How Jessica Robinson Built a Profitable Food Brand Without SEO

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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. Today on the podcast we are chatting with Jessica Robinson from a farm girl's kitchen. We actually had several listeners reach out and recommend Jessica for a podcast interview, and after editing this interview, I can definitely see why. Jessica has taken an unconventional path to achieving success with her food blog. She first started out by publishing a couple of cookbooks and then decided it was time to time to start her site. Instead of focusing on traditional SEO practices, she has really leaned into Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram as traffic drivers and sources of income for her business. Jessica shares her tips for growing her audience on social media, monetizing through the Facebook Content Monetization Program and Amazon affiliate links, and how her short form videos not only drive site traffic, but also boost her SEO. With over 430,000 followers on Facebook and a rapidly expanding presence across platforms, Jessica emphasizes the importance of diversifying income streams and traffic sources and shares more about connecting with her audience through relatable, authentic content and storytelling. We've been hearing more and more about the importance of Facebook as a traffic source. Bjork even shares a little bit more about how Pinch of Yam has been focusing on Facebook lately. I feel like this interview has a lot of practical tips for growing your presence on Facebook and we hope you'll get a lot out of it. So I'm just gonna let Bjork take it away.

Jessica, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah we're going to talk about your journey as a creator as we often do on this podcast. There's going to be some really fun things that we're going to talk about. One of the things that I think people will be really interested in talking about in this four week period, how you grew your Instagram from by 140,000 Facebook 130,000. 20,000 followers. On TikTok, we're going to be talking about growing your Amazon earnings, Facebook monetization program. But before we do that, always helpful to set it up, a little bit of context, how you got started. And it sounds like you had a business before this and there were some changes and pivots within that industry that led you to the world of food and food content. So take us back to that moment and how you got into what you're doing now.

I was a wedding and event floral designer and I had my own company. But when the economy tanked, no one would need. They didn't need my services anymore. So I pivoted because I grew up on a farm and I had learned how to cook. We had a. My mother had printed a little ring bound cookbook and she was out of copies. So she said, why don't you write a cookbook? And I didn't want to self publish. So I researched how to publish a cookbook and I was able to sign a cookbook contract. I sold the cookbook twice within 10 days to different publishers. Yeah, I was able to negotiate that.

How did that. So that was before you had a following. Yep. Yeah. So talk a little bit about that. How did you go about doing that and what were the publishers and how did you connect with them?

Right. So being unpublished, you're not the perfect person for a literary agent either. I did have a literary agent, but her contract, there was something in it and it said if you don't give her written notice within two weeks, that your contract automatically rolls over. So I decided that I was going to fire her and I reached out and I just googled how to. How to write a proposal. And I hired a ghostwriter who had cookbook experience and it was $300. And she instructed me how to write a cookbook proposal. And from doing that I was able to reach out to independent publishers and then sold it. I sold the first one within nine days. I sold the first one and then they saw success and I signed another contract with them for a second cookbook right away.

So this was. You were coming out of the kind of wedding and event floral business. The economy shifts and there's not as much need for that type of business. So you say, okay, what's next? You have this idea to do cookbooks. You go hardcore research mode. Learn how to do that. You reach out to independent publishers. What were the cookbooks about? Were they kind of topical in nature or how did you position and those as you pitched them?

So the first one was New England Farm Girl. One of my mistakes was I actually wrote, I was very vocal about it. I had all the social media platforms, so it was actually originally named New England Kitchen and someone stole the title to my cookbook. So right prior to it being published, I had to pivot.

Oh, interesting.

The publisher actually chose Farm Girl for me and I was a little upset by it at first, but everything changes and we pivoted and changed and I was able to take that. And the first cookbook was New England Farm Girls. So it was an ag tourism with a little bit of cooking into it. My mother's words were, everyone always needs to cook. And so I had all these family heirloom recipes and I had a tremendous knowledge of baking and cooking from scratch. And I thought, why not do a cookbook and get published? I did not want to sell. I personally did not want to self publish. Now the cookbook's also saying that they do not give you a huge amount of income. So one of the girlfriends, I met a girl at EFC and she said.

Efc, can you explain that for people who aren't here?

EFC was at everything Food conference. And just on a whim, my husband paid for me to go because at that time I also didn't have an income because I had closed the wedding business and I really didn't have, other than the cookbook, I didn't have an income. So he sent me out there and I met Lisa from Delicious Table. She was this big personality and she said, I'm gonna help you monetize your website. You're gonna start taking some of this content you have and you're going to earn an income. And not, she said, not have to depend on your husband or whatever. Because I had been so independent with the wedding flowers, it was very unusual to not have an income. Having to ask him for can you put fuel in my truck? Or whatever. I didn't want to do that. Sure. She helped me.

