472: Coaching Call: Increasing Search Traffic, Determining What to Prioritize, and Strategizing for Business Growth with Cameron Crawley and Sarah Cobacho from plantbaes

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. You spend a lot of time on your blog content, from planning to recipe testing to writing to promoting. But do you know if each of your posts are bringing you the most traffic they possibly can? With Clariti, you can see information about each and every post, which is automatically synced from WordPress, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console, so that you can make well-educated decisions about where your existing content may need a little attention. Think broken links or broken images, no internal links or missing alt text.

You can also use information that Clariti pulls about sessions, page views, and users to fuel the creation of new content because you’ll be able to see which types of posts are performing best for you. Get access to keyword ranking, click-through rate, impressions, and optimization data for all of your posts today with Clariti. Listeners to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast get 50% off of their first month of Clariti after signing up. To sign up, simply go to clariti.com/food. That’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This episode is part two of three of our summer membership spotlight. As part of the special podcast series, we are sharing a piece of content that is normally exclusive to Food Blogger Pro members, and we will be sharing this on the last Tuesday of the month for June, July, and August. This month, we’re excited to share an audio version of a coaching call. Every month, Bjork conducts a coaching call with a Food Blogger Pro member where they submit three questions that they might have about their blog, business, social media, whatever it may be. This coaching call is with Cameron and Sarah from the blog plantbaes. They share more about how they first started sharing content on Instagram in 2021, and how they quickly grew their following to over 1 million followers.

They also talk about why they decided to start a blog, and then pick Bjork’s Brain about any changes they could make to their website to make it more user-friendly, to help with SEO, and to drive traffic to their email newsletter list. They also talk through what they might do to increase their business revenue and advice on getting backlinks, improving domain authority, and other just general SEO stuff. It was a long coaching call, but a really good one, and we’re so excited to be able to share it with a broader audience today. As a reminder, if you would like to become a part of the Food Blogger Pro community, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more and to join us. We would love to have you. Without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Cam and Sarah, welcome to the coaching call.

Cameron Crawley: Thank you very much. Very grateful to be here. Thank you very much.

Bjork Ostrom: You are up bright and early. It’s 7:00 AM there. I’m at the end of my day. So thank you, first of all, for getting up early, starting this day off. We’re just jumping right into it. It’s like maybe a little bit of coffee and then straight into a coaching call.

Sarah Cobacho: I’m ready.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I have some coffee here too, so at least we have that in common-

Cameron Crawley: Nice.

Bjork Ostrom: … right off the bat. But I’m excited to talk to both of you. With these coaching calls, one of the things that we do is we talk about what is a goal that somebody’s after, and how do we even just talk through what it might look like to get to that goal. One of the great things in your story is that you’ve built a following, and you have success on social platforms and a following on platforms, a million followers on Instagram. And that has been able to translate, from what I understand, into success with your site, getting that up and running. We’re going to focus on that a little bit. But I would love to hear about your story and what you’ve built through the years. And you’ve also been working on that together, which we might talk about, how Lindsay and I have done that through the years as well. But maybe, Sarah, do you want to start with just talking about your story and how you got started creating content online?

Sarah Cobacho: Sure. I was actually studying nutrition, and plant-based, and it’s a huge passion of mine. So we actually started the website and the old content creation thing while I was still studying as a way to build up for my nutrition clinic. It’s always been a goal of us. We’ve always consumed a lot of content. We love YouTube. It’s always been like an idea, but we didn’t really know what it would look like. And we started doing videos on Instagram and it took off quite quickly.

Bjork Ostrom: When was that?

Cameron Crawley: 2021, quite late.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah, end of ’21.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Wow. So it was really recently.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah. We’re brand new to this whole world, so-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, good for you guys.

Sarah Cobacho: So I said… Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: What do you think it was about the content that you were creating that resonated with people?

Cameron Crawley: I think it was that Sarah’s-

Sarah Cobacho: He’s very good at making –

Cameron Crawley: … Sarah’s a nutritionist. I’ve got a video background, so it was very easy for me to jump on the camera and direct Sarah a little bit. And I think we also started right when Instagram were really pushing reels. But they’ve been going on for a little bit, but I think when we got into it, it was really like… So we got on that momentum already.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah, we’ve never posted any photos or anything. It was a hundred percent real from the beginning. And I think it’s a combination of while plant-based food is a little bit trending, but our recipe are really focused on the nutrition aspect as well. But I’m really, really passionate about eating. It’s always been my hobby, so I think it just works somehow.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. One of the things that I love about that is… We often talk about what it takes to succeed in this world of content creation. It’s multivariate. There’s multiple factors. And one of the factors is do you catch the wave of the medium at the right time? And you spoke to that and saying like, “Hey, we were producing video content exclusively from the start,” and that’s what you focused on. That was definitely a wave. And then, it’s the respective experience and background that you each have. And for Sarah, you have this background and expertise. You’ve gone to school. Professionally trained in the world of nutrition. And Cam, for you, you have a bit video background, so it’s really cool to see all of those things come together. And then what you talked about is you’re just naturally passionate about it. So it’s like passion, plus the correct medium of video, plus your respective talents all coming together in a way where, if I’m understanding it correctly, in two to three years, on Instagram at least, you’re able to build to a million followers. Is that more right, less?

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah, exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Which has been kind of a wild ride, probably.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah. It’s been some scary times there because we both started working on other side hustles. And I was doing podcast editing and video editing and stuff like that before. Halfway through 2021 is when I was like, “Okay, let’s just do this full time. This is so exciting. I love doing this.”

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah. I think I had the nutrition clinic up for a good three months. And then we were like, “Okay, content.” This is so exciting. We get to do it together. We really love it. And we also get to touch so many more people. And when I was in clinic, its one-on-one, than this –

Bjork Ostrom: One to one, yep.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah, we get just so many people every day. It’s incredible. Such a fantastic opportunity.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And I’m sure you hear from a lot of people who follow up and tell their story of how the content impacted them and… which is awesome. And a global audience that you can speak to, which is just really, really cool.

