152: 6 Blogging Mistakes Made By a Veteran Food Blogger with Carrie Forrest

In this episode, I talk about the fact that there are two days remaining for Food Blogger Pro enrollment. And we talked to Carrie Forrest, a Food Blogger Pro member, about her journey of blogging over the past nine years and six epic mistakes that she made and then fixed and how she went about doing that. Hey there everybody. This is Bjork Ostrom. And if you listen to this podcast in real time, you are aware of the fact that we are in the middle of an enrollment season for Food Blogger Pro and you have two days left to sign up. If you are interested in becoming a member of our site, FoodBloggerPro. It is a community of over 3,000 people from around the world who are taking the things that we talk about on this podcast and applying them in a real and meaningful way. And for those of you that listen to the podcast, you might think that, hey, this is kind of primarily what we do, but the reality is that 90% of the time and energy and focus that we have as a team is on our members of Food Blogger Pro. So if you're interested in signing up, all you have to do is go to foodbloggerpro.com in the last podcast episode, I talked a lot about what's involved with the membership and what you get from it. But the basic idea is, if you have gotten anything from this podcast, know that with a Food Blogger Pro membership, you will get so much more. There's videos, there's community, there is real time information on what's happening in the blogging world. And all of this stuff is available to you right away when you you sign up for a membership. Enrollment closes Thursday night. And if you want to see a little countdown clock of how much time is left, you can just go to the homepage to get a feel for that. If you do not listen to this podcast in real time, then it's a waiting list season. We are in middle of enrollment season. You can sign up for the waiting list and get notified when we do open again for enrollment. We're kind of like a college or university in that way. We don't like to have enrollment open all the time, but we like to kind of have a class, so to speak, come in so we can welcome them in. We can have everybody come in and be a part of this certain class and then we close it up again. So we're not always having people trickle in. So we have a good rhythm for that. Again, it's foodbloggerpro.com you can check that out. And I know that if you've gotten anything out of the podcast. You'll also get a lot out of your membership. For today's interview, we are actually talking to a Food Blogger Pro member, Carrie Forrest. And she is going to be talking about her transition over the last nine years from evolving her blog and her brand, but also going through some of some hard things with her blog and her site, how she got through those things and what she learned in that process. So she's actually going to be sharing six mistakes that she's made and then how she went about fixing those. And the hope for this is that you can learn from that and protect yourself from making those mistakes in the future. So let's go ahead and jump into the interview. Carrie, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Bjork. It's so fun to be here.

Yeah, it's been great because we have exchanged emails and messages and things like that, but anytime that I'm able to actually sit down virtually Right. With somebody or in person, it's always a really great pleasure. And we've. When I talk about emails and messages, we've exchanged those over the years because you've been at this blogging thing for a while. So can you quickly tell your story and how you started your blog and rewind the tape a little bit? Because we're going back almost nine years. Right?

I know. And by the way, on Food Blogger Pro, it says, I'm a. I think it says I'm a senior member now.

Ooh, you've been upgraded. Nice.

So that's a good way to make me feel old.

That's awesome, right? Yeah. There's maybe more intentional ways that we could structure the naming for that. But for those that aren't familiar, Food Blogger Pro, we have the forums. And in the forums, there's a little title underneath every person in terms of. That has to do with their kind of membership status. I think it relates to activity on the forum. So congratulations on your senior status. Thanks.

And can I tell a little story, Bjork, too, please?

Yeah, would love that.

Okay, so yesterday I was talking to a food blogger friend, and that's unusual. First of all, to actually be talking, like, again today, it's unusual that you and I are actually talking like real people. So I was talking on the phone with a food blogger friend, and I told her that I was coming on the podcast. You know, I was like, oh, my God, I have to tell you. And she said, no way. Bjork and Lindsay are like my best friends.

Oh, yeah.

And by the way, she's never met you in person. Either.

Isn't that funny?

And I said, I feel like that too. And she said, no, they're my best friends. Lindsay is my bff.

My bff, not your bff, right.

And then I said, no. I said, well, Bjork is kind of like my brother, so that's how I think of Bjork. And so that would make Lindsay my sister in law for sure.

Yeah. It's nice that even without us knowing that we're actually connected in that way before starting this interview. So it's good to have that context now. Okay, that's great. Yeah, that's the funny thing about. We were talking about podcasts a little bit. Bit, which maybe we can hit here. The combination of podcasts and even just the written word and stories and even like stories in Instagram, like literally the stories that people tell. I think it allows us to connect and interact and understand each other in a way that is impossible with like web version one, which was, you know, text and photos where hearing somebody talk and then you meet them in person, it's like, oh, that's exactly how you talk in person as well. So it's this great privilege that we have as people that are content creators, that we can connect with people. And I love that you had that little back and forth and honored to be related and honored that your friend would consider us her good friend as well.

Well, you and Lindsay have done such an amazing job of creating that feeling of community. And I just give you, both of you, just major props for what you've created.

Yeah, thanks. That really means a lot. And we don't hear it in. So this isn't quite in person but about as close as it can get. So really meaningful. Really appreciate it and excited to hear about your story and know that it kind of. There's some connection points along the way with Food Blogger Pro membership you had mentioned. But I know if you, if we go back to the beginning, you were blogging and creating content kind of in the early stages of blogs and, and social media and things like that. So take us back to. It would have been 2009. Right. Take us back to that point when you were thinking of starting a site and kind of what was the idea behind it and what were you hoping to do?