That's awesome. Love that idea of, you know, one of the things we talk about is even if you aren't doing something like a side hustle full time, even if it's part time, it's one of the great things about it is that if there ever is a need for you to scale up, to do it full time, you have the skills and abilities, you have the understanding of the industry. It was actually from there's this software company called Intercom. We use it for support for some of our companies. And it was one of their podcasts and they talked about the importance of side hustles. Not always because you want to build them into a full time hustle. Obviously for you, you know, over the years you've done that, but the benefit of those to have as kind of optionality. And in your case, what you talk about is this idea of, hey, you want to make sure that you have the ability to scale up, create your own income. And that's true. Even if somebody has a full time job, for instance, to have this thing that's kind of in the background, if there ever is a time when you need to scale it up. We've had a lot of those conversations with people where they're like, hey, loved my job and I had this thing that I was working on and I could scale it up. In your case, it sounds like you had this job that went away, this business that went away. You were in this transitional period and you said, I want to make sure that I'm producing my own income. But then how do you do that? And so then you went into research mode. You started to understand it. You had these cookbooks, the cookbooks kind of proof of concept. You know, I'm able to create a thing, right? We were all talking about how we are creators. I'm able to create a thing and earn income from that. But then what does it look like to do that repeatedly over time? Not in a passive way, none of this is truly passive, but maybe in a predictable way where month to month, you know, you're going to get ad income, you're going to get Facebook income, you know you're going to get Amazon income. And it sounds like you've been on a journey ever since that conversation at Everything Food conference with Lisa. As somebody who kind of kicked off that idea of, hey, what does it look like to really build this thing in a way where you have these online platforms that you're using to create an income. So talk about the, the maybe the chapters along the way that bring you to where you are today. What did that first chapter of starting look like?

So in 2020, right before COVID before we got shut down for lockdown, my mom passed away and Lisa, actually then, because we've become close Friends, So we have video calls. And she said, throw yourself into work to deal with grief and whatnot. And I'm 700 miles away from home. So I focused tremendously on Pinterest at that point, because Pinterest, I knew Lisa was doing a lot of things and other people were getting SEO, but I didn't. I wasn't so focused on SEO. I'm not a technical person. I'm more creative. And so I focused solely a lot on Pinterest, but as well as Facebook. And I grew those platforms. Pinterest was driving quite a few. 50,000, 75,000. I was able to monetize within three months, basically.

Yeah. When you say three months, three months of starting work on growing Pinterest, like you're able. It wasn't really happening. And then you're like, hey, I'm gonna really get after this. I'm gonna grow this. And, you know, getting 50,000 page view user sessions or whatever we'd wanna call them. But basic idea being you're able to scale that up in the world of Pinterest. You know, lots of different, you know, ways to measure that, but let's say it's for even numbers, predictable. You know, there's $50 revolutions per minute. It's like, oh, that's. You could be making within three months, 2,500, $3,000 from Pinterest as a traffic source. That's like a great income, especially creating that from saying, hey, for three months, I'm going to focus on this and kind of scale it up. That's like 30 to $40,000 a year from a kind of concerted effort to build that as a traffic source.

Right. And I believe in 2022, I actually brought in because Pinterest at that time had a 21 or 22. They had a. Excuse me, they had a creator's fund. And I would. And I earned $25,000 that year. Pins I was going to create anyway to go to my.

From Pinterest.

Yes.

Yeah. Interesting. Not only. This is. This is where it's like we get to double dip as creators. Facebook is an example of this. Pinterest creator fund on Instagram will occasionally get bonuses from Instagram where it's like, oh, not only are you going to create that content anyways, also with Pinterest, especially Facebook, a little bit, not only are you going to get traffic from that, but also you might get paid from the platform itself. So is there talk about the creator of Pinterest that, that, that. Is that still around? What did that. Did that. Did they fold that? What does that look like right now?

I think 2020 changed all of things too, because brands, to me, it seemed like as far as where I am for my following, it seemed like even through going through something called social fabric was. Was one of the platform you sponsored content. Everything was shifting at that point, so brands were getting tighter with budgets. And I only had Pinterest creator fund for one year.

Got it.

But. And one of the other things I always say is not to put your eggs all in one basket. So be willing to learn to adapt and create content, but know that you, you know, Pinterest might go away. Facebook monetization might go away. I hope it doesn't, but it might.

Yeah.

So I need to make sure I'm bringing income in from multiple platforms.

Yep. Do you know, is the Pinterest creator fund still active? I have a. Okay. They've folded it completely.

Correct.

Okay, Got it. Yep. And so can you talk a little bit about Pinterest? I'm sure a lot of people are interested to hear other people who are really good at Pinterest and have, you know, really plugged in there what that has looked like for you over the last five years.

And I, and I will say that I'm a little different than everyone else. I kind of marched to my own beat.

Sure.

So I am one that. Being raised in a farm, I think that was my mentality too, of I've always thought of this being a business. So if I didn't have the income from my website or my food blog, then I didn't spend it. So I never did things like Pinterest. Scheduling, scheduling platforms. I schedule everything right on Pinterest. I don't hire out currently, though at some point I should because I've grown so much. So I schedule right on Pinterest. And I'm also of the theory that less is more quality over quantity. And I just do really beautiful pictures. I found more success with doing video pins where I have the finished image on the bottom of the pin and a video pin on the top or two pictures. So even if your step images are photographed on your phone and then you throw in the. Throw in the finished image and then you'll have your graphic in the middle. Just I think scheduling things and having consistency. I also am a big fan of group boards, which other people are not anymore. I found great success with that.

