This is market research plus iteration, not prompting and hoping. You study a niche, save dozens of top-performing thumbnails and reverse-engineer common patterns. Then you deliver variants and test their click-through rate. What you're selling is better performance, not a JPEG. You have to justify why someone should pay you to design their thumbnail instead of doing it themselves. You have to show that you understand which thumbnails perform well and which ones don't, and why.
I started at Disney in 2011 with an eight-month internship as a cast member. My end goal was to go back after finishing my degree and rise through the company's ranks.
For years, living abroad felt like a dream. In my mid-20s, I'd left my home in Canada in 2012 with an EU passport in hand. I moved to Brussels, where I built a marketing career and earned a Ph.D. During a stint living in Rio, I even met my now-husband. Together, around 2020, we landed in Portugal, which we'd thought would be our forever home. It seemed like a great fit as we both spoke fluent Portuguese and wanted to stay in Europe.
It was super structured and ran like a well-oiled machine; I needed a little more ownership and a little more chaos. After about three years, I quit to scale my side business: I'm a full-stack email marketer who creates email campaigns - including email copy, design, development, and implementation - for direct-to-consumer and business-to-business companies globally. I use the platform Fiverr to find clients. My prices range from $100 for a single brief to $3,000+ per month for a done-for-you service.