How Jessica Robinson Built a Profitable Food Brand Without SEO

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This episode is sponsored by Raptive and Yoast.

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Welcome to episode 538 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Jessica Robinson from A Farmgirl’s Kitchen.

Last week on the podcast, Bjork chatted with Emily Walker from the Food Blogger Pro team for the latest Food Blogging News Roundtable. To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

How Jessica Robinson Built a Profitable Food Brand Without SEO

From publishing her first two cookbooks to launching her site, Jessica walks us through the early days of her journey as a food creator and the strategies she used to help her gain momentum — fast! She talks about why she chose to focus on Pinterest and Facebook instead of traditional SEO and how those choices paid off, allowing her to monetize her business within just a few months.

Jessica shares her tips for growing her audience on social media, monetizing through the Facebook Content Monetization program and Amazon affiliate links, and how her short-form videos not only drive traffic but also boost her SEO. With over 430k followers on Facebook and a rapidly expanding presence across platforms, Jessica emphasizes the importance of diversifying income streams and traffic sources and connecting with her audience through relatable, authentic content and storytelling.

Three episode takeaways:

• Lean into the concept of being ‘expert enough’ — Jessica monetized her site within three months by focusing on Pinterest and later Facebook and skipping SEO-heavy strategies in favor of visual platforms with viral potential. She really focuses on analytics and is constantly evolving and pivoting based on what is working (and what isn’t working anymore).
• Facebook can be a powerful traffic and revenue source — With over 430k followers, Facebook is Jessica’s #2 traffic driver and brings in $1,500–$3,000 monthly from the Facebook monetization program — excluding the additional income Jessica receives from affiliate income and search traffic. Jessica shares more about her posting strategy and how viral videos on Facebook contribute to her SEO strategy.
• The importance of short-form video — Consistently posting relatable, engaging recipe videos with a focus on storytelling helps Jessica grow her audience — all while connecting deeply with her community.

Resources:

• A Farmgirl’s Kitchen
• New England Farmgirl
• A Farmgirl’s Table
• Everything Food Conference
• Delicious Table
• Intercom
• Social Fabric
• Cinnamon Rolls Recipe
• PicMonkey
• Canva
• Splice App
• Maximizing Affiliate Revenue with Deep Linking
• URLgenius
• Grocers List
• Geniuslink
• Manychat
• Follow Jessica on Instagram and Facebook
• Email Bjork
• Email Jessica
• Join Food Blogger Pro during our Q4 Sale! Become a member for just $65 for 3 months! Sale ends Friday, October 3rd at 11:59pm EST.

Thank you to our sponsors!

This episode is sponsored by Raptive and Yoast.

Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here.

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to [email protected].

Transcript (click to expand):

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Today on the podcast, we are chatting with Jessica Robinson from a Farm Girls Kitchen. We actually had several listeners reach out and recommend Jessica for a podcast interview. And after editing this interview, I can definitely see why Jessica has taken an unconventional path to achieving success with her food blog. She first started out by publishing a couple of cookbooks and then decided it was time to start her site. Instead of focusing on traditional SEO practices, she has really leaned into Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram as traffic drivers and sources of income for her business. Jessica shares her tips for growing her audience on social media, monetizing through the Facebook content monetization program and Amazon affiliate links, and how her short form videos not only drive site traffic, but also boost her SEO.

With over 430,000 followers on Facebook and a rapidly expanding presence across platforms, Jessica emphasizes the importance of diversifying income streams and traffic sources and shares more about connecting with her audience through relatable, authentic content and storytelling. We’ve been hearing more and more about the importance of Facebook as a traffic source. Bjork even shares a little bit more about how Pinch of Yum has been focusing on Facebook lately. I feel like this interview has a lot of practical tips for growing your presence on Facebook, and we hope you’ll get a lot out of it. So I’m just going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Jessica, welcome to the podcast.

Jessica Robinson: Thanks for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we’re going to talk about your journey as a creator, as we often do on this podcast. There’s going to be some really fun things that we are going to talk about. One of the things that I think people will be really interested in talking about in this four week period, how you grew your Instagram by 140,000, Facebook, 130,000, 20,000 followers on TikTok, we’re going to be talking about growing your Amazon earnings Facebook monetization program. But before we do that, always helpful to set it up a little bit of context, how you got started, and it sounds like you had a business before this and there were some changes and pivots within that industry that led you to the world of food and food content. So take us back to that moment and how you got into what you’re doing now.

Jessica Robinson: Right. Well, I was a wedding and event floral designer, and I had my own company, but when the economy tank, no, they didn’t need my services anymore, so I pivoted because I grew up on a farm and I had learned how to cook. My mother had printed a little ring bound cookbook and she was out of copies, so she said, why don’t you write a cookbook? And I didn’t want to self-publish, so I researched how to publish a cookbook and I was able to sign a cookbook contract. I sold the cookbook twice within nine days, publishers.

Bjork Ostrom: I

Jessica Robinson: Was able to negotiate that.

Bjork Ostrom: How did that, so that was before you had following? Yep. Yeah. So talk a little bit about that. How did you go about doing that and what were the publishers and how did you connect with them?

