361: Earning $2,500 in One Day and Traveling Full-Time as a Food Blogger with Eric Samuelson

A big thank you to Clarity for sponsoring the Food Blogger Pro podcast. You've heard me talk about Clarity before. It's a tool that we're building and using for Pinch of Yum, but also a really powerful tool for anybody who's focusing on content. It's kind of one of the main vehicles for growth or revenue for their site. And we've been working on Clarity for a couple years, but it hasn't been until recently that we've started to bring other people in to. To sign up and become a part of it. We're doing an offer right now that we're calling 25 forever. So the first 500 people who sign up for Clarity will get their account at $25 a month.

Forever.

We're still in the early stages of offering this, but we'll cap it at 500 people. So once we have 500 people who have signed up, then we're going to cap that. We're going to move to a different pricing for Clarity. So it's still in the early stages. You know, it's not going to be the kind of thing where we're at this point where we'd cap it and say, hey, you can't sign up. Uh, you've missed your. Missed your chance. But slowly and surely we're moving to that 500 mark. So if you're interested in, in joining and checking it out, now would be a good time to do that. Um, there's no commitment, there's no plan that you have to join and can't cancel. So you can check it out. You can, you can see if it's a good fit. And how do you know if you would even be interested in it? Well, Clarity is for anybody who's focusing on content and also starting to focus on optimization of their existing content. So we have this belief that any and every site is gonna be suboptimal right now. There's gonna be broken images, broken links. There's gonna be posts that don't have internal links that could or don't have external links to helpful resources. There's gonna be images with missing alt text. There's gonna be content that's starting to perform worse that if you looked at and kind of improved and enhanced, it would increase rank. We're really just thinking about that for Pinch of Yum a lot. What are the ways that we could improve the content that's currently on our site as opposed to just creating new content? And we're using Clarity as the tool where we track that and make those enhancements and improvements. One of the things that comes along with that is you can join the Slack community that we have of other content creators. And this just came up the other day. Somebody posted and they said, I had no idea that it had broken images on my site, but somehow those images broke. So I need to, number one, find out how they broke and then, number two, fix them. But they were just saying that they noticed that because of clarity and some of the filtering that they were able to do. So they created a project they filtered first and said, show me all the broken images on my site. And then it was like, oh, there's some broken images. Then they filtered. After filtering those, they created a project that was fix broken images. Now, you could then have somebody on your team go in, make those improvements, make those enhance enhancements. Or if you don't have somebody on your team, that can be the type of stuff where maybe once a week, once a month, you kind of have this maintenance or kind of like spring cleaning mindset where you go in, you block the day out to make improvements, make enhancements. You're not creating new content, you're just going in and optimizing and improving and paying attention to older content and making sure that it's at 100% as opposed to, you know, 70%, which, if I.

Were to guess, I would say all.

Of our sites, pinch of Yum included, would probably be operating at like 70% of their true potential value. And we want to find ways that we can improve that. And we're using clarity as the tool to not only discover those things, but also to organize the tasks and projects that go along with improving them. So we're still in the early stages of it. We're excited about what it's going to be and what it's going to grow into. And we're also excited to learn from you in the process of what you would want it to be.

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Community that we will welcome you to if you are interested in signing up. So you can go to clarity.com food C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com food if you're interested in signing up. All right, that's a wrap for this little ad read. Let's go ahead and jump into today's episode. Hello. Hello. You're listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast.

I think you probably know that.

But for anybody who's tuning in, maybe.

You stumbled across this for some reason.

Maybe you're searching in the podcast app.

For RV Lifestyle and you came across this.

And you're like, what is this? Food bloggers? What? Huh? The reason I say that is because the conversation we're having today is with Eric Samuelson and he has a brand, a blog, a website, whatever you want to call it, called Eat like no One Else. And I've known Eric for a long time. We've traded emails back and forth, but this was the first time that we were able to have a long conversation. And it was really fun for me to hear his story, his journey of building his site into his full time income. And here's the tie into the RV lifestyle, how he was able to use that success that he had with his blog after years of hard work and really focused time on growing and building his brand to finally unlock some really cool things in his life, like traveling full time with his family, seeing the US When I had this conversation, if you see the video, you can see a map behind him of all the different places that they've gone as a family. And he couldn't have done it without the blog supporting him. And he's going to talk about what that's been like. Kind of a little bit of a different take on the type of content that he's creating. It's not just recipes, although recipes is a part of it. He talks a lot about the importance of Quarter four and why that's an important piece of the puzzle for him. And I think you'll find a lot of inspiration from it because he's worked hard for a long time and now he's able to. Here's the tie in. He's able to harvest the fruits of his labor and we're going to be talking about fruit, specifically in apples, in this podcast episode. So I think you'll enjoy it. Before we jump in, I do want to give a little shout out to the Facebook group. We occasionally mention this. It's the Food Blogger Pro podcast group. And slowly but surely we're growing that group. We have at the time of this recording that I'm recording this, 546 members who are all a part of this private group just for Food Blogger Pro podcast listeners. And it's a chance to join in on the conversation as opposed to just listen to it. And you can check that out by going to foodbloggerpro.com Facebook everybody has to click to apply. It's not just an open group, so.

You have to apply.

Um, we'll look through your account. Chances are if you're a blogger, if you're a publisher, you know, if you're not going to go and just kind of spam with a bunch of promotion.

Of your own stuff that will let.

You in and you'll get to be a part of the conversation there in Facebook. So would love to have you join the community there. And I'm also excited to share this interview with Eric, so let's go ahead and jump in. Eric, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Bjork.

If you were to guess, if you were to look back, when was the first time that we would have traded emails back and forth, would you have a guess as to the year?

Oh, man, it would have to be probably early last decade, I would think. I've been doing this since 2009 and I first encountered you guys with your old income reports. You were the first other blog I learned something like that from. Because back in those days there was no, there was no conferences or podcasts or like any of that kind of stuff. It was like, yeah, you're kind of like on your own. So, yeah, it's like, oh, here's somebody else doing something and sharing something else. Until it felt like, you know, someone kind of knew what I was, what I was doing and stuff.