Right. And things were so different because that was before Instagram, that was even before Facebook. And so I had started reading blogs. I was newly graduated from graduate school actually, and I had gone into a job that I. It just wasn't the right fit. And so I left that job after about Nine months. And I was. I had started an interest in nutrition. I had done more like, business and nonprofit stuff before graduate school. And then I had planned to go into business, maybe entrepreneurship, but it just. I don't know, I didn't really find the right fit. And then I had this new interest of nutrition, so I started reading blogs. And I was also newly married at the time, so this again is going back to 2000.

And.

Well, a few years before I started my blog is when I started reading blogs. And at that time, a blog really was very much like a journal if you. If you wrote a blog. A lot of people were writing, like, daily updates, and we didn't have good phones to take pictures. And they were like digital cameras, but the pictures are really awful. There wasn't good editing software. And so that's kind of the context of when I started my blog. And so I named it lovehealthyliving.net. i've had a few iterations, although I've kind of dragged all the old content and SEO from when I started in 2009. So I've, like, forwarded my domain. I guess that's the right way to explain it. Sure. So, I mean, I just kind of started it as a way maybe to start to connect with other people, maybe to start to explore this interest in food and cooking, which I'd never had up to that point. And that's just kind of how it started.

Yeah, it's interesting to think back to those. It's almost 10 years ago now when people were first producing content online on their own websites, kind of in a blog fashion, where it really was this journal where essentially you would follow along with somebody, and the idea was you're kind of following along with their online journal. So it's like, hey, here's a little quick snapshot, snapshot of what I ate today. And maybe it's a little bit about what was included with it, but you think about that and contrast it with how intentional people are to think about, you know, optimizing a post to show up in search engines and, you know, getting really good photos for Pinterest. It's a very, very different scene right now if you are blogging with the intent to grow and build and scale. And it's interesting to hear, you know, kind of reading a little bit about your story before starting this. It sounds like there was this interest from you in doing that, being intentional to build a thing. But then there kind of came this point, May four or five years in, where it sounds like you're Maybe a little bit burnt out. And you published this post where you said, I'm done. And then you're like, wait a minute, am I actually done? And kind of went back and forth on that. So can you take us back to that burnout moment? Or was it burnout? What was it that you experienced that made you want to kind of hang up the virtual cleats, if you will, and retire from blogging?

Yeah, so what happened was I, from around 2010 to around 2014, I got immersed in a vegan lifestyle. And so I changed my blog from lovehealthyliving.net it became carryonvegan.com and I really jumped into that lifestyle. That was kind of when veganism kind of started to go mainstream. And I just jumped in with both feet, decided, well, I'm going to rename my. My blog this, and I'm just gonna, like, document my whole transition to this lifestyle. And that's when I started creating recipes, which I had never done up to that point. I would post pictures of food, but then to actually format it into a recipe, and that's what people told me they wanted. And so I really built my blog and my business on that vegan platform. And it did really well. Because when you really niche yourself, I've realized later, it. I mean, that in some ways can be a very, very good strategy because it's just very clear what the blog is about. And so it was a successful strategy for me. And I had a recipe app. So instead of doing like an ebook to sell, I had an app that was kind of at the beginning of when food apps became popular or even a thing. And so I was able to sell that. So that was kind of a neat strategy to have something to sell.

And real quickly on that, because I think people will be curious. Was that something that you partnered with another company to do? And would you. Is that something you're still doing? Would you do it again? Or what was that experience like?

Yeah, so I think that market kind of it. It peaked maybe around 2015, because especially when big companies started releasing free apps that are just really amazing. So the way I did it was I licensed an app, a recipe app, software, and then that company took. Maybe I paid a fee, a licensing fee, and they took maybe 10% of sales. So that's how that works.

Got it. That makes sense. So talk to me about the point. In 2014, December 2014, you published that post. It sounds like things had kind of been going well. Like, you had had this niche, you had had some traction with It. But then you hit this point, you're like, ah, I don't know if this is something that I want to do. Was, were you burnt out on not getting the traction you wish you had? Was it just so much work? What was it at that point that kind of made you feel like, I don't know if this is for me anymore?

Yeah, well, kind of a lot happened. So in 2012, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. So I had my thyroid removed and then I had a lot of like, issues adapting to life without a thyroid. Just you can have a lot of fatigue and things like that. Getting. Because you have to take a thyroid replacement hormone. It can. Some people. Turns out me have a lot of issues. So I started having a lot of fatigue in 2012. But so at that time, I had been following a vegan diet for about two years. I stuck with it, you know, like, this was my community, this was my business, my life. And I'm certainly not going to like bash a vegan diet or I've never done that and I'm not doing that today. But I stuck with it. I just thought, well, you know, I need to get even more strict with my diet. And I. I just wasn't really sure what was going on. You know, looking back on it, I can see now it had a lot to do with what I went through, like that kind of trauma and adapting again to life without a thyroid. But it was around, let's see, it was around May 2014 then when I just really just said, well, I've got to make some changes with my diet and see if that can help. And I mean, I knew. And when I say changes to my diet, I mean not having that restriction of a vegan diet anymore. And I knew that this was not going to be what my audience wanted to hear.

