434: Navigating Google Algorithm Updates, Leaning into Email Marketing, and Running Three Food Blogs with Taryn Scarfone from Joy Filled Eats

This episode is sponsored by Clarity. If you've been frustrated trying to discover actionable insights from different analytics and keyword platforms, Clarity is your solution. Clarity helps you manage your blog content all in one place so you can find actionable insights that improve the quality of your content. Not only does it automatically sync your WordPress post data so you can find insights about broken images, broken links, and more, it can also sync with your Google Analytics and Google Search Console data so you can see keyword session, page view and user data for each and every post. One of our favorite ways to use it we can easily filter and see which of our posts have had a decrease in sessions or page views over a set period of time and give a little extra attention to those recipes. This is especially helpful when there are Google updates or changes in search algorithms so that we can easily tell which of our recipes have been impacted the most. Listeners to the Food Blogger Pro podcast get 50% off of their first month of clarity after signing up. To sign up, simply go to clarity.com food that's C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com food thanks again to Clarity for sponsoring this episode.

Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is interviewing Taryn Scarfone from the blog Joy Filled Eats. And I say from the blog Joy Filled Eats, but in reality she also runs two other food blogs with members of her family. Taryn and her husband run the blog A Girl for All Seasons and Taryn and her 14 year old daughter run the blog Baking Me Hungry. Taryn shares more about what it's like to juggle the responsibilities of three different food blogs and how her process and strategy for starting a food blog has changed over the years. She also shares more about what growth has looked like for each blog and how she prioritizes everything for all three sites. One of her sites was hit recently by the recent Google Algorithm Update and she shares more about her strategies for recovering from those algorithm updates and just her mindset around updates like that in general. In recent years, Taryn has hosted a mastermind group for food bloggers as well as an in person retreat with fellow food creators. And if you've ever felt inspired to do the same thing, she gives a step by step of how you might go about organizing and even getting a sponsor for an event like that. It's a really great interview. And stick around after the interview for our November Member News Update where you can hear More about what's going on at Food Blogger Pro. And without further ado, I'll let Bjork take it away.

Taryn, welcome to the podcast.

Hi, Bjork. Happy to be here.

Yeah, we're going to be having a conversation today touching a lot of different topics, but one of the interesting things with your story is you actually have three sites. And what I love about it is it feels like one of the considerations within that is like working together with family. So can you talk a little bit about your portfolio of sites that you have and kind of who the connection is with your family within each one of those?

Sure. I started Joy Filled Eats on my own in 2015 as a hobby, which is turned into a career. And while I was doing that on my own, it hit us that my husband likes to cook as much as I do. So we went to the Everything food conference in 2018 and on the way back on the plane ride, we're like, let's do it. Let's start a second site that we work on together.

Yeah.

So at that point we started and we worked on it very little for about two to three more years. And when Covid hit, we had a lot more time. So we really started to spend a lot more time on that site, which paid off. And then a year ago I decided to start a third site with my now 14 year old daughter because she has wanted to be a pastry chef since she was about five years old. So this site is mostly desserts and baking. Since my main site is low carb keto, gluten free, healthy, it's been nice to be able to have the other sites and make at this point we can make pretty much whatever we want.

Yeah. So because one, one is grilling focused, one is baking focused, and then the other one is keto. So it's kind of like you have all of that covered. It's, it's. I know a few other people who have kind of these niche focused sites and one of the things that they run into is kind of these like, you know, the, the parameters that they put around it, which is really good. And I think it's great for growing a site is to have these, you know, specific focuses and a specific offering. But then as a creator, sometimes you're like, oh my gosh, I really want to do this like muffin recipe that's so great where, what do I do with that? And so great to be able to spin up one of those additional sites. So the sites Joyfield eats a grill for all seasons and then Baking me hungry. What does it look like to, to juggle the three of those? Like, it's, it's an. I think anybody listening would think of having one site and to be like, oh my gosh, it's so much just to keep up one. Is it like just as hard to add another one in or do you feel like it? Actually it's like maybe kids a little bit. Like your first one is like, what am I doing? And then you have a second kid. It's still hard. You're managing more. But it's like, I've been through this before, I know what to do. What, what does that look like to manage multiple sites?

It's a little bit of both. Because a lot of things when you're setting up a website, you do once and then you forget how you did it.

Yep.