Jessica Robinson: Right, so being unpublished, you’re not the perfect person for a literary agent. I did have a literary agent, but her contract, there was something in it and it said, if you don’t give her written notice within two weeks that your contract automatically rolls over. So I decided that I was going to fire her, and I reached out and I just googled how to write a proposal, and I hired a ghost writer who had cookbook experience and it was $300, and she instructed me how to write a cookbook proposal. And from doing that, I was able to reach out to independent publishers and then sold it. I sold the first one within nine days. I sold the first one, and then they saw success, and I signed another contract with them for a second cookbook right away.

Bjork Ostrom: So you were coming out of the wedding and event floral business, the economy shifts and there’s not as much need for that type of business. So you say, okay, what’s next? You have this idea to do cookbooks. You go hardcore research mode, learn how to do that. You reach out to independent publishers. What were the cookbooks about? Were they kind of topical in nature or how did you position in those as you pitched them?

Jessica Robinson: So the first one was New England Farm Girl. One of my mistakes was I actually wrote, I was very vocal about it, and I had all the social media platforms. So it was actually originally named New England Kitchen, and someone stole the title to my cookbook. So right prior to it being published, I had to pivot.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, interesting.

Jessica Robinson: The publisher actually chose Farm Girl for me and I was a little upset by it at first, but everything changes and we pivoted and changed and I was able to take that. And the first cookbook was New England Farm Girls, so it was an ag tourism with a little bit of cooking into it. My mother’s words were, everyone always needs to cook. And so I had all these family heirloom recipes and I had a tremendous knowledge of baking and cooking from scratch from, and I thought, why not do a cookbook and get published? I personally did not want to self-publish. Now, the cookbook’s also saying that they do not give you a huge amount of income. So one of the girlfriends, I met a girl at EFC and she said,

Bjork Ostrom: Can you explain that for people who aren’t

Jessica Robinson: Familiar? FC was at everything food conference and just on a whim, my husband paid for me to go because at that time I also didn’t have an income because I had closed the wedding business and I really didn’t have, other than the cookbook, I didn’t have an income. So he sent me out there and I met Lisa from Delicious Table, and she was this big personality and she said, I’m going to help you monetize your website. You’re going to start taking some of this content you have and you are going to earn an income and not, she said, not have to depend on your husband or whatever, because I had been so independent with the wedding flowers, it was very unusual to not have an income having to ask him for, can you put fuel in my truck or whatever. I didn’t want to do that, so she helped me.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Love that idea of, one of the things we talk about is even if you aren’t doing something like a side hustle, even if it’s part-time, it’s one of the great things about it is that if there ever is a need for you to scale up to do it, you have the skills and abilities, you have the understanding of the industry. It was actually from, there’s this software company called Intercom. We use it for support for some of our companies, and it was one of their podcasts and they talked about the importance of side hustles. Not always because you want to build them into a full-time hustle. Obviously for you over the years you’ve done that, but the benefit of those to have as kind of optionality, and in your case, what you talk about is this idea of, hey, you want to make sure that you have the ability to scale up, create your own income, and that’s true even if somebody has a full-time job, for instance, to have this thing that’s kind of in the background, if there ever is a time when you need to scale it up.

We’ve had a lot of those conversations with people where they’re like, Hey, I actually loved my job and I had this thing that I was working on and I could scale it up. In your case, it sounds like you had this job that went away, this business that went away, you were in this transitional period and you said, I want to make sure that I’m producing my own income, but then how do you do that? And so then you went into research mode, you started to understand it. You had these cookbooks, the cookbooks kind of proof of concept. I’m able to create a thing. We were all talking about how we are creators. I’m able to create a thing and earn income from that. But then what does it look like to do that repeatedly over time? Not in a passive way, none of this is truly passive, but maybe in a predictable way where months to month you’re going to get ad income, you’re going to get Facebook income, you’re going to get Amazon income. And it sounds like you’ve been on a journey ever since that conversation at everything Food conference with Lisa as somebody who kind of kicked off that idea of, Hey, what does it look like to really build this thing in a way where you have these online platforms that you’re using to create an income. So talk about maybe the chapters along the way that bring you to where you are today. What did that first chapter of starting look like?

Jessica Robinson: So in 2020, right before, before we got shut down for lockdown, my mom passed away and Lisa actually then because become close friends, so we have video calls and she said, throw yourself into work to deal with grief and whatnot. And I’m 700 miles away from home. So I focused tremendously on Pinterest at that point because Pinterest, I knew Lisa was doing a lot of things that other people were getting SEO, but I wasn’t so focused on SEO. I’m not a technical person. I’m more creative. And so I focused solely a lot on Pinterest, but as well as Facebook and I grew those platforms, Pinterest was driving quite a few, 50,000, 75,000 I was able to monetize within three months basically.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. When you say three months, three months of starting work on growing Pinterest, it wasn’t really happening. And then you’re like, Hey, I’m going to really get after this. I’m going to grow this and getting 50,000 page views or sessions or whatever we’d want to call them, but basic idea being you’re able to scale that up in the world of Pinterest, lots of different ways to measure that, but let’s say it’s for even numbers predictable. There’s $50 RPM, it’s like, oh, you could be making within three months, 2,500, $3,000 from Pinterest as a traffic source. That’s like a great income, especially creating that from saying, Hey, for three months I’m going to focus on this and kind of scale it up. That’s like 30 to $40,000 a year from a concerted effort to build that as a traffic source.