And so essentially you've built an audience of following a business all around a certain diet. Exactly. And then you are starting to realize in your personal life maybe this isn't the best fit for you from a lifestyle and health perspective, which is a really hard point to come to. And it's also hard because I think it's one of the things that people fear in creating a niche is that their lifestyle changes and to acknowledge. I think this needs to be acknowledged. Like we're having conversations around business and decisions like that while fully realizing that, like on such a deep scale, the processing through thyroid cancer, having your thyroid remove, all of the things that come along with that, so real and difficult. And so just want to acknowledge that and not get too far away from that before that's fully acknowledged. And talking about, like, the business ramifications for that, which are very secondary. So acknowledge that and knowing that, that you are both dealing with this personally, but also dealing with this in your business, how did you process through that and make some of those hard decisions that went along with that?

Well, yeah, it was really hard to separate the personal part and the professional part because as a blogger, I'd. I'd never separated those. So I posted pictures when I was in the hospital, you know, going through the surgery and recovery. And I really relied on the community I had built, too. I mean, I had. At that time, it wasn't. So Instagram still wasn't there. This is 2012. But there was Twitter and then there were, of course, comments on my blog. And so I was really interacting with my audience and the community I had built. Just the whole time I had been building this business and really come to rely on that community as a, you know, as my friends and really my community, you know, everything that that word encompasses. And so, yeah, so then when I was ready. So, I mean, I couldn't not tell my community that I was making this change to not being like a vegan, you know, a strict vegan anymore. And I. So I knew that there was going to be backlash or, I mean, I guess I didn't really know what to expect. I just knew it wasn't going to be good. But on. So I think it was may, Maybe like mid May 2014, I published a blog post. I had written it like 20 times, just really making sure it said what I wanted it to say. And, you know, the title was like, why I'm Not Vegan Anymore. And I mean, it was just like, it was pretty crazy, the. The response. So I think I.

Crazy meaning negative or crazy negative? Yeah.

Yeah. So that day was probably the number one day of, like, my page views of all nine years of blogging. And it was so bad in the sense of how my audience reacted was. I think I told you this. Mailchimp suspended my account because so many people were unsubscribing at such a rapid pace. Yeah, I'm laughing, but of course, at.

The time, yeah, now that we are four years away from that.

But yeah, it was pretty intense. And I think the. I mean, I completely alienated my audience. And so, you know, it is not to say that I regret that decision. I think maybe looking back on it, I don't know, maybe there could have been a more strategic way to do it. But I Most definitely alienated my audience. And then I. So I've kind of been recovering ever since then. But then that point, you know, fast forward to what you're asking me. That point in December of that year, I guess I just reached this point where I was. I mean, I just kept watching my page views falling and falling and falling. And I had made some other mistakes that year with some, some links that got broken and we can talk about that. But essentially I saw my page views drop from like the high, which was like 85,000 page views a month in 20, 2013, 2014, and then it dropped to like 20,000 page views a month. And I just felt like I'm never going to come out of this. And so I did publish a post, only for like five minutes, and then I unpublished it, but it pretty much just said, I've decided not to stop blogging. And as soon as I did it, I just felt really bad and it didn't feel right. And so I took that post down and I've pretty much been kind of like recovering ever since that point.

And so. So the post you published said, I've decided to quit blogging. And then you took that down five minutes after and said, actually, maybe not. Okay, got it. So. So that brings us up to this point, a little bit of context and really interesting to hear your story and I think interesting for people within a specific niche as well. One of the things that we often talk about is the importance of really owning a certain category. And at the same time there's this interesting balance where you have to be able to grow outside of that thing. Well, you don't have to, but one of the things to consider is will you be able to grow outside of that things? And some of the most obvious examples are huge companies like Amazon, where they start with books and then they go into other categories and now they do so many different things. Or Zappos, which started with shoes, and then they go and build beyond that. But I like this analogy of starting with a niche. It's like you have a motorcycle where it goes super fast, but there's not much that you can carry with it. And so then you need to expand. And maybe from a motorcycle you go to a, you know, two person car, it's a little bigger niche, you can carry a little bit more and you kind of progress as you get that momentum early on. So it's interesting to hear your story of doing that a little bit different in that, you know, if you are vegan, there's a lot that goes around that in terms of lifestyle decisions that people make and also moral decisions people make and feel passionate about those things. So I can imagine it being a very difficult change to make. And I pulled that post up and not that it's one that you want to spend a lot of time with, but it's 534 comments on it. So, like, obviously people had a lot to say about it, but I think that's a, I think that context is a really good foundation to have this conversation of kind of these six mistakes that you've made through the years and then how you recovered from them. Because I think people like to hear, hey, this went wrong. And then here's what I did to kind of right that wrong and steer the ship in the correct direction again. So let's go ahead and jump into some of those. The first thing that you had said was changing focus and alienating your audience. And this is, I'm guessing specifically around that switch to vegan. And you said even in doing that, mailchimp suspended your account. So what did you learn from that? And how did you put the pieces back together to kind of continue moving forward in a positive direction?