So we've run into that a lot and our, our main focus is still joy filled eats because that's bringing in the most revenue. So that has been the main focus. And the other sites are a little slower. So it's like a little less social media, a little less new posts. But we basically spend one day a week, all day in the kitchen with an assistant and we'll test recipes for all three sites, depending on what, what's in season, what we feel like cooking that week. And then my daughter, now if I write out a recipe that we want to test and hand it to her, she can just run with it and take the camera and take pictures and do the whole thing, start to finish.

That must be fun for you as a mom to like work on something together in that way.

Yeah. When I upload the photos and I see, wow, these are actually really good. It's very, very rewarding.

It's like a 14 year old version of our daughter Solvi, who' is now starting to draw pictures and it's like, oh, you can kind of see what they are and it's like, I'm just so proud. But as they get older, it's like you just get more advanced and it's like, oh, now you have this recipe that you're developing and pictures that you're taking of it and a blog post that you're putting out into the world and people who are interacting with it and I just imagine that is a really valuable thing. And for her too, like to be learning that, that's really cool.

It has been very rewarding. I just need to teach her to do the less fun things like alt tags.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. All of us. Right? It's like whether you're 14 or 30 or 40. So talk to me about, you know, you talked about the assistant coming in. What does that look like? And do you have other kind of team members that are part of what you're doing? You know, I think that assistant role is such an important one, and I would imagine, especially when you're doing multiple recipes in a day.

Yeah. So we just hired a very good friend who comes in and she will prep ingredients and do the dishes. So it's pretty amazing having someone just like washing pans and pots like, as we go and not having them all pile up in the kitchen. We have six kids, which, fortunately, this is the first year they were all in school. So it's just been a very different.

Positive move forward, just in terms of margin. Yes, yes, totally. You're like, oh, my gosh, what does it feel like to have six hours, five hours in a day where it's just you being able to be at home, work on stuff, focus. That's great. So we, we chatted about this a little bit beforehand, but one of the things that I think is so incredible is you talked about launching this site with your husband and being able to build it pretty substantially. So grill for all seasons, smoke sun grilling recipes. And can you talk a little bit about the things that you. Sounds like you started slow and then maybe focused on it. When you started to focus on it, you're able to grow it really big and then you can share metrics or information to the degree that you're comfortable with that. And then Google Algorithm Update, like, not to bury the lead, but like that as a. As a consideration within all of this. So can you talk about kind of the arc of that site? Because it's both inspiring and then also, I think, relatable in terms of having to navigate kind of the Google Gods and these algorithm updates that they push out.

Yeah, within really starting to work on it, like a good amount of time. When we came back into it, within six months, we were at maybe a hundred thousand views a month. We had a Traeger turkey recipe that went viral our first Thanksgiving, and it was just amazing to watch that happen. And since then, it's been fairly steady. Over the summer, we were at around 150 views a month. Sessions. Sessions reviews. I forget which one on that site, but yeah, 150,000. And then we got the Google Update in September and it's down over 50%. Some of that's seasonal because it's grilling and smoking recipes. So it's hard to tell exactly, but it's definitely down quite a bit.

Can you talk about kind of your mindset going into that? And I think, you know, we've experienced Google algorithm updates kind of on both ends. Like, oh, it's really positive, you get one and it's really negative and it's, it can be super discouraging. Like you've spent so much time, effort, you build up this thing, you get traction with it, you get momentum with it. And by no fault of your own, something happens, an algorithm change happens. And we know all sorts of like sites that this happens to millions of page views a month and super established and an algorithm update happens. And they, and it impacts like thousands to tens of thousands to millions of dollars for these different sites and can completely, you know, kind of crush certain business models. What was that like for you? Obviously you have the other ones to kind of hedge against, which I would guess helps, but what was that like to experience that and what is your approach with the site, knowing that this Google algorithm update impacted it?

I mean, it's discouraging to be honest, but part of it is like I know that it ebbs and flows. So in March 2020, joy filled eats was 75% Pinterest traffic, which there was a Pinterest algorithm update and that went down substantially overnight. So it's just really a reminder to not put all your eggs in one basket because the girl for all seasons was 90% Google traffic. So then when an update comes that's not favorable, it can be bad.

Yeah.

So we just need to focus more on social for that site diversifying and just keep plugging away because I'm sure it'll come back up.