Jessica Robinson: And I believe in 2022, I actually brought in, because Pinterest at that time had 21 or 22. They had, excuse me, they had a creators fund, and I earned $25,000 that year. Pins I was going to create anyway to go to

Bjork Ostrom: From Pinterest.

Jessica Robinson: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, interesting. Not only, this is where it’s like we get to double dip as creators. Facebook is an example of this Pinterest creator fund on Instagram. Will Locationally get bonuses from Instagram where it’s like, oh, not only are you going to create that content anyways, also with Pinterest, especially Facebook a little bit, not only are you going to get traffic from that, but also you might get paid from the platform itself. So talk about the creator Pinterest that. Is that still around? Did they fold that? What does that look like now? Right now?

Jessica Robinson: So I think 2020 changed all those things too, because brands, to me, it seemed like as far as where I am for my following, it seemed like even through going through something called social fabric was one of the platforms, because you sponsored content, everything was shifting at that point. So brands were getting tighter with budgets, and I only had Pinterest creator fund for one year.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Jessica Robinson: But one of the other things I always say is not to put your eggs all in one basket, so be willing to learn to adapt and create content. But no, Pinterest might go away. Facebook monetization might go away. I hope it doesn’t, but it might.

Bjork Ostrom: So

Jessica Robinson: I need to make sure I’m bringing income in from multiple platforms.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Do you know, is the Pinterest crater fund still active? I have a Okay. They’ve folded it completely.

Jessica Robinson: Correct.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay, got it. Yep. And so can you talk a little bit about Pinterest? I’m sure a lot of people are interested to hear other people who are really good at Pinterest and have really plugged in there what that has looked like for you over the last five years.

Jessica Robinson: And I will say that I’m a little different than everyone else. I march to my own beat, so I am one that being raised in a farm. I think that was my mentality too, of, I’ve always thought of this being a business. So if I didn’t have the income from my website or my food blog, then I didn’t spend it. So I never did things like Pinterest scheduling platforms. I schedule everything right on Pinterest.

I don’t hire out currently though, and at some point I should, because I’ve grown so much. So I schedule right on Pinterest. And I’m also of the theory that less is more quality over quantity, and I just do really beautiful pictures. I found more success with doing video pins where I have the finished image on the bottom of the, and a video pin on the top or two pictures. So even if your step images are photographed on your phone and then you throw in the finished image and then you’ll have your graphic in the middle. Just I think scheduling things and having consistency. I also am a big fan of group boards, which other people are not anymore. I found great success with that.

Bjork Ostrom: Have you seen traffic shift?

Jessica Robinson: A hundred percent.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Yeah. I think one of the things that’s helpful is just hearing from other people, which is just like people know that people hear it, but to know sometimes it’s like, gosh, is this me? What am I doing wrong? But I think it’s, from what I hear, it’s like universally people are getting less traffic from Pinterest.

Jessica Robinson: So I think at one point I was getting something like a hundred thousand sessions or page views from Pinterest, but I’m no longer doing that. Now see, one of the things that I think I did with Pinterest was noticing that a lot of people had gotten hit over the years with Google algorithm out updates. And I’m not that person that says, oh, no, I got hit. And you get really upset about it. I like to put my mind to it and just shift and go, I’m going to figure it out. What am I going to do about this? So knowing that that happens with Google, my thought was if 90% of my traffic was coming from Pinterest, what if something happens with Pinterest? I cannot afford to lose all my traffic. So I shifted towards doing video content and creating video content for recipes that were already on my website.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. So you started to see this reliance on Pinterest from a traffic perspective. Okay, what does that mean? If it goes away? And I would say even in our world, it’s not if it goes away, but it’s just like when something goes away. Because no platform is going to live forever. No traffic source is going to be there forever. The internet will be here forever, but how people use it will change and it will shift. And the question, the hard part for us as creators is when do you make that shift? When do you start to build momentum on another platform and when do you not? And just say like, Hey, I’m going to continue to create here. It’s working, and as long as it works, it doesn’t make sense for me to double down somewhere else. There isn’t a great solution to it. And usually what I would say is, I think if something is working, continue to go deep there, as bandwidth opens up, whether your own time or you hire somebody to help, then you can start to look at these other platforms building momentum there as well. So it sounds like Pinterest started to shift. You started to see that, and also just knew you don’t want to be reliant on a single platform. What was the next focus area for you? It sounds like taking some of that thinking about short form video and posting to other platforms.

Jessica Robinson: So I had some growth on Facebook, Instagram, I’d always have a love hate relationship with Instagram. It was never really my thing, but I decided that I was going to focus on Facebook. And then what little bit of video content that I did did. I started to grow with reels almost instantly

Bjork Ostrom: On Facebook.