Sarah Cobacho: It’s the most wonderful feeling.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Cameron Crawley: Sarah spends like an hour and a half a day, just writing to people on comments –

Sarah Cobacho: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Interacting.

Sarah Cobacho: I respond pretty much every single comment that we get, unless they’re really mean.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, right.

Sarah Cobacho: It’s my favorite part, the community we’ve built.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Congratulations. That’s super exciting.

Sarah Cobacho: Thank you.

Bjork Ostrom: What did that look like in the early stages, just out of curiosity? So you’re building this, you’re getting momentum. My guess is, in order to allow you to make that transition, was the initial business revenue sponsored content? So brand comes to you and says, “Hey, can we partner and you can feature this ingredient or this plant-based food,” is that what it’s been primarily up to this point?

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah, that’s what it was in the beginning. Mostly, yeah.

Cameron Crawley: And then pretty much the first two years. That was all –

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And then at this point, one of the things that we’re going to focus on is talking about the site and spending some time there. If you were to just say percentage-wise, if you look at the pie chart, what does the business look like right now in terms of revenue? Is it like 50% sponsored content, 50% ad revenue? Or just at a high level, what does that look like?

Sarah Cobacho: Well, I just finished our first cookbook, so that’s been taking us a lot of time. So we haven’t been really focused on getting brand partnerships. We’ve been really focused on that and the-

Bjork Ostrom: Cookbook, which is great.

Sarah Cobacho: And Cam’s been working on the site.

Cameron Crawley: The blog –

Sarah Cobacho: I’ve been working on the book. So we’ve just started again working with brands in the next few weeks. Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah, it’s nice.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think anybody who’s done a cookbook, or any book, knows you have to not do some things in order to do that thing.

Sarah Cobacho: Oh, yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s a big commitment. So let’s talk about… Oh yeah, go ahead, Sarah.

Sarah Cobacho: No, I just wanted to say for context, our brand deals are very different in Australia than what they look like in the US budget-wise. And it’s not really something we want to rely on. It’s not something I’d like to consider a little bonus. We are still quite restricted because it has to be still really fitting in what we’re happy to promote.

Cameron Crawley: Align.

Sarah Cobacho: … and align, which is not that.

Cameron Crawley: So on that note, our blog ad revenue is pretty much our main income source.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep, that’s great. And that makes sense too. With sponsored content, it’s not like you want to… Because you are so specific and because you are… my guess is opinionated, in a good way, about types of food and what food you want to eat. My guess is also there’s a bend towards… Was it Mark Bittman who says, “Eat plants…”? He has that phrase around… Essentially, it’s like, as much as possible-

Sarah Cobacho: Eat plants, not too much, not too something?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that. But just this idea of you want to eat plant-based and the best types of plant-based foods to eat is things where you can get as close to possible as where it’s produced. So point being, it’s not like a candy bar company would be like… who has a big budget, could come to you and be like, “Hey, can we work together?” You’d be like, “Sounds nice, but no.”

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So you want to be careful of the branded partnerships that you do, which makes sense. Cookbook will be coming out, which is great. And then now starting to think strategically about ad revenue from the site. So can you talk about where the site came in? You launched that at the same time. Have you always been working on it at a similar pace to what you’ve been working on with social, or what does that look like?

Cameron Crawley: I used to dabble in Wix and stuff like that, sort of basic drag and drop. So we had our website on there first. And we had it on there until last year in June when I started figuring out more of where we can make income on the side from our sponsored content. I was just Googling around and I actually landed on your articles on the income reports. And that was so inspiring. I was just like, “Oh my god, I didn’t realize this was a thing.” So the whole world was literally blown away. It was a whole new world to me. And then I found other people who’ve been obviously inspired by you to do income reports and they had following similar to ours on social media, so it really made it possible to me. So while Sarah did the cookbook, I pretty much spent that two months learning WordPress and transferring all our recipes over from Wix, which was a massive job.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Cameron Crawley: So that’s been live since, I think, August. And then we got into Raptive in September, so a month later.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Yep. Great.

Sarah Cobacho: But all the recipe were just the recipe card and Instagram photo and the Instagram caption. So they weren’t really blog posts.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. So kind of getting the lay of the land, you have your social accounts, you have a… especially on Instagram, a good falling there, but on the others as well. You have your site, now on Raptive, and consistently earning money from that. And the goal would be, it sounds like, what does it look like to focus on the site as the next growth area? Is that more or less how you’re thinking of it or approaching it right now?

Cameron Crawley: I think for now we’re really satisfied with how it’s pretty much a passive income. We are happy to work on it and build it as much as we can, but we do want to focus on the next thing, which will be digital products. And then down the line, a community or something like that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep, that’s fair.

Cameron Crawley: But for now, we’re definitely happy with where it’s at, and we want to improve it as much as we can so it becomes a solid passive income source.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep.

Cameron Crawley: Or semi-passive.

Bjork Ostrom: Were you going to add to that? Yeah, semi-passive is probably the best way to describe that.

Cameron Crawley: What were you going to say?

Sarah Cobacho: No, I’m just saying in the next few month, it does look like a lot little admin, just rebuilding all of those recipes I’ve mentioned. But since September, we’ve been learning about blogging and everything and turns out I absolutely love it. So we’re now making those beautiful posts, and it’s a lot of fun. But we need to get all of those other recipes that are really good, but don’t have this full information added to them, so that’s a little bit of work in the background too.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s great. Awesome. You guys have done a great job, and I think we’ll continue to find success in what you do. You have the different components with your individual expertise, and also a proven history of creating content that resonates with people. Obviously on a blog, it’s different than what it would look like on social. But I think the core thesis of creating things that people want is the same. And if you go from having a million followers, from zero to a million in three to four years, there’s something there. There’s something that people want. And I would encourage you to double down on that and to really lean in. Because you guys have all of the different component parts that you need to build a really… You already have built a really successful thing, but to build it even greater and to reach even more people.

