464: How Email and High-Quality Content Helped Jason Norris Reach Millions of Monthly Pageviews with Recipe Teacher

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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 Jason Norris from the food blog Recipe Teacher. In this episode, Jason shares more about his first two websites, one of which was Windy City Fishing and the second of which was a food blog all about George Foreman Grill recipes. He sold both of those websites and then went on to start Recipe Teacher so which is a how to site featuring recipes from things like instant pot to pork chops, all sorts of easy, approachable recipes. In the early days of Recipe Teacher, he actually listed the site to sell for $1,000 and got no takers. And since that time he has grown his website to a site that is worth well over a million dollars. In this interview, he shares more about the importance of evolving your business and being adaptable. He chats about how he's grown his team of recipe developers and why email marketing and who runs due to help grow his email list from 1,000 subscribers to over 75,000 subscribers in three years. As part of that process, learn more about his demographic, which happens to be a lot of senior citizens. This is a really great interview about adapting to your audience, growing your site and just leaning into the quality of your content. Above all else, I'll just let Bjork take it away.

Jason, welcome to the podcast.

Hello and thank you so much for having me. Bjork.

Yeah, it was really fun. You put together or had this bio that you sent over and I read through this and it's your story. Which. To bury the lead we're going to or to not bury the lead. Maybe that's the best way to put it. We're going to. We're going to be talking about Recipe Teacher. This site that you've built has millions of page views. Very successful, but kind of a little teaser. At one point you put it up for sale for $1,000.

I did.

Which. And nobody bought it. And that's.

No, nobody bought it. There were no offers on it. And I thought, wow, a. This is a lemon. And eventually we made lemonade out of it. But yeah, it did not. It did not sell.

And we're going to talk about that. One of the things that's so, so great about it is it's like literally a thousand X story. Like, you think of this company that you try to sell for a thousand dollars, nobody wanted to buy it. And now it's at the point where as a company is worth, you know, mil. A million, million plus millions of dollars based on, you know, how you'd value a website in the world of content and advertising earnings. And so it's like a story of a thousand X in terms of business growth, but.

Right. And that's unfathomable to me. But it's, it's, it's cool to think about it.

Yeah. But let's take it back to your story. And this is really fun for me because it's like you go way back into, you know, anytime you start to mention AOL and somebody's story, it's like, that's where it's like really fun and nostalgic.

Yeah.

But you had started a website and the reason that we do this is, you know, you talk about this. All of this stuff kind of stacks on top of each. You know, you learn this thing and then you learn that thing and eventually you get to a point now where you have this successful site. But it all stacks, you know, like many careers do over time. And for you it was back in 1998, it sounds like, and you started a phishing website. Tell us about that. I did.

I did. Back in the summer of 1998, I think it was. I was on my way to a new lake in the Chicago area to go fishing, one that I had never been to before, and I got lost. And when I got there, it was a little different than I expected. So a Little bit after that. About a week later, I started thinking, you know, there should be a source on this new Internet thing that talks about fishing specifically in the Chicago area. So I got to work and I started learning what I could and I put together a website which at the time was called Jason Chicago area Outdoor and Fishing page. And it's incredible. Right? Right. Great name.

Right.

And it lived on AOL at some wheels like members aol.com whatever it was at the time, because AOL was huge. A couple of years later I actually was able to get the domain name windycityfishing.com I learned that whole process and I, I built a website that included message boards and then the straight HTML pages which would have the information about all the various lakes and rivers in the area.

And that was all pages. That was.

That's exactly.

Chicago area. Yes, Every lake. And then you had a message board functionality for people to like interact and talk about fishing in the Chicago area.

Exactly. And when I would see somebody would join, I was, I would get all excited and at first there were just a couple of dozen people and then that grew and grew to over 5,000 people as part of the message boards. And it really became the stepping stone for what would wind up being recipe teacher all these years later. And also my full time career, which I had for 23 plus years in graphic arts.

And when you say stepping stone, it's not like recipe teacher, it's not like Windy City Fishing evolved into recipe teacher. What you're saying is like you're learning these core fundamental things.

Exactly.

You're building an HTML page, even like the community aspect of bringing people around and, and you also use that, it sounds like to spin into a career around graphic design and like web based design or was it kind of every.

So it was, it was both print and web based. Because not only was I interested in fishing, I've also always been a fan of the band Fish with a ph.

Total.

Yeah. And years ago I had started a fanzine, a printable fanzine about the band fish. This was also in the mid-90s. So doing the fishing with an F and the fish with a ph, you know, two of my biggest hobbies, I, I learned the graphic arts both on online and in print, which led to my full time job then as a graphic artist.