Jessica Robinson: On Facebook. And at the time, you could do either videos or reels, and then I would post consistently. So I spent a couple years consistently posting. I also am someone who looks at algorithms and really looks at things to see what’s going to get the most for my money, bang for my buck as far as scheduling content. And I scheduled content through their platform and realized that anything I scheduled in the evening did really well.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jessica Robinson: And I actually took, if we sort of rewind, Pinterest had idea pins, and so I went through idea pins and just copied and pasted where I had written the ingredients, but there were no amounts and a little blurb about the recipe. And I copied and pasted those into that video content on Facebook, and it did really well because I think they were intrigued at the video, but then the video loops around, and then they were like, well, where’s the recipe? So they started to click to my website through that.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yep. It’s another one of those examples of double-dipping where you’re creating content on a platform. You’re getting paid for that. So let’s talk about Facebook a little bit. You have over 430,000 followers on Facebook. You talked about short form video being really important. Can you talk about month to month, how much could you expect to earn just from Facebook? They have the Facebook monetization program, I think it’s called, or something like that. What does that look like? And then also the traffic side of it.

Jessica Robinson: Okay. So Facebook is my number two traffic driver. And what’s happened is some of those reels on Facebook have gone viral, millions of views, and I’m actually giving them the entire recipe sometimes. Sometimes I don’t, but most times I just give them the entire recipe right there. I give the ingredients, maybe an abbreviated description, and sometimes with a link, sometimes I’ll just say all the recipes around my website. If once they go viral, then they also, most people do not want to have to read a recipe off of their phone, so they end up going to the website anyway. And those have become my top recipes for traffic. And now I’m realizing because since May, for some reason now I’m ranking on Google, which I’ve never ranked really on Google.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. The recipe itself is ranking. And often what I am guessing is what you’re saying is there’s some correlation that you’re seeing between a video that is viral on Facebook in this instance and the ranking of that recipe on your website. Is that right?

Jessica Robinson: Correct. And things that I would’ve never dreamed to rank

Bjork Ostrom: For.

Jessica Robinson: For example, cinnamon rolls. I’m ranking for cinnamon rolls on the first page. Number two or three, never would’ve thought ever. That recipe is actually photographed primarily on my phone. So they’re not even perfect pictures. And then now I’m ranking because Google now seems to have a short tab or shorts, and when you search on either desktop or your phone, I’m ranking the recipe and then my content for my video, whether it’s Instagram or Facebook, is showing up and being pushed almost at the top.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s one of the interesting things that we’re seeing with search results is it’s not just a recipe page. Now, it’s also short form video content, or you’ll see it with Twitter like that’s, or X creators in our world aren’t posting on XA lot, but if you search something, a lot of times I see it in the world of sports, a lot of times if you’re searching for a sports related event, there’ll be a carousel of X results. And so there is the kind of segmentation of search results where we usually think about it as the link to the recipe page. But there’s a lot of other places that we’re starting to see recipe content show up, one of which is short form video content, Facebook being an example, what does that look like from an earnings perspective? So if you have 400,000 followers, you have the occasional viral video for somebody who is kind of thinking of that, or in that world, how much could they expect to earn from a Facebook page? Let’s say there were only, what traffic wasn’t a consideration, what would that look like?

Jessica Robinson: So right now, I earn anywhere from 1500 to about $3,000 per month on Facebook. But in addition, they’re coming to my website from that link. So I earn income thereor, and then they’re also shopping for my Amazon affiliate.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yep. And that’s something that we’re going to talk about, just kind of the strategic use of Amazon affiliate links. Before we get there, how often are you posting on Facebook? What does that frequency look like? And it sounds like you’re just doing that within Facebook, is that right?

Jessica Robinson: Right. So I think maybe, so I started the journey really when I started to go viral in June. Now I’ve been posting consistently before, and I would post consistently probably four times, five times a day on Facebook. And that was through the creator. So I would schedule that right on Facebook through their MedApp dashboard. And then someone said to me, I don’t have a set thing. I don’t really have a schedule or look at the algorithm. When I have something to post, I just post it.

So it started to get me thinking, well, maybe I should just get in the kitchen, not think about it so much, maybe not schedule a seat. And the other thing I was doing personally was because 90% of your videos on Facebook are being showed to new followers. And not everyone, only a small percentage of people that follow you or really seeing your content. So I would repost, as long as you were mixing up and rotating content, I would repost, which I still do some, but for the most part, I’m recording video and I’m just throwing up one or two a day. Now I’m not really doing too many more or an organic post. I can do an organic post where I just either take a short video or a photo and say, this is what I’m doing in the kitchen, and there’s no outbound link, so they go crazy over it. They want to know where the recipe is, what I’m doing, everything.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s interesting when I pull up. So we just switched on to the monetization content monetization for Facebook. And just because it’s interesting, I think for people listening as much as possible, we’re trying to search your actual numbers. Pinch of Yum, pinch of Yum has 510,000 followers. We’re trying to say like, okay, how can we be smart about Facebook? We’ve had enough conversations with people where they’re like, Hey, we’re earning money from this. We’re getting traffic from this kind of been a neglected platform for us. So we’re early on in our journey of trying to figure this out. For Pinch of Yum, we are earning, in the last 28 days, we earned $1,263. But what’s interesting is to look at the split here. So from reels, we have 50% of the earnings from videos, 250 stories, 200 photos, 166, and then text zero because we’re not really publishing any text. So number one, if anybody has any ideas for us on how we could level up the pinch of Yu on Facebook page, reach out to me, [email protected]. Number two, I’d be interested in your end, Jessica, the things that you have learned around how to optimize earnings on Facebook. What are the things that you are doing that you feel like are most beneficial from an earnings perspective?