So yeah, for sure. Anytime that you can. Yeah, anytime that you can connect with somebody who's like, oh, yeah, I get it. Like, I get what you're doing and understand it, especially then. Yeah. But even now it's like, oh, it's really refreshing because you don't have to explain. You know, I feel like I always think of when we move into a new neighborhood, it's like people ask, what do you guys do? And I'm always like, I feel like every time it's like I'm evolving and trying to get better at figuring out how to describe what we do. Like, how did that land? They didn't ask any follow up questions. It probably was too confusing. But yeah, anytime you see somebody else doing it.

Yeah, I finally got into explaining it to people who seem to have no clue about any of it as to just say, I'm like a newspaper.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, yeah, there's something about the best way.

There's something about tying it to like a tangible physical thing.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, we'll often say like online magazine. And people like, oh, I get it. Like online food magazine. Okay, got it. But if you're like online food blog people are like, what?

Yeah, like pyramid scheme or something.

Yeah, exactly. So 2009, that was before Pinch of Yum. That was before most people, I'm guessing, listening to the podcast were creating content. What Was it that drove you to create content in 2009 and on what platform were you doing that?

Yeah, fortunately I started immediately with WordPress, so I didn't have to do any kind of like changeover. Unfortunately, I did start with Bluehost and that seemed to be a major mistake. That caused me some headaches way down the road. But that was the whole thing. But yeah, and I had a friend who was doing a. He was just like the old school, like forums, like people used to have, like forums used to be like a big, like a bigger thing before Facebook groups. Yeah. And so he like shared with me Google Analytics. So I got that on there right away. Yeah, right. Probably like within a week of starting my blog, I had analytics up and running, which right now is, you know, definitely give it back. Then it was like I never, you know, I'm like, what is this? You know, what is this information? Yeah, that, that, that, that helped me. The reason I started at the time was I was a stay at home dad. I was just looking for other ways to make money. I think I saw something on like Good Morning America or some new show or something about like somebody who was sharing who is making money off selling ads on their website for. I think it was beekeeping or just some, somebody with bees that was beekeeper honey or something. And like, oh, here's an extra way to make money here. Oh, it's kind of a cool idea. But like I kind of like began like starting to blog and saying, okay, let's see, let's give this a try out here. I had created websites before for, for fun and for. My dad had a computer store. So I made a website and stuff. So there's been a little bit, you know, I had some experience already in doing that. So I'm like, oh, yeah, so I have had a little technical experience, you know, so I didn't know something came up. I'd be able to, you know, manage through it. Like I, I could if I wanted to learn to write code if I really, really wanted to. I don't, I don't want to. Sure. But, but I can understand it when I. The few times why I've had to like get Cody a little, you know, get Cody because it's kind of worried about into the weeds and I had to do that. I've been able to. So.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Like have the ability if you need to. Yeah, necessarily something you'd want to do all day. So eat. Like no one else has to blog at that point. Did you have an idea of what it was and how close is it now to what you thought it would be?

It's surprisingly still pretty close. Originally I had like this kind of catchphrase where it was like at the store, in the kitchen, in the garden. So I have like this three prong thing I was doing where I was like talking about grocery shopping, talking about cooking and then gardening. The gardening part is gone. That part was. Did not, you know, did not fly. And it was not getting the traffic of the other things that, so that. So the other, the other two aspects are stuff I still kind of do are still. I'm still talking about cooking, I'm still talking about grocery shopping. So those two kind of stuck around.

When you say talk, you talk about grocery shopping. What does that look like? What do you, what do you mean? Because one of the interesting things about your blog versus some of the others that we talk about is that your focus isn't just recipes. You also talk about a lot of other things, non recipe content. And we've had a few conversations with folks on the, on the podcast who are food sites but not recipes. How much of your content is non recipe content?

I would say the majority of it's non recipe content. And this for. Because I'm gonna give example right now. Like this morning I just did a check for this week to see how less stats were doing. And out of my top 100 posts, 22 of them are recipe related. I mean we're recipes. But almost all of those recipes too are actually kind of more how to's type of type of recipes. So like you know, be like I want like how to cook a ham in the instant pot. So it'd be more phrase along those lines than it would be like I have a recipe for sous vide chicken with a creamy pepper flake sauce. Yeah, that's a more specific like recipe. That post doesn't do as well as the other ones do. But this is more of like a how to sell.

Yeah.

So yeah, I've always, I never started out just being like a recipe blog. Like that's never been like my thing. It's always been like I have recipes here but like I teach people like about ingredients. So like I do a lot of reviews of fruit varieties so like different types of fruits to check out in the store. You know, because hey try, try this new apple. You know, learn that hey, there's actually variety stores and tell you there's a variety of peaches, but there's tons of different types of peaches out there. So kind of learning that and is.

That something you'd always been interested in? Like, always would be. Would gravitate towards, like, hey, there's all these different apples. I wonder what these apples, you know, the differences between them or like, which ones are sweeter or was. Did you see an opportunity and say, like, hey, I think this could be something that I could write about?

Yeah, it was some of both. I like originally. So as a kid, I always liked going grocery shopping with my mom. Like we do like, like she's going on Monday here and I, you know, I enjoy walking on the store looking for new products, looking for new things. That's something I did as a kid always. But typically, like, give apples for an example. There was a time I didn't know about the different varieties. Like, oh, is this good for baking? Is this sweet or is this tart here? So I went. So I wanted to learn that for myself first. Sure. So I went out, you know, and started trying different types of apples and tasting them and seeing all that. I mean, this point out apples, one of the big things I've probably tried 300, 400 varieties of apples.

Sure.

About all those. Of course. But sure.

But the idea, yeah idea of being like, hey, it's almost like you're a test kitchen in a way where you're not testing recipes but doing research and gathering information about different apples or grapes or like, when are these in season? When are these not in season? So is a lot of the search content that you're getting then from people searching things like, what's a good apple to bake with? Or like, what is the sweetest apple? Like phrases like that versus, you know, chocolate chip cookies recipe.

