Welcome to episode 47.. and a half of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this special bonus edition, Bjork tells the story of why he and Lindsay started Food Blogger Pro, and how it has grown to help thousands of members start and grow their food blogs.

But first…

Food Blogger Pro is Open for Enrollment!

It’s the thing we’ve all been waiting for! We’ve had so many people email us asking when FBP would finally be open for enrollment again. And to our great happiness, the time has come!

We’ll be accepting new members to Food Blogger Pro today, May 24, through Thursday, June 2 at midnight CST.

–> Click here to sign up! <–

We are so excited to be bringing some new members on board. We love love our Food Blogger Pro family, and we’re so excited to be growing it once again.

Alright, now about that story. If you ever wondered why Bjork and Lindsay started Food Blogger Pro and what that was like for them, then listen in as Bjork takes a trip down memory lane. He also talks about the benefits of being a Food Blogger Pro member, from the video library to the community forum, the access to industry experts to the special deals & discounts. It's pretty great, if I may so so myself!

It's a fun day here at FBP HQ. Today I get to introduce you to Alexa, FBP's newest team member! Alexa is filling the role of Community & Event Specialist. You'll start to see her a lot 'round these parts, so I wanted to make sure you get a chance to learn a bit about her with a good ol' fashion Q&A session.

Today we’re announcing our next job opening to the Food Blogger Pro community.

What’s the position, you ask? Good question!

It’s called Community and Event Specialist.

What’s a Community and Event Specialist, you ask? Good question!

Read the description below to find out more.

I don’t know about you, but I love a good deal. But even better, I like it when I can see the value of that deal. What’s the difference? A deal without a lot of value can be a sale on an item I never use. But it’s on sale! I must buy it! And then it sits on the shelf never to be touched again until it’s inevitably tossed out. Not such a good value. A deal on something that you use every day? Now THAT’S what I’m talking about. I think you may know where I’m headed with this….

Announcing the Food Blogger Pro Deals & Discounts page!

No doubt about it - Food Blogger Pro is going through some exciting growth right now!

But before I give you today’s announcement (which - spoiler alert! - is mentioned in the blog post title) I’d like to tell you a little story.

And the story goes like this…

From a business perspective, one of the things that Lindsay and I have really come to believe in is the power of passive income.

Passive income, specifically passive income through affiliate marketing, has really helped us take our monetization game to the next level. For example, with Pinch of Yum, when we recommend products that we love and link to those products as an affiliate, we are able to earn passive income from the referral sales.

This monetization strategy is different than advertising and sponsorships, which can fluctuate from quarter to quarter, month to month, and even week to week. The passive income we earn as affiliates for our favorite products and services can be more consistent and predictable.

One of the things we love about Food Blogger Pro is the fact that we’re able to offer the benefits of passive income to our members through the FBP affiliate program (more on that in a bit!), but we noticed that often times affiliates would sign up for the program and not really know the most effective way to promote FBP to their readers.

Fun post!

Lindsay and I would like to introduce you to Beth Hornback, Food Blogger Pro’s brand new Community Happiness Specialist.

Many Food Blogger Pro members probably already know Beth from her active presence on the community forum. She’s been a member of Food Blogger Pro for over one year now and has already contributed over 400 posts to the community forum.

As a matter of fact, Beth was the first Food Blogger Pro member to reach the (honorable but strangely named) “Fellow” status on the community forum after posting more than 250 times.

Update (2.24.15): This position has been filled. Congratulations Beth!

Over the past two years, Food Blogger Pro has grown to over 800 members. As the community continues to grow, we want to make sure that members receive the highest level of service, which is why we’re hiring a Community Happiness Specialist.

It’s a unique position that requires a unique personality.

The primary role of this person? You guessed it: community happiness.

It's official! Food Blogger Pro has a (real) office. Woowoo!

I left our current HQ (the basement) and went over to the new HQ this afternoon to record a virtual tour video for you.

I made sure to point out some of the sweet freebies that were included with the new space.

Today is a big day at Food Blogger Pro Headquarters (otherwise known as the Ostrom’s basement).

Food Blogger Pro is launching our first tool for food bloggers. We couldn’t be more excited!

We’re calling it the Nutrition Label Generator.

Any guesses as to what it does?

Yep! You got it. It generates nutrition facts labels.

We have three goals with the Nutrition Label Generator.

We want this to be a tool that is:

1. Easy to use
2. Accurate
3. Value adding

Before I explain the three goals I want to quickly show you how to use the tool, explain why we're developing software tools, and discuss our software philosophy at FBP.

We're beyond excited to let you know that the Food Blogger Pro affiliate program has officially launched! Before I explain more about the program I wanted to say a big thanks to the team that helped make sure that every pixel was in place and every line of code written perfectly.

• Jon and Nate from FortySeven Media
• Tom from Packet Tide
• Chris from ShareASale

These were really incredible people to work with and we couldn't have done it without them.

Today we're excited to introduce you to a new branch of Food Blogger Pro.

The Community Forum!

Before talking details, I wanted to share why I feel like this is such an important part of Food Blogger Pro.

Good news from Food Blogger Pro! We're almost ready to launch the FBP forum.

Before we launch the forum, we want to get to know you a little bit better and give you an opportunity to get to know other members, so we put together a simple get-to-know-you survey.

Food Blogger Pro is officially two weeks old!

Over the past 14 days, videos on Food Blogger Pro have been played over 4,000 times by 175 different members in 26 different countries. Pretty cool.

In order to celebrate our two week birthday we put together some simple tips to help you maximize your Food Blogger Pro membership.

Hello there. Welcome to Food Blogger Pro!

Over the past three months Lindsay and I have planned, outlined, recorded, edited, uploaded and embedded over 250 videos covering the most important things a food blogger needs to know to start and grow a food blog. Needless to say, we're really excited to finally share these videos with you. If you're brand new to blogging, we hope these videos help you to feel confident with getting your blog setup and running. If you've been blogging for awhile, we hope these videos offer some insight that will help boost your blog to the next level.

Here's a video explaining the sign up process for members that purchased an early bird membership.