I think that's one of the things that we don't give enough credit to when we're hustling to learn a thing. And oftentimes I think we get caught up in like traffic or you know, working with A sponsor and getting money and earning income. And all of that's really important because it's like fuel that drives the car forward. But I think another really tangible benefit that's. It's less tangible, but it's still impactful are the skills that we're developing as we are working on a thing. So if you have. If you're able to pair, like, something you're passionate about, like in your case, fishing, along with something you're interested in learning, graphic design in your case, like, that can be a really wonderful thing. Even if your bet on turning it into a business doesn't pan out, like, you can still come away with these really valuable things. And it sounds like that's part of your story. But even with Windy City Fishing, you eventually sold that. Like, that was something that was valuable. You had built it up. What was that? Like, somebody reach out kind of cold email and say, hey, can we buy this from you?

That's exactly what happened. And I ignored it at first because it was. This was before we got spammed every single day with people wanting to buy our websites and all. But someone had reached out to me and I ignored it. And they reached out again maybe a month later, and they said, you know, we just want to let you know we are a real legitimate company. And I researched them, and I was ready to turn the page on Windy City Fishing at that time, anyways, I felt that I had kind of taken it to a place where I was very pleased where it was, and I was ready to start the next chapter. I was still incredibly interested in fishing, which I still am. And it's the weirdest thing because when I look back on it now, I think, you know, I didn't realize it at the time. I had no idea I was going to be getting into the whole recipe thing, but I was ready for a new challenge. I know that sounds cliche, but, yeah, they came to me and they made me an offer and I was blown away by it. So of course I had to make a counter offer. And, you know, that went on a little bit, but, yeah, they bought it for a sum that at that point was a win fall to me.

Yeah.

And I didn't even know that people bought and sold websites, to be honest. So it was really cool.

It's cool to see, like, it's still active. Like, you pull it up and you still see 14 hours ago, somebody posted, like, you know, slow but kind of fun after work. And it's like a picture of them catching this fish, and it's Just what's.

Funny about that too, is all of my pages and all of my likeness remained on Windy City Fishing until just a few months ago when they completely redid the message boards and the static pages. So I'm still listed as a member of the site. I don't post on it quite as often as I used to, but, yeah, they left all my stuff up there for. For a really long time, and I'm super glad it's still successful.

Yeah, that's really fun. That's a cool thing to see exist and people continue to get value from it. What was that like for you to go through the process of somebody reaching out and then it actually happening? Like, you know, the day that you get a wire amount and it's a substantial amount, and it's like, wow, I just built a thing and sold it. And did that kind of change your mindset even, like, as you started to think about what your next thing would be?

You know, the thing that I felt most was, oh, my goodness, this is my baby. And now I have to let my baby go. And that was rewarding and a little difficult at the same time because I just. I think about all the nights that I stayed up late working on this thing. And, you know, like you had mentioned too, when I would work on some of the colors or fonts or whatever I was working on, and whenever I would come across a problem, for some reason, I always thought, you know what? I'm glad I have this problem because I'm then going to learn how to overcome it. I know this is going to be useful to me, and I'm not like that regularly. So for whatever reason that I was doing that set the stage for, you know, overcoming something. Small obstacles, and don't. Don't let those obstacles get in the way.

That's great. And is what you're saying that in the process of selling it, then one of the things that you missed was having that opportunity to, like, have a problem and solve a problem. And like, there was suddenly a gap there?

There was, yes, there was more. So I really enjoyed the creative process of it. Now, as a graphic artist, that was my creative outlet for many years, creating brochures and websites for nursing homes, which is what I did. And I also did a lot of freelance work, but I miss the creative aspect of it. I missed looking at the analytics every day, seeing the numbers and seeing, wow, this is something I built. And so that, that, yeah, that was a little hard to let go of, but it did create a new opportunity for me because I realized all those things.

Yeah. There's a friend that I know, he had a finance blog, this was years ago. And he sold it and it was like life changing amount of money. And he said the two years after that were like the most depressing two years of his life.

Yeah.

Which I think it's important for us to hear it. That's not always the case for sure. But I think it's important for us to reflect on the things, the value that we get from the things that we do each and every day outside of just the fact that it's earning income for us. It's like there's a ton of value that we get from showing up and solving problems and proactively working on a thing. And so what did that look like for you? How quickly did you get get back into after selling Windy City Fishing? Quick. How quickly did you get into another side hustle? Like where did Recipe Teacher come into it?

So Recipe Teacher came in a few years later after Windy City Fishing. I had had a health issue that ran up some hospital bills. So that was a little bit unexpected. And when the money from Windy City Fishing came in, it really helped for that. When I had the health issues, I, I needed to start having a better diet with some cardiac issues. So I bought a George Foreman Grill, just the regular little George Foreman Grill, you see it, you know, Target, Walmart, whatever. And I started learning how to make recipes for it. But I could not find a lot of recipes online, which, you know, at the time that had become where people go to find recipes. So I thought, let me make a website for George Foreman Grill recipes. And that's exactly what I did. And this was WordPress was around at the time, but it was still very much like a personal blogging type of thing. And there were other content management systems, but I just made straight HTML pages. There were no recipe cards. I started doing that and I kept at it and somebody made me an offer on that.

