The Journey to $100k as a Content Creator with Johnny Brunet

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Ann Morrissey: Hey there, thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week, Bjork is sitting down to chat with Johnny Brunet about his success as a content creator. Johnny had a pandemic pivot moving from standup comedy to mastering the Blackstone griddle, but his success story all comes down to brilliant strategy. He’ll walk us through his genius move of creating content only for the beginner cook to dominate an overlooked market. Then they’ll do a deep dive into numbers as Johnny breaks down his successful revenue mix of YouTube AdSense, eBooks, and affiliate marketing, which will give you a simple rule for a successful and simple sales funnel. If you need a blueprint for turning a niche idea into a full-time income, you’ll definitely want to tune into this episode. And now without further ado, I’ll pass it over to Bjork.

Bjork Ostrom: Johnny, welcome to the podcast.

Johnny Brunet: Hello. Thank you so much for having me, Bjork. I’m excited to be here.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, this actually came out of a conversation on the Food Blogger Pro Forum, had a little back and forth. Somebody’s asking about some thoughts and advice around some stuff, which often happens in the Food Blogger Pro Forum. I wrote a response and then it’s cool. You jumped in and you were like, Hey, here’s some actual on the ground building my business, a little bit of a case study of how you’re doing it, and I was like, that’s awesome. And my initial understanding, you were talking about your ebook and selling your ebook. My initial understanding was like you had gotten to the point where you’re selling 20, 30, 40 copies of your ebook, and I was like, Hey, cool. Once you get to a hundred, 200, why don’t you jump on the podcast? We can have a conversation around it. And you’re like, oh, I’m there now. You were like, I’m just selling that many through my website. I’m selling 20, 30, 40 copies through my website. If you include my YouTube channel. I’m selling 200 plus sometimes a month. And I was like, oh, awesome. Let’s have a conversation about how you did that. So when did you first start creating food related content and what was it about?

Johnny Brunet: So I started in COVID. I was a COVID creator, I guess, tried to keep it short. So I did standup comedy as a hobby for six years leading up to COVID. Awesome. Then COVID happened. My wife got pregnant, and I was like, well, I’m not going to be going out in public and coming home to my wife who’s pregnant with her child at a bar

Bjork Ostrom: Bar. 50 people. Yeah,

Johnny Brunet: 50 people just all talking into the same microphone. They’re terrible jokes. Mine include, I’m not saying mine were great. And so I was like, well, I can’t just shut off this creative faucet. I’ve been doing this for six years for no money. I really enjoyed doing that. And so a lot of people jumped into content, did a couple different things that didn’t go very well, all comedy related. It’s just hard and entertainment’s super hard. You need to be really entertaining. You need to be really funny. But I cooked most of my life. My whole professional career was in food service, front of house, pack of house managed retirement communities and restaurants and stuff. And so I’d gotten some little classes and stuff about YouTube to try to grow the comedy thing, and they’re talking about niching down and trying to find a good niche. And then I saw a griddle one day Blackstone griddle, like a flat top grill, which is very popular if people weren’t familiar. They’re outside just flat surface. And I was like, oh, I always wanted of those. I worked at a diner and I did a lot of those, and then I would like one of those. Those are pretty cool. And then I looked at my checklist as I was still doing comedy shorts and stuff. I was like, oh, this checks off a lot of the, this is very specific for a need. I did a little bit of research on Google Trends, and it’s like it’s becoming more popular. It’s like, do you have any knowledge? I was like, actually, a little bit. I’ve never been a chef. I’m not

Bjork Ostrom: A super, yeah, but you’ve cooked, I mean, that’s lot. You probably have more hours than 99% of

Johnny Brunet: Yeah. I mean, I’ve stood over a flat top on Sunday morning for eight hours making omelets and pancakes and stuff at a Bob Evans, which that’s why my first job out of college, it’s a dinerin the Midwest, so people aren’t familiar,

Bjork Ostrom: But it’s like that’s expertise on the product. Yeah, it’s a Cracker Barrel.

Johnny Brunet: Same thing. So yeah, so I was like, oh. And then I started watching the videos. I was like, oh, I think I actually know a little bit more than some of these guys. Not in an arrogant way. I was like, I think actually there’s some stuff

Bjork Ostrom: They’re not going over. We call it expert enough. You have enough expertise to teach 98% of the population how to do Blackstone better.

