From $14/hr Crossing Guard to $14K/Month

Christine Tyler Hill took a part-time crossing guard job in Vermont in late 2023.

Pay: $14/hr, 50 minutes each weekday morning.

She’s also an artist and illustrator. And every morning at the crosswalk, she noticed things – migrating geese, pretty clouds, funny trash, a doe-eyed pitbull in a knitted sweater.

She started posting monthly “cloud reports” on Instagram – handwritten, illustrated snapshots of her daily observations from the intersection.

Followers loved them. If she forgot to post one, people would reach out asking where it was.

So in January she launched The Cloud Report – an 8-page handwritten zine printed on cream cardstock, mailed to subscribers every month 👇

• $8/month per subscriber
• Hand-bound, stamped, and labeled in her studio
• Content: drawings, paintings, and stories about “good trash and cute dogs”

Per The Wall Street Journal, she now has ~2,000 paying subscribers 🤯

That’s roughly $14,000/month – from her observations at a crosswalk.

The world feels bleak most of the time, but every single morning at the intersection, I’m bowled over by beautiful moments.

She’s not the first person to turn a low-paying job into a personal brand. Dylan Lemay was scooping ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery when he started filming trick tosses on TikTok. He now has 10M+ followers and used that audience to open his own ice cream shop in NYC.

Different paths, same playbook: document what you already do – even if it’s a “boring” job – build an audience, then monetize.

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