How long, how long had you been working on it and what, maybe two.

Or three years, I would say. And just very much a side thing, not putting a whole lot of effort into it. I did put effort into it, but you know, I had my full time job, I had everything else I was doing. So it was very much a side project.

Sure. How many recipes about did you have on it?

Oh, but probably only 30 or 40.

Okay. So it's kind of like a niche site with exactly George Foreman Grill content.

With George Foreman Grill content. Right. And you know, I never had any communication with them. It Wasn't about that.

And even with Journey, like, right, right.

I never talked. I. I did never talk to. I never talked to George and I didn't speak to the company either.

Yeah.

But, you know, doing Windy City fishing was a total labor of love. It was never about making any money. When it did make a few dollars and it was just a few, it was like, wow, this is the icing on the cake. And it was the same with the Foreman Grill recipe site. But when someone came to me and wanted to buy that, it was again, kind of mind blowing. And it's like, wow, I just sold my second website. And it was a couple of years later then that I got the idea for Recipe Teacher. And it was going to be a very simple how to make this, how to make that type of website, how to make French toast, how to make pork chops, how to make corn on the cob. And I, I put it together and I put up maybe a couple dozen recipes and it went nowhere. But I kept at it because I enjoyed it. I was learning WordPress at the time too. I was learning some more CSS and some other aspects of it, and it was fun. And then I put it up for sale because it was just doing nothing. And I thought, well, let me make a few dollars from this.

Yep.

And. And nobody bought it. So that's kind. That's sort of the lineage and the history that came up to starting Recipe Teacher.

Yeah. So he'd gone through this process of a couple. You had built a side Windy City Fishing. It's this passion project. You were able to sell it. It's not like it's, you know, you sell it and then you retire. But it's enough money where it's like, hey, this is a substantial.

Yes.

Amount of money coming in. Helps with hospital bills, like, things like that. It's like, wow, what a great thing. And then it's like, hey, I'm learning George Foreman recipes. I want to start eating a little bit differently. You go through the process building that thing, somebody reaches out, you build that. My guess is kind of similarly. It's not like it's, you know, this life changing money, but it's still amount. Where it's like, hey, I was, I was paid for a thing that I built.

Exactly.

And then you have Recipe Teacher and you kind of play with it a little bit and then you put it up for sale. Thousand dollars. People are. Don't. And was it like on a, like a marketplace or.

Yeah, I think it was. I think it was.

Yeah. So for those who aren't familiar. There's, you know, brokers, like Quiet Light Broker. We've had some of the brokers on the podcast before who work for Quiet Light. And it's more of like a, you know, they're selling stuff. 100,000, 200,000, you know, 5 million, 6 million.

Right.

You can have some of those higher priced things on a marketplace like Flippa, but you could also sell something for a thousand or two thousand dollars or even if you have a domain and you want to get rid of it, Flippa would be a place where you could do that. So you put it up and then people could bid on it. Nobody bids on it.

Nobody bid on it. I didn't one bid on that.

Yeah. So then you take it down and then what? You're like, actually, I do want to do this thing. Like, what was the decision making process and about when was it that this was happening?

This would have been probably 2017 or thereabouts. And I didn't want to completely give up on it because I enjoyed creating recipes, I enjoyed photographing them. I enjoyed, I like the whole aspect of it. What changed was I heard about this new kitchen appliance called the Instant Pot and that that literally changed my life. The Instant Pot changed my life.

That's awesome.

I went out and got one and I learned as much about this. I bought every book, I bought every magazine, I looked at every website. I learned all about this. My kitchen was a mess. I had stuff everywhere. And once I started doing instant pot recipes, the traffic started to go up.

Hmm, that's interesting. You know, it's one of the things that I think is important to understand in the world of content creation is there's all of these different variables at play. One of the variables, the obvious one, is like the quality of the content that you're creating. That's super important. Another variable at play is like, what type of content are you? Like, what is the content about? And if you're able to produce really quality content consistently and you're able to produce content around a thing that is itself rising, like in the case of an instant pot, more people are using it, more people are talking about it. We talk about it in terms of waves. If you're able to catch a wave, that's a really incredible thing. Even better if you're then also a good surfer. And what's cool to hear about your story is you had all this experience from your career, but also from going through having built multiple sites where you had kind of learned surfing and then what Happened, it sounds like is you were able to catch a wave around a type of appliance in this case.

Right.

That other people were starting to use more and talk more about. Does that feel accurate as a reflection of kind of what happened?

Completely. That's totally what happened. And it was also something I learned with Windy City Fishing is that it's important to be adaptable. Because I had had a little bit of a different vision when I started Windy City Fishing or Jason Chicago area Outdoor and Fishing page.

I was going to have Golf uk. Yeah.