Johnny Brunet: And looking back on it said, well, yeah, I trained at a place that had 500 restaurants and their whole business was making breakfast. So it’s like, yeah, basically they cultivated years of knowledge for short order cooks and someone were training me, and then it just happened that someone finally got popular to make a residential version. And I was like, oh. So yeah, but you still don’t know. You still learn more along the way. There’s little differences that I had to learn by just doing it. And that came up too,

Bjork Ostrom: Which is part of it is getting started. That was the key too. Jumping in and actually doing it.

Johnny Brunet: It is, you just got to jump in and do it. But then also I did get lucky to have some big wins at the beginning because of its popularity and then because of a few things that you don’t understand until later. You know what I mean? You do something and you’re like, oh, I did it. And then later you’re like, I didn’t really fully understand why that worked. It just worked. Yeah. What is an example? So I did a breakfast video and I still can’t recreate it. It has over a million and a half views and stuff. And I was just like, oh, I thought it was a pretty good video and stuff. And then I went back and started taking courses and stuff and noticed had a lot of things like, Hey, I’m bringing in knowledge that wasn’t really around in other videos, just about cooking order and temperature control on a flat top and stuff like that, which is not to go into the weeds, I’m sure no one cares about it, but the main thing is with flat tops is people want to use ’em like grills and just kind of turn ’em on high, and then you just kind of burn everything. And so temperature control is something nobody was talking about and why and how to control it and why you don’t cook your eggs at the same temperature as your pancakes, which is a very not common sense thing, but maybe for the home cook or the established home cook makes a lot of sense. But outside for maybe what I would consider your grill guy or it’s not always a guy. It could be mom or whoever, but it just wants to turn it around and throw stuff down. And it’s like, well, these eggs burnt. It’s like, yeah, man, you’re on high. The eggs are delicate. And then I kind of told a story, like I said, my wife was pregnant, and so I opened it up with something like, my pregnant wife wants some food. And so I had no idea that I’m laying in a story at the beginning, which I know in a lot of your podcasts recently, and it’s big to give that story and lay that groundwork of I want to make her breakfast, so then I do on the flat top. So that helped out too.

Bjork Ostrom: A couple of things to pull out that I think are important. You’re humble in your analysis of it, but I think you were also intentional in saying, okay, number one, you were doing courses, you were learning, you were researching, you were trying to understand, and from that fed into some of the decisions that you made around a niche, niching down, getting really specific and looking at not only the niche, but looking at the trend of that niche. And we talk about it on the podcast of you not only need to be a really good surfer, which means you have the skills, the abilities in your case, it’s like understanding actually how to cook on a blacktop, understanding story, understanding some of the video components. So those are the skills you need to be a surfer, but it’s only going to matter if you actually then catch a wave. And what I hear you saying is you also caught a wave. The wave being blacktop, that’s the part where you maybe look at and say like, Hey, I had some luck involved with this. But it was also from researching what you’re saying resonates with me. Because we see this time and time again with people who are building successful content businesses, which is they have the skills and the expertise, or they are expert enough to teach somebody a thing. They get after it, they learn and do this idea of ready, fire, aim instead of ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, fire. You are constantly ready, fire, aim. So you’re getting closer to a good piece of content. You’re learning what works and what doesn’t work, and then you’re doing all of that within the context of an industry that is growing, and then you do it for a long period of time. So you started in 2020, you had some initial success. I know you’re at the point, and we can talk about this, where you’re on track to do a six figure year, which is incredible, but at what point did you learn that, hey, I might be onto something and I can actually make some money from this?

Johnny Brunet: Probably the first year. Yeah. Sorry, one thing I just wanted you just reminded me I wanted to mention real quick was, okay, but when the niche thing, if I ever talk to anybody, I mean, it’s just the stereotype. I feel like it’s the thing that is so commonly said. Whenever you learn a skill, there’s like, this is the thing. It’s like riches are in the niches, or same thing, whatever. I don’t know. I play golf, keep your head down and it’s like, yep, that’s the first thing. And then you just skip it and you just keep going into all the other little stuff. And it’s like, but you’re right. If you skip the first part, it’s just going to be uphill, which your metaphor of catching the wave or whatever. It’s like, yeah, narrowing the niche was the best thing I ever did. And then I always heard someone say, go down four levels too. And I even in the last couple years did that more. So it was like outdoor cooking is the first one. And then well, cooking, I’m sorry, cooking would be a niche, and then it would be outdoor cooking, and then it would be the Blackstone would be three. And then with the ebook and stuff, I’ll get into this, I really went after beginners. No one was helping the beginners. Everyone was doing, look at what I can make. Look how fantastic this is. And I used my Blackstone griddle and my smoker and my pizza oven. I mean, we’ve probably seen videos like that. They’re just more of like, wow, I can’t believe he did that or she did that where mine was like, no, you just got it. You’re

Bjork Ostrom: Regular. Here’s some hash browns.