Yes, I do get a lot. Yeah, I do get a lot of people that are looking for that kind of specific information that they want to know. You know, what's a good. During the fall season. Like, my post on different types of apples for applesauce does really well. So I get a lot of people coming and looking for what kind of apples I can use. I also get a lot of people just like, right. Do you like a straight up apple review? Sure. Though it's actually the most common thing in my entire blog is people coming out and saying like, oh yeah, I found this apple too. I love it. I got it here. You know that they'll come on and say that it's strange. That is like the, like those posts get the most comments on anything I write about. People just like sharing like, oh, I like this too. Or like, I hated this. You're nuts. Why'd you think this was good? You know, most of the time it's positive. Most times positive. So.

Sure. So this is you saying you're going to try this apple and you're going to review it. Like, do you have a, do you have a, like a framework for saying, like, here's how crisp it is, how sweet it is, or is it kind of like.

Yeah, there's a rating system.

Okay.

Yeah. One is a rating system.

What is your. What's the best apple that you've ever had? Like, what's at the top of the list?

That's like picking my favorite kid. I can't do that.

Is there, is there one from the rating system that came out as number one or is there like a three way tie?

Oh, there's a, there's a huge tie. There's. There's a lot of different apples. Like, there's one called Snowsuit that I really like. There's chestnut crab apple. It's like a little apple developed by the University of Minnesota.

Yeah. Minnesota has like a very, you know, this obviously, but for listeners, like a very long list of like, really great apples that they've developed, Honey crisp is always the one that comes up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So if, so if somebody sees. What was the one that you said?

Chestnut crab. So it's unique. It's a, it's a, it's a crab apple, which people think, like, I can't eat those.

Yeah.

But it's actually pretty sweet and has this kind of nutty flavor. And it's really, it's a really, it's bigger than most crab apples, but it's still small.

Sure.

But it's like really, like, I, I love the skin of apples. Like some people, like a mother in law, like, will not eat the skin. She'll peel the skin off of every apple she'll buy. So she'll buy like the biggest apple she can, so she can peel it really easily. And I'm like, I want to have like that skin to flesh, that ratio body in the flesh and the skin at the same time.

Yeah.

Like, I really like that.

So that's why it's like, it's like the name's escaping me. Like, if you're a professional wine, like you reach. Oh, what is the name for it? Yeah, yeah.

Well, not.

No, not Connoisseur. Everybody who's listening is going to be able to think of this. It is sommelier. You're an apple sommelier. Yeah, but, but it's interesting, you know, even when I look At Chestnut Crab apple review, I see eat like no one else. Like, there it is in. It's a best crab apple for eating. And you pull it up and here's a post that you wrote about it, and here's your. The rating system. You know, it's got great flavor, very crisp. So it's cool to see a different type of content and one that you found, like, hey, this is something you're interested in. And there's also a need for it. People are searching for it and probably not producing content in the same way. When you think about, like, apple pie recipe, there might not be as many searches, but you're able to, like, own that in a different way as well. When you look at your. Yeah, go ahead.

I feel confident that if I, you know, and if I go in the grocery store and find a new variety of apple, that I'm going to write about it and I'm going to rank for it.

Yeah.

Like, I feel like I'm going to be one, two or three. Like, like, I just, like, I just, like, we'll know. It's good. It's what happens and it's pretty consistent. And, you know, and obviously, you know, depending on the time of year, the apple's, you know, there's seasonality to it, so that's more. It'll be more of a fall, winter type thing.

But when you are doing this content, you look at your site in terms of the strategy around it, obviously there's ads and people are coming. You get to do display ads. Do you also get a lot of people reaching out who are in the apple industry or in certain industries to do sponsored content or to work with you who have like, you know, one of those Apple slicers where you push it down and it like, automatically cuts it into multiple pieces.

Yeah.

Do you get a lot of that or is it.

I've got some, yes. I definitely got some. I had someone more recently that was. That had, like, they developed a new variety of apple, which is happening all the time. Like, everybody's trying to be the next honeycrisp right now. So there's a lot of apples, new varieties in the store that most of them are actually like, honey Crisscross was something else. So this was another different variety of Apple, and they had reached out to me about working with them. So. So it does happen from time to time. The budget too. Like, like I had mentioned, like, because I'm at a point now where, like, you know, I'm not taking, you know, I'm not doing work for Free. Yep, yep. So, and once I had mentioned the money thing, I got crickets, so which happens sometimes, you know.

Yeah, totally.

I don't want to test the waters here, but like, yeah, more of like, okay, I need, yeah, I need to be compensated for this. It was cool back in 2010 when a company sent me these apples, which are also another university, Minnesota variety. I'm like, oh yeah, someone sent me some apples. So cool stuff here, you know. But you know, eventually comes your full time job, you're like, it's not cool anymore to just get.

Yes, totally.

You can send me free stuff here and, and a pile of cash.

Yep. What did that look like for you? So you were working on the blog for a while. You were also. My guess is, well, you were, you, you were. Had your kids, you were with your kids. Did, did you make a transition into saying like, hey, this is going to be my full time thing and this is when that's going to happen? You have a long story, long journey being that you've been doing it since 2009. So could you look at it from just like a seasons perspective? It was like two years of this, three years of this. What did your journey look like?

Yeah, there was so there was a time period. There was the kind of beginning time period which a couple years of, of me when I was a stay at home dad. Eventually my wife had lost her job and so we had to like just do anything to get job, you know, get income stuff here. And that, that put me to work for a lot for like five years. Yep. There was that five year period in which I was trying to grow the blog and working at the same exact time.

And you had kids.

Yeah, and had kids. So it was extremely challenging too because I was working most of the time. I was working for Whole Foods.

Sure.

So I was, I was.

Which is good, like related in terms.