And yeah, right. And I was going to have all this other outdoor stuff. But I found that people wanted the message boards. I found that people wanted the fishing information, the firsthand fishing information. So fast forward to recipe teacher. Once I started the instant pot recipes, I realized, oh, people don't want just how to make this, how to make that. Here's instant pot pork chops. Here's instant pot chicken, here's whatever. And I went with that flow. And I think being adaptable, not just in an online business, but any business, is important.

Yeah, and I think that's a great point. I think one of the things that we need to make a decision on is as creators is what is the purpose of us creating. And you know, an example in your case, Windy City Fishing, it sounds like the main thing was like, I'm passionate about this. I'm interested in it. I want to create a thing because it's interesting for me And I think 100% as people in the world create around the thing that you are inspired to create around, that's one path and it. And it's a worthwhile and worthy pursuit. Another one could be, I'm interested in, like, building thing. I want to get traffic, I want to get the, you know, followers. And if that's the avenue, what I hear you saying is be open to seeing where there's a market pull, because it's a lot easier to get pulled into something than to, like, push something on people. And if you can be open to adapting and saying, hey, this thing is actually, you know, there's a lot of people talking about this or I produced this type of content and people really responded to it. It's almost like you're doing market research a little bit and seeing where there's opportunities and then being adaptable enough to say, I'm going to continue to do this and then continue to create in this, in this way, or in this genre of content and adapt as you see stuff happening. So did that feel like kind of what you were doing in that time was you were also interested in it in this case, which works out really well. Yeah. But then you saw, hey, there's an opportunity here. I'm going to continue to create content specifically around instant pots.

Right? Well, exactly. And, you know, here's the thing, too. I'm not a chef by trade. I've always been interested in cooking. I. I find cooking part of the creative process. And. And I want everything to be just right. But with. When I started doing those instant pot recipes, I thought, you know, I can do this. This is an appliance that's geared for people just like me who are looking to make these delicious, fast recipes, if you will. And I was very comfortable in that learning space. That then led to, about a year later, the air fryer recipes, which was another appliance that I started hearing about more and more. I went out and got one, actually, I got a couple. And I had stuff. I've got this little tiny kitchen you can see behind me. I've got a small house here. I had air fryers, instant pots, and just stuff all over the place. And I loved learning it. So, yeah, that was like kind of catching another wave. That was, you know, again, finding a niche in. In cooking with the. The countertop appliances. And I. I rode that wave.

Yeah. So tell me about the moment. You know, I haven't surfed ever, but my guess is that for somebody learning. Yeah, okay. But my guess is for somebody who's learning how to surf, there's a moment where you catch a wave and it's like, oh, that's awesome. That feels really good. And did you have a similar moment with recipe teacher where it was like, you'd gotten out of the stage of, like, I'm just gonna list this on flippa for a thousand dollars. And it was like, oh, this is working. It sounds like it was kind of the stage of the, like, you're starting to do instant pot recipes. Maybe it's like the moment where you, like, had a check deposited from Ad Thrive now. Raptive or. Yeah, like what could you look to a specific moment and say, like, this was the moment where I, you know, caught your. Caught the wave.

Yeah. It was the first time I was able to pay my rent with the money I made from the website. Now, this is even before Ad Thrive. I was using just Google Adsense. And I would look at that every single day. I would log in and, you know, at first I would make a dollar or two dollars, and I would do all the math in my head and Try to figure out, wow, that's, that's $300 a year, that's $800 a year and so on. Now my rent at the time was I think $950 a month. And I remember that first month where I made $1,000 and I thought, oh my goodness, this is actually a real thing. I'm, I'm making money to pay my rent. I can't believe it. I was ecstatic about it.

Yeah.

And that was sort of the moment of wow, this is, this is something.

Yeah. And from there you've continued to do like the continual level up, figuring out now you're going out and you're kind of surfing every day you're catching waves, that thousand dollars turns into 10,000 turns into multiple tens of thousands.

Right. And I had learned.

Go ahead. I'm sorry, what is. Well, share what you're going to share. But then also like, what has that journey been like to build this into a substantial business that now pays for much more than, you know, your rent.

Yeah. So after I made the money, you know, monthly to be able to pay my rent, I had seen that other recipe websites had ads that looked much more professional and substantial than, than the AdSense ads. So I did some research and I discovered Ad Thrive. And so I, I contacted them and you had to have, I believe it was a hundred thousand page views a month to be accepted into their network. I didn't quite have it at the time, but I, I kept working at that point. Now I was really striving to get to that hundred thousand.

Yeah. Page you had like a marker and a goal that you're.

I sure did. Yeah. And, and when I got to that a couple of months later and they accepted me, I. The feeling in my stomach and the feeling in my heart of excitement of what was to come. So I went from making like $10 a day, 10, $12 a day to 40, 50, $60 a day. When I hooked on with Ad Thrive. And I just could not believe it. Here was some real money coming in. And as the months went on, I just kept watching that go up and up and it still to this day, I'm in disbelief.

Yeah.