Have you seen traffic shift like a hundred percent? Okay. Yeah. Because I think one of the things that's helpful is just hearing from other people, which is Just like people know that people hear it. But to know sometimes it's like, gosh, is this me? What am I doing wrong? But I think it's, it's from what I hear, it's like universally people are getting less traffic from Pinterest.

Yeah. So I think at one point I was getting something like a hundred thousand sessions or page views from Pinterest, but I'm no longer doing that.

Yeah.

Now seeing one of the things that I think I did with Pinterest was noticing that a lot of people had gotten hit over the years with Google algorithm updates. And I'm not that person that says, oh no, I got hit. And you get really upset about it. I like to put my mind to it and just shift and go, what? I'm going to figure it out. What am I going to do about this? So knowing that that happens with Google, my thought was if 90% of my traffic was coming from Pinterest, what if something happens with Pinterest? I cannot afford to lose all my traffic.

Yeah.

So I shifted towards doing video content and, and creating video content for recipes that were already on my website.

Got it. So you started to see this reliance on Pinterest from a traffic perspective. Okay, what does that mean if it goes away? And I would say even in our world, it's not if it goes away, but it's just like when something goes away. Because no platform is going to live forever, no traffic source is going to be there forever, the Internet will be here forever. But like how people use it will change and it will shift. And the question, the hard part for us as creators is when do you make that shift? When do you start to build momentum on another platform and when do you not and just say like, hey, I'm going to continue to create here, it's working. And as long as it works, it doesn't make sense for me to double down somewhere else. There isn't a great solution to it. And usually what I would say is I think if something is working, continue to go deep there as bandwidth opens up, whether your own time or you hire somebody to help, then you can start to look at these other platforms building momentum there as well. So it sounds like Pinterest started to shift, you started to see that and also just knew you didn't want to be reliant on a single platform. What was the next focus area for you? It sounds like taking some of that thinking about short form video and posting to other platforms.

So I had some growth on Facebook, Instagram. I'd always Have a love hate relationship with Instagram. It was never really my thing, but I decided that I was gonna focus on Facebook. And then what little bit of video content that I did, I started to grow with reels almost instantly.

On Facebook.

On Facebook, and at the time, you could do either videos or reels. And then I would post consistently. So I spent a couple years consistently posting. I also am someone who looks at algorithms and really looks at things to see what's gonna get the most for my money. You know, bang for my buck as far as like scheduling content. And I scheduled content through their platform and realized that anything I scheduled in the evening did really well.

Sure.

And I actually took. If we sort of rewind. Pinterest had idea pins and so I went through idea pins and just copied and pasted where I had written the ingredients, but there were no amounts. And a little blurb about the recipe and I copied and pasted those into that video content on Facebook. And it did really well because I think they were intrigued at the video. But then it looped the video loops around.

Yep.

And then they were like, well, where's the recipe? So they started to click to my website through that.

Sure. Yep. It's another one of those examples of kind of double dipping where you're creating content on a platform. You're getting paid for that. So let's talk about Facebook a little bit. You have over 430,000 followers on Facebook. You talked about short form video being really important. Can you talk about, you know, month to month, how much could you expect to earn just from Facebook? They have the Facebook monetization program, I think it's called, or something like that. What does that look like? And then also the traffic side of it.

Okay, so Facebook is my number two traffic driver. And what's happened is some of those reels on Facebook have gone viral. Millions of views. And I'm actually giving them the entire recipe sometimes. Sometimes I don't. But most times I just give them the entire recipe right there. I give the ingredients maybe an abbreviated description and sometimes with a link. Sometimes I'll just say all the recipes are on my website. Once they go viral, then they also. Most people do not want to have to read a recipe off of their phone. So they end up going to the website anyway. And those have become my top recipes for traffic. And now I'm realizing because since May, for some reason now I'm ranking on Google, which I've never ranked. Really on Google.

Sure. Like the recipe itself is ranking. And often what I'm Guessing is what you're saying is there's some correlation that you're seeing between a video that is viral on Facebook in this instance and the ranking of that video of that recipe on your website, Is that right?

Correct. And things that I would have never dreamed to rank for, like for example, cinnamon rolls.

Sure.

I'm ranking for cinnamon rolls on the first page number two or three. Never would have thought ever. That recipe is actually photographed primarily on my phone. So they're not even perfect pictures. And then now I'm ranking because Google now seems to have a short tab or shorts. And when you search on either desktop or your phone, I'm ranking the recipe and then my content for my video, whether it's Instagram or Facebook, is showing up and being pushed almost at the top.