Johnny Brunet: That tastes really good. Yeah, here’s some hash browns. This is what you bought it for, or you got it for Father’s Day. It’s a $300 thing, so you’re not trying to be Run a Japanese steakhouse yet or whatever. So anyways, if anybody ever asks me, I’ll always be like, go down. When I heard four levels, it’s hard. You can go two or three and you’re like, yeah, it makes sense. It’s like, no, go one more and then you’ll find, and so I positioned my ebook in the same thing. This is the solution. You just got it. This is the solution to your problem for a beginner, I’m going to show you real world beginner stuff. But yeah, so the first year I got again, so when I say lucky, I got lucky on YouTube that I started getting a lot of views. The videos started taking off. And then also I didn’t realize until later that not all YouTube views are created equal, not all.

Bjork Ostrom: What do you mean by that?

Johnny Brunet: YouTube Advertising is created equal. So they advertise the same. They pay out just the same way TV does. A daytime soap opera commercial isn’t as much as a Super Bowl commercial.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Johnny Brunet: So I’m somewhere in the middle, but it was like, I didn’t realize they’d be like, who’s your audience? And I heard on a podcast once, they’re like, kids content on YouTube makes no money. You can get 3 million views because five, they don’t have the money to spend. So finance anything, if you’re in, the finance is top, top of the top. Because I insurance

Bjork Ostrom: You talk about insurance, how to shop for a new insurance plan.

Johnny Brunet: Yeah, I’m established adult with a family looking for life insurance,

Bjork Ostrom: Looking to spend money.

Johnny Brunet: I have a credit card ready to go. Well, so mine is middle aged man who has money and probably works and is supporting family. But also, this may be a stereotype or not, I feel as a hard audience to get to because they’re not very trustworthy of things and maybe don’t impulse by as much. So I just have a higher, I didn’t realize how much higher until I heard that. And then I talked to other food creators that were getting similar views that were getting 60% of the monthly money from me. The first year of YouTube, I made like $12,000. That

Bjork Ostrom: Was it. That was the piece where you talk about being maybe a little bit lucky is getting into a category that pays a little bit higher than generic food content. Is that what you’re getting at?

Johnny Brunet: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, having knowledge to run the griddle from my life experience has probably helped out a little bit as well. But I also think you can still create a channel and do the learn in public or build in public model with any niche. If you niche down enough, I firmly believe you could do a how to, I don’t know, think bake pie specific, specific pie related. I just doing pies. I’ve never made a pie before in my life, but every day I’m going to start baking a pie and recording it. And I still think you could grow that way as you learn, you just document your learning. So I still think that’s possible, but it was, I mean, I had knowledge. So yeah, the first year I made a little bit of money. I wrote out a plan, my five year dream plan of going full time and how I would do it. And then I started what would the money look like? And

Bjork Ostrom: Initially, it was just, and this was like 2020, 2021. 2020. Your first year.

Johnny Brunet: 21, probably after the first year. Yeah, when I hit the 12,000 in a little bit, a couple thousand on Amazon. So from affiliate stuff, affiliate, that was the first money. So the affiliate started first, but then YouTube quickly passed it. So I did that, started an email list, and then second year, end of second year wrote the ebook and it was 30 pages, $10, not great, but just I got it done. You did it?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, did. And it was just in Google Docs, Word, put it together. Okay, Canva. You go into Canva,

Johnny Brunet: You create a new, I bought a log template off Canva.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Yep. This is great.

Johnny Brunet: Relatable. The same template I use today. It’s the same one recipe. And it was recipe template. They had everything formatted for the pictures and stuff like that. So yeah, if you want to do an ebook, yeah, I would say it’s totally possible you can buy a template. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink the design. No one cares about the design. By the time they see the design, they’ve already gave you their money. So I fell into that trap too, where it’s like, what should it look like? It’s like just tell ’em what you’re promising them. I’m promising you 30 gluten-free recipes, desserts. I’m promising you that. You know what I mean?