Jessica Robinson: So Facebook, for example, I think the more they like your content, the higher they’ll pay you. So getting myself on camera, putting my face and my kitchen, even though I was a little leery of doing it sometimes about waiting all of us, everything right about judgmental people. And so for a while I was doing just my hands or maybe from face down the rolling pin and I would add voiceover. So voiceover was huge, but when people make a personal connection to you and to your brand, so they start to see me as a real person and that my recipes, or even because I do recipes, I do home canning. I do some homesteading items where we’re growing some vegetables and either canning or making marinara sauce or whatever. They see it as obtainable. They see it even being not perfectly thin. They see it, they relate to it. They see the cast iron on the wall, they see the dog or the hear. And that’s one thing too, I used to get really, I was very concerned about not having anyone around in the kitchen, not worried about noises. I no longer worry about that. I mean, I don’t want them slamming doors or coming through while I’m trying to create video content, but if the dog barks, the dog barks and people relate to that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, there’s something around the evolution of content on the internet where, and I think this shifted when stories came out where there is a version of internet content that was very curated. It was very beautiful. Everything was set in a way that made it look like magazines. It almost felt like you have magazines and then you have photos on the internet and you have a photo in a magazine, and then you carry that over to the internet and you have people then trying to emulate the brands that they are seeing, also creating curated images. But as soon as stories started to come out as a medium of content, it was almost like because it was so easy to flip your camera on and press record and you’re in your kitchen, I think there was a shift towards people being real. Here’s me producing content in my kitchen, and the purpose isn’t so much to project my perfect life. The purpose is to allow you to see yourself in me and me to show you how to do something that might be helpful, at least in our world, to say, here’s how you can make this recipe and you can make this recipe when the dog is here, the kids are running around. It’s real life. And I think something about that, it’s important to create content. I think it normalizes normal, but I also think it works. There is something compelling about that type of content. And so when you say that, it makes a lot of sense.

Jessica Robinson: The other thing for me too personally was I think being raised in a farm, and my mother was an expert baker. She ran a wedding and event, I’m sorry. No, she did wedding cakes for, she had a bakery business, so she would sell bread every weekend and you cook and clean and bake and whatever on the farm you have to feed people on the farm. But I thought stupid, but I thought that everyone knew how to cook or bake.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jessica Robinson: And so there’s a lot of these things that I’ve learned, even though I have no professional culinary experience other than being on the farm and working in a catering business a little bit, and I worked at a bakery, but other than that, I have no culinary experience. So I thought, well, people know this, and at the end of the day, they don’t. And there’s even vintage recipes. So I’ve gone nostalgic and they recognize that and they connect with it on a personal level.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think there’s this concept, I talked about it more early on, but I think we need to talk about it more often on the podcast, which is expert enough. You don’t have to be cordon blue trained for three years. It almost becomes detrimental if you are trying to speak to the masses. And so many of us are expert enough, meaning I am not an incredible guitar player, but I’m expert enough to teach somebody who doesn’t know any guitar. And it’s probably better for me to do that initially than somebody who’s been training for two decades and knows classical guitar and is one of the best in the world because they’re going to be so advanced that it’s almost going to be hard for them to teach somebody who’s in the beginning stages. And so I think the key for us is what are we expert enough on?

Another example outside of the food world is I love personal finance. I’m not the ultimate expert on personal finance, but I’m expert enough to have a conversation with my parents if they have a question and they’re like, what do you think we should do in this situation? And it’s probably better for me than some venture capitalist in San Francisco who has strong opinions on finance. And so for anybody listening, what are the things that you are expert enough on that you can help people get to where you are, who are maybe one step behind, two steps behind, three steps behind? Because that can sometimes be an advantage to you.

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So back to the Facebook question. It sounds like a lot of what you’re doing is thinking strategically around how do I show up? How do I be real? How do I connect with people? How do I make myself present in the content? How about the types of content I kind of did? That breakdown of reels from a monetary perspective is important for Pinch of Yum, but what type of content are you publishing the most on Facebook? Or is it a mix of everything?

Jessica Robinson: Now? I’m trying to do a mix of everything. So I use Pickmonkey. There’s other people that use Canva, so I have graphics that I’ve made for Facebook that say they just have a really great picture. Sometimes they have multiple pictures, so you have a step image and a finished image, and they’ll say what they are, and I’m just trying to put in real descriptions and I’ll say, here’s the recipe Now. I think if you mix those up and look to see what works and what doesn’t now engaging with your customers or your viewers on Facebook too also works. That’s one of the things that I’ve spent a lot of time on. I try to spend a little less time now because one of the reels has 22,000 comments, so I can’t possibly answer all those,

But I made a Word document with my standard answers and I just cut and paste some. I spend an hour a day in the morning answering, and I try to be helpful. I also try to do more in stories now, so sharing more. I did a real, well, it wasn’t real, but I did a story. I did a bunch of ’em at the same time, and I recorded about using potato flakes, and that was my secret ingredient to add those potato flakes to my dough to make it light and fluffy and also acted as a natural preservative. I had shared it in stories and I’d gotten a head cold, so I didn’t really have anything. I couldn’t be in the kitchen for about two weeks to record anything. I lost my voice and I thought, let me just throw this up as a reel. It kept 600,000 views in a matter of a couple weeks.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome.