Of like, you know, you know, I would learn about products, of course of being at the store, I'd be able to interact with customers and talk to them and you know, and I was always, you know, everyone looked at all my coworkers like, oh, go talk to him, go talk to him. There was some benefits that, but it was very difficult in that type of environment where the time schedule would be different every single week so it couldn't be consistent. So I think that kind of slowed me down for a while. So I was in that, that period for quite a while, had some health issues come up which put me out of work for, for a bit and eventually made it back Here. But at that point it was like I kept spinning my wheels. Like, we're not getting anywhere here. Like, I know I could do this. Like, I know I could get from point because I was struggling for a long time. Like, you know, I was getting the traffic, I had the traffic going here, but I wasn't getting the income for it yet.

Sure.

And so just trying to figure out, like, how could I, you know, there's guys, whatever, I do this right. I saw your guys income reports. I saw there was another blogger. I can't remember who she was at this point now, but also was giving income reports and her numbers were closer to where I was at. I'm looking like, oh my gosh, she's making, you know, her RPM that she's getting paid for, you know, is like a lot higher than mine. So like, you know, what was, what was the problem here? So just, you know, for me, a lot of stuff just took longer because I wasn't, I wasn't in the community of vloggers at that point very much. You know, I was busy and stuff here. So it took me a lot, I think a lot longer because I was just focusing on, you know, trying to survive, you know, get our stuff here and then eventually around. So it was. This would be 2017. So 2017 is what kind of had a breakthrough there is when I discovered mediavine.

Sure.

You know, which, you know, now it'd be easy to figure, you know, like, oh, you know, new bloggers. It's a lot easier really. It was like I didn't know this, that existed. I'm like, okay, there's this mediavine service here. This person's using it. I'm going to use this service and see what happens here. And like at the same time, I actually had quit my job for a temp. For a temp job, just to get a. I needed the break.

I needed more predictability and I needed to do something.

Even though it's only like a few months, I'm like, okay, if all this fails here, I'll deliver groceries for Instacart. Which I actually did. But like trying to figure out, like, I need to make this change my life. Cause this is, it was just, it was just not working. It was just like, you know, keep pounding my head against the wall. Cause I couldn't give the blog the time it needed and when. So then I did that take a job that would be more of an 8 to 5 type of deal. So I could like consistently work and know, like I could work these hours and get my blog when I wanted to and not be too tired to work on it. And that's when I also, like, I, I trained. It was amazing timing. I got this job here that was gonna last through the Christmas season and then I worked and then I had applied for mediavine, got into mediavine, like the last day of the training for that job. So I was already like, yeah, like set up good. And then, and then it took a day or two for, you know, stats to come in and start coming in. And then it was like, oh, my gosh, I'm already making more money than I was.

Yeah, making more money than you were at Whole Foods.

Whole Foods, yeah, I was already doing that. So I. It was a matter of. I had the traffic already. I just didn't know about it because I was so busy doing stuff that I didn't know that, oh, this is that key thing I need. It was, yeah, better ad service. I had ad services that just were not paying out the way they should.

Yes, right. We've had a couple. And it was more common, like 2015, 2016, 2017. But there were people who had significant amounts of traffic that weren't monetizing it with an ad network. Mediavine, ad thrive. And when they discover that it's like within six months or a year, it's a great problem to have because it's such an easy fix. Right. Like in your case, what you do is you start working with an ad network and then three days later you're like, now I'm making more than I did at my job at Whole Foods by, in. By essentially starting to, for lack of a better phrase, like harvest. The value that you had been kind of planting for seven or eight years, you had this crop, it's like you just didn't have the right tractor to like harvest what you had grown. Um, so at that point, what happened? 2017, that switch happens. Do you leave that temp job and say, like, great, now I'm going to do this, or do you finish that out?

So the timing went with Mediavine. So, you know, there's a net 60 day payout. So there was, There was time between. So that. So I stick. So I, you know, kept going. When I did, I. That job ended at. At the end of week. After cribbers, that job ended. There was a one week gap. There was a one month gap because I had to stop. I stopped my other advertising and they were 30 days out. So I had one month to figure out, like, okay, I need to make enough income to get to get to February. So that's when I, for a month I delivered. I did instacart delivery.

Sure. Like close the gap there as much.

As I could to just kind of COVID the rat and get taken care of. And then, and then February hit and my first like big payment was for Thanksgiving.

Yeah.

November month. So what was it like a big jump?

What was that moment like when you had that deposit from Minivine?

Oh, that was, it was, it was enthralling. Like, it was so, it was so exciting. We were all so excited. Like I've finally gotten to that point, like to be able to like, okay, my blog just paid for everything. And I had, you know, that that was like the, like one of my top moments in life for sure. Just like so excited. Like I worked so long for this year and you know, along the ways too, those people that I had some friends here that saw me doing this and they were like, you know, good intentions that sometimes too. But they're like, you know, like, why are you still doing this here? This is not, you know, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. But I knew it could. I knew like, you know, at the time I didn't know it was, it was the ad network that I was not on the right ad network. But that was like the, the key I was missing and I just didn't know it then. So once like I had figured that out, you know, and that you know, like my travel goal at that point, like I was like, I know mediavising increase their minimum level, but I was like beyond the minimum level. Yeah, I was like four times beyond it at that point.

Yeah.

So it was like a no brainer to like, like let me in.

That's awesome. So that was 2017 going into 2018 and then was it essentially, hey, I'm gonna just focus on this as my full time thing now. What did that transition look like to focusing on your blog full time?

It was great to not have to juggle all the, all the balls again. That same year too, we had my fourth child, my daughter, we had her that year too. So it was kind of a nice end of an era because like I had worked between when the third child was born until my fourth child was born. I worked outside the house and did stuff. And then so it's kind of like she came in, she had to be a part of daddy not being home.

Sure.

About me not being home for dinner three, four nights a week. And she never had to experience that. So that was like really exciting. And and, you know, and then try, you know, it was like, what's the next step? At that point, you know, he's like, I got to this, like, little period where I was like, I got to this point, now I've made it to the, you know, the mountaintop. You know, I was like, oh, there's still some more mountains here. I'm not, like, still up there. There's no still up there. And there's still more mountains to go to. So, you know, then they came and. And still that time period, I was so. I. I do extremely well for the seat, like the Q4. Like.