Bjork Ostrom: And

Johnny Brunet: If you have a website, you already got those recipes probably. So I did that and then built a whole website because I had no idea what I was doing and literally didn’t know that I could just get something else like Thrive Cart that I use now that I didn’t need a whole website to sell an ebook.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Johnny Brunet: But also it’s one of those things where you think you’re going to do too much, and I just had

Bjork Ostrom: Throughout you have what it’s going to be and

Johnny Brunet: And I built it through Elementor and way too much care on the aesthetics of it and blah, blah, blah, when I should just do more recipes. And really, I just needed a landing page. All I needed was a landing page to sell this book. And so the first year, it’s great

Bjork Ostrom: Used case hook, like a stand store as well. We’ve talked about Sand Store on the podcast, but essentially it’s like you need something, Gumroad is another one. You can do it within Kit. Essentially what you’re saying is you needed a website, URL, buy button and the ability for the PDF to be sent to somebody.

Johnny Brunet: Exactly. So then what eventually happened? So that was a lot. And the website was super slow and clunky, and that’s what I’m sending everybody to. So then I joined, I took another class, whatever, and this is a couple years in when I’m getting ready to go full time, or I’m sorry. So the first year, I dunno how much you want me to go in this. So I sold five, 500 copies the first year. I was like, great, this is amazing. And that was year two or three. So it went to a couple thousand to 7,000 to last year was $15,000 worth of eBooks. And it went from like $10. And when I would update it, I’d go to $15 eventually. I don’t remember where that was in there. I also eventually learned that yes, kit has a very simple way to get your ebook out. So I switched over from, I switched my email provider to Kit from one of the other ones that made it easier. I could also pop it in the email real easy. And that was two years ago when I went and sold 15,000. And then eventually learned about thrivecart and stuff. And when I decided this past year that this was going to be my main focus, that’s when I did THRIVECART and built a landing page, which isn’t necessary. That’s just me going deeper. I started making more money off of it, but that was after a lot of stuff too. I tried a community, I tried a course and just I tried too much stuff and then realized ebook has already been working. It’s been growing each year. So then after that, like I said, 15, so then this year is like I’m doubling everything is ebook. And that’s when I joined Food Blogger Pro at the beginning of the year, said, well, the website will lead to the ebook too, but it doesn’t need to be a full blown, I’m not doing a traditional food blog. I just want to answer the five or six basic questions like seasoning, cleaning, what oil people like to use, accessories. And then everything else is just a recipe, I don’t know, index. That’s what it is. And I can put my recipe at the bottom of each video, your ebook. Well either, oh, the recipe itself or the ebook, the eBooks in each description, but also if the recipe’s on the site that’s in there too. And then when you go to the site, I don’t run ads, I don’t run anything. So the only thing you can do is either read the recipe and the only thing to click on is either in the sidebar is my ebook and the main menu is my ebook, and then about me page is my ebook. So you can’t really go anywhere else.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s such a good example of, we talk about this idea that a lot of people who are listening to this podcast and thinking about growing a business, they think about themselves as marketing content where you create content and then you market it. You try and get people to watch it because that’s how you make your money. It’s like advertising dollars on a website or maybe YouTube ads on your YouTube channel. But in your case, one of the things that’s really great is you are able to do content marketing. You are creating content to market a product, and you now have the equivalent of what would be a site with, I don’t know, a hundred thousand page views in terms of the amount that you’re making from your ebook from selling 25 50 copies of your ebook from your website, which it sounds like you’re kind of at the point where you’re selling quite a few from your website and

Johnny Brunet: Yeah, it’s very seasonal, so much

Bjork Ostrom: Easier. Sure. Yeah, more in the summer,

Johnny Brunet: It was close to 50 by the end of July and August, and then now it goes, but that’s fine. But my goal

Bjork Ostrom: Will be a low month and yeah,

Johnny Brunet: So Christmas actually will have a pop because people will get ’em. But yes, February will be terrible,

Bjork Ostrom: I think. And this is super helpful. You were really generous to provide a breakdown here, and I think it’d be interesting to talk through this if you’re up for it, but last year generated $80,000 a revenue within your business, which is amazing. 55%. You actually have decimals. I’m going to include this. I think it’s kind of fun. We’ll nerd out on it.

