Successful side hustle: Part-time hand model earns $10,000 a year working just 5 extra hours per week

Washington balances her time between her role as chief of staff to the chief marketing officer at HubSpot, a CRM platform software development company, and working as a hand model and nail polish influencer.

Most days, you can find Washington using her lunch break, after-work hours, and even early mornings trying to catch the best light to showcase her latest nail creations, which she shares with more than 2,000 followers on her Instagram account @polishedby.chloe. And while she’s always been a fan of nail polish, she turned this hobby into a moneymaking side hustle during the pandemic. 

These days, when she’s not testing the newest colors and sharing the results with her followers, she’s leading virtual demonstrations for one of the industry’s top polish brands. Washington took some time out after applying her latest coat of polish to talk to Fortune about how this social media side career took off. 

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

How did you get into hand modeling and creating nail polish content? 

I am an only child. I love girly stuff. I probably should’ve had a nail polish budget before the pandemic because if I went to the store and there was a new color, I was grabbing it and putting it in my cart.

I always heard that I have nice hands. I don’t know if it’s a Southern thing, but people would say I had “piano fingers” growing up. And with my nail beds, there is a lot of real estate. So to be able to actually do something cool with that, and generate income, has been fantastic.

During the pandemic, especially when we were on lockdown, I was just painting my nails a lot. I wanted to try new designs and post to social media. But my friends didn’t care about this on my regular Instagram. Normally I talk about random things: family pictures, boyfriend pictures, Georgia football. Those are my topics. So I made a new Instagram, just to see. I thought maybe I might be able to get 10 followers, but it would be something for me to do—kind of like my mani memory book.

But you didn’t just stop at 10 followers, right? 

It picked up fast! I was not really expecting anything to come from it. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was an influx of nail Instagram pages. I think everyone was bored at home and wanting to have a creative outlet. 

Friendships have formed from this. It’s just the strangest, weirdest, most beautiful thing. The nail community, if you will, was everyone at home painting their nails and talking on Zoom when you couldn’t go to happy hour or go to brunch. I’ve made some really wonderful and beautiful friendships with people I’ve never met in person that I’ve talked to all the time.

Honestly, I still feel weird saying “hand model.” Sometimes I’ll just say I create content. Same thing. I model my hands, and I create the content and take photos of it.

Photo courtesy of Chloe Washington

When did it transform into a paid gig? 

I had my page up for maybe a month, and Olive & June reached out. They’re my main nail polish client. 

They wanted to get some user-generated content, and so they looked at who was tagging them. And that eventually led them to me. They reached out and asked if they could pay me to take some photos if they sent me their polish. They wanted to send a list of polishes to paint and take pictures of on my hand. And I was like, I sure can. You’re sending me free polish and you’re paying me—all right. 

I also work for Dana Rebecca Designs, a fine jewelry company. But I reached out to her versus her reaching out to me. I said that I loved their things and that I saw there was a call for models for a photo shoot in Chicago—and I wanted to know how I could work with them. And it went from there. 

How much do you earn? 

Influencers can make—at least in the nail industry among people I know—$1,000 to $2,000 to almost $100,000 a year. That’s not PR, but doing user-generated content for brands. 

I’ve made at least $10,000 a year for the past two years that I’ve been doing it. And that’s being able to do it part-time. I’m not really grinding like a lot of other people are. I would say I spend anywhere between five to 15 hours a week on this. 

I’m not only a hand model, I teach Mani 101 on Zoom calls each month for Olive & June as well. The class is an hour, and then I probably spend an hour prepping, especially when sometimes I’m teaching a new technique. I’ve got to first teach myself, and then I’ll teach other people.

I’m compensated for teaching the class. Additionally I’m an ambassador for Olive & June, so I’m compensated that way, too. That’s another passive way of income.

With the jewelry companies, I structure pay by the number of manicures and number of photos I post, but they’re flat fees. 

This is my play money. This is my “Oh, I want that handbag” money, or it’s money I can use to invest aside from the income from my full-time job.

You mentioned this was a lifelong hobby, but what type of job did you actually want to do when you were younger? 

I wanted to work for OPI and name the nail polish. I have a degree in fashion merchandising. That is what I wanted to do, and it came full circle. 

But I graduated in the Great Recession, and in 2007 and 2008 it was a rough time. So I went the IT route. I have project management experience, now leading marketing, strategic operations, and planning. I’ve always been a techie and into that type of stuff, too. But now I get to also do that creative side, what I have a degree in, and have it really come full circle. 

Have you managed to get OPI as a client or do any work with them? 

They started following me on Instagram. They don’t follow many people, so seeing that, of course I did a dance and yelled. My boyfriend asked what was wrong, and I was like, no, everything is right! So I have not expanded to OPI yet, but ORLY just sent me a PR box, so I’m excited to be able to talk to different brands.

Photo courtesy of Chloe Washington

How long does it usually take you to paint your nails at this point—what have you learned with practice?

The importance of skin care and cuticle care. No matter how good the nail polish is, if the foundation is not right, the picture is not going to be great—especially since I don’t edit them. So it’s about not clipping my cuticles, moisturizing throughout the day, and drinking enough water. 

That is something I never thought of in relation to taking pictures of your hands. If you’re dehydrated, your veins are all popping out of your skin and it doesn’t look good. You don’t want to post that on the internet.

I’ve definitely gotten faster and more precise. Talking about tips and tricks I’ve learned: Set a timer. It’s like paint on a wall, you need that first coat to dry completely. So I set a timer between coats. 

First you’ve got to put nail polish remover on to clear the surface. Then if I’m doing a base coat or ridge filler, I set a five-minute timer. I make sure to always have a barrier on because I don’t like to stain my nails in case I have to paint a light color later.

First coat, five minutes. Second coat, seven minutes. Top coat 10 minutes. If they’re sticking a little bit, you need to give it a while longer. Or you can stick your hand in the freezer for a minute if you’re in a big hurry. Different brands also have dry drops that can help. Icy cold water helps, too.

Where do you want this to go from here? 

I would like to continue to work with brands, whether it be different nail polish brands, that’s fine. I also enjoy the public speaking part of it. I did a lot of Instagram Live during the pandemic, for people to ask questions. 

I try to do a few things really well and be an expert in that and not try to chase the market. Hailey Bieber broke the internet a few months ago with her donut nails. That’s interesting to me, but I don’t do super-intricate nail designs. I don’t want people to feel like because there are all these influencers online that do their own nails, I have to do this, or I have to chase this.

There’s nothing wrong with going to the nail salon. I love a pedicure. I don’t let anybody touch my nails, but I love pedicures.

I don’t want to do this full-time because this has been a fun hobby pretty much all of my life. I want it to still be a fun hobby—and also be able to network, to meet people, and of course make money through it in that way.

I really want to be able to actually help people, make people feel beautiful and feel competent in what they’re doing.