Yeah, well, and I think, really, I mean, to kind of boil it down, I think you're right when you were saying that you don't want to be afraid of either getting into a niche and you don't want to be afraid of going outside your niche. Maybe once you've kind of mastered that niche, but then you kind of have to ask that question when you're going to go into a niche, is it going to be something that if you expand out of it, that you're going to alienate your audience or is it going to be kind of a natural evolution? And I think it's really still a really great strategy to go into a niche for folks thinking about starting a blog to go into a niche. But so let's just say like specifically around food, if you do gluten free, like I think that's a great niche. You know, if you all of a sudden said, well, I'm not going to be gluten free anymore, you are really going to alienate your audience. But if you said, well, I've mostly done gluten free baking, now I'm going to do gluten free, I don't know, something else, or now I'm going to do dairy free and gluten free, kind of expanding outside of the niche, I don't know, it's probably not the best example. But if you of Think about your niche in the beginning. Is it. If you stray out of that niche, how is your audience going to react? And I think if you start with something that's really almost like, you know, they say never talk to people about nutrition, religion or politics.

Right.

Those are really passionate topics for people. So just kind of want to think about your niche. So I mean, that's kind of like what I took away from that experience. I think also when you kind of like I think about the mistake I made, which was alienating my audience. You know, I don't think the mistake wasn't necessarily me having to change my lifestyle. Like, you know, it wasn't a mistake, but alienating my audience as opposed to maybe like, you know, maybe I could have stuck with like just doing vegan desserts. Like I still eat a ton of vegan food, but I also kind of have the like the personal thing of that. I have to be really authentic and be true. So, you know, there's just a fine line and you just have to be careful. I think if you're going to alienate an audience that you've really spent a lot of time building, then it's going to hurt. It's going to make it really, really hard.

Yep, yep. And. And I think the interesting thing to think about is that it doesn't necessarily mean that by expanding out of your niche that you are therefore alienating your audience. I think it, I think that the understanding of that is as it relates to your niche. So there's lots of different examples of people kind of doing the land and expand, claiming a niche, going beyond that. But if that niche is passionate about a certain thing, whether that be, you know, easy examples being those three things you listed, religion, nutrition, or what was the other thing you said? Politics. Yeah, for sure. So it's like, yeah, you imagine politics trying to expand into a different niche, right. Like expanding beyond your kind of core political beliefs. It doesn't really look the same. It can't really work that way. So some intentional thinking to go into that for sure, as people are continually evolving their brand or for the people that are in the beginning stages when they are starting out. So this is a really ground level conversation. What did that conversation look like with mailchimp to get your account reactivated and was that a difficult thing to get it back up and running?

It was not. It was very easy. It was kind of like they must have some kind of fail safe measure where if people are unsubscribing faster rate than what they said, like in their algorithm Then it's a sign, like maybe my site had been hacked or something like that. And so in a way, it was protecting me. So I had to call them and just explain what happened. And then they reactivated the account.

Got it.

Cool. And Bjork, I just wanted to say too, like, as an example of expanding outside of the niche, maybe this is a better example than before, but I've seen a lot of food bloggers expanding out into fashion.

Oh. Yep.

And I think that's a really, like, that there's some education that has to happen and maybe some ways to explain to the audience about what's happening. But I've seen a lot of food bloggers do that really well. And because a lot of food blog readers are women and, you know, not to be stereotypical, but we tend to have an interest in fashion, so it can be. It can be a good way to do that.

Yep. I love that you called that out and mention that because Lindsay, I was talking to her, this is probably a few months ago now, but she talked about how she'll watch a story on Instagram and somebody will talk about, you know, a. This is a actual example that happened for us. A steamer. I think that's what it's called. Like, if you have wrinkles in your clothes and you use this thing to get the wrinkles out. And this person was a food blogger, I think, and was like, I really love this steamer that I use every morning. And Lindsay bought it. It wasn't like a, you know, a sponsored content thing. It was just her being like, hey, this is really great. And I use this. I think that's a great example of it where I think we understand as people that we are not the. We are not our niche. And that might be a big part of who we are, but that doesn't mean that that's all that we are. And so there are those things that are around it, those life things that are really influential. Another example is Lindsay posted. This was maybe a couple months ago, but she posted about just like, hey, here the. She does these monthly updates every once in a while. And she's like, hey, you know, here's some of the things in April, I think it was April Coffee update, she called it, that I'm really enjoying right now. And she had mentioned the using stitch fix, which is you get this box of clothes sent to you. And she's like, I just have really enjoyed it. And again, it wasn't like, like sponsored or anything like that, but stitch fix reached out and they're like, hey, you know, we would love to potentially work with you because we had some people that followed up after and you know, just by chance mentioned, hey, heard about this on Pinch of Yum. And so I think that's another example and a really good point that you make that your niche doesn't have to be expanding within the genre. It could be another genre that complements what you're already doing. So really good point.

Point. Yep.

So the other thing or the second thing that you mentioned was this idea of broken links. And specifically you talked about broken links related to Pinterest and that was a mistake that was made that then you went back and fixed. And I think this is a really important one to point out because a lot of times people will have broken links and they don't even know it. So can you talk a little bit about what happened with this specific situation and how you went about fixing that?

Sure. Bjork. And you probably remember there used to be a WordPress version that back in the day where it would not let you change your permalink.

Sure.

And thank goodness for that. But then at a certain point, it must have been around 2014 or 2015, WordPress made it so you can change your permalink. And so when you're in your blog post and you're seeing where what your link is going to look like, it used to just pull it from your post title and you couldn't change it. And afterwards, I don't even know if you could, if it would change. I don't think it would ever change. You would have to actually manipulate it and know what you were doing.