When I log in at 9am every single morning and look at what that number is. It's knock on wood. It's life changing and it's very rewarding and very cool.

Yeah. And I think to go back to what we had talked about before, one of the things that's worth pointing out is it's the culmination of a lot of Work like, you look back to 1998 and you're learning HTML and building a site with like a, you know, billboard and you can post to it. And so I think as much as possible for all of us who are on this journey of like, building and creating and business and entrepreneurship, my encouragement to everybody listening is to think about the journey that you are on not in like one year, two years, but like decades. And thinking about how do you continue to show up? It's, you know, it's the name of our company. Tiny bit. How do you continue to show up every day, get a tiny bit better and kind of in pursuit of your goals. And what can happen is that can stack and that can build and you can develop these skills and expertise and insights and, and have a story like this, which is really reflect on that and look back on that. I know one of the things you've also done along the way is built a team. You have people that are supporting you. What did that look like as you started to make more from the site to start to think strategically about working with other people?

Yeah.

You're not doing it all on your own.

Right. And that's still very much a work in progress. But I was able to find a couple of really good recipe developers, a couple of friends, a couple of people that I found off of like freelancer sites such as Upwork. And I've tried a handful over the years and I've kind of settled into a couple now who I, who I know I can trust to make recipes that will resonate with my audience and, you know, who can help me in that process. Because as you know, you know, with Pinch of Yum, it starts with an idea for a recipe and, and then you have to test it and build it and do the whole nine yards. So being able to find a couple of good recipe developers has, has been incredibly rewarding. And that's something I really want to continue to build this because right now it's still me in, in my little house here. My girlfriend helps when she can, but I'm really hoping in the next year to build a team, especially a team that's close to home, where I can have, you know, videographers and photographers come in and I'm doing more of a directing than having my hands, you know, write in everything, because that does get tough.

Yeah, yeah. It's long days, a lot of work. There's a lot of things to be doing and you're kind of doing it all like you're the content director and dishwasher.

Exactly. And that's the biggest challenge because that little sink you see behind me overflows very quickly. Especially when you say this chicken does not look good with this plate. Let's try another, another one, let's try this kind of silverware instead. And it all piles up very quickly.

So what does a day look like for you now? Like in you get up, you know, are you straight into recipe development? Do you do keyword research? Like what are the things that you're doing on a day to day or week to week basis?

So basically I kind of reserve the mornings are my computer time with recipe teacher. You know, like I said, I, I get up and look at the numbers, the earnings and everything. But then it's getting to my emails and then a lot of it is research of like, how can I update some old recipes? That's been a real big part of it for like the last here is that when I look back at some of these older recipes, I'll, I'll try to identify some that have opportunities for growth. Maybe the images need to be updated, maybe the copy needs to be updated. And I'll, I'll work on that. I'll usually do that till around noon, then it's time to go and play by, by, by noon, I'm, unless I'm doing a shoot that day, I, I, I go out. That's where I do my fishing. That's where I enjoy the outdoors.

Awesome.

And then in the evening times, usually between like 9 o' clock and midnight, I'll have a baseball game on in the background or something like that. And it's at night where I do a lot of the like keyword research and the looking at the SEO stuff. That took a while for that whole process to kind of develop.

That whole process being like your day. Yeah. To like refine your day into what feels good.

Yes. Because I didn't know at first, my first day of freedom from a full time job, my first day of having my own business. I, I didn't know how to do that. Should I, should I, should it be 9 to 5? Should I take specific breaks? And you know, different people do it different ways. And, and I found a workflow that works. I'm, I'm up fairly early, I'm up very late at night and those were the times I really like to work. So that's kind of how that developed.

Yeah, it's one of the wonderful things that we have in being an entrepreneur is like to some degree you can kind of control your day and figure out what it what you want it to look like. Now, obviously there's always considerations where you start to grow a team and then you want to be available for that team in certain times. And you know, there's all of the kind of considerations that go with building a business. But to some degree it can be one of the most valuable things that you have, which is like autonomy and the ability to kind of craft what you want your day to look like. And for everybody, it's a little bit different. I'm curious to know as you've been. Well, one of the questions that I had was like, when was that first day when you worked on. It was just like, now you're done with your job and you're working on your site full time. What was that like?

That was, that was very bizarre and very surreal. What had happened was in 2019, I had started to look at some of the numbers that I was making with recipe teacher. And I remember at the beginning of the year I started thinking, you know, I'm making this. If this went up a little bit, I could actually start to entertain the notion of maybe doing this full time. So I'm kind of calculating all the numbers in my head. And as 2019 went on and the numbers continued to get better and better, it became more and more reality. But leaving a full time job with benefits, with security is a tough thing to do. But it was, it was the day after Christmas. It was December 26, 2019. We had a 60 degree day here in Chicago. And I thought, wonderful, I can take my kayak out and go fishing today. And, and I did. And I remember exactly where I was on the Des Plaines River. I remember the exact lure I used. And I caught a pretty nice northern pike and I was just thrilled. Here we are in December. I don't get to do a lot of fishing in December. I caught this fish, I release him back in the water and then I thought, oh man, the weather is going to be nice for the next couple days, but I have to go back to work.

