Plant-Based Lebanese Food Goes Online

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Thank you for tuning in today. I'm so glad you took time. You know, we put this show together every single day, less than 10 minutes long, all with the goal of giving you some ideas, maybe cheering you along, but also providing some practical support in your quest to create a new source of income. So the program is called Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

And today's story is actually someone we have featured before long, long ago. And just a note, aside from the Throwback Thursday segments, you know, where we are deliberately looking at somebody from the past, we actually never feature someone twice on the podcast. And so the only reason we're doing so here is because her side hustle, the story we told before, has now become her main hustle, which is always fun when that happens. And the other thing that tends to happen, you know, it's hard to kind of give this pattern up of like starting something on the side and getting really excited about a new project. So the other thing that's happened is today's story, the one I'm gonna bring you now, is about her new side hustle, okay?

So the new side hustle, I'll briefly mention her old project at the end, but the new side hustle, as her health improved, this Australian of Lebanese heritage started converting meat-based recipes to vegan equivalents. And she is now sharing her recipes with the world and not just sharing those recipes, but also getting paid for it. 'Cause that's what we're all about here. The story is called Plant-Based Lebanese Food Goes Online. I'll bring you that story in just a moment.

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Janelle Hamawi rolled her eyes when a young family member told her that he was trying to go vegan. She had no idea at the time that she'd end up trying it herself because of health issues. And not just trying, but loving plant-based cuisine so much that she began to convert traditional Lebanese recipes to plant-based versions. But let's go back a bit. Janelle was born in Sydney, Australia, and her family is originally from Lebanon.

She grew up consuming heavy doses of meaty dishes, but tried being more plant-based in response to her health changes. The new diet helped to reduce chronic fatigue, hair loss, brain fog, tinnitus, and more. It helped that she liked to cook, so she began collecting and creating delicious recipes. For example, her vegan shawarma is a vibrant feast of cooked mushrooms, fresh vegetables, pickles, and garlic sauce. She's even made some gluten-free vegan recipes, including stuffed peppers and persimmon chocolate pudding.

Mm, getting hungry just making this episode. Now, with her desire to share her newfound passion, Janelle began to post these recipes to Instagram in September 2018. The concept of scrumptious yet nutritious cuisine was appetizing to many people. Her visitors kept returning for seconds, sometimes thirds. And over time, she nurtured her hobby into a side hustle.

With an initial investment of less than $400, she made a blog about a year after starting the Instagram account and moved to a full website three months later. The project is called Plant-Based Folk. It earns a monthly income of $1,500, mostly from advertising. Janelle uses the attention on her Instagram account to attract visitors to her blog. She's also nurtured a mailing list because she knows social networks are fickle.

She entices new subscribers with a free ebook of 10 recipes, early access to new recipes, and more. In addition to sending that newsletter, Janelle also carefully researches keywords for her blog posts. So if you search for air fried potatoes, or spicy potatoes, or potatoes in cilantro, you're likely to find her aromatic recipe for Batatahara, a Lebanese dish. The keywords help with SEO, and the SEO leads to her website showing up at the top of search engine results. Janelle is building a network of fellow food bloggers and brands that want to work with her.

And if you like this model, she suggests reserving a WordPress site early, so that it's ready to go when you are. For food bloggers specifically, she says that the WordPress recipe card plugin is worth the cost. It simplifies the process of added content. Now, as I alluded to, we've actually featured Janelle before. She started a project called CPD Box, a booking platform for continuing professional development.

And she left her marketing job at 15 years to run CPD Box full time. Now, in addition to that, she's back to exploring her first passion. Because before she was in marketing, she earned a degree in hospitality management. Janelle plans to share her nutritious and spicy vegan recipes in an upcoming cookbook of Lebanese plant-based dishes. Furthermore, she's expanding her flavor profile by exploring the eating culture of her husband, a second generation Armenian.

Her inner chef and vegan convert are just getting started as she gets paid to share recipes. [Music]

And this is a very simple and effective business model that we have looked at lots of different times in lots of different ways. And if you wanted to do something like this, you essentially have four steps. Okay, so step one is topic. Choose a topic, figure out what it is that you're going to write about, or if you're using another medium, whatever it is you're trying to convey.

Step two, you're gonna need lots of content. So for Janelle, it's those Instagram posts and then those recipes on the blog. Step three, visitors, right? Like where do all the visitors come from? So, you know, in this case, Janelle focused on SEO.

She had built up that Instagram account as well and began trying to convert Instagram users to blog readers and then to email subscribers. Then step four is advertisers. Okay, how do you actually monetize this? Well, if you have enough people coming to consume content around a certain topic, then there are networks you can sign up for that will do all that for you. But you really need to have the visitors, you know, and lots of content in the right topic.

So one, two, three, four, there you go. And it can kind of run on autopilot after a while. Now, these things do tend to plateau, just to be clear. So it's all about where that plateau is. And we have seen a lot of examples at this level, kind of the $1,500 a month level or the 2,000, maybe a bit more.

But we've also had a number of stories that have gone much higher, you know, $8,000 a month, $10,000. And typically to go higher, you need a certain topic that can attract higher paying advertisers. For example, one of those stories we had that was doing, I don't know, $8,000 to $10,000 a month, maybe more, was about home exercise equipment. So lots of demand for that, especially since the pandemic, and also it's not cheap. So advertisers are willing to spend money, you know, to reach those particular visitors.

So topic, content, visitors, advertisers, there you have it, go from there. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to everything mentioned, Janelle's Instagram account, her website, et cetera. Go to sidehustleschool.com/17791779. Thank you so much for joining me today.

If you've got a comment or question for the show, you can leave that on the website as well. I hope you'll subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau, you're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.