099: Sponsored Content and Getting Paid What Your Work is Worth with Danielle Liss

Welcome to episode 99 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks with Danielle Liss from Hashtag Legal about how you can create solid sponsored content.

If you do sponsored content, you know how much work a campaign can be. From developing the recipe to aligning with the brand’s goals, many considerations go into creating solid sponsored content for a brand.

From understanding FTC guidelines to knowing the legal disclaimers all blogs should have on their sites, Danielle and her business partner cover it all at their practice, Hashtag Legal. While most bloggers want to focus on the creative side of their businesses, it’s important to have a handle on the business and legal side of things as well. Danielle saw this as an opportunity to help get bloggers to the point where they’re comfortable with pricing their work and structuring their businesses.

Keep Reading

098: An Architect’s Journey to Becoming a Freelance Food Photographer with Ashley McLaughlin

a headshot of Ashley McLaughlin and the title of this Food Blogger Pro Podcast episode, 'An Architect’s Journey to Becoming a Freelance Food Photographer'

Welcome to episode 98 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks with Ashley McLaughlin from Edible Perspective about becoming a full-time freelance food photographer.

Architecture and food…it doesn’t sound like there would be many similarities between the two, right? But there are, and Ashley’s background in architecture helped her understand experience, perspective, and design in a culinary setting.

After staring her blog, Edible Perspective, as a way to stay creative, Ashley’s love of food transformed into a love of photography. After a long learning process, she went from a complete novice with a DSLR to understanding exposure meters, shooting in manual mode, and writing a food photography series on her blog. Now she’s a full-time freelance food photographer who has photographed multiple cookbooks for bloggers.

Keep Reading

097: How to Create a Full-Time Income from Blogging Using The Egg Carton Method with Bjork Ostrom

Welcome to episode 97 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks about dividing income into multiple “eggs” in a carton of blogging income.

For a lot of us, “pro” blogging (i.e., making a full-time income from blogging) is the dream. In order to do that, however, income needs to be coming in from multiple channels.

Bjork likes to think of these “channels” as eggs in an egg carton; you need to fill your egg carton with different revenue streams in order to create a sustainable income from your blog. It’s really difficult to create a full-time blogging income from only one “egg,” so diversifying your egg carton can help you get there even sooner.

Keep Reading

096: How to Create the Perfect Recipe Post with Bjork Ostrom

Welcome to episode 96 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork talks about recipe plugins and why you need them.

Regardless of where you are in your blogging journey (just starting out to full-time), chances are you’ve heard the words recipe plugin before. These plugins are incredibly important for food bloggers to be aware of because they not only make your recipes look beautiful, but they also help your blog communicate with search engines like Google and Pinterest.

There are so many elements to consider when choosing a recipe plugin for your blog, and it’s important to choose one that checks off “all of the SEO boxes.” So when Bjork noticed the recipe plugin Pinch of Yum was using wasn’t quite keeping up with the times, he decided it was time to build one in-house.

Keep Reading

095: How Embracing the Mess Propelled a Career with Jillian Tohber Leslie from MiloTree

Welcome to episode 95 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork interviews Jillian Tohber Leslie from Catch My Party and MiloTree about making successful career changes by embracing the mess.

Last week, Bjork talked about 5 techniques you can use to keep gooing when you’re feeling overwhelmed with your blog. To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

Embrace The Mess

As with life, business isn’t always pretty. No matter how put-together someone’s business looks from the outside, you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ve had their own fair share of messy affairs to deal with in their business.

Jillian Tohber Leslie learned early in her career that the key to moving forward was embracing this messiness and using it to help propel her career and her businesses forward. She and her husband started Catch My Party, the largest party ideas site on the web, and went on to found MiloTree, a social and email growth popup that’s perfect for bloggers.

Keep Reading

094: How to Keep Going with Bjork Ostrom

a headshot of Bjork Ostrom and the title of this podcast episode, How to Keep Going

Welcome to episode 94 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks about how to keep going when you’re not sure you can continue.

Whether you’ve been blogging for a few months or a few years, you’ve no doubt had the thought at some point or another: How do I keep going?

Blogging can be tough. You might be fitting it in after your regular full-time job hours. You might be running your blog as a business with not enough hours in the day. You might be juggling it on the side while trying to raise a family. Whatever your situation, you’ve likely found out that blogging isn’t easy, and on some days it’s tough to imagine how you’ll keep it up.

Today, Bjork talks about some techniques that he and Lindsay have used in their businesses to help them get up in the morning and do The Work.

Keep Reading

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.

Keep Reading

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.

Keep Reading

091: Optimizing Recipes for SEO with Joost De Valk from Yoast SEO

Welcome to episode 91 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork interviews Joost de Valk, the founder of Yoast SEO, about optimizing SEO for your food blog.

SEO is something we bloggers hear a LOT about. It’s so important! But it can also be really confusing, even with the abundance of information out there.

Fortunately, there are tools such as the Yoast SEO plugin to help us navigate this often confusing landscape. Yoast SEO was founded by Joost de Valk and is one of the most popular WordPress plugins in use today. That’s… kind of a big deal. Joost met with Bjork for this interview to discuss a wide range of SEO topics, including why SEO matters for your recipes and how you can optimize it.

Keep Reading

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.

Keep Reading