Sure. Yeah. And for those that aren't familiar, so in WordPress you can obviously change the title of a post and what will happen is by default the WordPress will grab that title and use it for the permalink or where some people call it the URL, like the what people would type in to get there. And you can change that now. So you could, you know, if you had chocolate chip cookies, you could change it to, you know, pinchofyum.com gobbledygook if you wanted to, but you want to be kind of intentional with that. You don't want to just make up anything, but you can change it. But the thing is, once you change it, this is probably where you're getting to. All of the old versions of that won't automatically update. So you need to make. Be really careful if, if you're, if you're updating that.

Exactly. So there are now plugins that can Help you. And I think there have always been. But I was not that sophisticated. So as an example, like, because I was blogging since the old days, so my permalink, like just say for an example would be like, Carrie, well, now it's clean eating kitchen. It would be cleaneatingkitchen.com dairy free chia pudding. And what I did on the day that I went to this restaurant and ate a banana. So it was horrible. These links were horrible. So then I got it in my head that, oh, well, like, I saw that on Google Analytics that a post was doing really well, but I could see that it was just so ugly, you know, had all those random words.

Yep, clean up the links, make it nice and short it.

Yeah. So that's what I did. And I did not have any kind of plugin to redirect or do anything. And so I did this. I changed on probably my top 15 to 20 posts that were still driving a lot of traffic. I mean, the majority of the traffic to my blog. And I think that's what accounted for a lot of that big drop in page views in back in 2014. And we're talking thousands. And I just, I didn't even realize it. So you asked me how it affected Pinterest is that all those blog posts, when they were published, they got pinned to Pinterest with that URL. And then when I changed it on my site, anytime anybody clicked those pins, it would be broken. And so I finally did a plugin called Redirection. I know you mentioned one in Food Blogger Pro, but this one that I picked, I think it's free and it's just very, very simple. And now if I do change permalinks, which I really try not to do, it automatically forwards the other one.

Got it. Yeah.

And it actually, it's cool because it shows you. You can go in and it'll show you if there are any broken ones that you need to fix. And that's when I saw. Oh, my gosh. I actually got nauseated when I saw that.

It says within that day, all of a sudden there's all of these people coming through that are being redirected to the correct post. Yes.

Yeah. And it somehow I think it picked up all the. I'm not sure if it's possible, but it showed how many thousands were broke. It was still broken. And so I had to go in and fix it.

Sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I know the feeling that's happened to us as well. The plugin that we use is one called Pretty Links. And a lot of people use these types of plugins for, let's say, if they have an affiliate link. And a lot of times affiliate links are really long and look exactly like you described before, like, like weird variable or not variables, but weird characters in it and just really don't look good. And so people will use pretty link or I think it's pretty links, plural or a plugin like you're talking about, where they use that to clean things up. So it'd be pinch of yum.com, you know, vacuum. And maybe if we were an affiliate for Vacuum, which we're not, but. And that link was really long, it would. We'd have a really clean pretty link. That's where it gets the name from. From for that. But you can also use it for redirecting a broken URL to the correct URL. And it sounds like that's exactly what you did where you set that up. And then you can see with a lot of these, the number of redirects that are actually happening with that and so on pretty links. You go in and you can look and see like, okay, for this specific one that we have set up, I'm just pulling one up right now. An example would be we have a redirect for pinchvm.com Facebook which goes to Pinch of Yam's Facebook account. And it's a great way to manage some of those broken links. The other thing that I feel like would be worth mentioning is this tool called Google Search Console. It used to be called Google Webmaster Tools. And there's actually a place within that where you can go and look and see if you do have URLs that are broken, that are people are coming to your site. And it's a 404 page. So. So essentially an error that tells people something is happening. And you just go to Google Search Console and then this area called Crawl, and then you look at crawl errors and it will list all of those. And some of those might not be a big deal, but what you might notice is there might be some really important links that people are coming to your site and those are broken. So after you made that change, it sounds like pretty immediate. You were able to see an uptick in traffic again. Is that right?

Right. Yes. But I know that Pinterest does not like it when that happens. And I think it, you know, these links were broken for well over a year. And so I think maybe it took a little while for Pinterest to forgive me.

Sure.

And I wanted to say that I Listened to the SEO boot camp recently.

Oh, great.

And I thought that was fantastic. And Casey specifically mentioned that. Really, like, even when talking about Google SEO, it's probably not a good idea to change these permalinks. Or maybe that's not the right word. But the URL, and you know, I mean, if it's broken and you're going to break it, that's really not a good idea. But just to make it look nicer is probably not a good idea. So I am not changing any old links anymore.

Yeah. And the idea with that is, is when. If you change a URL. So let's say you have one post that is set up with gobbledygook pinch of yum.com gobblygook and you're like, I want this to be nice and clean to match the recipe. So I'm gonna change it to pinch of Yum.com chocolate chip cookies. When you do that, if you're gonna do it right, like we're talking about, you wanna set up a redirect. And a redirect means that, that somebody clicks on the gobbledygook link and it redirects it to the new one that you've created. There's a lot of people that say that that redirect process is bad because what's happening is it's introducing a jump, so it slows things down. You don't get to the page as quick. And the idea is from an SEO perspective, from Search Engine optimization, that as much as possible, you want to limit the number of kind of jumps that somebody has to go through before they get to the original content. You want that to be as quick as possible with as few redirects as possible. Really, really, really clean. And so it's not like something that you just want to set up all the time and go and update all of your content just so it's nice and clean moving forward, you want to be aware of that and create really intentional URLs. But if you're going back in time, you want to be really careful about how you handle those. So the really good takeaway. And for people who are looking at that, make sure you set up Google Search Console. There's a lot of great information in there and the corral area errors is one of those that you can be sure to check out. So the third mistake that you talked about making is this idea of photography and styling and specifically not giving that as much attention and effort as you should. So can you talk about about what that mistake was about and how you went about making sure that you fixed that.