And I think so much of it has to do with not waiting for that perfectly inspired moment, but you have an idea to move on it to post it. It sounds like a lot of that, a lot of what you’re reflecting on is like, Hey, create that content, post that content. It doesn’t matter if the kitchen is perfect, if your voice is gone, figure out an alternative. There’s never going to be a perfect moment, which I think is really important for people to hear because sometimes we can wait for that perfect moment. Let’s talk about that four week period. I referenced it at the beginning. You grew 140,000 followers on Instagram, 130,000 followers on Facebook, 20,000 on TikTok. How did you do that? What did that look like in that one month period?

Jessica Robinson: So I saw someone on TikTok. I just happened to be sitting there and I was always leery of putting myself on camera, but I thought, so our dream was to buy land and build this house, the farmhouse, and we’re going to be doing it in the spring, but building costs him a lot of money. And my husband has a full-time job. He does really well and he makes well, but I don’t want this to be set on him. So part of creating recipes and homesteading content was to try to bring in an income. So I just got on video, didn’t think about it, and got on video, recorded my face and just said who I was and what state I lived in. And then I just went on to, I used the splice app and I put in other videos of me and I was just washing a sheet pan, but then I did overlays of other things of our homestead, whatnot, and I did a voiceover and said, this is my dream. I’ve creating recipe content, but if you could do me a favor. And I did explain a little bit about how he had lost his parents within three and a half months of each other,

And could you please follow my account, like this post and comment. And I didn’t think about it. I did one piece of video. I posted it to Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok roughly the same time. So just for my phone. I added a little bit of text overlay initially, and there’s just my voiceover. I did captions, turned the captions on, and it just started to go viral instantly.

Bjork Ostrom: Instantly. That’s really cool. Why do you think that worked? What was it about that that you think compelled people to follow and to be a part of it? It’s such a great testament to there’s good people on the internet and we hear from people that are not great sometimes, but there’s also the majority of people are great.

Jessica Robinson: Well, I think it was most of the comments, I would say 99% of the comments were positive too, and they were saying things like, it’s so nice to have someone supporting their husband.

It’s so nice to be able to see positivity. And they were here for the recipes anyway. They were willing to follow me, and they were first time seeing me, all these wonderful comments. But I also think it resonated with people thinking that they had a dream too. And my personal dream was to build this house a farmhouse. We’re doing a recreation of a farmhouse, so they connected with it and sharing some of those nostalgic recipes in it. And then I had the voiceover. They just really connected it. It resonated with people, and it’s positive. It’s not negative, so it just took off.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that is so cool. I think if I were to guess, part of what’s compelling about it is it’s a story. It’s a journey. There’s intrigue. It’s not content that is siloed. It’s not a recipe who I am, here’s the journey I’m on, here’s the thing I’m trying to do, and here is how you can follow along with me on this journey. And I think that when we think of why do we follow an account, we might follow it because we know it’s going to be helpful. We might follow it because we think it’s going to be entertaining and funny, or we might follow it because we’re curious around the journey that somebody is on. And I think that curiosity piece is a really great one to invite people in on a journey that you are on, and what a great thing to be able to do that and really fun when it works. And you see people are interested in actually following along for that journey.

Jessica Robinson: And I think they’re also interested too, because I revealed the dollar amount of how much I was trying to pay off the land, and my goal was to pay off the land loan prior to the house bill and surprise him. So that way he’s less stressed with the mortgage and whatnot. But then they get really intrigued and they start to comment on things of either cast iron or I have vintage bowls, and oh, they had the same bowl or whatever. They just really connected personally with it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. I love that. So another thing that I wanted to talk to you about, you talked about the importance on Facebook. It’s actually triple dipping at this point because we talk about Facebook monetization, that’s one of the ways that you can earn from Facebook. We talked about that Facebook as a traffic source, so not only are people interacting with the content, you’re getting paid for it on Facebook, but then people are also going to your website. Lastly, there’s the ability to earn affiliate revenue from not just Facebook multiple platforms, but it sounds like you’ve really started to focus on increasing the earnings that you’re getting from Amazon Associates, which is Amazon’s affiliate program. How have you gone about doing that and what have been the most beneficial types of content that you’ve published that have increased affiliate earnings?

Jessica Robinson: So within that video that went viral, especially on Facebook for example, many people want to know how they could help me and achieve the goal. So I had a cut and paste thing that explained to them how I earned income as a food blogger, making income off of ad revenue, but that I also had a storefront for Amazon, and I kept dropping the link in there and they were shopping like crazy. But I also have always recommended things to me that are organic for my brand or my company on Facebook, on Instagram, and I’ll share or

Bjork Ostrom: Organic meaning like a good match for the type of content that you’re creating,

Jessica Robinson: Correct. Or something you didn’t know you needed. So for example, I do a lot in cast iron and I also sell a lot. I sell cast iron loaf pans a lot, which is, and it’s a company lot is in Tennessee, so people, they like United States brands. So I’ve tried to focus a lot on United States made brands, and then also one of the things I do is I use cast iron, not only cast iron, but the loaf pan liners. So they drop in, so something they didn’t know they needed and something they can’t go to the store and purchase and oftentimes will do that through video, through my stories, and then add the link.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Then that’s on Facebook.