Johnny Brunet: You had decimals.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay, to be clear, 55.7%, YouTube AdSense, 15.2% sponsorships, 12.7% affiliate, and then 16.5% ebook to make up that 80,000 in revenue. And then this year projecting over $100k, which is awesome. And these percentages are also interesting. 44%, 44.1% YouTube Adsense, 34.2% eBook sales. So that has essentially doubled sponsorships, 10.8% and affiliate 9%. The thing that I’m interested in talking about, number one, all of that is incredible, super cool to see and a huge congratulations. It’s like, I don’t know what the percentage is, but it’s only, I don’t know, 15, 10% of the population that’s earning over a hundred thousand dollars or more just in general like W2 jobs and contracting and business owners, let alone within the context of building a content business. So that’s super incredible. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors, what if your content could earn more and do more for your business audience and your future? You might know Raptive as the ad management platform behind thousands of the world’s top creators, including Pinch of Yum. But today, Raptive is so much more than ads. They’re a true business partner for creators helping you grow your traffic, increase your revenue, and protect your content. In an AI driven world, unlike one size fits all platforms, Raptive, customizes strategies for each creator, whether you’re growing a niche food blog or running a multi-site business, they offer expert support and SEO email and monetization strategy. And they’re leading the charge on AI advocacy to protect the future of creator owned content. And the best part, Raptive supports creators at every stage from Rise, their entry level program for growing sites to their top tier Luminary level. They’re offering scale with you so you can get the right support when you need it the most. Apply now at Raptive.com to get a personalized growth strategy and join a creator community that’s shaping the future of the open web. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode. You talked about focusing in on the ebook, and I think that’s a really fun thing and smart thing for you to do, fun thing to talk about because it seems like you’ve had success with that. What does that look like for you to double down on focusing on the ebook and what have you learned along the way to increase those sales or to increase the revenue from that?

Johnny Brunet: I’m sure the percentages can get if you’re not a math nerd, which it sounds like we’re pretty similar, so maybe you and I are right, everybody else says it. So probably the 45K is what YouTube has been the last couple years, give or take. So that’s stayed the same. The percentage changed because the ebook last year was 15 and it’s probably, it might hit 40 this year depending on how the holiday season, it’s getting close. So it’s gone up a lot. Like I said, last year was my first half year going and I wanted to do everything. I wanted to try to get as many revenue streams as possible and do a course and then do a community. And I already had the ebook and I just pulled myself in too many different directions. And then also, it’s like I was saying with the links and stuff, I forget why I learned all this from, I watched too many whatever social media gus, but it’s

Bjork Ostrom: Somewhere

Johnny Brunet: Someone just keeping it simple, keeping one link and one click. How many options are you giving people? Do you want them to buy your course or do you want them to buy your ebook? Do you want them to join your community or do you want them to go get this spatula you use? It’s just a lot. And then also, and actually last year’s YouTube was down a little bit, and this year’s going to be up because I was going all over the place with the videos, if that makes sense. You know what I mean? And this year it was just like, well, every video goes to one thing, it’s the ebook and it doesn’t even go to it. Like I was saying, with the site, it’s listed in the description and it’s in the comments. I always pin a comment, but I’m a terrible salesperson. If you ask me about the ebook, I’ll sell it to you. I’m very confident in it, but I’m just not comfortable with being the, I’m shoving it down your throat at the beginning of the video person. But the reason I feel like is I just kept saying, well, if it’s everywhere, and then I build the website and then I build the video and then it’s in my about me, and then it’s in my about, it’s at the bottom of most of my email newsletter. There’s no way you find me and don’t know it exists. There’s no way. So either you decide it’s worth your money or not without me having to be like, and there’s some people that don’t want it, but at least I don’t turn them away by always, always pushing it on them. You know what I mean?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s another thing available. It’s there. People can click on it. An example in a YouTube description, the link is there, and a huge part of marketing isn’t like twisting somebody’s arm. It’s just like a tension. And so people know that it’s there. You don’t have to force it. To your point, it’s like you can drive by a McDonald’s and it’s not like they’re hard selling you on it, but man, you’re going to drive by quite a few McDonald’s and at some point you might turn in and go to McDonald’s.

Johnny Brunet: Yeah, you’ll see it. And then another thing that came up this year was, it’s called FourthWall, which through YouTube, I’m not sure how it works with the other platforms. It allows you to put it on your shelf where it used to be a merchandise shelf below the video on YouTube. I dunno. Well now you can put a digital product there and as everybody’s doing this Instagram, TikTok, YouTube where you can then pop it up during the video.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool.