Yeah.

And it was at that moment where I decided it's time. And yeah, and I think that was like a Thursday or something like that. And the weekend was coming up and on Monday I asked my boss if we could talk and I said, you know, my business is taking off. I'm going to make January 30th my, my last day. So I gave them a month, a little more than a month's notice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when that finally came around, that, that very first day, I'm sitting here just in disbelief that I can sleep in a little bit. And time. Time to start cooking.

Yeah. That's awesome. You know, and it's one of the things Lindsay's actually in today. She's cooking, she's like, these are my favorite days. And it's the day where she's just like in the kitchen making recipes. Testing recipes.

Yes.

And it's just such.

I love that. I love doing that.

Yeah. Which is so cool. Before we continue, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

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So how about in your day to day, week to week, what are the tools that you have found to be most helpful? Like is there something that you are using, you know, as you look to do keyword research or project management or like kind of your digital tool set? What are the things that have been helpful as you've worked through continuing to build your site?

So I've probably been a little bit unorthodox with that. One of the things early on going all the way back to Windy City fishing was obviously learning what SEO is search Engine optimization. And when I started doing Recipe Teacher, I wanted it to be another labor of love, like Windy City Fishing and some of the others were. But obviously now it was a business. I didn't want to chase SEO. I wanted that to come naturally and organically. Now I would still use tools. Key Search was one that I really liked. It was very affordable, laid out very nicely. I still have it. I've got Semrush. I've used some of the others. You know, obviously Google Search Console and Google Trends and all that. I look at all of these to stay up to date on everything. I don't think there's ever been a night where I've actually said I need to find keyword opportunities because I kind of have an idea what's going to work. What can become an evergreen recipe, what maybe isn't going to become an evergreen recipe. I just did a recipe and my girlfriend and I love it. It's for gnocchi with butternut squash and sage butter sauce. And it's. It's absolutely delicious. I know that that recipe is probably not going to wind up being an evergreen recipe, just by the very nature of it. Gnocchi and sage butter sauce and all that stuff isn't hugely popular. But it's important to have recipes on the site that, that aren't going to be evergreen. You have to have a little bit of everything. Because somebody finds a noki recipe, they're going to start looking at other recipes too. So I try, I've always tried not to chase SEO. I try to let it happen kind of organically with what I've learned along the way. And a lot of that includes reading, you know, a lot of sites about, you know, the current state of search engine and search engine results and all that sort of thing.

Yep.

I also have a developer who I absolutely love and trust 100%, because having to mess around with like plugins or color changes or anything like that, I don't want to do any of that anymore. And I stopped doing that several years ago. That was what that was. Probably the first really big tool that I used was getting a developer and taking all of that off of my plate. So if ever I needed a change to something, I'd call her up or text her email or say, hey, Kathy, can you put this plugin in? Or let's do that. That was probably one of the most important early decisions I made in getting people and tools in place.

Yeah. Just to be able to have those things where you have somebody who's an expert, a Deep expert on a thing. And I think about this a lot. Like, as we start to scale businesses, one of the things that we need to get good at is routing. Meaning you have an idea, a task, something that needs to get done. Where does that go? Who's the person that you assign it to? I think about that even within. Lindsay Ellis gives me a hard time about this. But, like, even within the context of, like, our personal life, like, if we have, you know, it's like a plumbing issue. It's like, do we have like a plumber in our black book that we go to? And there's the equivalent in the business world where it's like, you know, if you have an issue in your case, like talking about the recipe and development of the site, where do you go for that? If you have, you know, somebody, then you want to bring them in and have help with photography, like, who do you go for that? And over time, as much as possible, if we can become routers for the things that we don't want to do or aren't best to do them, even if we do want to do them, there's somebody else that's maybe better at it in order to, as much as possible focus on and work on the thing that we are uniquely skilled for.

And it's exactly right.

Yeah. Part of your evolution has been saying, okay, you did build sites in HTML. You understood how to do that. You still probably could, but that means that you'd spend two to three hours working on that instead of developing a new recipe or testing recipe or working on content on the site.

That's exactly right. And, you know, a prime example of that came up the other day. I was having a zoom meeting with a graphic artist for a project that we're working on. And I've used her for a couple of things in the past. Now, I hired this graphic artist when that was my job for 23 years, was a graphic artist, but I'm a few years removed from it. I haven't been flexing that graphic artist muscle a lot with the print stuff. And so I wanted to reach out to somebody who was the best. And I've kind of made that a point for several aspects of the business over the last couple of years. And I think I learned that from my time in the corporate world because I remember the business owners that I worked with, they wanted the very best people around them. And I learned early on that I wanted the very best people around me. Another really good example of that came from one of your podcasts. I was listening to on the way home from fishing one night. And you had Ally from Duet on talking about email marketing. And I remember that interview and I remember thinking, she sounds like the best. I have to work with her. And I reached out to her shortly thereafter and that was one of the best decisions I ever made too, was working with her and getting that whole thing established. So, yeah, being able to find the right people to work with, making sure you don't take it all on yourself, even though you think you can. It's super important to get the right people to do it. That investment's going to pay off.