Jessica Robinson: Well, so I have them linked together and I’ll drop the stories on Instagram, which automatically shares to Facebook, so they shop off of both platforms.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Jessica Robinson: I’m always very careful of writing the word affiliate in little tiny letters and just having it there to make sure,

Bjork Ostrom: Disclosing that it’s an affiliate link.

Jessica Robinson: But I’ll give you an example of money. So I was selling on average around $2,000 of sales to Amazon a month, and now I’ve gone to about 12 to 15,000 per month. So not only am I earning more from my affiliate link, they’re also paying me a flat fee bonus every month. One of the things I’ve found is resharing on stories, people’s really heartfelt comments. So I reshare that and usually add hearts to it or something, and they just really like being featured and mentioned.

And I’m also the person that when I get a negative comment, let’s say Facebook for example, I used to have the mindset of deleting and blocking them, and now I no longer do that now generally, as long as it’s not like a really nasty comment, I go back with positivity and just say, one of the comments is, oh, you have too many ads in your website. Why can’t you just give us the recipe? I just have a cut and paste thing that says, this is how I make income as a food blogger and blah, blah, blah, and that’s what it says. And then they just go away.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. And I think one of the things I’ve realized is we will always have, there will always be those voices no matter what you’re doing. The hard part is the more you scale up, the more you get in front of people, the more opportunity there is for people to say a thing. If you have something go viral, it’s going to be more people seeing it and it’s just a percentage game. I don’t know what the percentage is, one out of a hundred, one out of a thousand, whatever it is. As you scale up, you’ll get more of that. It’s just part of showing up and creating content on the internet. So follow up question on that. Are you using, we talk about deep links. Is that something that you’re using for those Amazon links that you’re creating or is it just a straight link to Amazon?

Jessica Robinson: No, it’s just a straight link. I just go on my phone and use generally on my phone and just cut and paste, copy the Amazon affiliate link and just do videos or pictures. I even download. A lot of times I’ll actually download my finished images from my website if it’s a step image and downloads that just my phone and then post the link. But other times the video really, people like the video, so they like it and they’re like, where did you get that

Bjork Ostrom: The link? Do you know deep linking when I talk about deep linking. Okay, so this will be my tip for you. Anybody else who’s listening, we did an interview, URL Genius is the name of the company. That’d be a great one to look at. Also, grocers List does deep linking for Amazon. Genius Link is another one. Grocers List is a company that a sponsor of the podcast, and we’ve actually invested in the company and they’re specific for food creators. So anybody who’s doing, and I think, here’s my prediction, this will make you hundreds of dollars more a month, maybe even double of what you’re earning. Maybe not double, but so what happens is oftentimes if you are in Instagram and you are clicking on a link in Stories, it will open the Amazon link in the Instagram browser, and 98% of people aren’t going to be signed into Amazon on the Amazon browser, or sorry, on the Instagram browser. And so if you use one of these pieces of software that creates a deep link, what it will do is people click on the link in Instagram and instead of opening in the browser of Instagram where people aren’t signed in, it hops them out of Instagram and into the Amazon app where 98% of people are signed in

And it carries over your affiliate information as well. So it takes conversions and it’s like an immediate multiplier on people’s conversion rate because they don’t hit that wall where they need to sign in. And it’s like signing in takes maybe 30 seconds, but for whatever reason, people don’t want to do it. And so they don’t end up buying it versus if it’s just in the app, you click the buy now button, you get it shipped in two days or whatever it is. So that would be my tip for anybody who’s interested in doing this is looking at doing deep links. It’s not as important to do a deep link on a browser on your website because usually it’s going to work if people are in Safari on their phone or Chrome, it’s going to hop them to the Amazon app, or if they’re on desktop, it will just jump them over to a new tab where they’ll already be signed in. So for anybody doing Amazon links, make sure that you on social platforms are doing that deep linking. Again, grocers list. We did a long conversation with URL Genius on the podcast. Genius Link is another one. And all of those are great solutions for deep linking for Amazon content. So does that make sense?

Jessica Robinson: Yeah, no, totally. Well, that’s one of the things, so I was using ManyChat for, which is similar to Groceries list, correct?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Groceries List has the DM feature, but it also has a completely separate area, which is just deep linking, and it creates the deep link. So it’s almost like Microsoft Word. And then Microsoft Excel, they do two very different things. They’re both from Microsoft Grocers List has deep linking, and it also has DM functionality.

Jessica Robinson: So that was one of the things though that I was doing when on Instagram, for example, was I was using ManyChat and I watched other creators go to Facebook and use that same ManyChat to do GMs. But Facebook and Instagram, all the platforms have a different user. They’re different people, and I think one of the best things I did was actually get rid of ManyChat,

Bjork Ostrom: Just giving people all the information they need

Jessica Robinson: And no. So sometimes I give it to them and sometimes I don’t. But even on Instagram, once you build this following and even giving them the information, they’re sort of forced to go to your website to get it anyway because they can’t print it out and they don’t want to work off the reel. So I gave it to them and they can read it and they can look at it. They can save the reel, but they still have to go to your website to get it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, different platform, different ability to link, different way that content will present itself. All very good points. So as things stand right now, what would be the rank order for your business, all these different platforms, what are the most important places for you, including website and then all the social platforms?