So if you were to say the general goal with the site is to increase traffic, to build a following, obviously to increase that semi-passive income that comes along with it, is there something behind that goal that then allows you to feel like, “Hey, this is what we’re really after. We each want to be at a point where we feel secure having this be our only thing, and both of our salaries come from this, in order for us to work on this full time”? Or for some people it’s like, “I really want to get to this point, so then I can hire somebody and they can help with some of the day-to-day, so I’m not having to work as much.” Or would you have something like the spirit behind the goal of growth that you could identify? And it could be different for each of you.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah.

Sarah Cobacho: Do you want to start?

Cameron Crawley: Sure. I think the goal would be to, as you said… To be honest, we’re so new to blogging, so I don’t really know what’s possible in terms of the numbers and how much we could actually make per year. At the moment, it’s covering the bills, which is really nice. So that’s why we’re already looking at maybe we need to start digital products and build a community. I don’t really know what’s possible in terms of the blog income. I know that it can be huge. But I think the overall goal would be that it’s something we outsource. And I think everything in our business we’d like to have a team to help handle.

I think we’re pretty similar to you and Lindsay in a way where you really love the tech side of things and I’ve seen you have so many different businesses going. That’s what I love doing as well. I love creating new projects, whereas Sarah’s really good at the creative side of things and being amongst her community. So I feel like there’s kind of a semi-passive thing. We don’t want to just retire and live on a Greek island. We want to do that, but also be working on projects-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, right.

Cameron Crawley: … and having like retreats –

Bjork Ostrom: Working on a Greek island.

Cameron Crawley: Exactly. And having maybe retreats, constantly be doing fun things and adding value to the world and to our community.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, awesome. That’s great.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah. Sarah, anything different?

Sarah Cobacho: Look, it’s very similar. But you are a bit more into the business. I’m a bit more focused on my community at this stage. I’ve just been really, really loving it. And that’s my passion project. This is not a side hustle. This is not a little thing. I’m seeing this for the next 40 years. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I think the blog is going to be a very big component. And at this stage, I just really want to be focused to bring as much as we can. My mind is blown because Cam’s been working on this in the background for this last six months. But for me, it’s been two months since the book. So it’s just been a lot of fun and I think, yes, there’s a lot to do and I would love to have a team to help us take this to the next level.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great.

Cameron Crawley: Some experts, to come in and-

Bjork Ostrom: Totally. Totally. I think that’s one of the things that you’ll find, is as you continue to grow and scale it, one of the biggest unlocks is when you can bring somebody in who has that industry expertise. There’s a term that I thought of a lot within the context of what we were doing with business building, which is intentional ignorance. And it’s kind of an extreme example of what I feel like we should all at least be contemplating, which is how do you have somebody owning a thing, that is really good at that, that allows you to release it and to say this person has it? An example, I think, in our world, one of the experts in the Food Blogger Pro communities, Andrew. He has a site called NerdPress, and they manage the technical components for websites like yours and ours. And they’re really good at it and it allows people to step back and say like, “Okay, I’m not going to manage the day-to-day with this because they’re going to step in and do it.”

But there’s also something to be said… It contrasts or goes against that statement of intentional ignorance. Because there’s also something to be said about knowing just enough to be aware of what’s going on. So I think the phase that you’re in is good where you’re learning the ins and outs, the industry, you’re learning what you need to be aware of, even what is RPM as it relates to ads and things like that. So I think you’re in a really good place. But to also strategically be thinking along the way, “How do you bring other people in to help out?” You have some questions that you submitted here, and I would love to jump into those and start to talk about those. And we can hit some additional ones at the end, if we do have time. So the first question is what are your initial impressions of the website or the blog post? What would you focus on improving first? So anything that you would add to that, just to fill that question out?

Cameron Crawley: To be honest, it’s pretty… the website’s kind of… I just built it to the point where it could work and bring in ad revenue. It’s definitely nowhere near where we would want it to be.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally.

Cameron Crawley: It’s not –

Bjork Ostrom: That’s going to be true for the rest of your life. Your site will never be where you want it to be.

Cameron Crawley: Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Cameron Crawley: Good to know.

Bjork Ostrom: Because ours isn’t either. It’s like-

Cameron Crawley: Oh, wow.

Sarah Cobacho: Oh, really? Because it looks wonderful to me.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, thanks, but it’s always… I think that’s one of the things that we’ve realized, is you have to get to the point where you’re just comfortable with things never being where you want them to be because you’ll always want them to be at the next level. So encouragement for you guys, it looks great –

Cameron Crawley: Well, then you’re going to have a heart attack when you say our one.

Bjork Ostrom: No, I have, and I’ve spent time with it. I was actually just texting my sister-in-law last night, and she’s starting a travel site. She’s into travel. And she’s like, “I’m kind of embarrassed by the first version of my site.” But I think the most important thing that we can do is, and what I said to her is, “Ship it and share it.” As much as possible, ship it and share it. And along the way, figure out what is the next thing you’re going to make a little bit better, and just continually improve along the way. So all that to say, with what you guys have done, it’s beautiful. And you’ve done a really good job with it. I think there’s two broad worlds that you can speak to. One is the technical considerations of a website. And with the technical considerations of a site, what you’re going to want to be doing is understanding Google Search Console, to go into Google Search Console and to look at it and to say, “Are there any warnings? Are there any errors?”

That is the hub where Google is going to come to you and say, “Here are the things that we see as either issues,” or technically errors, which is you want to fix that right away. Warnings, which are like… These are things you could be aware of and improve. Or opportunities, like here’s something that you could maybe look at adding. The technical stuff is going to be things like making sure that there’s no broken links, making sure that you don’t have what’s called orphaned content. That’s like a page that sits on its own and doesn’t have links in from any other pieces of content. You’re going to want to make sure that all your images are properly marked up with alt text. You’re going to want to make sure that you have internal links to your own pieces of content and external links to other pieces of content.