That's awesome. Yeah, that's a perfect example. So Allie is a FoodBlocker Pro Expert. She's been on the podcast before. Her company, Duet D U E T T CO if people want to check that out. Can you talk about, like, how you approach email? What does that look like for you? And is that an important piece? It sounds like an important piece of the puzzle as you continue to kind of grow the different areas of recipe.

So it wasn't important early on, only because I was trying to take on every aspect of the business myself. And I did set up a very rudimentary. I had some emails that would go out once in a while. I think it wasn't convert kit. It might have been constant contact. It was one of those. And I kept hearing about the importance of building a. An email base. And so when I. When I heard, you know, Ali on your podcast, that was when it really dawned on me. I have to do this. And working with her. My email list was maybe a thousand or so when we started working together three years ago. It's now 75,000 and a very integral part of the whole recipe teacher experience. A big thing we learned from that whole thing too was that I have a demographic of senior citizens that I had no idea I had because once I started really going hard with the emails, I would start getting a lot of response from visitors to the site. And there's so many times where I would get an email from Mildred, who is so thankful she found recipe teacher.

Yeah.

And her and her husband are retired and they're 82 years old and they. Their daughter got them an air fryer and they didn't know what to do with it. And then they found my site and they love pork chops and blah, blah, blah. And every time I get one of those emails, I share it with my girlfriend. And that brightens her day also.

Totally. Yeah.

And so I never expected that that was going to be part of this whole thing.

Yeah.

So doing the emails has really helped me learn my demographic along the way.

Yeah. And it's such an important piece to understand, really is. And it's almost like personifies those people. As you start to do that, you start to get a better understanding, like, oh, Mildred. And you kind of think about her as you're creating content then and 100%.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's great. So now you're sending out emails, like every time you have a new recipe. What does that look like?

Yeah, every time I have a new recipe, I send one out. And you know, everybody's got slightly different approaches to emails. I've tried it a couple of different ways. I've tried having kind of a long little story before I get right into the, the recipe. I've tried getting right to the recipe. Not all that different from the recipe posts themselves. You know, we've all, we all obviously have the story that goes along with the recipe. Those have changed over the years and I think the approach of that with email has changed a little bit too. So I, I try to make them personal. I try to make them all from me. I want the, the, the reader to understand that this is actually me sending these out.

Yeah.

And aside from several of the templated ones, the sequences that Ali has put together, every time I have a new. I make the email for it and I put it together and it gives me the opportunity, maybe something happened that day. Maybe I caught a nice fish or maybe I got back from vacation or something. It's nice to be able to share that little bit of my personality with the readers through the email. And I'll say, you know, I'm really excited. I've got this new recipe for gnocchi with butternut sage squash, but with butternut squash and sage butter sauce. And I hope you love it. And so I basically do keep them kind of short and sweet. I like to have a nice picture of it. And the response has been great.

Cool. That's awesome. There's something to be said. The. It's not quantifiable, but it's significant, the personality connection to content. And I think especially in absolutely post helpful content world, I think one of the things that we're finding is the importance of connection to your audience. Yes, it's hard because it's also. It's not scalable in a way where it would be if you're just producing content en masse, but like it's also a little bit of a moat. It's something that differentiates you from another site that's doing recipes, which is like it's you that's the differentiator and it's people who follow along with you and know you and yes. And that's such an important piece and email is such a great format to do that. So it's cool to hear about your story and growing that in such a significant way. What have been the things that have helped grow that list the most? Is there something that changed that really helped with growth?

I just think the natural growth of the website.

Sure.

And I think the content itself and as recipe teacher continued to grow and I start to learn the demographic a little bit more and I start to learn what recipes really work and I can keep generating that content and the feedback that I would get from the email saying, we love that you use simple ingredients, we love the way you explain it. Now, I didn't invent this. There's a lot of websites that have easy recipes with pantry friendly ingredients, sure. As you know. But there's room for your own personality in this. And I think that's where it was a combination of hard work and I think luck that my style of writing has resonated with people enough that there's been this natural growth to the site. And like you said, in the era of the content updates and AI and everything else, I think it is imperative more than ever to have that personal connection with your content, with your audience and you can do that through email in a great way. So yeah, I think that's really important.

Yeah. So incredible success story. You put it up for flippa. A thousand dollars. People are like, no, we're not gonna buy that.

Right.

Take it down, decide to work on it, grow it to this great success. Do you ever think about like, hey, what is the value of this thing now? Having been through selling a website multiple times and like selling it now, like is that ever on the table?