Johnny Brunet: So you pricing that with affiliates and stuff on Instagram as well, where they can pop up, whatever, this is the blender I’m using. This lets me pop up my digital product in mid video when I mention it, and it’ll be like, this recipe, by the way is in my griddle, one-on-one ebook period, end of sentence, that pops up. You know what I mean? I don’t give them a hard pitch. It’s just like, are you interested learn more or not?

Bjork Ostrom: That’s cool. I’ve never heard of fourth Wall. I pull it up and I see some familiar faces, MKBHD, who’s a tech reviewer, but the basic idea is that it is a product or it is a software company that allows you to include links to different products within your social content. Is that right?

Johnny Brunet: Correct. And so for the longest time on YouTube, if there would be a merch bar underneath it and two people, it was Teespring, which turned into Spring, which did t-shirts and stuff, and somebody else, it was a physical merch bar. You were selling physical merchandise, and it was mainly just apparel usually is what people had. And then this is just new to where, oh, you can drop a digital product down there or new to me in the last year.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. That’s cool. Do you have a sense for where people are coming from, all the links that you have? What percentage of those are fourth wall versus link in the description versus emails? Or is it at this point don’t know how that traffic divides out?

Johnny Brunet: So it’s like probably 40, 35% is FourthWall. Everything else I know is through ThriveCart, which then I have as many individuals. I’m not perfect. I mean, it probably would be, if I was really OCD about it, it probably would be more beneficial to have as many individual links as I can. So I do know which one’s my menu on the website, my sidebar on the website, some specific blog posts. The one that gets messy is I just have YouTube description, and that’s 250 video. So that’s the one where

Bjork Ostrom: It’s also drives lot.

Johnny Brunet: If you were to do one for every

Bjork Ostrom: Single, yeah, that would be

Johnny Brunet: Idea. Idea, but I don’t know. Oh, I have some QR codes too, which I actually sold a couple more than I thought. My TV watching in the past two years has surprisingly grown on YouTube. The amount of people watching on TV is,

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, sure, yeah, I do that. I watch YouTube videos on traditional TV.

Johnny Brunet: So then, yeah, what a lot of people do is start popping up QRs at the end of the video rather. Can’t click, can click on anything and you can just,

Bjork Ostrom: The assumption is they’ll have their phone with them. Yeah,

Johnny Brunet: I’ve sold at least 20

Bjork Ostrom: And

Johnny Brunet: I’ve only done it like five videos, but another barbecue guy told me he was doing it. I was like, I don’t know. That’s a lot of work, man, but okay, I’ll do it. And then, yeah, at least, and it works. Three a month gets sold through somebody clicking a QR code or taking a

Bjork Ostrom: Picture. The thing that I think is so great about this, and I don’t know if this is what you’re alluding to before, you don’t remember who it was, but you talked about Alex Hormozi, which who’s an online marketer, this idea of that he has one product, one avatar, one channel.

Johnny Brunet: Yeah, that’s huge.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think that’s, so often what happens is we get so distracted by all of the different things that we can do, and really in your case, you have this ebook, people are buying it, you have content, people are watching it. So then what do you do? Well, why not just go deeper with figuring out how to get that link in front of more people? One of the questions I would have for you is have you ever thought of, now that you have all of that traffic funneling to that page, have you ever thought about breaking out tiers? So you have the $20 product, would you ever create then a $35 or a $40 tier and then a high-end $70 tier because all of that traffic is already going there? Is that something that you would do?

Johnny Brunet: Yeah, so last year I tried to do that with the course and it’s, I’m not sure exactly, it’s probably a little bit of both of the course not working and me not pushing it as hard as I wanted to for 50 or so dollars. And then I also just didn’t personally, eventually I was like, well, am I comfortable with it? Do I think it’s worth that? I moved the ebook to $20 recently this past year, and it’s more than some physical books that are out there on griddling, but I am still a hundred percent confident that it’s better bought ’em, all of them. I’m a hundred percent confident that it’s the best thing available in my niche because read them all and I’ve tried to make it and I think it’s worth the money. When I got to the course, I just didn’t have the faith in it to sell that much. But yeah, I’d love another tier. I just don’t know what it is in the cooking world, and it’s just such a, sometimes I question whether it’s me being scared to charge more or if it’s maybe just trying to be realistic about what my thing is compared to complexity wise of going into baking. There’s just so many levels. I just say that because baking scares me, keep going, but seriously, you got to get down to a level of cooking and expertise and you see the sourdough stuff and it’s like, yeah, a sourdough course probably is worth a hundred dollars. It probably is in mine. It’s just kind of a very specific niche and then recipes and I don’t know. So yeah, I would love to, but I don’t see the product yet for that, that people would pay for, but maybe myself, maybe it’s a limiting belief. I don’t know.