Yeah. Because it's apples and it's. It's like fall food. And. Yeah.

I have intentionally written. So I have so much content for Thanksgiving. Like, I will write content for Thanksgiving that, like, will only get. Get traffic for those two, three weeks. But it's so much traffic that and so much money that, like, I don't care that it gets to, you know, five page views the rest of the year.

Yeah.

When it gets, like, you know, hundreds and hundreds in a couple of days, then it's like, yeah.

And the idea behind that, just to explain it for people, is not only a lot of people searching for food content, but Thanksgiving also lands around the. It is a national holiday for families followed by a national holiday for retail, which is Black Cyber Monday. And so companies not only are at the end of their ad budget for the year. Right. So they're getting to quarter four, where they need to spend through their ad budget, but it also moves into the most important season, which is kind of that kickoff of Black Friday up to Christmas, where companies are spending more than they ever do on advertising. And so for, like, in your case, not only is it smart because there's a lot of traffic to it, but the spend against that traffic is higher. So strategic in that way.

Yes. Yes. The amount of, like. Yeah, it could be like, I have made during. Especially during. So like, like the pandemic Christmas, the 2020 Christmas sure was like. I think, like, it was. I made, like, two, three, you know, 2,500 bucks and Christmas Eve.

Yep. And. And it's not passive in the sense that you don't have to do anything, but it is passive in the sense that you wouldn't have to work that day. And you.

I was not working that day. Yes, I was. I was on the phone looking at analytics and just enjoying it.

Yeah, for sure. And it's like, to go back to the earlier analogy, it's. There's years and years of Work that you've put in to get to that point, but it's kind of that snowball effect of, you know, you've. You've done that work and it's built up enough where it can kind of move on its own. I like to think about almost like when we start with any business, but especially publishing content online, it's like we're doing. I use snow analogies, being in Minnesota as much as possible. You like these snow analogies. Um, it's like you're making a snowball, but you're pushing it like up a hill, right? And so it's like, not only is it are you going up a hill, but you're also this. It's really small. You're having to work really hard. But over time, like, not only does that snowball get bigger and it might get a little bit harder, but it's kind of like the, the. You get to the top and it kind of maybe evens out. So, like you're able to push it and it rolls a little bit. But then eventually what happens is you get to the other side and you can push it and it kind of goes on its own. Like it's. It's not necessarily maybe downhill, but it's just like a slight decline. And so you push it and it rolls a little bit. You push it and it rolls a little bit. And it feels like that's kind of the feeling that you have at that point where you're able to make multiple thousands of dollars in one day not having to do it. But it's because you have this snowball that you've been pushing for so long. And that's such a great feeling. So talking about snow, talking about Minnesota, here's this transition. You're going to be in Minnesota soon because 2020, your family ventured out and said, you know what? We're going to. We have the ability to live anywhere. We're going to live anywhere. Tell us what that decision was like and what it is that you're doing right now. What does your day to day look like?

So right now, me and my family are. We live full time in our camper. So we, we travel the country and this kind of started back in this. So back in December of 2019, while we were. While we were all very sick together, stuck in the house. Later on, we always kind of wondered, did we get Covid back then? Because it wasn't.

Yeah, we were like station zero on.

The news that there was this virus in China. So we kind of were like, do we get that then one of those mysteries, like, I don't know, we were just probably sick with a very weird sickness. That food didn't taste right afterward, like someone brought us some like hot dogs from Aldi and they were like, oh, interesting. They had pound of salt on them.

It was like, oh, interesting.

So it was weird. So. So we were thinking like, you know, like, oh, we wanted to, we want to go and travel places. We want to be able to like see more things. We have, you know, I've been working so hard and that we've been taking vacations, but like I. I had one stretch where like we went to the Smoky Mountains for four days. That was the only vacation, like two years. You know, we didn't like take the time off. Like, I want to go travel place, I want to see more stuff.

Yeah.

So we're talking about that as we're in our fever delirium. Midwife wanting to do this here. Did think it was fun. Like, oh, this is gonna be one of those things that'll happen, you know, years down the road, Covid hit and that kind of like made it even more wanting to leave because we were told we couldn't leave. We're sitting here stuck at home. Our landlord at the time, she started missing her family a lot. That kind of pandemic thing, you know, life's a little more fragile now. Wanted to move down to Florida and for us it was so she wanted to sell the house. And that would have been. That was the third time in four years that we were renting a place and the landlord wanted to sell. So we were like, we're getting tired of this, like these forced moves. The kids get emotionally involved in a place and then we can't do that yet. And you know, at that time, like the housing market was. I mean, it's still bad now, but then it was like there was nothing. So there was like, hey, well, we either go rent somewhere else in the same spot or is this the time we take this jump and we go and do this? So also the beginning of the pandemic was extremely good for the blog. Like I jumped another level like that in traffic from that. So there was money, tons of money coming in, nowhere to go. So we were saving money, doing anything. So I was like, yeah, let's buy a camper. So we bought this pop up camper to kind of start with. It was like, it's practice. We've never camped in something like that before. Let's do it here. It became my home office because I was stuck at home. And we never left the driveway because we never could get it registered.

Sure.

And so by the time we actually.

Wanted to buy because for what reason? Why couldn't you register it?

They shut down Michigan. We, we don't have the dmv. We have the Secretary of State.

Okay.

Where you get stuff.

And that shut down.

Yeah. And that shut down. So we couldn't take. Get it get changed so we can actually go. Go dry with it. So by the time we actually were ready to do that and we're able to go to a place we're like we need a camper that's going to be not a pop up camper but one that we can actually like be in in all weather all year round. But the nice thing is we were able to. The market, market was so hot for those type of campers because people wanted to go camping because it couldn't go.

Couldn't go out there like couldn't do anything.