Yeah, totally. And I think doing it as long as you have seven, no, eight years doing it as long as we have, you know, over a decade, one of the things you realize is that's just part of this business. Things go up, things go down. And as long as you can continue to show up and continually create good content, be aware of the changes within the different platforms within search, but maybe not like cater everything to those. Like it's kind of that mix that sweet sauce of like how, how what's working on search as an example, but also like what is good content? Like, what does your audience resonate with and finding the balance of those. And the interesting thing in your story is it sounds like that was the only site that was impacted. Like the other two, it, it sounds like kind of kept going like everything was normal. Is that right?

Yes. The newest site, Baking Me Hungry right now is primarily getting Google Discover traffic.

Sure.

Which I don't know why Google likes it. I mean, that domain's interesting because I bought an expired domain that's existed for over 10 years that I took the domain. So I don't know if Google just likes the longevity of it being in existence and that it's back and that it started out with some backlinks.

But can you talk about what Google Discover is? Because I think there are a lot of people who are listening. They're like, wait, Google Discover. And there's some people in different content categories, like this site where I know somebody who does Disney News. And like, Google Discover is like a gold mine for them. And I think in our world, we think so often of just like standard search. Like, you search something and you go to the results page and click on it. But what is Google Discover? And can you kind of talk about how that's maybe a little bit different than normal search results or, you know, a search results page on Google?

Honestly, I. What I think Google Discover is, is when you or on your phone and just on the main, like, you open up the. The browser and it's just what's there like that it's encouraging you to scroll through. It'll be news articles, recipes. Am I correct? Yeah, totally in what it is.

And it's funny because it's like, for those who use it, I think they know it well, but maybe don't know that they. What they're doing, what they're using is Google Discover. And so, like, for anybody listening, if you want to get a feel of like, what it is and how it works, you could just go on your phone. As long as you're signed in to Google, I think just go to google.com or pull up like, the Google search app. Like, if you don't use Safari or if you don't use Chrome. Well, Chrome, it comes up. Yeah, as long as you, I think, go to google.com but like, for me, I'm in Safari on my phone, I go to google.com, and then I see all of these, like, news articles that's that are for. For me, it's like Baltimore Ravens versus Arizona Cardinals. Five things we learned. 49ers have a Brock Purdy, like, all of these football news, Minneapolis News, ChatGPT, Matthew Perry, like a Yahoo Finance article, Business Insider, Loki Season 2. Like, all of these different pieces where it's like, hey, you might be interested in this. And so the interesting thing is, like, recipes, I don't think often as something that gets into those like Google Discover. But it sounds like for that baking site you've seen that, is there an area like, are you pulling that up in Google Analytics? And if, if people would be interested in seeing if they are getting Google Discover traffic? I haven't looked in GA4 yet. Is there a place where you can find that as like a source?

I don't know if it's a source in GA4. You can see it in search console on the left side it says Discover. And if you click that.

Yep. And the ones that we've had this is in the past. Like this is pulling from maybe like a year or two ago. And it's fun because when it hits, it hits and like you'll have like your normal search traffic. And then it's like for Pinch of Yam, it was like double like. And we're like, oh my gosh, what happened? And we looked and it was like Lindsay did an article on like my favorite recipes from Aldi or something like that. And it was. Or favorite ingredients or things from Aldi, snacks from Aldi. And that was kind of like a Google Discovery kind of article. It felt like. And so if people want to see if they're getting Google Discover traffic. Yeah, I'm seeing it right now. Like it's under. So looking at Pinch of Yum, this is always so terrible to like describe it on a podcast, describing Google search console on a podcast. But you see search results and then under that you see Discover. And this is interesting. Like for October 26, for pinch of Yum, there was something that must have like a recipe that must have gotten some traction because it had 300,000 impressions. So like a lot of people scrolling past it and then 6,000 clicks. So and then it will be like, you know, on October 19th, it was 800 impressions and 30 clicks. So it's kind of like very spiky. Are you seeing kind of the same result with that site where.

Yes, definitely.

Something will get picked.

Very spiky. We had a biscuit recipe go viral and I mean that site generates normally under a hundred dollars a day. Like it's a smaller site and we hit almost a thousand dollars in one day with Discover traffic.

Yeah.

Time to go out to dinner and celebrate.

So how do you. Is that so fun for your daughter? Like as a 14 year old? I can't imagine what that would be like.

Yeah, we tell her it's gonna pay for culinary school someday.