Jessica Robinson: So I’m trying to create more new recipes. If you have old ones, I’m definitely trying to fix some of the old ones too, but I’m a quality over quantity, and so I’m consistently trying to create new recipe content, which will give me a new URL and giving me a new URL is a new URL for Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and one up. And that also gives me a new ad revenue stream for that. But at this point, I’m just trying to create a combination of new recipes for my website for people to go to, and then also video content because clearly video content is driving people to my pages for social media as well as my website. They really, really love video content. And it doesn’t have to be fancy. Our kitchen is outdated, it’s dark, it’s not Pinterest perfect, but no one

Bjork Ostrom: Cares as long as the content that you’re creating is good. I’ve thought about that within the context of interviews that happen or videos that I watch. I’ll be willing, as a creator, it’s not ideal or as a consumer to put up with a lot of things if the output of it is valuable, insightful, helpful. And I think that’s true in this case, which it’s like if you have a good recipe and bonus, you make it seem or it actually is approachable and easy to do, that’s a really wonderful thing, and you don’t need Pinterest perfect in order to do that.

Jessica Robinson: I think that’s the same thing though with the video content too, of creating recipes that seem approachable using simple ingredients. There’s nothing fancy. And I had one of our wood woodworkers, I asked him if he could make me a cutting board to straddle over top of the kitchen sink because I knew that was where right now, until we build this beautiful house, that’s where I have the best light. And he just built me a cutting board and I use that over top of the sink.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. It’s one of the things that Lindsay and I joke about. We’re in the middle of doing this kitchen edition, and one of the jokes that we had as we’re thinking about making the decision was maybe it’s just a matter of putting a couple lamps in to get better light. That’s not the actual solution of what it was, but sometimes we go to these extremes of like, well, I suppose it’s a kitchen edition. And then it’s like, well, actually we just needed two lamps in the corner and then we’re good.

Jessica Robinson: My thought would be what I did was analyze other people, a few other people. I’m one person that doesn’t really, I don’t ever look at someone and go, oh, I wish I was them, or how come they have more following than I do? I don’t. I’m one that just gets in the kitchen and gets it done. That’s how my personality is. But I’ve also looked at other people, like for example, there’s a woman named Lily Lou Te, she’s in a double wide, and she went viral just making these simplistic recipes, and she even signed a cookbook deal. So if she can do it and she can make video content and have it go crazy, why can’t I do the same thing?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. I love that. And I think it’s inspiring to think about how do you show up, tell your story, create content, don’t wait until things are perfect. It’s really inspiring and inspiring to see where you’re at, the success that you’ve had and continued success moving forward. I’m curious to know, as you look at the year ahead, where do you imagine spending the majority of your time? What are you going to be prioritizing moving forward?

Jessica Robinson: So I’ve always prioritized, and this was Lisa’s suggestion too, holiday content, because for me, I watched her one year and at Thanksgiving she had one recipe that went crazy. So for me, I earned, the majority of my income is earned in quarter four for ad revenue. Now I still want to create recipes all year long, but I’m going down the rabbit hole of keeping doing true to my roots, the nostalgic. So I’m going to continue to do some of the recipes that we recently found of my mom’s and photograph those and get ’em on my website and not worry too. That was one of my things was I was always worried about having to have the blog post be perfect or having to have the perfect images of it. And at the end of the day, I don’t think it really matters as much anymore as maybe it did. It needs to be a really well-written recipe and tested, so it’s really well done. And the blog post, I still have an SEO checklist, but I’m not being, it doesn’t need to be stuffed with everything. You know what I mean? To get to rank or whatever. Not my goal at the end of the day either.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. The purpose of it is to create a compelling piece of content that’s human forward and to do best practice from a search perspective. You want the technical stuff to be sound, but oftentimes people will land in a certain category. Some people might be search people. You do keyword research, you figure out the thing that you can rank for, you have a process for it. You create that content. You have a team who’s working on it. There are other people who are inspiration led, but you still want to be search forward in thinking strategically about it. So you’re structuring something well, which makes a ton of sense.

Jessica Robinson: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: So Jessica, so fun to talk to you, and my guess is people will want to follow along with what you’re up to. Check out your site, where’s the best place for people to do that and how can they get ahold of you?

Jessica Robinson: Sure. I mean, they can reach out through social media, but you can also email me and my website is a farm girls kitchen.com and all of my social media is also a Farm Girls Kitchen.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. And then if they did want to email you, is it just Jessica at?

Jessica Robinson: No, it’s a Farm Girls [email protected].

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Great. Jessica, thanks so much for coming on.

Jessica Robinson: Thanks for having me.

Emily Walker: Hey, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I wanted to take a minute and just ask that if you enjoyed this episode or any of our other many episodes of the Food Blogger Pro podcast that you share it. It means so much to us as a podcast if you share episodes with your friends and family, or if you are a food blogger or entrepreneur, if you could share ’em on social media or even in your email newsletters. It really helped us get the word out about our podcast and reach more listeners. Thanks again for listening. We really hope you enjoyed this episode, and we’ll see you back here next week.