How to Reduce Food Waste as a Food Blogger

That #recipefail you made last week that ended up in the trash? The potato peels that were uneaten and discarded? The suspicious, unmarked leftovers in the back of the fridge? Sound familiar? All of these are examples of sources of food waste in the home. Many of us don’t even realize how much food we waste every single day – it’s just habitual.

But we can change that! Making small tweaks to our routines in the kitchen to reduce our food waste is one of the simplest ways we can diminish our negative impact on the environment.

Keep Reading

Tips for Hiring a Virtual Assistant as a Food Blogger

When you are ready to start growing your business, you will inevitably encounter the need to hire some help and build a team. For a food creator, hiring a virtual assistant (or VA) can be a great place to start. 

“Virtual assistant” can mean a lot of different things. You might be looking for a generalized VA to manage emails, schedule your calendar, and handle other administrative tasks. Or perhaps a more specialized VA could be a better fit (think social media manager or email marketing manager)?

If done strategically, hiring a virtual assistant to add to your team can take certain tasks off of your plate and allow you to focus on the responsibilities that you enjoy, and that benefit your business the most.

If you think you might be ready to hire a new team member, we’ve put together a handy, step-by-step guide to get started!

Keep Reading

4 Ways to Backup Your Computer and Blog

Most people are pretty good at protecting the physical products in their lives. We put insurance on our cars, cases on our phones, and locks on our bikes. But bloggers live in a world where they also need to protect their digital products. Things like blog posts, eBooks, photos, and videos represent huge investments of time and money.

Can you imagine if you woke up tomorrow, typed in the URL of your blog, pressed return, and saw a white screen? Then, in a moment of panic you looked in your computer’s photos folder, only to find that your pictures were missing as well? It’s rare, but it happens. Hence the reason for a blog backup!

Keep Reading

Best Photo Size for a Food Blog

a photo of Lindsay Ostrom taking a picture and the title of this blog post, 'best photo size for a food blog'

One of the most common questions we get from food bloggers is something along the lines of, “How big should the images on my site be?”

It’s not too surprising –– you know that phrase, “You eat with your eyes”? Great photos are an essential part of any successful food blog, so it makes sense that bloggers are concerned with making sure that the photos on their sites are on their sites are the right size for their posts, Google, and site speed.

Image size may seem like a simple enough topic, but it’s actually a bit more nuanced than you may think!

So let’s dive into the beautiful world of food photo sizing.

Keep Reading

How to have an organized desktop

I worked for four years as "the I.T. guy" at a local non-profit, which means that I saw lots of different computer desktops.

Call me crazy, but I found it really interesting. 

{image1}

There were two things I noticed when working on computers:

  1. People would almost always have a random array of files and folders on their desktop.
  2. People would almost always say something along the lines of "please don't judge my messy desktop."

So, while people usually didn't have an organized desktop, they realized that they probably should.

The good news is that it's not that hard! Here's how:

Keep Reading

How to Keep your Gmail Inbox Neat Using Boomerang

This blog post is part of a new series we’re doing on Food Blogger Pro called Keep it Neat. The series will cover simple tips to help you keep your blogging life neat and tidy.

{image1}

Easier said than done, eh? 🙂

Today I’m sharing a tip for keeping your Gmail inbox neat.

My personal goal is to "do email" once a day. When I login to my email account I try and work all the way through my inbox until it’s completely empty.

This process works great until I find an email that I can’t respond to. Maybe I don’t have the information I need, maybe I don’t have enough time, or maybe it would make more sent to respond to someone a little bit later on in the week.

Regardless of the reason, an email that’s left in the inbox results in a disappointing scenario: an almost empty inbox. I’m not sure about you, but I hate that feeling.

Keep Reading