056: Working in Your Area of Brilliance with Meghan Telpner

Welcome to episode 56 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks with Megan Telpner about creating a business, staying small, and finding the work you should be doing.

Last week, Bjork talked with Jason logsdon about self-publishing cookbooks. To go back and listen that episode, click here.

Working in Your Area of Brilliance

Meghan Telpner is the CEO of the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, an online school where students learn to create healthy lives through cooking. The school has certified over 700 people to practice as culinary nutritionists and Meghan is a sought-after speaker about entrepreneurship.

She didn’t start there, though. Meghan’s career online began back in the early 2000s, and she’s fine-tuned (and rough-tuned) her business to grow it into what it is today. Meghan has found that just “doing the work” isn’t good enough, and that to really excel you need to be working in your area of brilliance.

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055: Generating Income through Self-Publishing a Cookbook with Jason Logsdon

Welcome to episode 55 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks with Jason Logsdon from Amazing Food Made Easy about self-publishing a cookbook.

For many bloggers, getting a cookbook deal sounds like a dream come true. That’s when they know they’ve “made it.” As it turns out, though, getting a cookbook deal with a major publisher isn’t all puppies and roses. When it comes down to it, publishing a cookbook is more about brand awareness than it is about income, and much of the legwork done for creating and marketing the book is still up to the author.

Jason Logsdon published his first cookbook when his blog was still rather small – and he quickly discovered how self-publishing can actually be a simple, rewarding process that allows you to generate income even with a relatively small audience.

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054: How Bloggers Become Entrepreneurs with Jeni Elliott from The Blog Maven

Welcome to episode 54 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks with Jeni Elliot from The Blog Maven.

Jeni Elliott knows that just doing the work isn’t going to turn your business dreams into a reality. Instead, she’s a proponent of doing the right kind of work, using both tactics and strategies to achieve your overarching goals, and maintaining a work-life balance.

She got her start not in the blogging world, but in the business world, where she helped small business owners meet their goals. As an avid blog reader, though, she found that she could apply her strategies to blog businesses and see profound impact. So, she made The Blog Maven her career’s work, and along the way has learned what it takes to turn a blogger into an entrepreneur.

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052: How to Sell 4,000 Cookbooks Before You Even Publish with Megan Gilmore from Detoxinista

Welcome to episode 52 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks with Megan Gilmore from Detoxinista.

We all know that writing a cookbook is a LOT of work. From the recipe development to the photography, a cookbook author is a busy bee. One thing you might not know, though, is that the author is also expected to presell copies of their book to their audience before it even publishes. As you might imagine, this can be quite the task!

When Megan Gilmore, the author behind Detoxinista, set out to presell copies of her first cookbook, they expected the average number of sales – somewhere around 500 cookbooks. Instead, she blew everyone at 10 Speed Press out of the water with a whopping 4,000 cookbook presales – the largest presale in the history of 10 Speed Press. Today, she’s here to tell us how she did it.

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048: Finding success on the verge of quitting with Dustin & Lacey Baier from A Sweet Pea Chef

Welcome to episode 48 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork interviews Dustin & Lacey Baier from A Sweet Pea Chef.

A few years ago, A Sweet Pea Chef was floundering. Dustin & Lacey had grown it to the point where it was getting expensive to maintain, but they hadn’t unlocked the secrets to turning it into a successful business. They bounced from great idea to great idea, but just weren’t able to get anything to stick.

Until, one day, an internet passer-by pounced and described how inferior they were to the competition. Little did they know, this angry email would lead them down a path that would help them properly monetize their website and start turning things around.

Since then, Dustin & Lacey learned how to say no to good opportunities to focus on what’s most important, cracked the code for viral vide, and took A Sweet Pea Chef to new heights.

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046: How Kate Kordsmeier Doubled Her Income with Freelancing

Welcome to episode 46 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks with Kate Kordsmeier from the blog Root & Revel about her successful freelance writing career.

While many of us dream about the days when we could find enough success with our blogs that we could write for magazines like Cooking Light and Conde Nast Traveler, Kate’s already been-there-done-that. With a little experience in copywriting and a lot of drive, Kate was able to quit her full-time job and double her income with freelance writing – before she ever had a food blog.

In this interview, Kate shares a lot of tips and tricks she’s learned along the way so that you, too, can try your hand at freelance writing.

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044: Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing with Justine Grey

Welcome to episode 44 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork talks with Justine Grey about how low-traffic bloggers can make an income through affiliate marketing.

Many bloggers wonder how they can make an income from their blog when they don’t have a lot of traffic. As we all know, ads pay per impression (or click), and sometimes it takes a lot of impressions to get the dollars to add up.

However, bloggers with lower traffic numbers still can make money with their blogs. How? With affiliate marketing! By sharing the products they love with their readers, smaller bloggers are able to earn commissions on those products and start earning an income sooner.

Justine Grey is an affiliate marketing guru, and she is here today to tell us all about the world of affiliate marketing.

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043: How Tieghan Gerard used Photography, Recipe Development, and Hustle to Build Half Baked Harvest

Welcome to episode 43 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork is bringing on an oft-requested guest, Tieghan Gerard from Half Baked Harvest!

We occasionally ask in the podcast for guest requests – bloggers or other inspiring individuals that our listeners would like to hear from. One person who came up quite a few times was fellow FBP member, Tieghan Gerard.

When I think of bloggers who inspire me for photography, Tieghan is definitely near the top of the list. I’ve often thought about what makes her photography so special, and in this podcast episode I finally learned what it is: mood.

When Tieghan heads into a photo shoot, the first thing she thinks about is the mood that she wants to set in the photo. How will this dish make the viewer feel? And how can I portray that with a photograph? Tieghan talks about her photography process and how she sets a mood as well as a lot of other awesome info in this great podcast episode.

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040: How to Monetize a Podcast from Day 1 with Allison & Suzy from the Food Heals Podcast

Welcome to episode 40 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork interviews a couple podcasters about… podcasting!

Most of the time when we talk about food media, we immediately think of food blogging. We are Food Blogger Pro, after all! However, there definitely are other mediums out there that are just as effective at reaching your potential audience, and one of these is podcasting.

Allison & Suzy started their Food Heals podcast less than a year ago and are already helping people, reaching their ideal audience, and finding huge success in the podcasting arena. They’re also making money at it. In fact, Allison & Suzy started to monetize their podcast from day one. Listen in on this episode to learn how they’ve created such great success and made podcasting a part of their business.

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036: What Bloggers Need to Know about Copyrights, Contracts & more with Becky from My Utensil Crock

Welcome to episode 36 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! Today, Bjork is talking with Becky Brown, a lawyer by day and food blogger by night, about copyrights, trademarks, and other legal stuff that surrounds blogging.

Becky Brown is an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security, and she has been for a rather long time. She started her food blog as a way to document what she did in her free time – namely, cooking!

However, as she got more and more involved with her blog she realized that there were legal implications for some of the things she did online. She also realized that there wasn’t a good resource for bloggers that explained these legalities and helped people navigate through them.

So, she and Liz Vaysman got together and put together an ebook specifically for bloggers that describes everything you need to know about the legalese of blogging in plain, easy-to-understand English. The ebook is called Think Like a Lawyer, Blog Like a Pro and helps bloggers avoid legal pitfalls that can otherwise catch you totally off guard.

As a special bonus, Becky is offering her book, Think Like a Lawyer Blog Like a Pro at a special discount for Food Blogger Pro members! To get the discount, head on over to our Deals page. If you’re not an FBP member, you can still get the ebook on Becky’s website here!

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