Bjork Ostrom: And your audience, and it sounds like part of it is you kind of tested it out. It didn’t feel like a great fit, but the basic concept for anybody listening that I always think about is once you have that proven path, what does it then look like to offer multiple levels within that? So you have an ebook, and then what would this sounds like what you’re trying to figure out is what would be the next thing in addition to that that would be as valuable that people would pay more for? That’s the hard part. Obviously

Johnny Brunet: One-on-one coaching to community stuff.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yeah. But to your point, it’s easier to think about adding on in that funnel versus I think what sometimes people do is they go and create a brand new different category where they’re like, Hey, this worked for the blacktop and now I’m going to go and do it for sourdough or whatever. And it’s like, oh, that lift is so much more than just so much more doing something additive within the funnel that already exists. So tell me about your site. You talked about that it sounds like at the beginning of the year, a thousand sessions a month, and that’s grown here in the summer 18x. We’ll frame it up as marketers. How have you grown that traffic being that you’re kind of social first?

Johnny Brunet: So it’s probably, yeah, through the heat. So it’s a very seasonal niche, so through the middle summer it went up to about 18,000. It’s backed down about nine or 10, and I imagine it’ll just stay there through the winter and then hopefully go way higher next summer. How have I grown it? Well, so on the site, I really didn’t do anything too crazy. I just went after my most popular videos and I’m sure you’ll link my site. It’s not impressive by any means. And then every video, I would just put the link to the recipe in the bottom and then I would put the video in there. And they’re really pretty straightforward. And I don’t know with AI and stuff how all that’s going. They were just very bland, I don’t know, blog posts. I wasn’t really going over a lot, but I think that may have been easier for them to really crawl. And then also I think it wasn’t a coincidence that my three best videos, and I have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t know. I’m not nearly a vlog expert like you, but everything I’ve been trying to figure out is as AI has risen and people talk about just building a brand and how they can take in all the information to stuff, I find I can’t be a coincidence that my three to four best posts are my videos that have Million views. You know what I mean? I think it’s now smart enough to correlate them together because YouTube page websites, same name chicken fried rice video has a million and a half views. That’s my best video now. It’s also my best blog post, and it’s nothing special compared to any other chicken fried rice on the Blackstone or on a griddle or on a flat top grill. It’s no different than anybody. I just think it’s now probably given me a little bit of authority because I have the other authority through YouTube is my guess.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah, totally. It’s one of the things that we’re seeing and that we’re talking a lot about, which is the value of a strong social following outside of your site itself. And so the food space is a little bit insulated from this, but what we’re seeing is generally speaking, if you have a strong following on a social platform, that’s going to be really advantageous for you on your website for the exact reason that you shared. You have a piece of content. If that goes viral, people are naturally going to be looking for it and wanting to find it. Maybe you have the recipe within the description itself, but especially if you don’t, people would be wanting to go and find how to make it, so it makes a ton of sense to close it out. I’m curious, the advice that you’d give for people who are interested in growing YouTube, it’s been a platform that’s changed a lot. There’s long form content, there’s short form content. Are you focusing on one primary type of content, and what would your advice be if somebody’s like, gosh, I would really love to grow my YouTube channel. What have you learned in the process?