Sure. And I'll say that I'm still in the process, but I think some of my lack of focus on photography and styling comes from my just having this background of being a journal style blogger from back in the day where there was, like, some part of being authentic where you just snapped a picture and you just put it up, and that's just what everybody was doing. And as opposed to just really making it look so beautiful. This is, like, a skill and a mindset that I have had to have reinforced and reinforced and have, you know, pay people, coaches to tell me and just. And have people leave mean comments like, your green smoothie looks like baby poo.

It's part of the. Yep. It's. You're paying your dues.

And so this is something that I'm still learning and practicing every day. I did. Eventually. I should have done it years ago, but I did buy Lindsay's Tasty Food photography ebook, which is amazing. And it's not overwhelming because my camera is still, like. It's just like an alien to me in some ways. I. I am finally shooting in manual and. But I'm almost nine years in on this thing, so it's definitely a mental switch for me. And the styling part, that's kind of unique to me too, like, having garnishes. And recently I was working with someone who kind of giving me some constructive criticism on my photography. And she said. I showed her a picture that I'd done recently, like, last week, and she said, well, you know, if you could make it look a little bit more like this is how it looked on your counter, like before. Before you're ready to serve it. As opposed to a still life.

Sure.

I was like, oh, my God, I've been styling it like a painting. So that is a mistake that I just. That I haven't put the effort. And in learning how to do it and practicing it, it's almost like you have to do it a little bit every day.

Yeah. When. So from the courses that you took and some of the coaching you did, or maybe even from tasty food photography, any of those avenues, what do you feel like are the most important, the one or two things that you've taken away that have made the biggest difference when it comes to photography.

Okay. Practice.

Yep.

And then the second one, which was kind of hard for me, was to, like, develop my own style. And. And then it feels authentic. So I don't feel like. I don't know, like. Like I'm faking It like, oh yeah, this is how it looked when it came. This is how I served it. Because my food's never going to look like that when I serve it. It's always going to look like a baby poo cream smoothie.

Yes.

But if I want it to look pretty and not to look like that, I have to make an effort. But then like finding my own style and a few ways that I've done that is going through like the Food Gawker Gallery and I think you push like a heart and creating kind of like a gallery of pictures that jump out at me. And what is it about those pictures exactly? Like going down to, is it a white background or is it a dark background? Is there a flower or not a flower? Little tiny things, you know, like is the, do you use a spoon or do you leave out the spoon and then is it an antique spoon or is it a wood handled spoon? Like really starting to develop my own aesthetic. And that was just not, I don't know, that's not the way that my brain works. Like to me I'm more like I'm just going to grab whatever I actually use to eat my smoothie versus making it look a certain way.

Yeah. Lindsay talks about this idea of creating a private Pinterest board and not going in and well, going into Pinterest with the sole intent to find inspiration. So what are the things? If you feel like you're trying to find your style, what are the styles that you appreciate? And then making a note in the description area of what you appreciate about those things. So it's almost, almost teaching yourself what you like and not that. Then you take that and replicate exactly what that is. Because the purpose is to create your own style and to allow yourself to get, to develop individually while finding the certain components, the little pieces. Like you said, maybe it's a certain spoon or maybe it's an angle or maybe it's the colors that are used and letting that inform than your creative process, which I think is great. And the other thing that I think is so important to point out is this idea of practice and time. And I think we don't give ourselves enough time to become good at something, to become truly good at something. I think we want to be really good, really quick and with something like photography, I think because we are all in a way photographers, we have a phone in our pocket that can, can take photographs that can look good. We all feel like we should be able to do it. But in order to really build it as a craft, it takes A lot of time. And it's like a musical instrument. Right. You were not going to pick up the saxophone and expect to play it really well. Even within a year of practicing an hour or two a day, you're still not going to be great at the saxophone. It's going to take a long time to get to the point where you can play confidently. And the same is true with photography. So I love that you bring up that practice point because that's so true for any of the skills that we're trying to develop.

Yeah. And I think the analogy to a musical instrument is perfect.

Yep. And I did play saxophone in high school, in case you're wondering. So one of the, the next thing that you listed here is this idea of evergreen content and specifically not having enough recipes on your site. And that's one of the things that I think for this niche or industry or genre of recipe content that we kind of take for granted it is that we are creating content that in a lot of ways will be evergreen. And it sounds like in the earlier stages or one of the mistakes that you had made was not really leaning into that enough. So you can, can you talk about that?

