Podcasts Archive

Building a Sustainable Creator Business Around Family Recipes with Yvette Marquez

by Ann @ Food Blogger Pro on Sep 29, 2026 in Building Traffic and Growing Your Audience

Welcome to episode 590 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Yvette Marquez.

This week, we are welcoming back Yvette Marquez to the podcast to share how she’s built a sustainable creator business around family recipes, storytelling, cookbooks, and brand partnerships. She walks through what her work looks like today, from updating older blog posts and developing her next cookbook to resharing classic recipes in new formats. She and Bjork dig into why your archive can be a long-term business asset, which means you don’t have to keep coming up with brand-new ideas all the time — a game-changer!

Yvette will also share how Facebook, Substack, virtual assistants, business managers, and behind-the-scenes recipe development all contribute to her business. Her advice for new creators: choose authenticity over perfection, invest in the skills and people who support your strengths, and build a business on genuine stories and audience trust!

Keep Reading

How Justin Ellen Went From Camera-Shy to 3 Million Social Media Followers

by Emily @ FBP on Sep 22, 2026 in Food Blogger Stories

Welcome to episode 589 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Justin Ellen from Everything Just Baked.

Justin Ellen started decorating and selling cakes in high school, with the dream of one day opening his own bakery. At the encouragement of his sister, he hesitantly started posting photos of his cakes on Instagram, but didn’t like being in front of the camera. He slowly but surely overcame his fear of being on camera, and now has 1.4 million followers on both Facebook and TikTok, and over 800,000 followers on Instagram.

In this interview, Justin shares how he transitioned from selling cakes to building a business as a content creator, what his first few brand deals looked like, why he decided to launch his website last year (and how he has already grown to 400,000 monthly pageviews!), and dives into the process of self-publishing his first cookbook (out this month!). This is a really fun and inspiring interview for food creators at any level — we hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we did!

Keep Reading

Creating Connection and Equity in the Creator Space with Yoli Ouiya

by Ann @ Food Blogger Pro on Sep 15, 2026 in Running an Online Business

Welcome to episode 588 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Yoli Ouiya from Food + Wellness Equity Collective.

In this week’s episode, Bjork is sitting down to chat with the “Queen of Green herself, Yoli Ouiya! Yoli breaks down what green living really means (hint: it’s about how the products we use affect both our bodies and the planet) and shares practical tips for making smarter choices around food, home, and personal care. From there, the conversation shifts into the natural consumer-products space, where Yoli goes into validating a product idea, building trust through great branding, and the realities of bootstrapping versus chasing funding.

You’ll also hear Yoli open up about the Food and Wellness Equity Collective, the community she co-founded to give creators, especially those who often feel overlooked or isolated in this industry, a real sense of connection and support. If you’re looking to build a brand and a community with real staying power, this episode will be right up your alley!

Keep Reading

Building Smarter Systems as a Creator with Andrew Wilder and Miranda Wicker

by Ann @ Food Blogger Pro on Sep 8, 2026 in AI

Welcome to episode 587 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Andrew Wilder and Miranda Wicker from NerdPress.

Bjork is chatting with Andrew and Miranda for a conversation on AI, content creation, and what it means to stay human in an increasingly automated world. They dig into a question that every creator is facing right now: are you reacting to the AI shift, or are you using it to rethink how you work?

They’ll walk through real examples of AI integrations, memory, skills, scheduled tasks, and MCP connections, including NerdPress’s very own guided agent connector, built with guardrails and approval steps for safer site management. If you’ve been wondering how to use AI to work smarter without losing what makes your content yours, this episode is a great place to start!

Keep Reading

Reinventing Yourself as a Creator with Timothy Pakron from Mississippi Vegan

by Emily @ FBP on Sep 1, 2026 in Food Blogger Stories

Welcome to episode 586 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Timothy Pakron from Mississippi Vegan.

Timothy came to food blogging by way of studio art and his passion for fresh produce, not the blog itself. He started sharing his photography and vegan recipes on Instagram first, built an audience there, and landed a cookbook deal before he ever put much focus into a blog. In this conversation, Bjork and Timothy talk through what it looks like to build a body of work around a strong personal point of view, and why story and connection have carried his career from Instagram to cookbooks to now, a second book (Garden Variety), and a thriving blog.

They also chat about the practical side of running a content business today: how Timothy uses AI tools as a strategy partner for auditing and refining old posts, how he’s adjusting to a search and social media landscape that keep shifting under everyone’s feet, and how he thinks about his blog less as a static archive and more as an ecosystem that needs constant tending. If you’re trying to figure out how to stand out with your story or navigate a creative career that has real ups and downs, this episode is for you.

