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What It's About
A diagnosis sprouts a vegetarian blog journey!
Business Model
Blog
Skills Required
Experimentation & Nutrition Knowledge
Complexity
Low
Profit Potential
Medium
Words of Wisdom
She believes every post she creates on I Heart Vegetables should solve a problem and serve her audience. This means every post needs to be something which a would-be healthy vegetarian is going to search for in Google. If it’s not valuable to someone who finds her page, it doesn’t make the cut.
Fun Fact
Contrary to popular belief, there are many supermarket products that are vegetarian and even vegan! These include even processed snack foods like Oreos (they don’t contain real dairy!) and dark chocolate. A good tip when shopping: Products that are listed as "cholesterol-free" are often vegan, as bad cholesterol only comes from animal products.
Notes from Chris
Episode 595
When Liz Thomson found out she had high cholesterol, she resolved to make a change. It was time for a healthy new lifestyle with diet and exercise at the heart of it all. Liz opted to try a vegan diet for the next six months in the hopes it would give her more energy, better health, and bring that cholesterol number right down. Although it would be hard, Liz was determined she wouldn’t just endure this new diet but thrive on it. Two months into her journey, Liz felt the itch to write about what she was doing. Being a marketer in her day job, she thought a blog would be a cool place to share what she was learning and experiencing. So, she headed over to WordPress and started a free website called LizLivingVegan. Over the next four months, Liz shared everything she could on her new blog. Anything that was new, exciting or interesting she added, usually publishing a few times a week. Liz got her cholesterol tested at the end of her six-month experiment, but it wasn’t good news. Her number hadn’t budged, and the doctor decided the only treatment for this was medical, and couldn’t be changed by diet and exercise. Bummer. Although Liz walked away from it all a little sad and quickly returned to a less-restrictive vegetarian diet, she didn’t feel it was all for nothing. Along the way she’d found a passion for blogging, sharing recipes and creating a community around the cause. She’d got a taste for it, and she wanted more. The led Liz to start a new blog, I Heart Vegetables, where she was going to blog about her new (but old) life as a vegetarian. She was still committed to healthy living and wanted to share it with anyone who was interested. Since starting, she's been able to generate a healthy profit from the I Heart Vegetables blog. It’s also helped her to land a book deal with Rockridge Press and publish The Truly Healthy Vegetarian Cookbook. Looking to the future, Liz wants to continue to grow the business and optimize her site further, to ensure she can help as many people live a happy and healthy vegetarian lifestyle. But for now, she’s enjoying getting her life back on track after the intense process of writing her book!MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- I Heart Vegetables: As your parents told you growing up, you've got to eat your veggies! If you're curious about adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet (or a "Meatless Monday"), head on over to Liz's blog to try out some of her recipes
- Mediavine: A full service ad management system for video monetization and sponsored influencer marketing
- The Truly Healthy Vegetarian Cookbook: The vegetarian cookbook that Liz wrote as a result of her blog
- The Art of Non-Conformity | 279 Days to Overnight Success: 11,000 words of free advice on how to create your own success with your own project
- College Grad Shares “More than Mac & Cheese” Recipes for Students: When a college student learns to cook, she documents her recipes online, earning more than $1,000/month
- Engineer Beats Wildest Eggspectations With Recipe Blog: A Minnesotan software engineer turns healthy recipes into an online business that has over three million website visitors a month
Quote of the Day
"Even though there's a lot more competition now in the blogging world, there are also a lot more resources. I think the first step is just getting something out there. Your site might not be perfect, your photos won't look as great as you want them to at first, but you just have to get started. That's the best way to learn."
—Liz Thomson #SideHustleSchool