Yeah. And I really kind of made this mistake even after I hit that low Point in 2014. So I got a little gun shy. I have to say I was nervous about, I mean, I still had a vegan audience then I was trying to build a new audience, but then I was a little nervous like those remaining readers who I still had. What if I posted a non vegan recipe? So what I did instead was I kind of went back to the journal style blog post which was like the what I ate Wednesday. The, I don't know, like, oh, you know, now it's summer and here's some pictures from around where I live. And those posts I think are fun and I like to read them from other bloggers, but they're not really posts that you can like. You can't put a pretty title on it and put it on Pinterest and get thousands of hits. So they're good for every now and then. But you can't really build your food blog on those types of photos or those types of posts. And so, you know, I think I did. I have made that mistake and you know, thinking a little bit more strategically about having more recipes, really good quality recipes on my site and then having like even the other posts that can be considered evergreen, which, you know, don't. They don't just have to be recipes, they can be health articles in My case, they could be like those roundup posts. I think that counts as an evergreen content. Or even like how to like how to cook a squash in a crock pot could be an evergreen piece of content that's not necessarily like complicated extensive recipe.

One of the. I've thought about this a couple times and I wonder what this would look like. And it could be in this niche, but maybe not necessarily. But creating massively valuable pieces of content, but putting a ton of time into it. And maybe it's like spending two weeks on one single piece of content and building it as like the ultimate authoritative piece of content for that specific thing. And I don't have a good example. Well, I feel like a good example is there is a he's a SEO guy and he has a site called Backlinko. His name is Brian Dean and he has a really minimal amount of content. I don't know how much it is, but maybe it's I'm just making this up 50 blog posts or something like that. But they all rank really, really well for specific keywords because they're so well done. And his strategy has been to create really awesome pieces of content, spend a ton of time on them and just letting those be evergreen pieces of content that he continually goes back, maintains and updates. And I think there is space for that in this niche as well. I've thought about that. Even with Pinch of Yum, where I don't think we give enough time and attention to older pieces of content, maintaining those pieces of content as evergreen. Because I think we so often get caught up in the create new, create new, create new mindset, which is good. But also there's this mindset of optimize old, optimize old, optimize old. And with recipes we can do that. So it's interesting to hear your talk about that. And like you said, it doesn't have to be just recipes that are evergreen content, but being intentional to think about what are the pieces of content that I can go back to that I can maintain that can be kind of a pillar of my business. So is that something that you are intentional thinking about now as you create content?

Yes, I agree with you. And I think also this idea of updating the old content, you can still do that and not necessarily republish it so it comes up to the front page. Because a lot of my old stuff, I don't necessarily want that. But for instance, I'm been exploring because I didn't say this, but I ended up getting a master's degree in public Health, nutrition. So I kind of have, I have a balance between recipes and health information and kind of like my journey on my site. So I've been exploring this whole area of CBD oil, which is kind of like a really hot topic in the health industry these days. And so I have a post that was published maybe six weeks ago and still as I'm continuing to learn, I'm going back and I'm even like fleshing it out more. So it's probably around 1500, maybe 2000 words now. And I'm just continuing to add little pieces to it and. But not republishing it, but because I do link to it quite a bit on Facebook and Instagram and stuff like that. And it is doing pretty well with SEO. So I just want to make sure it's still, still stays nice and current.

Yeah, that's great. So we coming to the end here, we have two more and would love to hit each one of these. So the fifth thing that you'd mentioned, one of these mistakes that you had made that you are now starting to correct is not having something to sell. Can you talk about why that was a mistake and what happened as you started to change that?

Right. And I think this goes back to a concept that you have talked about, Bjork, about having like an egg carton with 12 slots or 12 eggs. And I think this is just kind of a reinforcement of that. Now I feel like 12 is too many for me. So I shoot for about five. But for many years I had my blog and my app, so that was two and those did well for me. But then when I, I did stop selling the app because it was a vegan food app. And so when I switched my focus, I shut down the app app. And so then for three and a half years I just had my blog ad revenue and it's just really, I feel like it's not enough unless you are just a blockbuster page views blogger. It's. It is important to think about other sources of revenue. So I mean that could even be, I mean, I guess I have had sponsored posts and that would count as one that, you know, that's definitely a good revenue source. And then there's the ad traffic and just. But you kind of have to challenge yourself, I think to think about ebooks, which I think are still relevant, you know, cookbooks. Just really pushing yourself to develop those other sources of revenue.

Yeah, for sure. And for you, what do you think about when you think of adding those products? Is that something that you have done or are looking at doing here in of terms 2018.

I have done and I'm continuing to think about it.

Got it.

Yeah. In 2018 I still, I do really think that the ebooks. One thing that I'm interested is self publishing a print to order book.

And for those that aren't familiar, can you talk about what print to order is?

So that would be. It's self publishing. I would work with somebody who, she will design it for me, I upload it to Amazon. I. I'm not really sure of the process. But then it's your. It's a book like it's a hard copy book but it doesn't get printed until. Till someone orders it on Amazon.

Right. So idea being that one of the issues usually with any print copy is that or print book is you have to order a bunch of copies. So you have, you know, a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand copies of a book sitting in your garage and you need to make sure or at you know, Amazon's shelves and needing to make sure that those get off the shelves. But in this case there's a little bit higher cost. But anytime that somebody orders it, then what happens is they actually go and print it. So it's kind of a one, one, one off solution so you don't have to worry about any inventory. And there's a company, I forget the name of it, but they were acquired by Amazon and so now Amazon does that. So love that idea.

I think it's called Create Space or something. Something like that.