All of this stuff is like… you could just Google, “Technical SEO checklist,” and surface some of that stuff. There are other tools that will also do that for you. There’s a tool called Ahrefs, which we use. And Ahrefs will do… It’ll do SEO keyword information, but it will also offer audit opportunities. This is an internal tool that we built called Clariti that does some of that. All of these are opportunities to do the technical hygiene, technical hygiene, technical SEO hygiene for your site. And that would all be really important as well. But the other thing that’s really important is just to think about the brand. The brand is going to be one of those things that… In the conversations that we’re having with creators who are getting multiple millions of page views to their site, one of the biggest considerations is how do you create something that isn’t just getting a bunch of SEO juice and getting people click on it randomly and then look at it and leave? Because there are those sites and you can be really successful with it.

And it’s one of the trends that’s happened over the last three to four years, is people building out a post, kind of with search in mind, like SEO-forward content. But what you’ll notice is a lot of times it’s kind of bland. A lot of times it has not a lot of personality. And there’s starting to be a shift in the industry around SEO where there’s really… Personality-forward content is becoming more important. So what I would encourage you to do is check all of the boxes from a technical SEO perspective. Make sure that you’re fully optimized from all things technical SEO, but also to think really strategically about your brand. And your brand is a little bit of you, but it’s also a lot of your community. Like who are you serving? What are their problems?

And how do you let people know that you are going to be the person that’s going to help them solve those problems? I’d be interested to put it back to you to say… For the people who are following you, who are interacting with you, what would you say the reason is behind it? What is the reason that they’re connecting with you and following with you and interacting with you?

Sarah Cobacho: I have a cute French accent.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. Okay.

Cameron Crawley: I think that’s a good hook.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure. But if it was… Even if you-

Cameron Crawley: Some people think it’s cute.

Bjork Ostrom: Even if you didn’t have a French accent… Or I’d say this. If you did, but if the content that you’re producing wasn’t helpful, people wouldn’t follow you.

Sarah Cobacho: Oh no, I’m just joking.

Bjork Ostrom: But also, I think there probably is some truth to it. And I think you can lean into it. I think it’s a wonderful thing.

Cameron Crawley: It’s love and hate as well.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Cameron Crawley: Some people are very irritated, which I think also works for us. It provides —

Bjork Ostrom: Which could be said about anybody who’s producing content for a million people. It’s like you’re going to have –

Cameron Crawley: They’re going to find something.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah Cobacho: No, look, our audience is actually really clear. It’s 93% women, and that’s consistent across all platforms. What I provide that is different from other people… There is a lot of noise around plant-based nutrition. Everyone’s been hearing you need to eat more plants. We do not push people to go vegan. Everybody does whatever they want. What I’m offering is if you want to feed your family or yourself a little bit more plants during the week, I have the perfect recipes that have been designed with nutrition knowledge in mind. So all of my recipes have a minimum of 20 grams of protein per serving. I make sure you get all of the nutrients of focus that you could be looking to have more on a plant-based diet. And all of this is done in the background. I talk about it into the blog post, the people who have been here from the beginning just know this is what we provide. And they taste really good.

Cameron Crawley: That’s the key. Yeah.

Sarah Cobacho: I have a lot of staple, like breads, these kind of things. But I’m really trying to focus on easy meal prep, high-protein meal prep. They love this one to take to work, so you can feel food satisfied for the entire day and try to switch a bit to easy midday dinner as well. And we have a lot of Mediterranean-style recipe, because that where I’m from. I don’t know if that’s clear, but.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah, it ties into the… I mean, it’s a bit of a trend as well. Everyone’s into that.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. And scientifically proven to be a healthy diet and not like a South Beach diet. It’s just this is a good way to eat, which is awesome. I would say with your site, one of the considerations would be really defining that, like letting people know on all the areas that people are coming into contact with you… Like the 20 grams of protein. I’m in this stage where I’m trying to eat more protein. Insofar as our five-year-old when Lindsay asked, “What are you going to get dad for Christmas?” She was like, “A protein maker,” which is awesome. Yeah.

Cameron Crawley: Oh, that’s amazing.

Bjork Ostrom: So if I was somebody who is… It feels like a really obvious and helpful problem solution. If I’m somebody who’s trying to eat vegan or plant-based, but also trying to be intentional to have enough protein, to know that you are a resource that does that is really helpful. And I would spell that out, even when you land on the homepage, having refining your headline, your H2… H1 would be the main headline, H2 would be the sub-headline. Really crafting who you are, what you’re about and what sets you apart. And I feel like some of those things that you just shared in talking to me about how you think about creating content, and the recipes that you’re publishing, are the types of things that you need to let people know when they come to your site. That’s going to be something that’s really compelling for people.

I think of a really good example. In a different world is Beth. Her name is Beth. She has a site called Budget Bytes. She has incredible recipes, but she’s also really… I mean, it’s the name of the brand. She’s created this really great following around connecting budget-friendly to recipes, and so that’s what she’s all about. And everything that she’s doing has how much it costs per recipe or per serving. And that, to me, is another differentiator where somebody would come and they’d say like, “Oh, this is really helpful.” Her tagline that she has in the middle of her site is, “Small budget, no problem. Cooking on a budget shouldn’t mean canned meals and ramen noodles night after night. Welcome to the world of delicious recipes designed for small budgets.” That does a really good job. And then everything that she’s doing, including here, is highlighting those different components and those elements.

Cameron Crawley: Oh, wow.

Bjork Ostrom: And so, I think as you think about your site and positioning it, make sure to draw those elements out, so people that do come to your site know maybe it is an emphasis on getting all of the different elements that you need in a meal. So what you’re doing is highlighting and saying how much protein each serving has, or maybe you’re highlighting macros, or I don’t know what it is. You know better than I do. But starting to integrate some of those differentiators into the site itself. So it’s kind of the technical considerations, and you guys will figure that out. You’ll get into it and you’ll know, making sure that that’s all well done. And then there’s the branding considerations around differentiating yourself and really leaning into your personal brand and into the ethos of the brand itself. So what are your thoughts or questions after talking through it a little bit?