Yeah. That is so awesome. I love that. It's really inspiring. Something to think about. As our girl. They're not at the point yet where, I mean, they're helping, but not really, but as they get older, thinking about like, what does a job look like for them and how cool for them to like learn all of these different skills and to kind of fold that in. So that's super helpful. And I think a lot of people are probably navigating some version of either, just trying to understand how the algorithm works, all the different components with it. And it's interesting to hear somebody who has a portfolio of sites say like, hey, this impacted this site. It didn't impact this site as much. This episode is sponsored by Raptive when it comes to monetizing a blog or a site, display ads are a fantastic passive way to generate income on the content you're producing. In fact, Raptive display ads are one of our biggest revenue generators at Pinch of Yum, they make up nearly 80% of our overall monthly income. Raptive, which is formally AdThrive, is on a mission to empower independent creators like you. And to date Raptive has paid out more than $2 billion to creators. Not only do they help creators generate ad revenue, they also offer creators many other benefits to help support them with their audience revenue and business goals. For example, Raptive creators get access to industry leading tools like Topic, which helps creators discover opportunities to improve their content and plan the structure of their blog posts. You also get access to resources on HR and recruiting, SEO, email marketing, customized AB ad layout, testing, and more. As a Raptive creator, you can learn more about Raptive's creator levels and what's all included in each level@raptive.com creator levels. Then when you're ready to apply, head to raptive.com and click the Apply now button. Working with an ad network has had a profound impact on the way Pinterevon monetizes our business. And by being a Raptive creator, you're getting access to results based solutions that can really impact the way your business runs and grows. Learn more@raptive.com thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about, you know, you talk, we talk about this idea of continual learning how important that is. I know one of the ways that you've done that is you've organized and facilitated meetups or retreats kind of mastermind groups in the past. And even it was interesting to hear you talk about going to the conference and coming away from the conference with your husband and being like, hey, let's do this. And I Remember interviewing Nathan Barry who started ConvertKit, and he said all of his biggest breakthroughs with his business came from when he attended conferences. And I see that as kind of a through line, in person event, a conference, a meetup. So what does that look like for you to host these, to gather people together and any advice for people who are interested in doing a similar thing on their own?

Definitely. So coming back from that conference, I realized that the best times were hanging out with other women in sweatpants and just talking shop. We just talk about what we do and what's working for us. And that was absolutely the best part of the conference. So backtrack a little bit. Leading up to the conference, Sarah from Sidetracked Sarah started a mastermind group online for women that were going to the conference so that when we got there, we would see some familiar faces.

Oh, that's awesome.

Which was really awesome. And after the conference, that mastermind group continued for a little while and it kind of branched out and I took over it at one point and people just came and went as life changed and their businesses changed and I. After Covid, there weren't any like big events yet. And I just really missed like seeing other bloggers in person. So I heard a rumor that at the time AdThrive would occasionally sponsor retreats. So I reached out to Ad Thrive and pitched my idea and they pretty much gave us enough money to pay for the retreat. It was very simple. We rented a beach house, we took turns cooking, and we, every of each one of the women just led a different session on something that they excelled in. So we had London from Evolving Table did a session on how to start doing YouTube videos, which not many of us were doing. Christina from It's a Keeper is a Whiz with airtable. She was helping us figure out how to get organized and use airtable. So each person just brought their own expertise. We sat around in our pajamas, we ate snacks and drank wine and took.

A walk on the beach.

And it was, it was wonderful. So even without. So the total cost, house and food and everything came in at under $4,000. So even if you wanted to organize one of these without a sponsor and just divide up the costs, it's pretty minimal.

Yeah, that's great. And it's one of the things I've found whenever I get together with a group of people, it's like you can have some loose structure that's important. But generally speaking, the one thing you all have in common is like this pursuit of create. Creating things online. And so Naturally from that you share. And I love the idea of everybody bringing kind of one thing. What, what did you say? Like, how did you frame it up? Like one thing that's working well or one thing that you're an expert in or just something.

What's their area of expertise? The thing that I think I do well at is email marketing. So I led a session on email marketing.

Yeah. So in that session, can you. So let's say you get everybody together. You're like, hey, we're going to rent this beach house. Maybe everybody has their own room or you're sharing rooms, depending on how big it is. You have some food that you bring in, ones that I've done before, they've been able to like cover a chef coming in because everybody chips in to kind of pay for that. And so you have meals taken care of. And then do you schedule like a one hour session where you say like, hey, we're gonna do. I'm gonna present on email for one hour. You present for a little bit and then kind of Q and A after that?