Johnny Brunet: I mean, I’m currently going to move into doing some more short form next year. It’s my goal when it gets busy, but I’ve going to have plans to hire an editor for the first time to help free up time to do that. I’ve done this multiple times, so my advice would be if you’re by yourself, just do one. Just do the one thing, whether it’s short form or long form, pick your thing, make sure you have your niche. If you don’t, that’s the most important, like we said at the beginning, and then just get better at answering very specific questions and things for that niche. It’s so stereotypical, but it’s what the Alex Hermo thing, it’s like one avatar, one problem, one platform. So it’s like your avatar is your niche or whatever. That’s a beginner griddler, not a person with a griddle, not a person that enjoys cooking outside, not a barbecue Enthusiast is A beginner Blackstone griddle owner, and their problem is how to use it, season clean, temperature control, what to make, and I solve that with the ebook and with every video I make, I try to solve that and then only do YouTube by yourself until you can hire an editor or something, because spread myself too thin. I’ve tried multiple streams, I’ve tried revenue and products, and I would just do one. And if you’re just do the one whether either one’s fine, short or long is fine, either one’s fine, but just focus on that one and really learn the details of that specific one. Yeah, short YouTube videos, I probably don’t even, I don’t know as much as I know about long form and in long form, I know a little bit more and I just try to be as clear and concise as possible to where they know exactly what they’re getting and I don’t waste their time hopefully with any fluff or anything like that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. Johnny, this has been a super fun conversation. Really appreciate you coming on sharing specific numbers. That’s always helpful. I know that you’ve said as a podcast listener, listening to multiple podcasts when somebody comes on and shares specifics around where they’re at, how they grew, but especially when it contains numbers is super helpful. So appreciate that and I know that listeners will appreciate that as well, and super fun to talk to a Food Blogger Pro member. It all came out of a form conversation and you’ve been doing a great job with this and excited to see you continue to grow and have success as you move forward. And we have a Blackstone griddle and I am a beginner Blackstone griddle user, so I will be liking, subscribing and following along with all that you’re up to. So I appreciate you coming on and for people who want to follow along with you maybe as kind of a quick last note here, where can they do that?

Johnny Brunet: This is Johnny Brunette. That’s my website. That’s my YouTube page, that’s my Facebook. I’m going to try to grow Facebook next year too as I go into short form after listening to a couple recent podcast, recent, who knows when this comes out? But yeah, if you listen to a couple of those and then, yeah, I think I sent it to you, but you’re welcome to share the Google link to ebook for everybody if they want to kind see what it looks like. I don’t care. I think maybe that’ll be a good

Bjork Ostrom: Ference. We’ll make people buy it. I’ll be the marketer for you in this, so if people want to check it out, they can buy it. They

Johnny Brunet: Can buy it. We won’t put that link out, say it just feels like it’s fellow creators. But yeah, it

Bjork Ostrom: Started, maybe you could maybe just so it’s not public if you wanted to,

Johnny Brunet: It was 30 pages and now it’s 150, so that’s the only thing at the end I’d say is

Bjork Ostrom: Amazing. It

Johnny Brunet: Just started it. You know what I mean? That doesn’t mean that’s what it is at the end, and it was $10. I love that brief and a half years ago. Now it’s 20.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s great. Johnny, this is awesome. Thanks for coming on.

Johnny Brunet: Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. Since we are kicking off the month of October, I wanted to pop on and let you know what you can expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. If you are not yet a Food Blogger Pro member, we would love to have you. You can visit foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more about everything we offer and to join us. We always like to say that your Food Blogger Pro membership is changing every week because we are always adding new content into the membership. We are kicking off this month with a brand new Coaching Call on Thursday, October 9th. We’re trying something new. This is a group coaching call with several of our Food Blogger Pro members who’ve all gathered together with Bjork to chat about returning to your blog when you’ve been away for a while. We’ll have the video and audio replays available for you on the site on October 9th. Next up on October 16th, which is a Thursday, you’ll be having our live Q&A all about Meta Ads. You’ll learn everything you need to know to get started with Meta Ads, how to be strategic with them to increase your followers and drive traffic to your site. It should be a really useful Q&A. If you head to the live section of the Food Blogger Pro membership, you can add the Q&A a to your calendar and submit a question in advance. On Thursday, October 23rd, we are hosting a public webinar with Cookie Finance to talk about all things navigating taxes as a food creator. Again, this live Q&A will be available to everyone. You don’t have to be a Food Blogger Pro member to join us. Cookie Finance has put together a registration page. You can head to the show notes to register for the Q&A and to join us last up on Thursday, October 30th. We’ll have a brand new course all about getting subscribers to your email list. We’ve been talking a lot lately about the importance of establishing a healthy email list, but sometimes it can be tricky to grow your email list, especially as you’re starting out, and hopefully this course will give you some new ideas and strategies to grow your email list. And that’s it for October. We are really excited about all the content we have coming up, and we’re looking forward to seeing you in the membership. That’s all we have for this week. We’ll see you back here on Tuesday with a brand new podcast episode. Make it a great week.