Yeah, it's one of the interesting things that we're seeing with search results is it's not just, you know, a recipe page now. It's also short form video content. Or you'll see it with Twitter, like that's. Or X. Like we're, you know, creators in our world aren't posting on X a lot, but if you search something a lot of times, like I see it in the world of sports, like a lot of times if you're searching for a sports related event, there'll be like a carousel of X results. And so there is the kind of segmentation of search results where we usually think about it as like the link to your, you know, the recipe page. But there's a lot of other places that we're starting to see recipe content show up, one of which is short form video content. Facebook being an example. What does that look like from an earnings perspective? So if you have 400,000 followers, you have the occasional viral video. For somebody who's kind of thinking of that or in that world, how much could they expect to earn from a Facebook page? Like let's say they were only paid, you know, there was traffic, wasn't a consideration. What would that look like?

So right now I earn anywhere from 1500 to about $3000 per month on Facebook. But in addition, they're coming to my website from that link. So I earn income there. And then they're also shopping for my Amazon affiliate.

Sure. Yep. And that's something that we're going to talk about. Just kind of the strategic use of Amazon affiliate links. Uh, before we get there, how often are you posting on Facebook? What does that frequency looks like, look like? And it sounds like you're just doing that within Facebook, is that right?

Right. So I think maybe. So I started the journey really, when I started to go viral in June. Now, I've been posting consistently before, and I would post consistently probably four times, five times a day on Facebook, and that was through the creator space. So I would schedule that right on Facebook through their meta dashboard. And then someone said to me, I don't really. I don't have a set thing. I don't really. I don't really, you know, have a schedule or look at the algorithm. When I have something to post, I just post it. So it started to get me thinking, well, maybe I should just get in the kitchen, not think about it so much. Maybe not. Schedule seat. And the other thing I was doing personally was because 90% of your videos on Facebook are being showed to new followers, and not everyone, you know, only a small percentage of people that follow you are really seeing your content. So I would repost. As long as you were kind of mixing up and rotating content, I would repost, which I still do some, but for the most part, I'm recording video and I'm just throwing up one or two a day. Now. I don't. I'm not really doing too many more or an organic post. Like, I can. I can do an organic post where I just either take a short video or a photo and say, this is what I'm doing in the kitchen. And there's no outbound link, so they just. They go crazy over it. They want to know where the recipe is. You know what I'm doing everything.

Yeah, it's. It's interesting when I pull up. So we just switched on to the, like, monetization content, monetization for Facebook. And just because it's interesting, I think for people listening, you know, as much as possible, we're trying to search here, like, actual numbers. Pinch of Yum. Pinch of Yum has 510,000 followers. We're. We're trying to say, like, okay, how can we be smart about Facebook? We've had enough conversations with people where they're like, hey, we're earning money from this. We're getting traffic from this. Kind of been a neglected platform for us. So we're start. We're early on in our journey of kind of trying to figure this out. For Pinch of Yum, we are earning, like, in the last 28 days, we earned $1,263. But what's interesting is to look at the kind of split here. So from reels, we have 50% of the earnings from videos, 250 stories, 200 photos 166 and then text 0 because we're not really publishing any text. So number one, if anybody has any ideas for us on how we could level up the pinch of yum Facebook page, reach out to me. Bjorkinybit.com Number two, I'd be interested in your end, Jessica. The things that you have learned around how to optimize earnings on Facebook, what are the things that you are doing that you feel like are most beneficial from an earnings perspective?

So Facebook, for example, I think the more they like your content, the higher they'll pay you. So getting myself on camera, putting my face in my kitchen, even though I was a little leery of doing it right. I'm self conscious sometimes about weight or whatever. Everything right about judgmental people. And so for a while I was doing just my hands or maybe you know, from face down, the rolling pin and Yep. And I would add voiceover. So voiceover was huge. But when people make a personal connection to you and to your brand, so they start to see me as a real person and that my recipes or even. Cause I do recipes, I do home canning, I do some homesteading items where we're growing some vegetables and either canning or making marinara sauce or whatever, they see it as obtainable. They see it even though even being not perfectly thin, they see it, they relate to it. They see the cast iron on the wall, they see the dog or they hear it. And that's one thing too. I used to get really, I was very concerned about not having anyone around in the kitchen. Not worried about noises. I no longer worry about that. I mean, I don't want them slamming doors or coming through while I'm trying to create video content. But if the dog barks, the dog barks. People relate to that.

Yeah, it's. There's something around the evolution of content on the Internet where. And I think it came. I think this shifted when stories came out where there is a version of Internet content that was very curated, it was very beautiful. Everything was set in a way that made it look like magazines. It almost felt like you have magazines and then you have photos on the Internet and you have a photo in a magazine and then you carry that over to the Internet and you have people then trying to emulate the brands that they are seeing, also creating curated images. But as soon as stories started to come out as a medium of content, it was almost like because it was so easy to flip your camera on and press record and you're in your kitchen, I think there was a shift towards people being real. Like, here's me producing content in my kitchen. And the purpose isn't so much to project my perfect life. The purpose is to allow you to see yourself in me and me, to show you how to do something that might be helpful, at least in our world. Right?

Yeah.

