's an easy transition. But no, it's not, it's not. You have to, you have to know what you're doing. You can't just go in and, and think like, oh, I'm gonna make some money doing this tomorrow. Uh, you know, I, I coached, uh, I did a lot of auditions. Uh I did a lot of different things before I kind of figured out my niche and got successful. Very quickly. Amanda, did you have any advice for someone who might be trying to get into this? That, that's a good question. I would say do your research, uh, like, know what you need to know, to be successful, uh, get good so, uh, practice, learn your craft, uh, and then network. So, uh if people don't know that you do voice over, then how are they gonna hire you? Uh You know, tell anybody that, you know, like this is what I'm doing. Uh And also just make connections with other people in the community. Uh The voiceover community is just a lovely group of people and I will tell you, uh I have, I have had so much help uh mentoring from, from people who came before me and it has really uh kind of springboard me forward. Are there any projects that have stood out to you as some of your favorites so far? Oh, that's a good question. I do a lot of e learning projects and I have a background in education. So it's always fun to me to kind of get um get my teacher uh voice back on. Uh I love doing commercials. Uh I am working with uh a media company right now called Space Cat doing a really fun commercial for them. Uh There are a ton of different uh kind of ways that you can do voice over. And uh it's really neat to be able to do a lot of different things. Well, our producer Joe says you have a very serious voice. I can see why you're, I do. I have a meditation, uh amazing, perfect gig that I do. So. Yeah, Amanda. Thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your story. Thank you. It was really nice to be here.