So it was like yeah, camping was the thing. So we like we sold, we sold the thing for twice as much we paid for it. And then, and then the other type of campers weren't going for as hot. So it was like a thousand more dollars. We upgraded to what we're in right now. Yep. So like all those kind of parts came together and then in September we. That was the time we were going to take off and start traveling. So we have a map behind me here that proposer are seeing the starting.

To get filled in. It's like 50% almost more than. Yeah.

Yeah. So we've been a lot of places here and so that enabled us to travel around and be in every way we want. We were set up pretty well in some ways too because we already had a mobile Internet hotspot because we lived at a place where the cable would not come to so interesting. We had no op. We have little options for cable. We had no options for cable and satellite Internet was bad. So we got this like hotspot thing that uses T mobile and we've been using it for years. So we already like had like the Internet thing figured out so I could like have Internet wherever we win. So that was like I have to be able to work, I have to go have Internet. So and. And campground Internet is basically a flip of the coin of it's going to work or not.

Yeah, sure, totally.

So. So yeah, so we made those that we were kind of ready to do that and so yeah, we took off September and been doing ever since.

That's awesome. How long do you think you'll do it?

We're not quite sure yet still. We had kind of a long period. So fortunately my father in law came down with ALS and he passed away.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Yeah, lost him. So that took away from a lot of our fun travel time. They're out in Southern California so we, we had a whole butt to get out there a couple times. Yeah. To be there for that. So we spent a lot of time out there and it was a good thing. My blog, it was a blessing because we were at the situation where we were able to be at my mother in law's house, right. For like six weeks right after he passed to be with her so she wasn't have to be by her, you know, by herself and learning this new life about her husband. So that was a blessing to know that we were able to do with that. But since, since the. Now we're in the. Okay, you know, when are we going to stop? We're not quite sure yet. Last year was like the housing market had looked totally bad. We're like, we're not even going to consider it yet. We want to wait longer and like we're not going to overpay for something, but we don't have to.

Right.

It's starting to look a little bit better now. Still not great, but getting better here. But we want to like we're still kind of deciding where we want to end up at the end too. So we're going to do this for a little while longer too. And we had, we hadn't gone down to like the Carolinas and Florida yet. So we wanted to do that because we were going to do that last winter. But then with our dad we had a shift here.

So it's, it's cool to hear that. And I feel like one of the things that is really true with it is that the hard work that you did early on, the sacrifices you made is coming back to like repay you with some really cool things like being able to spend six weeks with your mother in law in a really important time when you wouldn't have otherwise been able to do that. And I think one of the things I think about personally a lot is this idea of like my conversations with like my past and future selves. And I would imagine that if you were sitting across from your past self, one of the things you would say is like thank you because it's a gift. The gift your past self has given you is it's pretty cool to see that. And whether that be being Able to travel with your family and be able to be with them in a way that is really unique, or to be with your wife's family in a season, you know, where it's really important. That's really cool. And also, like, it was. You worked really hard to get that and to get there. If you were to look back, you know, and have a conversation with yourself, what are some of the things other than thank you. What. What would you say? Like, hey, this is, you know, obviously, it's like, stick with it. It did end up paying off, but, like, you know, as you think about your journey, what are some of the things that you've learned, I guess is the question along the way.

It has to be, you know, the. The not giving up. Because there's definitely moments where, you know, I had doubts and felt like, is this ever going to happen? I'm like, I'm just spinning my wheels. So there was a lot of doubts going on. That. And that led to some, you know, just kind of like, you know, down periods and.

Yeah.

Sound like you're like, oh, this is depressing, you know, type thing here. So this, like, seeing that it's going to work, you know, and it just, you know, and to keep at it and keep going, you know, because, you know, I had this formal, like, I, like, I knew that it could be, you know, seeing, like, what you and Lindsay have done and see what other bloggers have done, and then them sharing the information was so extremely helpful because it just showed that, hey, this can be done. It can happen here, you know, so just a matter of figuring that out.

Yeah.

And of course, I would have told myself Mediavine resisted earlier than I found out about it. Yeah.

Apply for me Divine sooner.

I don't even know what year they started. Actually, I would be curious to look back what year they started.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure. So when you.

How about looking forward?

Like, when you. You had talked about these other peaks, and I feel like one of the things personally that I try and think about is, like, how do you balance being content with being ambitious? And it sounds like you said mountaintop experience. You get to this point where you've worked hard, your blog is paying for your needs, and then you look around, I imagine your arms kind of stretched out, and then you look up to the side and you're like, wait, there's more. What does that look like for you? Do you have those additional goals that you're after? And then how do you balance that with kind of being content?

Yeah, I say it's not easy. I mean, it's going to do something like. Like how I'm talking with you now, kind of remember, like, you know, those moments because you still eventually start, like, it's easy to forget, like those victories. You have to kind of like remember them, still keep them in mind.

Yeah.

That they are like, you know, those are big things that happen to kind of keep those in mind. I think of like, like, look back in the Bible to like the Israelites and they were always like, there's like these, these monuments they put up to kind of like, remember what we did with this.

Don't forget.

Don't forget this. Remember it over again. So I think it's one of those things that we as humans tend to forget, like those good experiences.

So.

So it's good to come on a podcast like this and talk about that.

Yeah.

Forget that sometimes. Like right now I'm in the midst of a, like 2022 has been a down year compared to last year. Like just the percentage wise. It's been down all year. Yeah. You know, it's not like worrisome, you know, being down just like, okay, now I'm not, I'm not saving as much money right now than I was right now. So right now I'm in the midst of trying to adjust that and try to get that back up. Yeah, there's been other. Yeah. Thinking of, like, yeah, I want to, you know, I want to achieve other things in my business besides, like, you know, add income. And so I've been, I've been working on the other, you know, other things I've done sponsor content, you know, a few years ago. So I've had, you know, things here and there. Those are always fun when you, you know, those are kind of like individual mountains. When you secure a deal, it's like, yes. Yeah, yeah, it's a little more. It's nice spots to. Because it's more instant money. Like, usually you write a blog post and, you know, it could be months or even a year before Google is giving enough mojo for it to actually, like.

Right.