Cameron Crawley: Firstly, do you think the tagline is a bit too broad, the, “Everyday recipes with a healthy touch,” just based on what Sarah said?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I would say, probably. The interesting thing, kind of the anti-example in this world, is Pinch of Yum. It’s a broad site that doesn’t have a super specific niche. If we were to start today, that would look different. But part of the reason we do that is it’s been 14 years, and it is what it is now. But if we were to back and start again with a new site, what we would do is at least to start, we’d have something very specific and niche. Not because… Well, reason being is we’ve used this analogy before, but if you’re trying to get somewhere, you could take a semi truck or you could take a motorcycle. And in the early stages, it’s going to be easiest to… You’re not going to be able to haul much, but to do a motorcycle. And then once you get some momentum, you can upgrade to a motorcycle with a sidecar. And then you can upgrade to a Geo Metro. I don’t know if you guys ever had Geo Metros or remember those.

Cameron Crawley: What, like a Fiat?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, exactly, Fiat. But to start super small and specific. And then if you feel like you’ve tapped out that market, then you can land and expand and go bigger. But I think to start, it’s helpful to have something that you’re speaking directly to. To have an audience that you’re speaking directly to, and then from there expand beyond that. You already have that to some degree, being vegan, but it might be helpful to have it be vegan plus. Like vegan plus protein, or vegan plus Mediterranean. Just as a consideration, something that you could potentially think about. So other thoughts around that one?

Sarah Cobacho: Actually, I have a question on this, if that’s okay. Sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s great.

Sarah Cobacho: So just on this, because I’ve been wondering, this has been a really free-flowing journey for me so far, kind of like what do I feel like eating? I’m going to film it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Totally.

Sarah Cobacho: So I’m trying to be a little bit more intentional with my recipe choice at this stage. And I was wondering, it’s a fine line between something that I think would bring value on the long term and something that it’s going to do well on social media. It don’t usually match that well.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Yep.

Cameron Crawley: And then Google keywords.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah. My style of cooking is I’m putting words of recipes that don’t really exist.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, great. That people aren’t going to search.

Sarah Cobacho: The last one that you’ve seen on the blog is me trying to do something that people will recognize a little bit more. And that didn’t work really well on social. So I’m wondering, do you think it’s best to focus on recipes that are doing… and there’s no right or wrong answer I guess, but just of your opinion, that are doing well on social? Or should I try to be a bit more intentional with SEO? Do I need to, I guess you answered, niche out on those recipes that do really well for me? Or do I need to have a little bit of everything, so when someone is in my site, they don’t have to go somewhere else to find this piece of information they could be looking for?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. I would say to do kind of a total reframe on it would kind of be going to an artist. And an artist saying, “Which type of canvas should I use?” Or, “Should I do ceramics or should I do still photography?” They’re all canvases and they’re all mediums. So I would say a lot of it comes down to… Because the world that we’re living in is one where it’s personal businesses. It’s not like a business where you’re producing widgets. A huge consideration is your own ability to continually show up every day and create content for 10 years. And the different paths to do that are… Not infinite, but there’s a lot of different paths. The people that I see doing really well in the world of search, generally are people who bend towards process, maybe are a little bit technical. Not scientific necessarily, but they’re going to be people who love to get into a keyword researching tool.

They love to spend time analyzing opportunities. They’re also really great at the craft of cooking. But generally speaking, they’re going to be people who are technical-forward and interested in that world, versus people who are charismatic and like to get in front of a camera and record and have a recipe that they feel inspired to share. That would be Lindsay. That’s the category that she creates in. She’s maybe collectively in her life spent six hours in a keyword research tool. It’s not something that she does. Because if she did, she would only create content for like six months and then she’d be like, “I really don’t like this.” So how she’s creating content is similar. It’s like what is something that I’m excited about? She’s aware of general trends and what’s happening and is creating content around that, but it’s not from a scientific analysis approach.

So I think as you think of your content creation process, I think what you need to find is on the spectrum of life giving versus life taking, or energy giving versus energy taking, where do you fall on that spectrum as a creator? Now, one of the opportunities that you have is maybe you have 10 pieces of content and you’re like, “These are all similar things that I’m looking at. I’m kind of inspired by these,” and then you pass that off to Cam who then… maybe you like that technical element a little bit more. You can do some keyword research. You can look and say like, “Hey, this one makes sense, but maybe we word it a little bit differently. Here’s how we should word it. And this feels like it’s the best opportunity for us from a search perspective.” And you could even call it something different on social than you do on the blog.

Sarah Cobacho: That’s actually a pretty good idea.

Bjork Ostrom: There’s all different versions of how you can use technical considerations around search to support your decision-making. A lot of people initially go into it leading with keyword research. But I think you can also put it as a second or third thing in your process. And you can lead with inspiration, and then refine with keyword research. Because I think there are a lot of people, and you might fall into this camp, who feel like it’s soul-sucking to find that there is an opportunity to have whatever the recipe might be, and then they’re not super inspired to make it. But they feel like there’s an SEO opportunity, so then you do it, but it’s not something you want to make. But for other people, they love that idea.

Cameron Crawley: Sarah loves the challenge, I think. That would actually help, if you have a limit.

Sarah Cobacho: I do like a challenge. If you come and you’ll tell me we have this –

Cameron Crawley: It’s like a Gordon Ramsay show.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure.

Cameron Crawley: … run to the thing and get the ingredients.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And if that’s you, it’s like… I think the point is understand all the tools available, and then use them within the context of how you as a creator are best going to be able to create. And you can draw it back to the artist analogy. It’s like one artist is going to use a marker different than another artist, or a paintbrush, or whatever it might be, but they still all have the same tool set. They’re just using it in a way that is best aligned with how they create. So it’s a little bit of a non-answer, but I think it’s so dependent on the individual.

Sarah Cobacho: I think it was a great answer. Thank you.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Raptive. You may be like the many other Food Blogger Pro members and podcast listeners who are working towards increasing their traffic to be able to apply to an ad network. Raptive, which is formerly AdThrive, for instance, requires a minimum of 100,000 page views and brand-safe content to join the community. These qualifiers attract premium advertisers, and ensure creators like you benefit from Raptive’s expansive solutions and services. But if you’re not quite there yet and you want to be, Raptive can still help. Raptive put together a comprehensive email series, it’s 11 emails in total, that will help you optimize your content, understand your audience, grow your email list, and grow your traffic to help you reach your ad network goals. Pinch of Yum works with Raptive to bring in passive income each month. The ads show up on each Pinch of Yum post. And when that ad loads on someone’s screen or somebody interacts with that ad, Pinch of Yum earns money.