Pretty much, yep. I just created a Google document with time slots. People signed up. We did cook, which I do, I did find enjoyable because we each just cook one meal. Everyone pretty much just had groceries delivered. So it wasn't, was not a big deal to cook one meal over the long weekends. And we just would sign up for different slots and go from there.

Cool, that's awesome. And you talked about the idea of a sponsorship. A lot of times brands will say, hey, if there's a group of people gathering together, we would be interested in allocating some of our money to, you know, whether they consider it PR or marketing or whatever to support that kind of effort. Which is cool to hear that Ad Thrive or now Raptive did that. How about on the mastermind side of things? Like, how do you mastermind? What does that look like? And what did you find? Were the things that were most helpful in that process and maybe things that you would do differently or suggest that somebody, you know, consider differently if they're, if they were going to go into it and do it on their own.

That was also. That's very simple to do. So I created just a Google form with a basic. It was five or six questions. Why do you want to join? I set the criteria of making a hundred thousand dollars a year just so that it was full time, like more career bloggers and less hobbyists. So we'd all be at the same level. So everyone just filled out the form. The people that seemed like, would be a good fit. We made a Facebook group to, like, be able to discuss what times work, what day of the week works. And then we would just zoom once a month for one hour. And we tried different things where, when I first started participating in a Mastermind, like, one person would be on the hot seat where they would start off and pick a topic, and then after that, it could just be question and answers more so more of a session style. And it became more casual recently where just, okay, guys, there was an update, like, how's everybody doing? What's going on? But it's also the one thing that I've found challenging with Mastermind groups is getting people to commit. So that has been challenging. And part of me wonders. My husband always says that you have to have skin in the game. So something that someone's paying for, even if it's five or ten dollars, they feel they're just more committed, naturally. Whereas the ones that I've run have all been free. They've just been informal and casual.

So, yep. Lindsay and I have these recurring meetings. It's like, we call it household huddle, and we have it, like, scheduled, and we're always like, let's just reschedule it for another time. Like, it's. It's an example of, I think, what happens with a Mastermind meeting, which is if you're not paying for it, if you don't have skin in the game, it's really easy to look at it and say, like, I've got some other pressing things. And it feels like that's always what happens for Lindsay and I when we come up against these meetings is like, oh, we have these pressing things that we got to get done. But to our earlier conversation, a lot of the most impactful things that you can do within your business are from these conversations or meetings or meetups or, you know, these opportunities to essentially just talk with other people and learn what other people are doing. Because if not, we can kind of be in these little bubbles, and, like, I can show up in my office, and it's literally. It's like a square. It's not a bubble. It's square. It's a box. I could just work here all day long, do stuff, but it's when I kind of rub shoulders with other people, interact, even these podcasts, that I come away with ideas and insights. And so as much as people can prioritize that, I think the more the better. So masterminds, obviously, really important meetups. I love the fact that you're the one organizing Those as well. A lot of times people will say, how do I get connected into these groups? And like the great. The best way to do it is just to do it on your own. So for anybody who hears this and they're like, you know what, I'm going to give it a shot. Like, what would kind of the quick playbook be that you would recommend for them? Like if you were to outline kind of like a packing trip for camping, it'd be like tent, you know, that's all that I know about camping. We never go camping. A tent, a sleeping bag, a fire starter. Like, what would the packing list be for? Not actual packing list, but the prep list, the launch list for your own in person meetup.

I think step one is decide whether or not you want a sponsor. If you'd rather have less money out of pocket, go for finding a sponsor. Second step, decide where you personally want to travel to. I decided that I wanted it to be within a few hours just to make it easier. I could bring things from home. I didn't have to fly. So that was one of my requirements was just then I found a house and booked it. So after that I first reached out to the other women I was in a mastermind group with already, like, who is interested in coming? And once I had answers from them, yes or no, I realized we had a couple spots left. So all I did was make another Google form and pop it in the. Pop it in a Facebook group. And I had some interest. So we decided part of the way we chose people was just what their experience was, what their expertise was. So if we already had someone doing email marketing, we don't need a second person who specializes in email marketing.

Yeah, that's great. One of the things I thought of when you talked about, you know, your session that you did on email marketing was this reality that a lot of creators, a lot of bloggers in the food space specifically, it feels like, let me know if this feels true to you as well. Email marketing is kind of this like secondary thing. Like in some niches it's all that people think about is like email, email. I think in our niche people think about like search, search, search. And email is kind of an afterthought. So how are you strategically using email as like a valuable part of your business? And what advice would you give for other creators in the food space specifically who have kind of treated email as an afterthought?

