This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Just a quick little content warning as we begin today's episode. This one is adults only. I know we've got a lot of families who listen to the show and that's awesome. This one is probably not for the kids, all right? But for the adults out there, if you've ever wanted to blog about intimacy aids and other physical products associated with sex and intimacy and get paid for it, maybe you wanna pay attention.
And if you're like, okay, no, thanks. I don't wanna do that myself, but it's cool. She can do that. This person will pay attention as well because we're gonna hear about a biology student turned model who has had a penchant for writing. She's been interested in sexual wellness as well.
And she just had to find a way to make money with it. That's what she did years later. She's still going, the blog is still up. She's providing a lot of reviews about different products and such. So we'll talk about what that looks like in the story.
Again, adults only for this one, but there's nothing explicit. We're just talking about sexual wellness. So that's what we'll get into in the case study. That case study is coming up. Quick shout out to our sponsor and then the story.
[Music]
Sexual wellness and sex positivity is a crucial part of who Cy is. That's the person we're talking about, Cy. She uses a pseudonym. Cy started her first ever blog while still in high school. This was a Tumblr page called SmashCash, where she could reblog erotic content she was reading.
And the more she read, the more she felt compelled to tell her story and leave the curated content behind. So a couple of years later, alongside studying for her biology degree, Cy evolved her blog into Super SmashCash and created a free WordPress hosted website. This would be a new canvas where she could review sex toys, share a body positive message and discuss taboo subjects, which might get her banned from Facebook. Cy posted a lot of content on the blog, but the content she was most passionate about was sex toy reviews and other sexual wellness products. She loved getting her hands on a new product, testing it, publishing her findings, helping out readers who were curious about these things.
It was the perfect synergy of the scientific and personal parts of her life. Problem was, Cy didn't have a lot of business connections. She was only reviewing items she'd bought herself. So after a few months, she decided to put the blog on pause. She'd already found work as a life model for art classes, something she still does to this day, bringing in a more immediate income and freeing up time to focus on her studies.
The blog sat untouched for the best part of a year when Cy decided to revive it. Her life was changing, she was processing some stuff, and she wanted to revisit writing as a way to share. It provided solace, comfort and distraction. And if she was gonna start writing the blog again, she was gonna take it seriously and turn it into a real business venture, a side hustle, if you will. So she buckled down and began looking for ways to monetize.
Her first foray into the business side of blogging was to network with other bloggers. She would contact them, make friends, find out who was offering them samples to review. She would then reach out to those companies, review the products and add an affiliate link in the post to generate income. Now, here's a fun fact. Although receiving free sex toys may sound like a good deal, it's not always the case because if Cy gets one in the mail and it feels awful, she still gotta test it and put together a review which can make for a really bad day at the office.
Still, this model of getting free toys and adding affiliate links generated enough income to cover the month-to-month cost of the blog, but she wasn't making much money. There was a lot of competition for traffic and she didn't enjoy not feeling in control of her income. So she began to expand and explore and soon found two profitable income streams for Super Smash Cash. The first was to rent advertising space on the blog to toy manufacturers. This allowed her to control the cost of the space, offer on-brand products, which wasn't available with programs like Google AdSense.
And the second was to offer sponsored posts. These are blog posts which have been paid for by a third-party company to advertise products or brand ideas. For example, a couple's shop paid for Cy to write a post about a couple's night, which included their brand message and a link back to their store in the post. These type of posts take a lot of work, but they are the most profitable. When it comes to building an audience in this niche, Cy finds that being honest and transparent is key.
You have to balance personal opinions and experience with objective facts and understand that what works for you may not work for someone else. The goal of any review, whether it's this kind of product or something else, it's to help someone reach their own decision. So if you get this right, people will naturally begin to trust and gravitate towards you. Now, although she loves having a growing audience, privacy is also important in this space. So Cy keeps her real identity a secret.
She's careful to never share her face in any of the images she posts. She also avoids email forwarding or even using the same browser for research to avoid any accidental sharing in her real life. Looking forward, Cy would like to transition out of modeling and explore more of her creative and artistic passions. She'd also like to grow the blog while she explores other options. [Music]
Cy's website is still up.
We first featured her a number of years ago. She's still blogging, she's still writing reviews. SuperSmashCash.com. Cash is spelled C-A-C-H-E.com. Products for adult sexual wellness, of course.
So use your discretion where and when you browse. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I hope you'll think about this and maybe say, okay, what is it that I know about that I could share with other people? Or maybe there's an affiliate model or an advertising model or some kind of content marketing model. Something I could do with a skill or a set of knowledge that I have accumulated over the years.
That's what we're all about here on "Side Hustle School." Big thanks to Cy, big thanks to all of our listeners. Tomorrow, we're gonna talk about different streams of income. Everybody always wants to know about that, but how many income streams is best? We'll look at a listener question. We've also got a story coming up about two guys in college who found a way to place ads on 450,000 cars.
You're actually earning a multi-million dollar income from this. That's coming up soon along with many other topics. I'm so grateful to be able to make the show for you every single day. Listen wherever you get your shows, www.sidehustleschool.com for the complete archives. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
You are listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