To say, here's how you can make this recipe. And you can make this recipe when the dog is here, the kids are running around like it's real life. And I think something about that, like, it's important to create content because I think it normalizes normal, but I also think it works like there is something compelling about that type of content. And so when you. When you say that, it makes a lot of sense.

The other thing for me, too, personally, was, I think, being raised in a farm. And my mother was an expert baker. She ran a wedding. An event. I'm sorry, no, what? She did wedding cakes for, you know, and had this. She had a bakery business. So she would sell bread on the. Every weekend. And you cook and clean and bake and whatever on the farm. Right. Because you have to feed people on the farm. But I thought stupid, but I thought that everyone knew how to cook or bake.

Sure.

And so there's a lot of these things that I've learned, even though I have no professional culinary experience other than being on the farm and working in a catering business a little bit, and I worked at a bakery, but other than that, I have no culinary experience. So I thought, well, people know this, and the end of the day, they don't. And there's even vintage recipes. So I've gone nostalgic. And they, they recognize that and they connect with it on a personal level.

Yeah. I think there's this concept I talked about a more, you know, early on, but I think we need to talk about it more often on the podcast, which is expert enough. You don't have to be, you know, cordon blue trained for three years. Like, it almost becomes detrimental if you are trying to speak to the masses. And so many of us are expert enough. Meaning, like, I am not an incredible guitar player, but I'm expert enough to teach somebody who doesn't know any guitar. And it's probably better for me to do that initially than somebody who's been training for two decades and knows classical guitar and, you know, is one of the best in. In the world because they're going to be so advanced that it's almost going to be hard for them to teach somebody who is in the beginning stages. And so I think the key for us is like, what are we expert enough on? Another example outside of the food world is like, I love personal finance. I'm not the ultimate expert on personal finance, but I'm expert enough to have a conversation with my parents if they have a question and they're like, what do you think we should do in this situation? And it's probably better for me than some, you know, venture capitalist in San Francisco who has like strong opinions on finance. And so for anybody listening, what are the things that you are expert enough on that you can help people get to where you are who are maybe one step behind, two steps behind, three steps behind, because that can sometimes be an advantage to you. Before we continue, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors. What if your content could earn more and do more for your business audience and your future? You might know Raptive as the ad management platform behind thousands of the world's top creators, including Pinch of Yum. But today, Raptive is so much more than ads. They're a true business partner for creators, helping you grow your traffic, increase your revenue and protect your content in an AI driven world. Unlike one size fits all platforms, Raptive customizes strategies for each creator. Whether you're growing a niche food blog or running a multi site business. They offer expert support in SEO, email and monetization strategy and they're leading the charge on AI advocacy to protect the future of creator owned content. And the best part, Raptive supports creators at every stage. From Rise, their entry level program for growing sites to their top tier luminary level. They're offering scale with you so you can get the right support when you need it the most. Apply now@raptive.com to get a personalized growth strategy and join a creator community that's shaping the future of the open web. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode. So back to the Facebook question. It sounds like a lot of what you're doing is thinking strategically around how do I show up, how do I be real, how do I connect with people, how do I make myself like present in the content? How about the types of content? I kind of did that breakdown of reels from a monetary perspective is important for Pinch of Yam, but what type of content are you publishing the most on Facebook? Or is it a mix of everything?

No, I'm trying to do a mix of everything. So there's I use PicMonkey, there's other people that use Canva. So I have graphics that I've made for Facebook that say they Just have a really great picture. Sometimes they have multiple pictures. So you have a step image and a finished image and they'll say what they are. And I'm just trying to put in real descriptions. And I'll say, here's the recipe. Now I think if you mix those up and look to see what works and what doesn't. Now engaging with your customers or your viewers on Facebook too, also works. That's one of the things that I've spent a lot of time on. I try to spend a little less time now because one of the reels has 22,000 comments. So I can't possibly answer all those. But I made a Word document with my standard answers and I just cut and paste some. I spend an hour a day in the morning answering. And I try to be helpful. I also try to do more in stories now. So sharing more. I did a real. Well, real. But I did a story. I did a bunch of them at the same time. And I recorded about using potato flakes. And that was my secret ingredient to add those potato flakes to my dough to make it light and fluffy and also acted as a natural preservative. I had shared it in stories and I'd gotten a head cold. So I didn't really have anything. I couldn't be in the kitchen, right, for like about two weeks to record anything. Cause I lost my voice. And I thought, let me just throw this up as a reel. You know, it got 600,000 views in a matter of a couple weeks.

Yeah. That's awesome. And I think so much of it has to do with not waiting for that perfectly inspired moment. But like you have an idea to move on it, to post it. It sounds like a lot of that is a lot of what you're reflecting on is like, hey, create that content, post that content. It doesn't matter if the kitchen is perfect. If your, you know, voice is gone. Figure out an alternative. There's never going to be a perfect moment. Which I think is really important for people to hear because sometimes we can wait for that perfect moment. Let's talk about that four week period. I referenced it at the beginning. You grew 140,000 followers on Instagram, 130,000 followers on Facebook, 20,000 on TikTok. How did you do that? What did that look like in that one month period?

