093: How Finding a Niche Transformed a Business with Meggan Hill from Culinary Hill

Welcome to episode 93 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork chats with Meggan Hill from Culinary Hill about how finding a niche transformed her business.

As an internet entrepreneur, it can be tempting to try to appeal to everyone. You don’t want to send potential traffic away from your website, right?

However, successful bloggers have said time and again that a big contributor to success is finding a specific audience and sharing only content that fits that audience perfectly. In other words, finding a niche.

Meggan Hill started her blog, Culinary Hill, with an aim of pleasing everyone. And… it didn’t work out so well. Her blog did okay, but she ended up feeling discouraged and gave it up for a while. A couple years ago, though, she decided it was time to make some changes and make this blogging thing work for her. With the help of a branding agency, she was able to find a niche, free up her creativity by sticking to that niche, and nearly triple her traffic in just one year. Today, she’s here to tell us all about it.

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092: How to Make $40K in the First Year of Blogging with Chelsea Lords from Chelsea’s Messy Apron

Welcome to episode 92 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork talks with Chelsea Lords from Chelsea’s Messy Apron about making $40,000 in her first year of blogging.

Most bloggers start out with the long-term plan in mind: they probably won’t make much money in the first year or two, but it’ll pay off in the end. And while this path works for a lot of people (Bjork and Lindsay included!), other bloggers decide to do it a bit differently.

Chelsea Lords from Chelsea’s Messy Apron hit the ground running with her blog and ended up making $40,000 in just the first year. Today, she talks about the first steps she took on her path to success, how today is different than that first year, and what she would have done differently looking back.

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090: How a Legislative Assistant Created Her Own Path to Working for Herself with Brita Britnell

Welcome to episode 90 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Brita Britnell about how she stepped off the beaten blogging path and found a new way to work for herself.

Most bloggers start on their blogging journey hoping to eventually work full-time for themselves on their blog. While this is definitely an admirable and achievable goal, some bloggers have found that this is not the only way.

Brita started making videos for her blog about a year ago and unexpectedly found that she absolutely loved it. She knew there was demand for bloggers to create video, but she also knew that most bloggers just didn’t have the time to learn a new skill. So, she started making videos for other bloggers and found the demand so great that she had to start a waitlist for clients. In just a few months she was able to leave her job and work for herself doing something that she loved. Today, she’s here to share her story.

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085: 9 million visitors & 450 contributors: the Story of Her View From Home with Leslie Means

Welcome to episode 85 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Leslie Means, cofounder of Her View From Home, about scaling her website to over 450 contributors and 9 million visitors per month.

Leslie Means started her website just like many of us did – with a passion and a dream. However, instead of the typical create-publish-promote-repeat agenda, she took a bit of a different path: she wanted to publish articles from contributors and pay those authors based on article performance.

Today, Her View From Home has over 9 million monthly visitors and pulls from a pool of 450 contributors. The business is thriving, and Leslie is here to tell us all about it.

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082: How a 4th Grade Teacher Built a $20k/mo Blog with Andrew from Mixergy

Welcome to episode 82 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, we’re playing an episode from the Mixergy podcast with Andrew Warner.

In this episode, Andrew chats with Lindsay about Pinch of Yum’s history and where they are today. Andrew takes the time to dig deep and ask some really interesting questions that wouldn’t normally get asked, and Lindsay’s answers might just help you understand what’s going on with your blog a bit better.

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079: How Finding a Unique Niche Led to YouTube Success with Lauren Toyota from Hot For Food

Welcome to episode 79 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork interviews Lauren Toyota from Hot for Food about how she grew her YouTube following.

When starting (or running) a business, it can be tempting to look at what other successful people have done and try to do the same thing. If they were successful doing this, then you should be, too, right?

While that scenario sometimes plays out, oftentimes you just become another fish in a sea of fish that are all doing the same thing. Lauren Toyota from Hot for Food found her success by diving into a newer niche and producing content in a way that no one else had done before. And it worked – she amassed just about 200k followers in just one year on YouTube. Today she’s here to talk about how it all went down.

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073: How to Publish Consistent and Quality Content with Jessica Merchant from How Sweet It Is

Welcome to episode 73 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Jessica Merchant from the blog How Sweet It Is about consistently creating great content.

In blogging, content is huge. It’s not the only important thing, but it’s the foundation of your business. Creating great content is really important.

Just as important is creating content often. A blog needs fresh, exciting ideas to thrive. new content is what your existing readers want to see.

However, doing both those things – creating really great content on a consistent basis – can be really tough. It definitely involves dedication and skill to do right. Jessica Merchant from How Sweet It Is definitely has that dedication and skill, and today she’s here to tell us just how she manages to make consistent and quality content every single week.

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072: FBP Member Spotlight: Sam Turnbull from It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken

Welcome to episode 72 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork is talking with Sam Turnbull from It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken in our first ever Member Spotlight episode!

Many FBP members dream of leaving their full-time jobs in order to put all of their time and effort into their blog; Sam was able to do that very thing.

Since leaving her job last year, Sam has experienced some great successes with her blog – including landing a book deal. In order to get there, however, Sam had to learn how to relate to her readers and publish content they love.

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071: Finding your Raving Fans through Facebook Live with Amanda Rettke from I Am Baker

Welcome to episode 71 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork interviews Amanda Rettke from I Am Baker about her success with Facebook Live and how it has helped connect her with her audience.

They say you only need 1,000 raving fans to create a successful business. Just 1,000! However, raving fans can be hard to come by. Where do you get them? How do you know they love you and the work you are doing?

Amanda struggled with this a bit for the first few years she was in business. She knew she had great fans, but she didn’t feel like she really connected with them. And then she decided to try Facebook Live. Her raving fans loved being able to see and interact with her live, and she loved being able to connect with them. Facebook Live has been the experience Amanda needed to feel connected with her readers, and today she is here to tell us how she did it.

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069: Building a Brand on National TV with Jocelyn Delk Adams from Grandbaby Cakes

Welcome to episode 69 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Jocelyn Delk Adams from Grandbaby Cakes about growing her audience and building her brand by way of National TV.

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a TV star, starting a food blog probably wasn’t your first idea for how to get there. However, for Jocelyn Delk Adams of the popular blog Grandbaby Cakes, her food blog was just the ticket she needed.

Jocelyn started her TV career with her local TV channels, then slowly moved up to the big networks. She’s now been seen on National shows such as Rachel Ray and the Today Show. She loves where her experiences have taken her and attributes much of her blog’s success to her effort to get her blog in front of new faces via TV appearances.

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