So more page views equals more money. And it can really add up over time. That’s why so many Food Blogger Pro community members are interested in getting their page view numbers up, so that they’ll be able to apply to an ad network and make money on display ads. So if you’re in the same boat and are interested in getting some traffic tips delivered to you for free, head to foodbloggerpro.com/raptive. The 11 weekly emails you’ll receive are designed for creators who have a working knowledge of SEO, keyword research, and email lists, but haven’t yet been able to crack that 100,000-page view mark. Go to foodbloggerpro.com/raptive to opt into this free newsletter series. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

The other thing that I would say that’s important to do on your site is to have a compelling… And you have this within the sidebar. But to really be thinking strategically about email, and to have a compelling… Even on the homepage, I think it would probably be worth it to have a compelling email signup offer. And the reason is because email’s going to become more important when third-party cookies go away. I don’t know how aware of you are in the industry or for anybody watching, there’s a big pivot that’s coming where Google Chrome is going to be removing third-party cookies, which means that advertising on Google Chrome is going to be less effective. The way to combat that is to have first-party data. And first-party data, the best example of that is an email address. And what you do is, in your case working with Raptive, you include an additional snippet of code, which Raptive will supply to you, and you include that code in your emails.

And then anytime that somebody clicks to go over to your site, it’s going to be able to identify them, and they are going to be able to advertise more effectively for that person, so you’ll be able to earn more. So just to really be thinking strategically about email. And that could be email on the site, but it could also be email within social. Like occasionally having a call to action within Instagram to say, “Hey, if you want this recipe, sign up here and I’ll send it to you via email.” Or whatever you can do to think strategically about having email sign-ups is going to benefit you down the line as well.

Sarah Cobacho: I think for us, a little meal plan or free book is a good one.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah. We have an e-book in our Linktree, or in our link page.

Sarah Cobacho: It needs to be updated.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah. But we definitely should do that on our website too.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think, we’re thinking about this with Pinch of Yum, the closer you can get to having the email sign-up be to the actual piece of content, the better. So if you have Mediterranean pasta, the offer being the top three Mediterranean recipes, top five, download “Sign up here to get the top five Mediterranean.” The closer you can get to the content, I think the higher conversion that you’re going to have. It’s hard to do when you’re first starting out because it’s like you just need to get something up. And the best thing to get up, like you talked about, is something that’s like “Okay, this is…” highlights the best recipes that you have, or plant-based breakfasts in this case. That’s awesome. I think that’s a great place to start.

Sarah Cobacho: This was what we came up with last year, because we just really wanted to have something out. Because everything was buzzing. We were like, “We’re not getting… It’s a shame.” But definitely can be refined to something more tailored to our current offering.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s great. Cool. Let’s talk about this second one, kind of in a similar category. But the back half of this would be interesting to talk about. So how can we increase traffic from Google and search engines, which mostly comes from Instagram and social at this point? And then any advice on getting backlinks and improving domain authority? So any additional context around that one?

Cameron Crawley: Well, right now, most of our traffic’s coming from Instagram and Facebook. And then there’s direct, which I’m not really sure where that’s coming from.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think it’d be like people just typing in the URL-

Cameron Crawley: Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: … and coming to it. Or maybe a bookmark or-

Cameron Crawley: Oh, okay.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Cameron Crawley: Okay, cool. Yeah. So most of it’s coming from social media. And I’ve seen in Raptive, you can see, I heard you talk about this, how Pinterest have such a really high RPM. But our views are quite low or our outbound clicks from Pinterest are quite low. So I’m interested in that too, because Google obviously seems a lot harder to row and rank-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. It’s hard until it’s not. You do a bunch of work, you really hustle. And then slowly over time, what you’ll start to see is stuff will get picked up. But it is super competitive and there’s a lot of…

Sarah Cobacho: What do you mean by over time?

Cameron Crawley: What is the timeline you speak of?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. Well, tell us specifically what this looks like.

Cameron Crawley: Yes. How long do I have –

Bjork Ostrom: I think it depends on what type of keywords you’re going after. If you’re going after long-tail pieces of content and you’re producing a lot of that content, it’s going to be shorter. If you’re going after shorter keywords that have a higher volume, that’s going to be longer. So I think it really depends on your strategy as it relates to the type of content that you’re producing, and what you’re trying to go after. So an example being… I’m just going to try this real quick, just to see. So high-protein vegan marry me pasta, you rank number one for that, right?

Sarah Cobacho: Woo.

Bjork Ostrom: So that’s great. How many people are searching for that exact term? Probably not many.

Sarah Cobacho: I’m not sure.

Bjork Ostrom: So that’s an example of your site. And it looks great. You have an image in there. There’s the links down below. I’ll just share my screen here so you can see what I’m seeing. That’s awesome. And it’s like you’ve ranked well for that. Now the question is if you remove high-protein and it’s just vegan marry me pasta, suddenly that now looks different. You’re still in the top five, so that’s great. Now it’s like you remove vegan and it’s just marry me pasta. Okay, that now looks very different. So what you can see is the idea is as you start to do keyword research, it’s like a snowball. You start with those long-tail little pieces of content and then you’re like, “Hey, maybe there’s this shorter keyword that has a little bit more traffic that we can go after,” and then you build on that over time. And then eventually, you’ll get to the point where you can start to have some of those shorter keywords with higher volume that you can start to get after. In terms of timeline for that, there’s so many variables.

Sarah Cobacho: I’m sorry about that.

Bjork Ostrom: Even just how many people are searching for a thing, the algorithm updates, all of those different things. But if you stick with it and continue to produce really good content, can look at the technical components. If you build out some of the community stuff, which we can talk about as well, and you start to be a hub for people, all of that will compound over time. But it does take a long time. So the backlinks, you talked about backlinks and domain authority. I think what we’ve found, there’ll be two camps of SEO people. One is you have strategies for backlinks. Like you work with an agency and they look for people who have a broken link around marry me pasta. They follow up and they say, “Hey, I noticed you have a broken link. You should update it with this link, which isn’t broken.”