I went to a small ad thrive meetup that Matt Mullen was at. So meeting him and hearing what he did we decided to hire him to work one on one with us, which really was a good kick in the pants to get going on email because really that is the only thing you own. So if you can build a large loyal email network, they will click through and you will get site visits from them. So besides just selling to them, I realized when I was looking through analytics, like I'm getting a substantial amount of views from my email list.

Yeah.

So once we took the time and created a quick start guide and different opt ins, I was able to grow my list to 40,000 pretty quickly. And it's been kind of stagnant. I haven't added any new opt ins or really pushed it in a while, but at this point it's been great because I try not to oversell to my list. But a few times a year I will promote an affiliate that I work with, which is always lucrative. And now ConvertKit is starting to add ads in email newsletters which is a positive going in a positive direction and some email sponsorships and it's just another great way to diversify.

Yeah. That we just had a conversation with ConvertKit about kind of looking into that. I think they're partnering with Live Intent, which is another kind of third party email and that I might not be correct on that, but if I'm remembering right. And so we were talking with Live Intent and they're like, oh, actually ConvertKit is just like doing this natively. And we actually just also had for the first time somebody say like, hey, can we sponsor the newsletter? So even for us where it's like, oh yeah, this is like an important thing. We need to be like focusing on this and spending time with it. You mentioned Matt. Matt's site is called Email Crusher. His service, um, he was on the podcast I think back in 2019, episode 201. If anybody would want to check that out. All about email and how you can be smart and intentional with email as a, as a creator and like you said, you own it. And this idea that a Google algorithm update can happen and your traffic can go away or a Pinterest algorithm can happen and that traffic can go away, but you're, you always have your email. And what we found, especially when you want to promote something like you said affiliate or product, it's a lot easier to do via email than it is like with a blog post or even on social to some degree. So do you use ConvertKit for your email service provider?

I do, just for joyful deets. The one thing with the second and the third blog is. We haven't really gotten into email with those yet. It's just found I have a finite amount of time, so I could pick and choose.

Believe it or not, with three sites, six kids, all that comes with that, you don't have all the time in the world. Speaking of that, as you think about balancing the balancing act, these three sites that you have, life, kind of your normal life, how do you think about, like, ROI on your time? And that's like, you know, all of us, I, I think, are wanting to make sure that the time that we're spending is the best return. And a component of that is, like, we want to make sure that we're doing things that we actually enjoy. But you've built successful sites, a successful business, you know, it's. It's at the point now where it's like, this is a, this is a career, a job. You've, you've built this business that now brings in substantial revenue. And in. The hard part with it is like, we only have so much time, but there's an infinite amount of things that we could be doing. We could just be working on these things 24 hours a day and never stop. So how do you think strategically about your time as a business owner, as a mom, as a. As a wife? Like, all of these different roles that we play to make sure that the time that you're spending is the best return for your business.

So a lot of that is for me, it's been seeing where the traffic is actually coming from. So I've tried hiring things out, but they all work better when I do them myself, which is, which is hard because I hired out Pinterest and my Pinterest went down. I hired out Facebook, Facebook went down. So I've taken a lot of these things back on myself. And then it is a stretch trying to fit everything in. But if I'm not seeing that roi, I'm not going to pay somebody a thousand bucks a month to manage a social media. It's just not worth it.

Yeah, the idea being you can pay for it, they can do it. But if you, if it's producing 500 of value, it doesn't make sense if it's costing a thousand.

Yes, definitely. And if I see it going down, then I would rather do it myself and have it not go down.

Yes, totally. Yeah. It's one of the hard things as a creator is, you know, kind of the nuance of your audience, the things that they'll resonate with. And sometimes you can't run A playbook against that. Like, yeah, you have to know kind of the specifics of things that have worked and things that haven't worked. Do you feel like that's a little bit of what it is for you, is like you kind of have this gut intuition of the things that are going to perform well based on your eight years of building the audience, interacting with the audience, and it's hard to outsource that.

It is. And I've also had a hard time when I do hire out something like Facebook, and I, Like, I hear the VA's voice, like, in the. Like, if I scroll through it, it's. It's just not me. It's not my voice. I mean, I do use a ghostwriter for some blog posts, so that happens at the same. That happens with that, too. But I just have to. I. And I've also found I like interacting with my audience. So when I personally am the one who jumps back in there to social media, like, I feel the connection again with my readers.