Keep Reading

Why Trust Matters More Than Detection in the Age of AI with Jeremy Carrasco

by Ann @ Food Blogger Pro on Aug 25, 2026 in AI

Welcome to episode 585 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Jeremy Carrasco, the creator behind Jeremy Finds AI and founder of Riddance.

Pop quiz! Can you actually spot AI-generated content if you saw it? Jeremy’s background in live streaming, encoding, and video production gave him an early edge in identifying synthetic content, but as AI videos get more realistic, he explains why that edge is disappearing fast, and why the old advice to simply “train your eye” isn’t enough anymore. In this episode, Jeremy makes the case that the real question isn’t “can you spot AI?” but “do you trust the source?”

He and Bjork get into the difference between acceptable and deceptive AI use, why disclosing your AI workflow might actually build more trust with your audience, and what “human-forward” creation looks like in an increasingly synthetic feed. Jeremy also shares candidly how he uses AI in his own work, and why he refuses to let it touch his creative edge. If you create content in any capacity, this conversation gives you a clear-eyed look at where trust is headed next and what it’ll take to hold onto yours.

Keep Reading

A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Claude as a Food Blogger with Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju

by Emily @ FBP on Aug 18, 2026 in Tech Tips for Food Bloggers

Welcome to episode 584 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju from Urban Farmie.

Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju recently made the leap from a successful career in management consulting to become a full-time content creator with Urban Farmie. Her background in business strategy didn’t disappear when she made the switch, and it has become one the most valuable tools in her toolbox, especially when it comes to how she uses AI in her business.

In this episode, Shruthi shares how she’s moved well beyond using Claude as a chatbot and has started treating it as a genuine business partner — delegating tasks, building custom skills, and creating systems that let her spend more time on the work only she can do. If you’ve been curious about AI but aren’t sure how to actually integrate it into your workflow in a meaningful way, this episode is a great place to start.

Keep Reading

Why Jeanelle Castro Thinks YouTube Is the Most Powerful Social Platform for Food Creators

by Emily @ FBP on Aug 11, 2026 in Building Traffic and Growing Your Audience, Recipe Videos

Welcome to episode 583 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Jeanelle Castro from Jeanelleats.

Jeanelle started Jeanelleats ten years ago while still working a 9-to–5 — but she knew she had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and she always loved making videos. In 2016 she started posting on YouTube, got serious about tracking her metrics and posting consistently, and within a few months her channel started taking off. Today she has nearly 2 million subscribers on YouTube!

In this episode, Jeanelle shares how she built a content system where YouTube is the engine that drives everything else — including her blog traffic, her Google rankings, and her brand deals. She explains how she uses YouTube Shorts to drive traffic to her site (her CTA is simple: “head to Jeanelleats for the recipe!”), and why she believes that the success of a social post and the performance of a blog post are more correlated than most creators realize.

Keep Reading

Building Brand Authority Through PR with Lydia Bagarozza

by Ann @ Food Blogger Pro on Aug 4, 2026 in Building Traffic and Growing Your Audience

Welcome to episode 582 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Lydia Bagarozza.

Have you ever wondered how food creators and brands land coverage in respected publications, and whether that kind of press is even worth chasing? In this episode, Bjork sits down with PR expert Lydia Bagarozza to demystify proactive PR, showing that it’s less about crisis control and more about shaping brand perception and earning credibility through the media. Lydia breaks down how to pitch timely, newsworthy stories to the right editors and producers, and why clear positioning and specific expertise can turn a pitch into a yes.

The conversation also makes the case for PR as a long-term investment. Lydia explains how appearing in respected publications and local news builds social proof, backlinks, and brand signals that feed into SEO, AI visibility, and trust, and she shares go-to tools like Qwoted, Connectively, and Help a Reporter Out for finding real media opportunities. If you’ve been curious about earning press for your brand, this episode is a great place to start!

Keep Reading

What’s Actually Holding Your Food Blog Back in Search with Liane Walker from Foodie Digital

by Emily @ FBP on Jul 28, 2026 in Food Blog SEO

Welcome to episode 581 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Liane Walker from Foodie Digital.

Liane Walker has seen just about every SEO mistake a food creator can make. In this episode, she’s sharing her expertise about the two things that matter most right now for food blogs — getting your technical SEO foundation right and creating content that’s structured to reach the right reader.

One of the biggest issues Liane has noticed time and time again with food bloggers is link spam — something that might seem harmless but can quietly become an SEO success killer. She breaks down exactly what Google considers as spam, when to mark a link as nofollow, and how this is all a part of mitigating risk in search marketing.

Keep Reading