The Food Blogger Pro Podcast

We interview successful food bloggers and industry experts in an effort to surface strategies that can help you more efficiently grow and monetize your site. You'll learn about recipe SEO, food photography, plugins, monetization, traffic, and more. New episodes every Tuesday!

471: Unlocking Success through Strategic Goal-Planning, Partnerships, and Providing Services with Matthew Gartland

Ann @ Food Blogger Pro
by Ann @ Food Blogger Pro on Jul 23, 2024 in
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Welcome to episode 473 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Matthew Gartland from SPI Media. 

Matthew Gartland is the CEO of SPI Media. The SPI (aka Smart Passive Income) Media community is full of online entrepreneurs who have come together to build their online businesses through SPI’s wealth of educational content, community-building opportunities, and training experiences.

In this interview, Matthew shares the story behind his own entrepreneurial journey, which led him to start SPI Media along with Pat Flynn. They also talk about the benefits of offering services and leaning into the skills you already have, and how you can solve real-life problems by doing so. They round out the interview by discussing the importance of strategic goal-planning, the power of community, and how building partnerships earlier in your career can help to not only build an audience but to sell to them.

Whether you’re just starting out or years into your business venture, we think this will be a really insightful episode and hope you enjoy it!

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470: How Working as Ina Garten’s Assistant Kicked Off Lidey Heuck’s Career as a Food Creator and Cookbook Author

Emily @ FBP
by Emily @ FBP on Jul 16, 2024 in

Welcome to episode 470 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Lidey Heuck.

Lidey’s first job out of college was as Ina Garten’s assistant — yes, you read that right! After 7 years working as part of the Barefoot Contessa team, Lidey has gone on to grow her own business as a food creator. She is a recipe contributor to New York Times Cooking, runs her own food blog, and recently published her first cookbook, Cooking in Real Life.

In this interview, she shares more about her experience working at Barefoot Contessa, how she balances creating content for different platforms, what it’s like to contribute to NYT Cooking, why she might want to open a brick-and-mortar shop, and so much more.

This is an enjoyable listen that will get you thinking about the many different routes a career path as a food creator can take. Hope you enjoy this fun episode as much as we did!

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469: How Erin Collins Went from 25,000 to 250,000 Instagram Followers While Self-Publishing a Cookbook

Ann @ Food Blogger Pro
by Ann @ Food Blogger Pro on Jul 9, 2024 in

Welcome to episode 469 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Erin Collins from Meaningful Eats. 

Erin started her blog, Meaningful Eats, in 2012. Since then, she has self-published a cookbook (another one is coming out soon!), grown her site to 1 million monthly page views, and gained over 275,000 Instagram followers.

In this interview, Erin talks about how she achieves a work-life balance by delegating tasks and how being aware of her “zone of genius” allows her to focus on what she’s most passionate about. She also discusses how she committed to growing her Instagram following by honing in on her audience’s needs.

She self-published her cookbook “Gluten-Free Cookies, Brownies, and Bars” last fall and generated over $100,000 in revenue in the first nine months! It was great to hear about her process of self-publishing a cookbook. We can’t wait for you to dive in to hear more about her story!

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468: Breaking into the Private Chef Industry and Sharing What You’re in Pursuit of with Celebrity Chef Kenneth Temple

Ann @ Food Blogger Pro
by Ann @ Food Blogger Pro on Jul 2, 2024 in

Welcome to episode 468 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews celebrity chef and food blogger Kenneth Temple. 

Kenneth Temple started his food blog in 2017 and has been a private chef since 2009 so he’s got a lot of great insights to share with us in this interview. He now finds himself cooking for NFL, MLB, NBA players, and Grammy artists. On the blog side, he qualified for Mediavine in November of 2023—a huge milestone!

In this interview, Kenneth and Bjork discuss how he broke into the private chef industry, landed his first celebrity client, and why he chose to go down this route over working in a restaurant. They also talk about the importance of putting yourself out there and sharing your aspirations with others and the power of word-of-mouth marketing. They also chat about what blogging as a chef looks like and how he had to adjust his strategy after learning about SEO and searchability.

Even if your goal isn’t to pursue a career as a private chef, we find Kenneth’s advice on managing your time and promoting yourself extremely valuable and think you will too. We hope you enjoy the episode!