Totally. Lindsay's talked about that. This idea of in the seasons where she hasn't been involved, like, maybe it's maternity leave or something like that, you kind of lose this. Like, you don't have your finger on the pulse as much of what's happening. And then the idea of content creation gets more difficult because you feel disconnected. Is that kind of what you're talking about a little bit like, wanting to be as closely connected to your audience as possible?

Yeah, it's. Yeah. About being connected. And also just I feel like I get less positive affirmation if I'm not the one going in there and saying, oh, that's great that you like the recipe, Susan. Like, it's just. If it's not me doing that, then I don't see those things. And I'm not getting, like, it's more than just income and page views and all those metrics. Like, we really do want to just connect with people.

Yes, totally. It's like, there's all of these different variables that fuel us, that give us meaning in our work. One of them could be the ability to, like, pay the bills, which allows us to show up. But if it's just that, and it's like this empty. Like, if you got. If you paid the bills by, like, posting content that nobody would ever see, but it still paid the bills, you probably wouldn't last very long. None of us would. Because another really important component is impact. Are we connecting with people? Does it make a difference to them? Like, that is super significant as well, when you look at kind of the landscape of the things that you're doing, let's say that you had to dwindle it down to three major things and everything else had to go away. Would you be able to pinpoint and say like these are the most important things either from like a meaning perspective or from a business perspective?

By things, what do you mean?

Yeah, like an example would be for Pinterest vm, we'd say like publishing content onto the blog and we would not publish content to Facebook.

Right. I think publishing content to the blog is probably also in a top spot. That's how we got into this because we like to cook. My degree is visual art with a concentration in photography. So I love photography, I always have. So that's definitely the top spot. After that it's more. We kind of switch more to a business perspective with each site. Like where the view is coming from. We should concentrate on that first. Diversifying more across social media. Like I don't have TikToks for my site I sites. I just haven't had time to do that or the desire to. There's just always something new and you don't have to do everything.

Yeah.

And for a third, I think it is probably just doing research, just keywords. It's. When I first started I just would make whatever I wanted. So I had some blog posts with crazy key names that no one would ever search for. Which is honestly a waste of time at this point because we have to look at it from a business perspective a little bit. Yeah. First making just something crazy that tastes good.

Which is interesting when you think about where your traffic was coming from, which was Pinterest. It's like that can do well on Pinterest because maybe it's more visual, people are more intrigued by it. But if you're interested in search, you kind of have to be more aware of that. Is that one of the reasons why you were able to build traffic to the grilling site more quickly is because you kind of approached it from a search perspective. And can you talk about what that looked like, like what your approach was that allowed you to scale that site so quickly? And to build search traffic we kind.

Of just went for a very specific niche. We bought a Traeger grill because there were some high ranking keywords using the Traeger brand that we would be able to rank for with a new site. So that's what we decided to do from the beginning. And it did pay off for a time. And then the update came and we'll see where it goes from here. I had a train of thought that I lost.

Well, no, that's good. And I think, you know, one of the things that people often ask is like, can I still create a site? Can I build a site now? And I think you can, but you have to be strategic with it. And I think what you just shared is a really great example of being strategic where you do some research, you see what people are interested in, you see how you overlap in terms of your interests. And it's grilling and it's trigger grills. You see there's an opportunity there and it's like, okay, let's create a site kind of in this category, knowing that it's going to touch on all of these things, your area of interest or passion, or for your husband at least, but also an opportunity that presents itself based on some research that you've done. And I think that same approach could be taken by anybody who's starting something new. Now. It's not like you can start a general food site and just kind of post about whatever you're having for lunch. Unless you're like a really compelling writer or you're. It's like comedy based and people follow for that reason. If it's search based, you're going to have to be strategic about it. And I think that's, that's a great example of it. And to your point, you're able to grow it really quickly. Google algorithm update happens. But that's not because of the search results or the strategy. It's just like the randomness of these updates that come along. So I think that's great and a really important takeaway. How about you? Anything, you know, as we close things out, anything that you would give as advice or insight for somebody who's in those early stages, you know, you've been at it a long time now. You've had success with it. And there are people who are curious about what it looks like to do this. Well, what would your advice be to those people who are kind of in those early stages of, of building, maybe year one or two, maybe they're year three, or maybe they've had it for a while now. They're like, I'm going to take it seriously and I'm going to build this thing. What would your advice be for those people?