That sounds right. Yeah. I'm not super familiar with it, but. Cool. All right, so last thing that you talk about here, Carrie, is having a growth mindset and not having a growth mindset and not going outside of your community to expand your audience. Why was that a mistake and how did you go about fixing that?

Yeah, and I think it's different from like a growth mindset. It's really an idea about growing your audience and how do you get exposed to new people. And it just seemed to be so much easier back in the day. I'm not, I'm not sure why. I guess because we were all really communicating only on blogs without social media. It was really there was just one way to, to connect with people and that was on blogs. And so it was kind of easy to just all like somebody would mention, oh yeah, read this blog. And then we used to have the sidebar would be like other blogs I read and you'd list like your 30 favorite blogs. And it was just, it was kind of like really simple to, to Expand your audience. So now that is, I find that's really. It's much, much more difficult to have to really think about how can I authentically, like, present myself to another blogger where she will then introduce me to her audience? And there are ways to do that that is. Is really authentic. Like even just saying, let's do an interview with you, like a written interview with my blogger. She'll put it on her blog, and then I'll offer her something in return. Like, I have a podcast. So maybe I'll interview her on my podcast and then expose her work to my audience. You really have to be deliberate.

Yeah. And I think another thing related to that that I've thought about is this idea that people aren't where I am. And sometimes I think, hey, everybody hangs out on the Internet in the same way that I do. But the reality is everybody has their own way that they operate online in different online communities. And for some people, they live within the community of Reddit, and some people live within the community of Snapchat or Instagram or YouTube or some people only do email. And if you think. Think of how narrow this is. Speaking to myself, if you think of how narrow I am in the way that I'm connecting with and reaching people, there's a ton of opportunity that I'm missing in all of those different places, and not only in the avenue that we are reaching people, but also in the other communities. Like you said, this idea of connecting with and partnering with other people to help get exposure in other places is so massively valuable. Valuable. And. And there's billions of people in the world, and the 99.9999% of them don't have any idea what I'm doing or what we're up to. And so as much as possible, I think it's so valuable to think about strategically reaching those people and connecting with those people, which is great. And I'm glad that you were able to do that by coming on the podcast, Carrie, and having these conversations. One of the things you had actually mentioned was that you do have a podcast. Can you talk a little bit about what that is and what that journey's been like? Yeah.

So that's one, I guess, strategic way that I thought about building my audience. And it's interesting because itunes and the other podcast networks, you can actually. It has a search function, so you could go in there and type whatever you wanted. I've even gone in there and typed my. My personality type in my Myers Briggs infj. And I found a podcast Just for that. Now, if I were to try to find blogs, you know how that is, you go into Google and if I just type that in, I would just get a two bazillion returns. But it's, it's so, it's kind of cool that there's almost like an index or a directory when you do a podcast. And so that was kind of one of the ways I was thinking about growing my audience. So I called it Clean Eating for Women to make it kind of a niche. My blog is Clean Eating Kitchen, so it's a little bit even more niche. And I've been able to interview people and we talk about diet and health and supplements and things like that, but related to women.

That's awesome. And it's great to have anybody that does a podcast on a podcast because it's always a little bit easier when you're somebody who does a podcast. So it works out really well. Carrie, really fun to connect. Really great to have this conversation with you and so appreciate, appreciate you sharing some of these things that you've gone through on your blogging journey. If people want to follow along with you and what you're up to, where can they connect with you?

Well, probably my blog is, as I mentioned, clean eatingkitchen.com I do love Instagram and I'm clean eating Carrie on Instagram.

Awesome. And we you're a Food Blogger Pro member, so we'll see you on the Food Blogger Pro forums, which is so fun, fun. And when this podcast comes out, we'll be in the middle of a Food Blogger Pro enrollment season. So for anybody that's interested, we'll talk about it at the beginning of this podcast. But would love to have you on as a member of Food Blogger Pro. And Carrie, so fun to connect and thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you, Bjork.

Hey.

Hey, beautiful listeners. Alexa here bringing you the reviewer of the week. And this one comes from Karen from the wonderful blog seasonalcravings.com it says, I started listening to Lindsey and Bjork's podcast this week while on vacation and I am learning so much. I listen to them while I take my morning run and I find that my run goes so much quicker. Thanks for that. I like that they are focused on the essentials of success. Since it's so easy to get caught up in the details when doing any creation creative project, I find myself more focused and determined to make my food blog work. Thanks so much. And keep them coming. I love hearing about how to schedule my day to stay focused and get the most done before my kids get home at 3pm thank you so much Karen. We really appreciate it and thank you all for listening today. I hope that you really enjoyed Cari's episode. I love when we feature members from the Food Blogger Pro community on the podcast because the community is made up of so many amazing, wonderful people who I learn from every single day. So if you are interested in joining Food Blogger Pro, I just wanted to remind you that enrollment is closing this Thursday, May 31st. You only have a few more days to join depending on when you listen to this, and enrollment won't be open for another few months. So if you're still trying to decide whether or not you want to become a member, I say just jump into it. We have a 60 day money back guarantee so that you that you can try it out for a few weeks before really diving in and determining whether or not Foodlogger Pro is right for you. Not too many people take us up on that offer, but it's there in case you need it. So you can try Food Blogger Pro risk free. But I really, really believe that you're going to love it. So with that I'm signing off today. Thank you guys again for listening and from all of us here at fbphq, make it a great week.