So I saw someone on TikTok. I just happened to be sitting there and I. I was always leery of putting myself on camera, but I thought, you know, we. So our dream was to buy land and Build this house, the farmhouse. And we're gonna be doing it this spring. But building cost him a lot of money and.

Sure.

And I. And my husband has a full time job. He does really well and he makes well, but I don't want this to be set on him. So part of creating, you know, recipes and homesteading content was to try to bring in an income. So I just got on video, didn't think about it and got on video, recorded my face and just said who I was, what state I lived in and that, that I just went on to. I used the Splice app and I just put on, I put in other videos of me and I was just washing a sheet pan, but then I did overlays of other things of our, you know, our homestead, whatnot. And I did a voiceover and said, this is my dream. I'm creating recipe content, but if you could do me a favor. And I did explain a little bit about how he had lost his parents within three and a half months of each other. And could you please follow my account like this? Post and comment. And I didn't think about it. I did one piece of video. I posted it to Instagram, Facebook and TikTok roughly the same time. So just for my phone, I added a little bit of text overlay. Initially. There's just my voiceover. I did captions, turned the captions on and in it just started to go viral instantly.

Instantly. That's really cool. It's. Why do you think that worked? What was it about that that you think compelled people to follow and to be a part of it? It's such a great testament to good. Like there's good people on the Internet and we hear from people that are not great sometimes, but like there's also the majority of people are great.

Well, I think it was most of the comments. I would say 99% of the comments were positive too. And they were saying things like, it's so nice to have someone supporting their husband. It's so nice to be able to see positivity. And they were here for the recipes anyway. They were willing to follow me and their first time seeing me, all these wonderful comments. But I also think it resonated with people thinking that they had a dream too. And my personal dream was to build this house a farmhouse. We're doing a recreation of a farmhouse. So they connected with it and sharing some of those nostalgic recipes in it. And then I had the voiceover. They just really connected. It, it resonated with people and it's Positive, it's not negative. So they just. It just took off.

Yeah. That is so cool. It. I think, you know, if I were to guess, part of what's compelling about it is it's a story, it's a journey. There's intrigue. Like, it's not content that is siloed. It's not a recipe. It's here's who I am, here's the journey I'm on, here's the thing I'm trying to do, and here is how you can follow along with me on this journey. And I think that when we think of why do we follow an account, we might follow it because we know it's going to be helpful. We might follow it because we think it's going to be entertaining and funny, or we might follow it because we're curious around the journey that somebody is on. And I think that curiosity piece is a really great one to invite people in on a journey that you are on. And what a great thing to be able to do that and really fun when it works. And you see people are interested in actually, you know, following along for that journey.

And I think they're also interested too, because I, I revealed the dollar amount of how much I was trying to pay off the land.

Sure.

My goal was to pay off the land loan prior to the house build and surprise him. So that way he's less stressed with the mortgage and whatnot. But they, then they get really intrigued and they start to comment on things of, you know, either cast iron or I have vintage bowls and, oh, they had the same bowl or whatever. They just really connected personally with it.

Yeah. That's great. I love that. So another thing that I wanted to talk to you about, you talked about the importance on Facebook. It's actually triple dipping at this point because we talk about Facebook monetization. That's one of the ways that you can earn from Facebook. We talked about Facebook as a traffic source. So not only are people interacting with content, you're getting paid for it on Facebook, but then people are also going to your website. Lastly, there's the ability to earn affiliate revenue from not just Facebook, multiple platforms. But it sounds like you've really started to focus on increasing the earnings that you're getting from Amazon Associates, which is Amazon, Amazon's affiliate program. How have you gone about doing that and what have been the most beneficial types of content that you've published that have increased affiliate earnings?

Sure. Well, so within that video that went viral, especially on Facebook, for example, many people wanted to know how they could help me and achieve the goal. So I had a cut and paste thing that explained to them how I earned income as a food blogger making income off ad revenue, but that I also had a storefront for Amazon and I kept dropping the link in there and they were shopping like crazy. But I also have always recommended things to me that are organic for my brand or my or my company on Facebook, on Instagram.

Or organic meaning like a good match for the type of content that you're creating. Yeah, correct.

Like, or something you didn't know you needed. So for example, I do a lot in cast iron and I also sell a lot. I sell cast iron loaf pans a lot which is, and it's a company lodges in, in Tennessee. So people like, they like United States brands. So I've tried to focus a lot on United States made brands. And then also one of the things I do is I use cast iron. Not only cast iron, but the loaf pan liners. So they drop in. So something they didn't know they needed and something they can't go to the store and purchase. And oftentimes we'll do that through video, through my stories and then add the link.

Cool. Then that's on Facebook.

Well, so I have them linked together and I'll drop the stories in Instagram which automatically shares to Facebook so they shop off of both platforms.

Got it.

I'm always very careful of writing the word affiliate in little tiny letters and just having it there to make sure.

Like disclosing that it's an affiliate link. Yeah.