And it's the sum of all the blog posts that matters too. So this is nice when you get one of those. Like, okay, so I've been doing that. I'm trying to focus more on getting some affiliate income instead of like before, I've been kind of like picking in multiple different programs. Now I'm trying to, like, think. Concentrating on one particular one right now.

Sure.

Trying to, like, do all that at once. So working on that. And then right Now, I've been heavily encouraged by multiple people, other bloggers, that. To start my own podcast.

Oh, cool.

So that. That's currently in the works of.

Yep.

Hopefully launch that in the next couple months here. That'll be a Grocery Focus podcast where I'm focused on giving grocery shopping tips. And mainly it's going to be kind of a. I'm going to be basically reading my blog posts in the podcast. Yep. And then kind of expanding on that with some bonus tips here. So I'm not actually recreating the wheel. I'm actually just taking what I already have. That's what's.

Oh, that's great.

And putting it into a different format for people to consume.

So that's awesome. Yeah. Super smart. I think anytime that we can think about repurposing content, like, some people love to listen to content, some people love to read it, there are people who will be reading me say these words because they won't listen to the podcast. They'll go and they'll read the transcript. And it's something that I'm constantly reminded of. I am not my target market. So anytime I think, like, oh, why would anybody read a podcast transcript? It's like, well, because people like reading more than they like listening. Or, you know, maybe they are at a job where they can read, but they can't have headphones in or whatever it might be. So I think that's great. If you were to look back and say, you know, obviously perseverance is a huge part of it, would you be able to pinpoint anything along the way that was most helpful in terms of your growth? Like the things that have any type of, like, you know, obviously working with mediavine, that was important. Obviously, you know, perseverance was important. But what would there be anything else you'd be able to look back on and say, like, hey, this is a really important thing that I learned, or, like an important step that I took along the way?

Yeah, I would say it was. And I kind of had a little bit of this already, but, like, to really get really see it is the idea of updating old content. The idea that the updating old kind of is extremely important. As important as pushing out new stuff, sometimes more important in some cases. So I really got that, and I think it was. I already kind of started going those lines here, and then hearing Casey Markey come out and talk about the, you know, you know, treat your blog like it's a garden and there can be weeds in the area. You need to weed out the garden. Yep.

Like, you're constantly maintaining it.

Yeah, yeah, yep. I've heard him say that. Probably. He's probably talking about in your podcast. It's about, you know, he's all. So like, doing that was like, okay, this is, you know, a key part of what helped me then grow to the next level from, you know, because I got to a point where like, hey, I'm making. So that first year when I was doing blog full time, I still was being carried a lot by the holiday season. So I would have. So I would be like, I had to get tons of mines for the holidays. I'd save up some of that money to then use the rest of the year because some other months they weren't like, as profitable. Where they were. Sure, they're not as profitable, but they were a point where like, oh, yeah, this money, I need a little extra savings to kind of get over the hump this month.

Yep.

So doing that, like, going back and, and focusing on updating old content has become like a huge thing. Like, that's a big part of my game plan.

Yeah.

And, and now I'm like, of the philosophy of like, you know, when you hit, you know, and I think we can easily, like, bloggers think, like, hey, don't hit publish. And I'm done now. But like, to me, that, that, that's like step one. Like, that's like the beginning of it is like, you publish it. That's the start. Like, and it's, you know, you should be coming back to it, you know, you know, reevaluate things. You know, things change, you know, like, you know, there's been several things I've had to, like, update over the years because there's just something changing, like the accessibility type. Things like where I was not putting descriptors on my image tags for all my photos here. So that's been a lot of work trying to go back. And so I need to have those on there because it's the law to try and update those things.

And for those who aren't familiar, the idea being there's alt text and alt text stands for alternative text. And you see that as a field within WordPress. And there's accessibility standards, much like if you have a building and it needs to be wheelchair accessible, if you have a website, it needs to be accessible to people with, in the example of alt text, people who might be visually impaired in some way. And so the alt text describes the image to them. And so your point is like, hey, that's something if you weren't doing before you could go back and should go back and add that alt text so everybody has the ability, regardless of if they can actually see the image to understand what it is.

Things like that trying to, you go back, you update those things. The different sizes of images that Google has wanted, it seems to have changed sometimes or maybe I want to change, but beginning onto like a standard, okay, my images need to be this exact size. So now, I mean now we're at what, 1,200 for the width and then the height doesn't matter. So that's been what I've been doing and updating for the last year. Plus is trying to get, you know, some of those other images adjusted so that they're, you know, they're to the best thing. So you know, there's those type of changes too that come along where it's just like, okay, those different things change or. I realized it was encouraged a lot by from Skyler, from the Feast plugin and all his different frameworks. And so he was recommending using emojis for categories because then you pick those up on Google search and people are like, oh, it gives you another little visual hit. So I've been doing that and that's helped because people, you know, when you do a search now you're now seeing my image and you're seeing these little emoji categories popping up that are that Google does well.

So yeah, idea being that Google brings in emoji at this point and anything that you can add contextually around a search result might encourage click throughs. Do you have an example of a search phrase that somebody might use where those would pull up like where you'd be able to see an example of that?

Yeah, yeah. Well this is one that really works out. I have a guide to beef at Costco like beef prices. So when you type in Costco beef prices, you should get. Last time I checked the emojis were showing. So you have like the little intro there. And then my categories would be kind of at the bot right underneath in that search thing and you can see some of the different categories. You can go, I'm gonna jump to here category on like, like roast versus in steaks and you know, and a couple different things.

So that's really cool. I'll take a screenshot here that we can use as in the show notes. But what I searched was Costco beef prices. And then there's the Costco beef link, right? And then underneath that is your blog post and it says Costco meat prices 2022 beef. And then underneath it are like the sub site links and each one of those has a little emoji on it which just looks great. The steak prices has a steak whole cut and roast prices has a little meat. One rib eye has an eye and beef tenderloin has a cow on it. But oh yeah, you can see how that adds a certain dynamic in terms of, you know, drawing somebody into that. So great little, great little tip for that. And those are when you click on that post, those are like additional. That's in the like jump to section of the post. Is that right?