I would say to just put in the time. That's one thing. You can't expect to grow a blog doing it an hour to a week. I do not honestly work full time. I think I probably work 25 to 30 hours a week, so close to full time. And then my husband works again on the sites as well. So between us would probably is a full time job. I think that it would be very hard to really see a very part time blog like yeah grow at this point. You just, you just need time. Get up. Our goal from the very beginning was three new blog posts a week. So in the summer with kids home from school, we went down to two a week. Now after eight years of being in in the business with joyful deeds, I am doing a lot of republishing this year which I think may be part of why that site did not get hit with the update. Because I've republishing a lot of posts and for the newer sites still just trying to get up like two or three brand new posts a week. So if you're not producing enough content, you are not going to grow and get the page views.

Yeah, it's like the analogy I've used occasionally is this idea of a train powered by coal. I don't even know if that still exists. Probably not. But for what you did for years and years and years was like you were shoveling coal into the engine of the train and it got up to speed, it was going fast and it got enough momentum that you were able to in the summer like step back a little bit. And the reason is because the engine had it's, it was running hot and like it's not like then you stop and you never shovel coal in anymore. It's just like now you're doing it to like maintain the speed that you got it up to. But to get it up to that speed from a standstill is really hard. Like you're going to have to be shoveling a lot. And in the world of content, building a content site, it's kind of similar where it's, it takes a lot to get something going from a standstill and then it like inches forward and then if you stop, then it stops. But if you do it for eight years and then you stop, it's going to continue going and you can kind of come back and shovel into it and you want to maintain it, continue to work on it. But it's, it's, you know, like you said you could do it 25 to 30 hours as opposed to 50 hours of just like focused time and energy every day. Which is, it's cool to be at that point like you're able to. Your business is giving back to you in a really significant way. Which is, which is Cool. And I think a testament to like the years of working really hard on it. How about this? So if anybody wants to connect with you, follow along with what you're up to, you know, either on, on the food side or even like if they're like, hey, I want to start a mastermind. Do you have any ideas, like, anything like that? Is there a way to connect with you or a way for folks to follow along with what you're up to?

Sure.

Hop on any of the sites, send me an email, leave a comment. Happy to help.

Cool. That's awesome. We'll link to everything in the show. Notes Taren. Really fun to connect, hear your story. It's inspiring anytime that we connect with anybody who's been doing good work for a long period of time and you're one of those people. So thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you.

Foreign.

Alexa here. And thanks for tuning into this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We hope you enjoyed it and we just so appreciate that you are here today. I wanted to give you a quick recap of what we have going on on the membership side of Food Blogger Pro in November. So Food Blogger Pro is the podcast that you're listening to right now, but it's also a membership. And with this membership you can get access to courses and forum discussions and events and so much more to help you make progress on your blog, blog and your business. So if you're interested in joining, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com join but we always add something new to the site. We always add a couple things new to the site every single month. And here's what we have going on for November. So last week on the second we released our coaching call with Chris Caldas and they are a very amazing food photographer. Definitely check them out@kriscaldes.com and in this coaching call with Bjork, they talked through things like finding flexibility in how you work, doing life, giving work, and how to kind of separate your blog from your professional website. It's a really interesting conversation and we definitely recommend you checking it out. And then On Thursday, literally two days from now, on the 9th, we have a live Q and A about TikTok with Britta Brit. Now, Britta is the amazing videographer behind Food with Feeling. And members get access to this live Q and A for free. But if you go to foodbloggerpro.com webinars, you can actually go purchase access to this Q and A to ask questions and attend live if you're not a member. So again, that is whobloggerpro.com webinars. You can find all of our webinars, including this one right there. And then on the 16th we will have a new course all about recipe batching and content batching, how it works, what it is, and how you can maybe implement some strategies to help you. If you're interested in implementing this as part of your workflow, it's going to be so great. We're really excited because this is one of those topics that we get a lot of questions about. Many people have talked about about this in the podcast before about how impactful recipe batching has been for their business. So we're really excited to have a full course to teach you how to do it. And finally, we will be releasing a trending recipes ideas this winter. Updated blog post at the end of the month, but more to come there. The last thing I wanted to mention, if you're not a member and you're interested in getting access to the community, we will have a Cyber Monday sale coming up. So if you are interested, even if you're just like a little interested, it's no commitment, you can opt in@foodbloggerpro.com cyber and we will update you as soon as the sale is live. So again, that's foodbloggerpro.com cyber all right, that does it for us this week. We hope you have a great week and we'll see you next time.

Sam.