But I'll give you an example of money. So I was selling on average around $2,000 of sales to Amazon a month. And now I'm going, I've gone to about 12 to 15,000 per month. So not only am I earning more from my affiliate link, they're also paying me a flat fee bonus every month. And I also, one of the things I found is resharing on stories, people's really heartfelt comments.

Yeah.

So I reshare that and usually add hearts to it or something. And they just really like being featured and mentioned. And I'm also the person that when I get a negative comment, let's say Facebook, for example, I used to have the mindset of deleting and blocking them and now I no longer do that. Now I generally, as long as it's not like a really nasty comment, I go back with positivity and just say, you know, one of the comments is, oh, you have too many ads on your website or why can't you just give us the recipe? I just have a cut and paste thing that says, this is how I make income as a food blogger and blah, blah, blah. And that's what it says. And then they just go away.

Yeah, totally. And I think one of the things I've realized is like, we will always have. There will always be those voices no matter what you're doing. The hard part is like, the more you scale up, the more you get in front of people, the more opportunity there is for people to say a thing. If you have something go viral. Yeah, it's going to be more people seeing it. And it's just a percentage game. I don't know what the percentage is.1 out of a hundred? 1 out of a thousand. Like, whatever it is, you know, as you scale up, you'll get more of that. It's just part of showing up and creating content on the Internet. So follow up question on that. Are you using, you know, we talk about deep links. Is that something that you're using for those Amazon links that you're creating or is it just a straight link to Amazon?

No, it's just a straight link. I just go on my phone and use and use the. Generally on my phone and just cut and paste, you know, copy the Amazon affiliate link and just do videos or pictures. I even download. A lot of times I'll actually download my finished images from my website, if it's a step image and download that to my phone and then post the link. But most, but other times, the video, really people like the video. So, you know, they, they like, where did you get that?

Yeah, do, do have, you know, deep linking, like, when I talk about deep linking, like, okay, so this will be my, this will be my tip for you. Anybody else who's listening, we did an interview. URL. Genius is the name of the company that'd be a great one to look at. Also. Grocer's List does deep linking for Amazon. Genius Link is another one. Grocer's List is a company that, you know, a sponsor of the podcast. And we've actually invested in the company and they're specific for food creators. So anybody who's doing. And I think, here's my prediction, this will make you hundreds of dollars more a month, maybe even, you know, double of what, what you're earning. Maybe not double. But so what happens is oftentimes if you are in Instagram and you are clicking on a link in Stories, you. It will open the Amazon link in the Instagram browser, okay. And 98% of people aren't going to be signed into Amazon on the Amazon browser, or, sorry, on the Instagram browser. And so if you use one of these pieces of software that creates a deep link, what it will do is, is people click on the link in Instagram and instead of opening in the browser of Instagram where people aren't signed in, it hops them out of Instagram and into the Amazon app, where, you know, 98% of people are signed in and it carries over their affiliate information as well. So it takes conversions and it's like an immediate multiplier on people's conversion rate because they don't hit that wall where they need to sign in. And it's like signing in takes maybe 30 seconds, but for whatever reason, people don't want to do it. And so they don't end up buying it versus if it's just in the app, you click the Buy now button, you get it shipped in two days or whatever it is. So that would be my tip for anybody who's interested in doing this is looking at doing deep links. It's not as important to do a deep link like on a browser, on your website, because usually it's going to work. If people are in Safari on their phone or Chrome, it's going to hop them to the Amazon app, or if they're on desktop, it will just jump them over to a new tab where they'll already be signed in. So for anybody doing Amazon links, make sure that you on social platforms are doing that deep linking again. Grocer's List, we did a long conversation with URL Genius on the podcast. Genius Link is another one. And all of those are great solutions for deep linking for Amazon content. So does that make sense?

Yeah, no, totally. Well, that's one of the things so I was using ManyChat for. Which is similar to Groceries List, correct?

Yeah, Groceries List has the DM feature, but it also has like a completely separate area which is just deep linking. And it creates the deep link. So it's almost like Microsoft Word and then Microsoft Excel. They do two very different things. They're both from Microsoft. Grocer's List has deep linking and it also has like DM functionality.

So that was one of the things, though, that I was doing on Instagram, for example, was I was using manychat and I watched. I watched other creators go to Facebook and use that same Manychat to do DMs. But Facebook and Instagram, all the platforms have different. A different user. Yeah, they're different people. And I think one of the best things I did was actually get rid of manychat.

Just giving people all the information they need.

Yes, yes and no. So sometimes. Sometimes I give it to them and sometimes I don't. But even on Instagram, once you build this following and even giving them the information, they. They're sort of forced to go to your website to get it anyway because they can't print it out and they don't want to. They don't want to work off the reel. So I gave it to them, and they can read it and they can look at it, they can save the reel, but they still have to go to your website to get it.

Yeah. Different platform, different ability to link, different way that content will present itself. Yeah, all very good points. So, as things stand right now, what would be the rank order for your business? All these different platforms, what are the most important places for you, including website and then all the social platforms?