Yes, yeah, the advanced jump to plugin the insert from WordPress. The block. Yeah, the block, yeah, got it. So that they use the jump down to things, which was originally things like, okay, okay, they're going to skip through content here. But then it does bring up those things on, on the search where you see those things. And I think like Google, you know, recognizes if I, you know, go into like trying to search for, you know, Costco roast. Now that may have moved me up further on that too. I think those are helpful to have and that's cool. Just adding those buttons. It hasn't like, you know, feel like, oh my gosh, people are going to jump everywhere. They're not going to look at my content. I want to make less money, but there's no evidence of that. Yeah, like it's not affected.

It's helpful. It's helpful for people to be able to get to where they want to get as quickly as possible. And that's always a win. So.

And I think like when you're on a phone too, like, there's another thing to kind of look at it, look at, pops up like, oh, there's a little icon thing here, thing here. Like, so it just helps you to kind of like see something else and break, break up the content a little more.

That's great. Um, Eric, I feel like we could talk for a really long time and it's been really great to connect after all these years of trading emails back and forth. Super inspiring for me to hear your story and, you know, your hard work and where that's gotten you and kind of the cool things like traveling around.

The world with your family.

What a gift to be able to do that. My last question for you, if you were to go back to yourself, maybe in one of those seasons that was a little bit more difficult, you feel like you're kind of grinding. You know, there's progress, but maybe not as much as you want, what would it be that you'd tell Yourself, Just.

Just keep going. Just, you know, that what you're doing, you know, is working here. And I think, you know, a lot of people now that are doing that are grinding and feel like, you know, it's not happening. And you also, you can't compare yourself to other people. That. That's big, too. Like, you may look at someone, like, I've seen bloggers, new bloggers who come on the scene and are able to do it faster. You're able to get the point faster than me. And so you have to look at a way, you know, someone tells. I was like, you know, just because someone's here doesn't mean that that person's better than you or they're more skilled than you. You know, there's different circumstances. You know, new people now, of course, have things like Food blogger Pro. They have conferences to go to. They have more of those kind of tools that, you know, a lot of us in the early days how to kind of like, pave the way for those things to happen. So, like, you know, you're kind of a pioneer in that way. It's like. Like we're traveling around at west now. We're seeing all these stories about the. The Oregon Trail and all the trails of the California. And like, those things started with people, you know, pulling carriages out.

Yeah. And now there's a highway.

Yeah. Eventually building a transcontinental railroad where instead of taking months to get there, they're doing it a week.

Yeah.

So those kind of things, a great analogy they're giving. You know, those people that are. Are doing the training thing now aren't better than the people who were pulling it. They. They just are now wreaking the benefits of that. So I think, yeah, you got to compare, you know, so. So it's one thing, you know, not to compare yourself with somebody else, you know, because, you know, like, those things, different advantages or some people, you know, even financially, you know, if you're someone who comes from a more wealthy family, may have extra income to. In order to pursue something.

Yeah.

You know, or, you know, or there's health problems. You know, if you. Someone has more health problems or other, physically or mentally, that could make things harder, you know, to do. So you can't, you know, really, if you do any comparison, it's more looking at it like yourself, like, comparing like, I, I came from here, I'm here now. You know, I love that. Taking joy in that. Instead of looking at someone else and saying, like, oh, I can't, you know, because at times, honestly, you Know, you know, when I was struggling there, looking you guys here, like, oh, man, you know, it'd be easy to get jealous of that and you know, sure. In the point of like, you know, oh, I'm envious of like, you know, Bjork and Lindsey for doing this here, but. Yeah, but then you take the energy instead of like being jealous and you take it to like a point of like, I. I know I can do this and be a motivator. Yeah, that's what I go tell my other self when I was having those periods of like, doubt and stress and trying to figure out, can I do this thing? That you can do this here. And even if it takes you longer to do it, you know that it can still be done. So.

Gosh, that's awesome. I love that and so much good content and good things to think about. Wrapped up in that and excited to watch you on your journey, not only across the US but as you continue on with this, it's great to see you settling into a really valuable, cool type of content that you're creating and it's inspiring for me. So I appreciate you coming on Eric. Where can people follow along with you? We mentioned obviously the site like no one else, but is that social handles as well?

Yeah. So the actual website is like no one is the actual web address here. And then. Yeah, for some reason I left the else out in the past because I didn't feel like it was. It was too long almost. But on Instagram it's elect no one else. So I had that out there and then it's. And it's like no one on Facebook too. Instagram's definitely the better one to kind of reach me out. So that's the one I kind of do more with. So great.

Eric, thanks so much for coming on. Really great to. Yeah, thanks.

It was amazing.

Hey there, Alexa here from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. And I wanted to let you know that we actually are going to be hosting a free event, a free workshop on about monetization for food bloggers, for bloggers in general, with the ConvertKit team. So ConvertKit, if you're unfamiliar, is an email marketing platform for creators. And their team of educators asked us to come along and present on a topic that most of us want to learn more about, our team included. So it's like I mentioned, it's all about monetization and it's about the three unique ways that we're monetizing or experimenting with monetizing our food blog, our system, Mr. Sight Pinch of Yam so Bjork and angel from the ConvertKit team will go on at 2pm Eastern, 1pm Central on the 16th. That's this Thursday to talk all about it. So he's going to kind of dive in. He, meaning Bjork, is going to dive in and talk about the different ways that we've experimented with monetizing Pinch of Yum. And then he'll present some takeaways that you can take for yourself and maybe put it in your back pocket for later or apply to your blog right now. So it's going to be a great event and we would love to see some familiar faces from the Food Blogger Pro community there. So if you're interested in registering for free for this one hour workshop, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com money and that will redirect you to the workshop registration page on the ConvertKit site. So we would love to see you there. Again. It's this Thursday at 2pm Eastern, 1pm Central and you can go to foodbloggerpro.com money to get registered. Thanks again for tuning into this episode this week. We'll see you next time. And until then, make it a great week.