Marketing Analyst Serves Up Gluten-Free Profit

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

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I'd like to begin today's episode by wishing you a happy Boxing Day. Episode 1821 here of Sadosville School going out on the 26th of December, 2021. Boxing Day is of course the traditional English holiday that stems from a pagan ritual of worshiping Amazon boxes. You know, you get all those Amazon boxes that come in the mail and back in the day, the pagans would actually worship those boxes. These days, of course, well, now that I think about it, we pretty much do the same thing.

Okay, happy Boxing Day. Now, in today's story, a marketing analyst, former division one athlete and home chef, this is all one person, she does a lot, draws on her food limitations to whip up a popular blog that earns $5,000 a month from ad revenue, $5,000 a month from a blog. Like I always love looking at lifestyle businesses like this one. And the thing that I found most notable, which you're gonna hear about here, is that she worked with an agency to get going as opposed to making her own website or using a template from a company like Squarespace, Wix or WordPress. All of those have been our sponsors in the past, but I'm a big fan of them because they help make things easy for people.

However, she chose to go a different route. So at the end of this episode, I'll just kind of look at that a bit more. Why might you choose to do that versus the alternative? So all that's coming up in this action-packed episode. Stay tuned.

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Many of us can't imagine a life without bread, pasta, and pizza. In fact, the majority of eaters out there don't consider gluten-free as a viable option. Adding to the challenge, many alternative recipes get a bad reputation as being a poor substitute of foods we love. Enter Addison Labonte, today's featured side hustler, who decided it was time to make gluten-free cooking approachable, fun, and most importantly, delicious for everyday home cooks. So clearly I'm not the market there, but lots of everyday home cooks out there.

A marketing analyst by day, in 2018, Addison had the idea to start an online food photography and recipe blog. A few years earlier, she had gone gluten-free herself to address some medical issues. As she got used to her new diet, friends and family enjoyed her reports on what she was whipping up in the kitchen. Presto, the ingredients for a food-focused blog began to blend together. Now, though she was confident in her abilities to cook healthy and delicious recipes, Addison admits to not being a programmer.

She could write recipes, but didn't know where to start on how to get her content online. So she hired an agency to set up her blog, which she called Organically Addison. To build her audience, social media, and here I mean mostly Instagram, became her gluten-free bread and butter. And to grow that audience, Addison put on her analyst hat because that's what she does for her day job. Rather than just try everything and not be sure what works and what doesn't, Addison chose to measure what was effective and what kind of went out into the void.

The data truly mattered to her. She took a good look at the analytics behind each post she made to see what else she could cook for her growing audience, and she adapted her posting strategy accordingly. As the blog's readership grew, Addison strove to develop and write about recipes that were easy to cook, nutritious, and delicious for the pickiest of eaters. She herself had grown up as a self-described picky eater, so that part was easy. She was also big on recognizing what she knew and what she didn't.

After all, that's why she had hired the agency. So as her site grew, she once again outsourced some of the blogging work to a digital agency that was tasked with developing Instagram collaborations and generating ad revenue, because that was how she wanted to get paid. How did it work out? Well, by consistently posting eye-catching photos in a new weekly recipe, Addison's blog viewership grew, and she was able to monetize within the first year of launch. Through just a few different advertising channels, she's taken an initial investment of about $1,000 and turned it into a recurring $5,000-a-month business.

As for what's next, she's content with keeping her day job while working on her blog. She loves the balance and benefits she gets from doing both. In a way, it's like having your gluten-free cake and eating it too. [Music]

So let's unpack this part about how Addison outsourced her website design and building. Because as I said, a lot of our listeners just tend to do it on their own, using a platform that makes it easy.

But for her, Addison found it to be easier to actually pay a company to set up her blog for her. And it sounds like she did it on a budget, which is also good. But she says, "I've always believed in doing what you do well and outsourcing the rest. And I'm confident in my abilities in the kitchen, not computer programming. Prior to launch, I never realized how much work blogging can be.

I also didn't realize how much coding goes into the backend. So I'm so thankful I outsourced that." As I said, there you have it. I wanna give you a range of perspectives when you're trying to decide yourself, you know, what do you do yourself? What do you just kind of figure out versus what do you go to someone for help? So lots of different roads to the path of success.

And I'm so glad Addison has found hers, right? $5,000 a month through this blog, which is really all about content. Like if you look at the blog, organicallyaddison.com, we link it up in the show notes page, of course, you'll just see like so many recipes, so many posts. And she's really focusing on, you know, high resolution photography and clear writing. And then eventually it just becomes a game of quantity of, okay, once you get these things right, how can you have more and more posts?

So that you have more and more reviews and therefore, you know, hopefully more and more advertising revenue. So good work Addison. Thank you so much for letting us share your story. And listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I hope you're having a wonderful boxing day or a good day, if it's some other day afterwards.

Today's notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1821. Thank you for tuning in today. Take care of yourself during the holiday season. Got a new year coming up soon. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the "Onward Project."