A lot of intentional backlink building. Or reaching out and saying, “I’ll pay you $150 to include a backlink.” That would all be in the category, especially the paying, like Google as outright said you can’t do that. I don’t know how they’d ever figure this out. If we figure this out, you would be… I don’t know if you’d be delisted necessarily, but it’s just very much so frowned upon by Google. So we’re in the camp of how do you just think about what people would naturally link to and as much as possible create that type of content? And I think that is either just outstanding content that people love and they come back to and they’re like, “Hey, I made this. I really like this. This is super helpful.” Maybe it’s in a group of people who are trying to eat vegan and high protein as well, and they link to it. So just over time, naturally.

I think there’s also things that you can do where it’s community or campaign-type initiatives. So instead of thinking about content in a… like it’s a blog post, you could think of it in the context of a series or a campaign. Maybe it’s like you are doing something and you support a certain mission. And you say, “Over these next 10 pieces of content, we’re going to help support a food shelf in Sydney.” And then you go on a morning news show and they feature it. Anything that is unique or interesting where you can bring people around what you’re doing, that’s when it gets outside of the world of SEO hacks, and more in just human psychology. And naturally, what are people going to talk about, what are people going to think about? What are people going to share? What’s interesting?

And that’s where you can lean into the social side of it. You can get people excited on social about a thing that you’re doing. That would be where I would lean into it. People also talk about going on podcasts. But essentially, what you’re just trying to do is think about what’s something that people would talk about and get excited about, rally around, that would be helpful, that would be unique? You can put your marketing brain on, you can get really creative? Because that’s what the internet is, is people sharing stuff, talking about things, interacting online. And the more that you can get into the psyche of people by either drama, which in our world doesn’t really exist and wouldn’t make sense, or excitement or passion or novelty, that’s where I would encourage you to think about the world of backlink building.

Cameron Crawley: Okay, cool. Amazing. We need to get you in the news, somehow.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Sarah Cobacho: Well, we do have some events with a puppy shelter coming up, but I don’t think that’s going to go in the news.

Bjork Ostrom: What is it that you have coming up?

Sarah Cobacho: I want to help raise fund for a puppy shelter. So I’m going to make cakes with a friend of mine who’s a baker. And I’m hoping to…

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. But I feel like that… That’s awesome. And that’s an example of something that you could then talk about and share about. And you could share it on social, and there might be people who pick it up because it’s this really fun unique thing. And you could reach out to whoever would be willing to have you and talk about it there. So it’s kind of like PR. How do you get in front of-

Sarah Cobacho: That’s right.

Bjork Ostrom: … whether it’s news agencies, other websites-

Sarah Cobacho: So we need to think big.

Bjork Ostrom: … by doing something fun and unique and novel. What’s that?

Sarah Cobacho: We need to think big.

Cameron Crawley: Think big.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Right. Sometimes it’s thinking local. In the early stages, I called our small town newspaper and was like, “Hey, Lindsay and I are both from the same hometown and we’re working on a website together.” This is like 12 years ago. And they sent out a reporter who wrote an article for us in the local paper.

Cameron Crawley: Oh, cool.

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s little stuff like that. And I think from that then, you can say, “Hey, this small town newspaper did a feature.” You could take that and, say, the next level up, you could reach out to another newspaper and say, “We’re doing this thing. Hey, my friend and I are partnering to raise money for a dog shelter and we’re making dog cakes and here’s the dogs eating the cakes.” People would love that. So I think you have to be… The best version of backlink building, I think is creative, fun, outreach type work like that.

Sarah Cobacho: Good. I like that.

Cameron Crawley: And that would be win-win.

Sarah Cobacho: That’s my kind of…

Cameron Crawley: Can draw attention.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Sarah Cobacho: That’s my kind of things. Sorry, just a very technical quick question. You mentioned before, orphan content. Does that mean that we need to have internal or backlink or link to our website or link to other things in every single post we make?

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. So it’s just what you wouldn’t want is you wouldn’t want a new piece of content to go out on your blog and to not have a link to that in any other pieces of content. So it’s different than a category page, technically. It’s different than the homepage where it’s linked to. Generally speaking, you want to have a web. There’s the World Wide Web, which is links everywhere. But you want to have a mini web on your website, which is all of the content linking to itself. So on the marry me pasta, maybe there’s another post that you have or another page and you’d want to say, “Hey, you might also be interested in this pasta if you want something that’s a little bit quicker to make,” or something like that. So it’s-

Sarah Cobacho: Do you think… Sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s interlinking the actual content within itself.

Sarah Cobacho: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. That’s something we’re not doing. And do you think… So meal writing, that’s something I keep pushing. But for example, a nutrition article to have on the website would help both with my branding, position me better as a nutritionist, and I could link that to pretty much every single pieces of content that we’re making. Like this is high in iron, “Hey, check this blog that… Check this article for my best tips on iron on a plant-based diet,” kind of thing?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And one of the ways you could think of that is hub-and-spoke. So in the world of content, you think of what is the hub? If you imagine a wheel, what is the hub, and then what are the things coming off of that hub? A category page is kind of that. But you could also create a post, in and of itself, that’s helpful and interesting for people that then links out to those other resources that you have. So maybe you create a post and it’s about the importance of eating high protein.

And I apologize for using that as the example, but it’s a good one. I’ll just keep coming back to it. The importance of eating high protein when on a vegan diet. It could be a nutritionist perspective on why that’s important. And within that piece of content, then you can naturally be linking out to other places on your site that highlights why that’s an important thing to do or recipes or whatever it might be. So yeah, I would say it positions you and your expertise around nutrition. Yeah, so I think it’d be super smart to do that.

Cameron Crawley: Thank you.

