Why side-hustlers are sharing their incomes

While discussing full-time income is still uncomfortable for many workers, some side-hustlers are being totally transparent about their off-hours earnings.

During her 9-to-5, Tolu Frimpong is a marketing manager based in south-east London. But in addition to her corporate role, she is a content creator and financial coach, earning income from freelance writing, brand partnerships, affiliate marketing and one-to-one financial coaching. She’s on a mission to make £25,000 ($31,423) each year from her side hustles – and she wants everyone to know.

Through her YouTube channel, Frimpong, 35, openly shares her financial journey. She believes talking about side income could help others meet their financial goals. However, she has never publicly disclosed her corporate salary: even though she’s transparent about her side-hustle earnings and £36,000 debt elimination, she still believes discussing pay with full-time colleagues is taboo.

“It was only maybe a few years ago I even realised that it wasn’t illegal to mention how much you earned to colleagues,” she says. “I've always grown up just assuming that you're not allowed to discuss salaries with your colleagues … I've just never questioned it because no one ever discusses it.”

Yet she feels entirely differently about discussing earnings around her secondary career. She says it’s because she has creative freedom and control over her work, unlike in a corporate job where she has a fixed role, and must meet the company’s expectations and operate within the parameters set by them.

As the number of people with side hustles increases, especially among young workers, so has the trend of earnings transparency among some of them. It’s not just Gen Z participating in this – people across different age groups now have the platforms to publicly disclose their income, and advocate for pay transparency as well. On TikTok, the hashtag "pay transparency" has amassed 511.1m views and “side hustle income” 7.6m views, respectively, as of this writing. Many of these people report disclosing their entrepreneurial incomes to inspire others to grow their own ventures, or encourage them to build long-term wealth.

Yet there’s a flip side – as open as these side hustlers are about their off-hours income, many still stay tight-lipped about how much they earn from their 9-to-5 jobs. What’s driving the difference – and will it change?

Courtesy of Tolu Frimpong

A point of pride

In Spain, remote-worker Sira Masetti, 34, a quality auditor at Amazon, maintains an online side hustle publishing websites about niche topics such as self-improvement and relationships. She started the venture as a hobby in the pandemic, and saw the potential of turning it into a lucrative income stream. She posts on Twitter about how she grows her websites and makes money from them through ad revenues, which average to £3,500 ($4,365) per month.

“Side-hustles release the ‘inner entrepreneur’ in individuals – so talking about their earnings is one way to demonstrate their success,” says Jennifer Nahrgang, a professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Iowa, US. “In short, individuals are proud of what they are accomplishing. Individuals view side hustles as new opportunities that they can share with others to entice others to join them in their success.”

Masetti’s intention with being open about her side income is to inspire other people to build long-term wealth. “I think that having a side hustle and then transforming it in a business, if it works, is probably the best and easiest way to make money and build wealth in the long term. So, I started to share insights about my side hustle journey, because I genuinely want people to see that they can achieve financial freedom, exactly as I did, and how they can do it.”

But, like Frimpong, Masetti keeps her corporate salary quiet, believing it to be much lower than what people would expect from a large company like Amazon. She’s worried others will assume she’s worth what she earns at her corporate job, and label her unfairly, even though the job is what she needs right now. "People may think that in more than five years I wasn't able to make more, or that I wasn't able to grow in the company."

Courtesy of Sira Masetti

Another reason these creators may keep their full-time earnings close to their chests, says Nahrgang, is that colleagues at the same company may feel like they are competing for pay or that salary disclosures might create tension.

This rings true for Matt Brighton, 30, a senior product manager in financial services with multiple side hustles as a content creator and property investor. Based in Sheffield, he earns what he calls a “higher than UK average” salary in his corporate role at Remote, an HR solutions start-up, but prefers to keep the exact amount private. He believes sharing corporate earnings could potentially expose him to rumours, or make it awkward with any of his current co-workers who might be earning less.

However, Brighton is transparent about his side-hustle earnings. Last year, he made more than £30,000 from those projects, and he has already earned more than that in the first quarter of this year. “Let’s say I share my side income this year and it’s more than someone at Remote makes on their full-time salary. I’d still feel fine because it’s my outside business that has nothing to do with the workplace. They can only look at it with inspiration because that’s not something they can control.”

Courtesy of Matt Brighton

Moving a bigger needle?

While discussions of pay in the corporate world has long-standing rules and unspoken practises that tend to protect the employers, experts say the emergence of side hustles – and the transparency around them – has the potential to shake up norms around pay transparency.

Gabriela Serpa Royo, an analyst at Canvas8, a global behavioural insights practice, explains, “For many, the act of publicising side hustles feels a bit like speaking into a void. There’s no boss, or colleague to measure yourself up to.” She adds, “The creator economy is fairly new, which is why it’s fertile playing ground for new work rules. Through side hustles, people are playing with taboos to reinvent norms for a more transparent, inclusive workforce.”

Additionally, says Serpa Royo, there’s no guidance set by HR or clear career paths laid out in the world of side hustles; instead, people have to turn to each other for information about the steps they take and how much they make, which is often encouraged on social media.

It remains to be seen whether sharing side-hustle earnings will trickle down into more transparency around full-time pay. However, experts including Rameez Kaleem, founder and director of 3R strategy, a London-based independent HR consultancy, say they’ve seen a push for increased pay transparency among young workers. Even if the progress is slow, this evolving attitude, combined with movements such as side-hustle income sharing, could pave the path for a new era of salary disclosure.