{ PREMIER ISSUE 2018 } KHARISMA MAGAZINE
39
Kharisma : At some point , were you able to monetize your blog ?
Jessica : Yes , yes , I was . I started to get people to contact me and send me things to review . I was doing sponsored posts . I would charge to have a post on my blog about – gosh , I ’ m trying to think about what products I did . There were vitamin supplements , protein shakes I was sent . Something that was really cool – I don ’ t know if you know what a Vitamix is ?
Kharisma : Yes , yes .
Jessica : Probably , my all-time favourite partnership was being sent a Vitamix . I
had always wanted a Vitamix , but as a 23 , 24-year-old , I couldn ’ t really justify spending $ 1,200.00 on a blender . I was sent one , and I think they sent me a little bit of money as well to blog about it . That just made my day .
Kharisma : I can imagine .
Jessica : I still have it . I still use it when I ’ m in Australia .
Kharisma : Oh , nice .
Jessica : Yeah , so I monetized it that way , and I also released an online group program about health and wellness . I released that , probably , about a year into having the blog . How else did I monetize it ? I released that , and I was also an affiliate for other people , so I was selling other people ’ s e – books . I would have a badge on my site , so if somebody clicked on it and then purchased , I would receive a percentage of the commission . I did a very , very small amount of one on one health coaching as well until I had a handful of clients , and then I realize very quickly that I didn ’ t want to be a health coach , and that wasn ’ t a route I wanted to go down .
Kharisma : What did you do to make the change , if you realized at that point you were – “ Okay , I don ’ t want to be a health coach .” Were you still employed at this time at your full time job ?
Jessica : Yeah , I was still employed at the time . While I was setting up my – while I was working on Live Health Simply , my husband and I also launched another website , which was called Shop Healthy . We still have that today . We ’ ve outsourced the management of it , so the day to day running of it , we ’ re not involved in . But if you go to shophealthy . com . au , you ’ ll see that website as well . Through the blog , we were also getting traffic sent to our online health food store , so that was great . I was at this stage when I was getting a decent amount of traffic to my