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467: Pinterest Strategy in 2024 Q&A with Kate Ahl

Emily @ FBP
by Emily @ FBP on Jun 25, 2024 in

Welcome to episode 467 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Kate Ahl from Simple Pin Media.

This is a super special episode of the podcast, as it kicks off what we are calling our Summer Membership Spotlight. Over the next three months (June, July, and August) we will be sharing a piece of content that is normally exclusive to Food Blogger Pro members here on the podcast.

We are starting with a replay of our Pinterest Live Q&A with Kate Ahl! This Q&A originally aired in April. Food Blogger Pro members submitted lots of great questions all about Pinterest strategy — branding, pinning strategy, types of pins, you name it.

We’re so excited to share this Q&A with you (it’s a really informative one!) and hope you’ll tune in for our other membership spotlight episodes throughout the summer.

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466: How to Respond to the Recent Google Updates with Ann Smarty

Emily @ FBP
by Emily @ FBP on Jun 18, 2024 in

Welcome to episode 466 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Ann Smarty from Smarty Marketing.

Ann Smarty has been working in the SEO industry for over 20 years, and she has lots of expertise to share with us in this interview! Bjork and Ann chat about the current state of SEO, including a deep dive into the impact of the recent Google Helpful Content Updates.

They also discuss the history of backlinks with SEO and how to approach link-building as a content creator (and why it’s more about community than you might think).

Ann has a really great perspective on the importance of developing a holistic SEO strategy and why diversifying your income and traffic sources matters now, more than ever. Don’t miss this episode!

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465: Creating a Subscription Platform for Your Food Blog with Jen Matichuk

Emily @ FBP
by Emily @ FBP on Jun 11, 2024 in

Welcome to episode 465 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Jen Matichuk.

Are you tired of brand partnerships or navigating the Google algorithm? Have you ever considered starting a membership for your community? Then you won’t want to miss this podcast episode with Jen Matichuk from Memberful.

And yes, Memberful is a podcast sponsor, but this episode isn’t sponsored by them! We were just really excited to have an honest conversation about what it looks like to create a membership as a food creator, and how you might go about doing it.

In this episode, Bjork and Jen chat about how to determine if a membership is the right option for your business, how to choose a subscription platform, how to predict if a subscription model will be successful for you, how to market content behind a paywall, and more!

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464: How Email and High-Quality Content Helped Jason Norris Reach Millions of Monthly Pageviews with Recipe Teacher

Emily @ FBP
by Emily @ FBP on Jun 4, 2024 in

Welcome to episode 464 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Jason Norris from Recipe Teacher.

Jason Norris has gone on quite a journey with his site, Recipe Teacher. From trying to sell the site for $1000, to growing a site that reaches millions of monthly pageviews and is worth well over a million dollars.

In this interview, Jason shares more about the growth of his site, how he has built a team of recipe developers, his approach to SEO, and more. He also explains how he grew his email list from 1,000 to over 75,000 subscribers by working with our friend Allea at Duett and, in the process, learned that many of his readers are seniors!

Jason’s journey to success is a really fun one to hear about, and one that we know will inspire many of you to keep plugging along. Enjoy!

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463: How a Love of SEO and Entrepreneurship Helped Shaunda Necole Grow Three Successful Websites and Hit 1 Million Monthly Pageviews

Emily @ FBP
by Emily @ FBP on May 28, 2024 in

Welcome to episode 463 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Shaunda Necole from The Soul Food Pot.

Shaunda Necole has a true passion for being an entrepreneur — from her first business owning a cheerleading product company to today, running three websites, a food tour of Las Vegas, writing books, and more.

In this interview, she shares more about her love of SEO and keyword research and how her SEO strategy has changed in light of Google’s recent Helpful Content Updates. She also explains how she divides her time between her three websites (a food blog, a travel website, and her personal site), in addition to her SEO consulting, Las Vegas food tours, and upcoming travel book.

In a time where SEO can feel really unpredictable, Shaunda’s perspective and approach to SEO is one we all need to hear (and she clearly knows what she’s doing — her food blog hits 1 million monthly pageviews during the holiday season)! We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did.

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