Well, you know, like you talked about earlier, there are formulas that are generally used for the value of websites. So as time has gone on, I've always kind of known in the back of my head what a general value is of the site. If someone were to come to me now with that number, I would not, I would not sell it. It's far too valuable to me personally and in terms of growth. So. But yes, I have thought about that number. And when I think about those numbers, like this whole process, it just, it's surreal and it blows my mind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's funny how in a matter like a Short matter of time, relatively, if you are building a business and if you consider that to be part of, like your collective net worth is the value of the business. Like, there's some really crazy stories of people having an idea whether it's a recipe site or not. Like, it could be really any business, but if, if something takes off, it's like that could have such a substantial impact not only on your day to day, like you're able to go out and kayak at noon. That's a really wonderful thing. But also like, we are creating these really valuable companies and they, that's what they are. They're companies. And so I think it's important that we think about that as well as, you know, the maybe a certain type of freedom that it gives you or cash flow that it could potentially create in and of itself. It's also valuable. So last question for you. As you think about people who are listening, maybe they're in that stage of saying, you know, they have the site, they would list on Flippa for $1,000 and maybe nobody would buy it. What would your advice be for those listeners?

So, you know, I've had people ask me before, how do you start a website? And I'll hear people say, well, I've got recipes and I can start a website too. What I tell them now is go to Food Blogger Pro if you want to get.

Yeah.

If you want to get all the tips on how to start. Yeah. And that's the truth. But basically I tell people, don't get hung up on what's the color of my website going to look like? What are the fonts going to look like? What's all. None of that matters. What matters is your content. And if you have an idea for something, just do it. Open a Word document and start typing. Whether it's a recipe, whether it's the review of a restaurant or a golf course or something like that. Content is king. Start working on your content because without it, you don't have anything.

Yeah, I love that. And so much of it isn't learning the new trick or tool. It's just correct getting into it. It's like I've been starting. I played tennis in high school and I loved tennis. And I've just recently started to pick it back up. And I know it's not about watching a bunch of YouTube videos. It's getting out and actually hitting and then watching YouTube videos.

Right, right.

Exactly those things.

Yes.

In tandem. But the important thing is without, like in your case, without the content, you don't have anything to work with and to, you know, analyze and to think about. And so the first part is always like, create the thing. And then you can step back and look at it and say, how do I improve the thing now that I've created it? I think that's great advice. So.

And especially today, there's so many tools available at all of our disposals with like WordPress and everything else that it makes it a lot easier. But you can't do anything without content.

Yep. That's great. Jason, if people want to follow along with you, connect with you, what's the best way to do that?

Go right to RecipeTeacher.com and you'll see the address for all of our different socials. For Instagram, for Pinterest, for Facebook. Facebook. And you can email me@mangocipeteacher.com I don't particularly love mangoes or dislike them.

Yeah, what's the story with that?

Yeah, I, I like the song. The Mango song by Fish. Yes. So I just, I had to come up with something and. And that's what I did.

I love it. That was gonna be one of the questions. I'm glad you mentioned it because I saw on the calendar invite it was Mango at Recipe Teacher.

Yeah. So that's, that's my, my little nod to Fish. Yeah.

That's awesome. Well, Jason, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story.

Hey, thank you so much, Bjork. This has been, this has been great and it's a pleasure to talk to you.

Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Since it is the first week of a new month, I wanted to take some time to highlight what will be going on in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. So for the month of June, we have a few great things scheduled and we're going to kick it off with a coaching call. In June's coaching call, Tara Smithson from the food blog Simply Made Eats joined Bjork to talk about how to develop, stick with and revise goals in the first few years of blogging, how to manage your time when you're feeling overwhelmed, and how to approach building backlinks for your site. It's an awesome coaching call, so make sure to watch the video replay on Food Blogger Pro or catch the audio version on our members only podcast, Food Blogger Pro on the go. And that will be live on June 6th. Next up, we have a live Q and A on June 13th. All about creating systems. Chris from the Business Creative Biz Launch will be joining us to chat all about how to create systems, which systems are most important, and how systems can transform your business. So that will be on Thursday, June 13 at 2pm Eastern Time, 1pm Central Time, and we look forward to seeing you there. Remember that you can submit questions in advance. If you have anything, you know that you would like. Chris and Bjork to cover to round out the month, we're going to be doing what we're calling our Summer Lesson Cleanup. We're going to be doing lots of small edits and tweaks to a lot of our existing lessons. Just as we always talk about the importance of updating and republishing old content, we're going to be doing the same over on Video foodblogger Pro so you might notice some updates or changes to existing courses just to make them more current and useful for our members. If you are not yet a Food Blogger Pro member, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com membership to learn more and join us. We would love to have you, and if you're already a member, we look forward to seeing you next month in the Forum and at our live Q and A. That's it for this week. Make it a great week.

SA.