Foodie Friends Blog Their Way to Free Stuff & Real Money

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

Hey, what's up, it's Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School, here with you for episode 256 of the show. Lots of talk about books lately. I mentioned yesterday that Gretchen Rubin's new book, The Four Tendencies, is now out. I have read it myself and found it to be insightful. In fact, learned a bit about myself that I did not know. It's much cheaper

than therapy. Not that they are exclusive. I want to say congrats to another friend, John Acuff. He has a new book out this week as well. It's called Finish, Give Yourself the Gift of Done. A couple years ago, he wrote a very popular book called Start, which was

all about how to get started and take the first steps on something. He didn't realize through much feedback and talking with lots of folks throughout the country that some people don't struggle in getting started. They struggle in finishing. In other words, perhaps they get started too often, but they fail to see it through. Well, John is a great writer, a great speaker as well. You might want to check that out. It's called Finish.

Now today's side hustle story is about two friends who start a hustle together taking photos on Instagram to promote local restaurants. And I like this story because they're able to do this and make real money. I think it was something like $30,000 so far working part time over the past year. They're also building a foundation so that this should be able to increase, but they've done this without being internet famous. So a lot of stories about brand marketing with Instagram or other social platforms kind of require you to have this huge social media following before you can really do it. But these two

friends started when they had just 1000 followers on Instagram, which is certainly respectable, but it's not huge. In other words, this is something that anyone can do. The story is called foodie friends blog their way to free stuff in real money. And I'll bring that to you right after saying thanks to our sponsor. Alexandra booze works as an account manager for a PR firm in Washington DC. And on nights

and weekends, this foodie and her friend Karen have turned food and lifestyle blogging into a profitable side hustle. Whenever Alexandria would visit Karen in New York City, it would always go out to eat somewhere new and interesting. It was during one of those nights when they were looking for their next meal, they decided to start an Instagram account to document their fun foodie adventures. They thought hey, no one's ever taken a photo of their food and posted it on Instagram before. Okay, that part wasn't true. After a month of thinking

about what they should call it, they launched their Instagram account. And what started as just friends and family liking their iPhone photos of food quickly turned into over 1000 followers. So in September, they built the website East Coast Contessa's to compliment the Instagram account. They used GoDaddy to buy the URL and WordPress to create a free website. For months, they offered their services for free, reviewing small bakeries, coffee shops and food trucks in the form of reviews and social media campaigns. No brand was too

small for them. And with this attitude, they were able to feature a lot of different businesses. They also attended free conferences, webinars, dinners and festivals to meet chefs. Pretty much did anything they could think of to meet people and get the word out. In other words, they hustled. Once they realized there was a market for the kind of content they could

create, they invested in some equipment so they could produce better media than what was coming from their iPhones. They bought a GoPro, a couple DSLRs, and a few interchangeable lenses. And this sounds expensive, but by keeping their eye out for sales, they only spent about $1,500 on all that equipment. And this equipment allowed them to create better photos and video, which along with their consistent networking, helped them reach more brands. The next step was to go from doing all this work for free to getting paid for it. Alex and Karen made a list of all the brands they would like to partner with

and then started reaching out and pitching each brand personally. Now here they're using the skills from their day job because both Karen and Alex come from media backgrounds, so they already had an idea on how to craft an engaging narrative that would be of interest to potential partners. They also knew that research was key. They spent a lot of time learning everything they could about a brand before making a pitch. These efforts paid off because last year, the East Coast Contessas landed their first paid partnership with the National Wine Company. And that's not all. They leveraged that first partnership and

kept pitching to other brands on their list. They tried to make their pitch as easy as possible for the brand to say yes by making sure it was a good fit and providing an entire media kit with their pricing and examples of previous work. And speaking of pricing, they offered multiple packages, depending on the brand and situation. For some brands, it only made sense to do social media promotion for $300 per photo. For other brands, the best approach was social media promotion plus an editorial write-up at a dollar per word.

And in other situations, they would also offer to do a video, which starts at $400 on top of the other promotions. They priced all these packages based on the number of followers they had as well as the amount of time it would take. And this strategy worked well. They continued to get more partnerships and last year brought in $15,000 in revenue. At some point, they realized the restaurant industry has a lot of crossover with the hospitality industry. So early this year, they started branching out beyond restaurants and began

contacting boutique hotels and mid-sized national chains. This brought in new partners. And for the first half of 2017, they brought in $12,000 in revenue. So now they're well on track to surpass last year's figures. And of course, they're still doing this part-time in the midst of their other commitments. Alex and Karen appreciate the extra income,

but also the opportunity to learn alongside a friend. Alex said we challenge each other to be more creative and innovative. It's also nice to have someone there with you during any hard moments. Since they first got inspired during that dinner in New York City, Alex and Karen have now partnered with nearly 200 brands. Many of those were free partnerships in the early days, but now naturally they're focused on paid commitments. And with dozens

more partnerships lined up for the rest of the year, they don't have plans to slow down anytime soon. Well, there are a lot of things to like about the East Coast Contessas. I appreciate the origin story, how this came to be, then the decision to try something out and see what happens, the willingness to work for free and build those relationships with brands, build a bit of a portfolio, and then being able to create that revenue model without an enormous social media following. And I also like the packages they offer. If you visit their website, be sure to check out the "Work With Us" section. Since their

clients are restaurants and hotels and other brands, this is essentially their sales page. And they do a great job highlighting a variety of ways that brands can pay them through sponsored content, of course, but also giveaways, photography features, and more. So to me, this is a good working model of something that can be replicated, especially for anyone who has a background in PR or communications or other media, combined with an interest in food and beverage or hospitality. So if that's you, maybe you can grow something like this. It just takes the right idea and the right dedication. And I think both those things come through in this story. Friends

and listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. The show notes for today's episode are at sidehustleschool.com/256. You can follow me on Instagram at 193 countries, that's 193 countries, or just my name, Chris Gillibow, on Facebook or Twitter. Thank you for listening. You are a rock star, and I'll be back tomorrow.