Is there anything you love to wake up to? The smell of coffee, the sound birds, a warm-blooded creature?

Well, I like all those things but I feel best when I wake knowing money is coming my way.

That’s why I’m an advocate for riser gigs.

A riser gig is an ongoing daily project that starts the day off with chips stacking up on your side of the table.

A riser gig = money in the morning, every morning.

What Does a Riser Gig Look Like?

My riser gigs have included aggregating news, contributing to professional newsletters and writing business news recaps.

For example, one real estate firm hired me to produce two pieces each morning. I recapped and summarized the most important real estate news for agents and brokers and a I wrote a post of interest to buyers who subscribed to a daily newsletter.

AM Hours Required

A riser gig gets that title because these jobs have early-morning deadlines. All of the clients I’ve worked with wanted submissions Monday through Friday between 6 am to 10 am.

I’ve taken gigs where I committed between two to four hours. So, depending on the job and deadline, that has meant getting up and getting started as early as 4:30 am.

When I said riser gigs are “money in the morning,” I meant literally.

I know early morning hours aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Some people don’t want to get out of bed, much less commit to working.  After all, scheduling flexibility is one of the main selling points of freelancing, right?

It’s supposed to be, yes. But all the focus on doing it how you want, when you want is a common downfall.

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A lot of people don’t actually want to do all the work that’s required of freelancers. They jump into this business looking for ways to make money under the most liberal terms—no set hours, no set schedule, no deadlines.

The problem is that a lot of those people aren’t self-starters and they lack self-discipline.

Doing it on their own terms means they don’t work enough to earn a living or they don’t work at all. They wallow in flexibility for a while, thinking it’s such a great thing, then end up broke and head back to the world of time-clocks.

If more newbies started their freelance careers targeting riser gigs, more of them would be successful. And if more people paired a riser gig with personal projects, more of those projects would get completed.

A riser gig gives you a motive to get up and get on the grind. And once you’re at your desk, it’s easier to keep the momentum going.

Foundation For A Profitable Day

Even if you don’t have a problem getting up and getting to work, riser gigs are a smooth move. Think of it as the foundation to a profitable day.

The real estate company I mentioned paid $50 for each day’s round-up and $50 for the post. They suggested I start work at 7 am because the deadline was 10 am.

According to their calculation, I could spend two hours creating the news round-up and an hour writing a post about one of those headlines.

That worked well for me at the time. I was writing for other business and finance clients and scoured the news every morning anyway. That gig paid to do it, and once I got the hang of it, it rarely took me a full three hours to do the work.

By 10 am I already had $100, which quenched my appetite for money in the morning. Plus, I had the rest of the day to keep stacking up my chips.