How Much 10 Jobs Paid Me – No 4-Year Degree

If you are like me and curious as to what you can make doing different types of jobs, especially in the creative field, I break down how much I've made at each of my 10 jobs. From washing dishes and delivering pizzas, to working at recording studios and production companies, I hope the video above gives you some insight into what can be made at different levels of your career.

I don't have a four-year college degree – just an associates degree in recording arts, so I never thought I'd be able to work my way up in a different industry and make a decent living.

How Much I Made at Every Job

When it comes to taboo conversation topics, the main ones are religion, politics, sex, and money. Well, in this video, we’re talking about money of course. I’m going to go over all of the jobs I’ve had since I was 17 and how much I made at each one.

Like I said earlier, I don’t have a four-year college degree, so back when I felt more directionless, I was always curious to know what types of jobs paid well and what ones didn’t – especially in the creative field where it can vary so greatly. So from the food and retail industries to music and video production, let’s get into.

Restaurant Dishwasher

My first job when I was in high school was working as a dishwasher in the restaurant of a country club. And it wasn’t a bougie country club – it was more middle class. Here, I made $7/hr and generally had 4 and a half hour shifts, so I usually just made enough to fill up a tank of gas and maybe buy a couple of CDs. You know, before there was streaming.

Circuit City Sales Associate

I never really enjoyed high school, so I decided to graduate a semester early in my senior year. I finished school in December and in January, I got a job at Circuit City as a Sales Associate in the TV department. Which, if me buying CDs didn’t tell you that I’m old, working at Circuit City definitely does.

The pay was just $9 an hour, and they had already eliminated commissions, so there was no monetary incentive to sell. But still, while my friends were at school, I was making money selling plasma TVs, which was pretty cool. By the time summer rolled around, I decided I had enough and went off to college. I got my associates degree in 12 months, which took to me to my next job.

Recording Studio Runner

After college, I moved out to LA and got a job working at a really nice recording studio in Hollywood called Henson. It’s one of those historic recording studios with lots of history and amazing gear and great sounding rooms. But of course, I was at the bottom of the totem pole, working as a studio runner, which is essentially like an intern. I cleaned toilets and got food for a bunch of pop stars and all sorts of errands and cleaning like taking a q-tip to a large format console, cleaning every fader and knob. I also often worked the nigh shift which was from 5pm until I cleaned up after the last artist went home for the day, which could be 2am or 9am – no telling which.

All of that paid me minimum wage in California, which was $8 an hour. I often got overtime pay which was $12 an hour, but still, I was barely scraping by. After about 6 months, there were still like 6 other runners ahead of me for a promotion to just become an assistant engineer, which also had low pay and terrible hours, so I decided to quit and move back to Indiana to play in a band with my friends.

Pizza Delivery Guy

While playing in a band in a college town, I got a job as a pizza delivery driver. This paid about $5.15 per hour, but with tips, it came closer to $15-$20 per hour. It was a pretty decent job, and I had some fun and ate a lot of pizza.

Recording Studio Intern

After the band fizzled out, I eventually moved to Chicago and worked as an intern at a recording studio that did a lot of work for commercials and movies. It’s one of the largest studios in Chicago, and it paid absolutely nothing. Not only were there too many interns for the amount of work there was, they wouldn’t really put you in situations where you could learn anything, so it felt like a huge waste of time. After three months, my internship was up, and they didn’t offer me a position, so good riddance.

Video Editor

I had previously done some minor video editing in school and enjoyed it, so I put together a now embarrassing video resume and found a job as a part-time video editor at a small production company. Despite no real experience, I was able to start on a trial basis, making $20 an hour. After the first week went well, I started working 30-40 hours a week. It was a lot of internal corporate videos, conference videos, some small business promo videos. So it wasn’t the most exciting stuff, but I learned a lot. I also went on shoots as a production assistant and learned a lot from the production side of things as well. I worked there for 3 and a half years and got incremental $3 raises, so I was making $32 per hour when I left, which was a little over $50,000 per year.

Miscellaneous

While working as a video editor, I also picked up a side job working a couple of evenings at another recording studio. This was a smaller studio, but they gave you a lot of freedom. I was essentially the night manager there, which once again, didn’t pay anything, but while working there, I engineered a few sessions which paid about $30 per hour.

After that, I worked for a real estate investor, looking at houses and analyzing potential deals. It didn’t pay anything either, but if I brought him a deal that he would’ve closed on, I would’ve earned a commission of like 10% or something. But there were a lot of bottlenecks and issues working there, so, after a few months of no deals, I left.

Also, throughout this time, I was a second shooter for my then-girlfriend now-wife’s photography business. I would shoot weddings on the weekend with her, which depending on the budget and the time, I would make $200 to $300 per wedding. While it was a ton of work, I did develop a lot as a photographer and quickly learned the ins and outs of my camera.

Instacart

In 2015, Rachel and I decided to pack up and move to LA. I didn’t have a job lined up, but I did work remotely at my video editing job, mostly working on motion graphics projects. When that started to dry up, I began building my motion graphics reel to lock down a full-time job in LA. While I was working on the reel and applying and interviewing at places, I decided to try Instacart out to make a little money. In case you aren’t familiar, Instacart is where people can have groceries delivered to them. So I would shop at a handful of different grocery stores around downtown LA and then deliver the orders. While my past experience as a studio runner and pizza delivery driver made me a pro at quickly shopping and delivering food, it was a bit stressful finding parking or parking in alleys and loading zones hoping I wouldn’t get a ticket. At the time, Instacart paid per item shopped for and a delivery fee plus any tip the customer left. Sometimes I’d shop for a business, and they’d leave me a monster tip of over $40 which was amazing, but everything generally averaged out to around $20 to $25 per hour, not to mention the cost of gas and the wear and tear on my car.

Motion Graphics Artist

Luckily, I only had to do Instacart for a few months because I ended up getting a couple of job offers. They were both for a motion graphics artist position. The first one was an offer at huge mobile gaming development company. They offered me a 3-month contract at around $30 per hour – which was weird because I applied for a full-time position. That same week, I got an offer from a company I liked better. It was a startup in the online education space and they offered me a full-time job with a salary of $70,000 per year with great benefits. So that was a no-brainer for me.

After about 6 months or so, my responsibilities expanded to more of a director of photography for production shoots as well as motion graphics. This came with a pay bump to $85,000 a year, which just about blew my mind.

Youtuber

While working as a motion graphics artist, Rachel and I started our YouTube channel Mango Street. It got off to a great start and after a few months, we started generating some money in the form of brand deals. After about 6 months, we started paying ourselves $1,000 per month, but trying to keep as much money in the business to keep it growing.

Eventually, we took the YouTube channel full-time. We then paid ourselves about $4,000 per month, but it would vary based off of our business’s financials. Some months, we’d be waiting on a bunch of payments to come in and were a little tighter on cash than we would’ve liked. So while initially, it was a pay cut from my last job, I was working from home with Rachel with a ton of freedom, so it was totally worth it. Plus, we were building a business with a lot of potential.

Now, it’s been a few years, and I usually pay myself around $6,000 per month, but again, it fluctuates based off the cash flow of the business.

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Well, that wraps up about every job I’ve had, and I hope it shed some light on different positions in different industries. I’m always curious about topics like this since it either varies so greatly or people just aren’t forthcoming when it comes to talking about money, which I totally understand.

If you want input on what videos I make next, follow me on Instagram because I’ll post polls asking what you want to see next.