So I. I'm trying to create more new recipes. If you have old ones, I'm definitely trying to fix some of the old ones too, but I'm a quality over quantity. And so I'm consistently trying to create new recipe content which will give me a new URL. And giving me a new URL is a new URL for Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and OneUp. Right. And that also gives me a new ad revenue stream for that. But at this point, I'm just trying to create a combination of new recipes for my website for people to go to, and then also video content. Because clearly video content is driving people to my pages for social media as well as my website. They really, really love video content. And it doesn't. It doesn't have to be fancy. Our kitchen is outdated, it's dark. You know, it's just. It's not what. It's not Pinterest perfect, but no one cares.

Yeah. As long as the content that you're creating is. Is good. Like, I've. I've thought about that within the context of, like, you know, interviews that happen or videos that I watch, like, I'll be willing as a creator, it's not ideal or as a consumer to put up with a lot of things. If the output of it is valuable, insightful, helpful. And I think that's true in this case, which it's like, if you have a good recipe and bonus, you make it seem. Or it actually is approachable and easy to do.

Right.

That can. That's like a really wonderful thing. And you don't need Pinterest. Perfect. In order to do that.

I think that's the same thing, though, with the video content, too, of creating recipes that seem approachable using simple ingredients. There's nothing fancy. And I had one of our woodworkers, I asked him if he could make me a cutting board to straddle over top of the kitchen sink, because I knew that was where right now. Until we build this beautiful house, that's where I have the best light.

Yeah.

And he just built me a cutting board, and I used that over top of the sink.

Cool.

Yeah.

It's one of the things that Lindsay and I joke about. We're in the middle of doing this Kitchen Edition, and one of the jokes that we had as we were thinking about making the decision was like, maybe it's just a matter of, like, putting a couple lamps in to get better light. That's not, like, the actual solution of what it was. But, like, sometimes we go to these extremes of, like, well, I suppose it's a kitchen Edition. And then it's like, well, actually, we just needed, like, two lamps in the corner, and then we were good.

My. My thought would be, what I did was analyze other people, a few other people. I'm one person that. That doesn't really. I don't ever look at someone and go, oh, I wish I was them, or how come they have more following than I do. I don't. I'm one that just gets in the kitchen and gets it done. That's how my personality is. But I've also looked at other people. Like, for example, there's a woman named Lilly Lou Taylor. She's in a double wide, and she went viral just making these simplistic recipes, and she even signed a cookbook deal. So if she can do it and she can make video content and have it go crazy, why can't I do the same thing?

Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. And I think it's inspiring to think about, like, how do you show up, tell your story, create content, don't wait until things are perfect. It's really inspiring and inspiring to see where you're at, the success that you've had and continued success moving forward. I'm curious to know, as you look at the year ahead, where do you imagine spending the majority of your time? What are you going to be prioritizing moving forward?

So I've always prioritized, and this was Lisa's suggestion, too. Holiday content. Because for me, I watched her one year, and at Thanksgiving, she had one recipe that went crazy, and she. So for me, I earn the majority of my income is earned in quarter four for ad revenue. Now I still wanna create recipes all year long, but I'm going down the rabbit hole of keeping doing true to my roots, the nostalgic. So I'm gonna continue to do some of the recipes that we recently found of my mom's and do, you know, photograph those and get them on my website and not worry too. That was one of my things was I was always worried about having to have the blog post be perfect or having to have the perfect images of it. And at the end of the day I don't think it really matters as much anymore as maybe it did. It needs to be a really well written recipe and tested so it's really well done. And the blog post, I still have an SEO checklist, but I'm not being. It doesn't need to be stuffed with everything, you know what I mean, to get to rank or whatever. Because that's not my goal at the end of the day either.

Yeah. The purpose of it is to create a compelling piece of content that's human forward and to do best practice from a search perspective. You want the technical stuff to be sound, but oftentimes we people will land in a certain category. Some people might be search people. You do keyword research, you figure out the thing that you can rank for. You have a process for it, you create that content, you have a team who's working on it. There are other people who are inspiration led, but you still want to be search forward in thinking strategically about it. So you're structuring something. Well, which makes a ton of sense.

Right.

So Jessica, so fun to talk to you and my guess is people will want to follow along with what you're up to. Check out your site. Where's the best place for people to do that and how can they get a hold of you?

Sure, I mean they can reach out through social media, but you can also email me. My website is afarmgirlskitchen.com and all of my social media is also afarmgirlskitchen.

Cool. And then if they did wanna email you, is it just Jessica?

Oh, it's afarmgirlskitchenmail.com Cool.

Great. Jessica, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

Foreign.

Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I wanted to take a minute and just ask that if you enjoyed this episode or any of our other many episodes of the Food Blogger Pro podcast that you share it. It means so much to us as a podcast. If you share episodes with your friends and family, or if you are a friend, food blogger or entrepreneur, if you could share them on social media or even in your email newsletters, it really helps us get the word out about our podcast and reach more listeners. Thanks again for listening. We really hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll see you back here next week.

Sam.