Sarah Cobacho: Thank you so much.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Last question is kind of a high level one. Any advice on what we should focus on and prioritize in our blog and overall business to increase revenue? So what I heard you saying in the beginning is awesome. And specifically around thinking strategically around increasing some of the passive, semi-passive income from the blog itself. But then also starting to think about what does it look like to have a community? What does it look like to have products? That’s where I think you can really start to be smart about content. There’s an interview that I did with Nathan Barry. He’s the CEO of email service provider ConvertKit. He had this series that he did called The Billion Dollar Creator. And his whole premise with that is creators are underselling themselves by just doing advertising on their blog and sponsored content. Because the real way to capture, fully capture the value that you are creating is to have an accompanying product or business that you are selling to your audience.

And so it could be information, it could be a product, it could be a course, it could be a community. Maybe it’s helping people think or helping people start to eat vegan, if they’re just starting out. Or you’d know your audience better, what it would be. But essentially thinking about what are the things that you could offer your audience that would be fully capturing the value of what you’re creating, versus a brand pays you $15,000 to do a sponsored post. The reason they’re doing that is because it’s probably worth 30, 40, 50,000 to them. But if it’s just you doing that, if you’re selling your own product, that’s where it starts to get really magical. I was having a conversation at a conference recently with somebody who started and has built a community, like a gardening community. And he was saying they operate their content at break-even.

So they maybe make a million dollars. They spend a million on it. Because they create tens of millions from a product that they’re selling. In their case, it’s plant products that they’re selling to people. And that’s what’s allowed them to have a business that’s worth tens of millions as opposed to a business that’s worth maybe multiple millions, which is still awesome and impressive and amazing. So as you think about long-term, what that looks like, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with building up a following and monetizing via ads and sponsored content. And you can create a great life and a great business. I think that depending on the degree to which you want to fast-track that and really think strategically about revenue…

Or in your case, when you talk about prioritizing on the blog and the overall business to increase revenue, what I would encourage you to think about when you’re in that space is to say, “Hey,” what would it look like to create either a brand within the context of your current brand, that is products? Or the example is Primal Kitchen, which… Do you guys have Primal Kitchen products in Australia?

Cameron Crawley: I don’t know if we do. I’ve heard of it. Yeah.

Sarah Cobacho: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. That was created out of somebody who had a keto blog and then sold it for a ridiculous amount of money, not for the blog, but for the brand itself. So that’s where I feel like for somebody who has the things that you have, a passion and an expertise in a certain subject, momentum with growing a following, the skills and expertise you need to create video and content online, you guys have proven that. And an industry trend that’s going up, like plant-based vegan eating. To me, where it gets really exciting, and if I were to place a bet on a super successful, tens of millions of dollars outcome down the road, my bet would be around product accompanying content which you use to sell the product. That’s, I think, thinking of revenue optimization down the line.

Also, what you have going is great. And if you just continue to do what you’re doing and think about… A cookbook is an example of a product. Strategically selling the cookbook, maybe working with brands. I know you said you weren’t super interested in that, but working with brands that are aligned. And then just continually growing the traffic to your site over time, you’ll still have a great business. It’s just takes longer to build momentum in the world of content to a point where it gets to be a significant amount. But you’ll get there if you keep at it.

Sarah Cobacho: Sorry, quick question.

Cameron Crawley: I’m inspired.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah, me too. I wrote down all of your question. I’m going to have a little journaling sesh after this.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. Yeah.

Sarah Cobacho: What do I want? What does this look like? Just when you mean product, do you mean physical product or digital product?

Bjork Ostrom: Either.

Cameron Crawley: Which one would you prefer to do, if you had to do one today?

Bjork Ostrom: I mean, I think in your position, I would start with digital. Because I think you already… It’s just repackaging the way that you’re already producing content, which is video. And people know you. So I did a… I think it was something within the community where we were talking about product creation. And it was Nisha from Rainbow Plant Life. So it’s one of those that she recently did. It was maybe on the podcast. Or if not in the podcast, it was within the Food Blogger Pro community. And she talked about how she spent six months or something like that, just getting on calls with some of her followers in order to understand what it was that they needed. And in the world of software, they’d call it product development. You’re developing ideas around what the need is, and then you’re using that to inform what you end up creating.

If you wanted to dive deep into that world, there’s a book called Lean Startup, which is again, in the world of software, but the idea is kind of similar. But the basic idea is a lot of people, like in the world of software, they go and they’re like, “I have a really good idea.” And then they work on it for two years and then they launch it and they’re like, “Oh, this wasn’t actually a problem for anybody.” So in our world, it’s like you think that there’s a digital course that people need and you go into a lab and you record for a year and you launch and people are like, “I don’t really need that.” So the important step in stage is getting to know what people actually need. So it’s a lot of getting on calls and asking questions. And it’s awesome for people who follow you because they want to meet you and interact with you.

And then using that to say, “Hey, this is a theme that we see.” Could even be a Typeform server that you send out. So I think in your case, probably what’s easiest is to stairstep up. Like, okay, there’s sponsor content, there’s ad revenue, and then there’s a digital product. And you can sell people on a transformation, how to be healthy, successful, high energy, and still eat vegan. And then from there, you can start to think about… Well, and you’ll have a cookbook, which is a product, to think strategically about selling that. And then I think the opportunity is what’s above that? And it might be packaged goods, it might be certain kitchen things. I don’t know what it is at that point. You would know better. That’s, I think, where it gets really interesting, because then you have accompanying business sitting next to it that can grow and scale in a different way.

That’s probably, I don’t know, a three, four, five-year thing as you build up these other things. Or not. Maybe you get into it and you’re super excited about something. But the digital product stuff, I feel like, can be shorter term, as well as the cookbook can be shorter term. And I feel like that is a step along the way to get you there. You had one other thought. And I have time, if you have time, to just talk through what it’s like to work on a thing together. Do you want to hit that as the last question? Or what did that look like?

Sarah Cobacho: Oh yeah, I would love that. Thank you so much for your extra time. Really appreciate it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Sarah Cobacho: Cam and I work on this together full time. Obviously, we’ve been together for almost 10 years now. And because I know you and Lindsay have built this incredible business and you have a family and everything. So I guess I just wanted your insight on how does that look like for you and do you manage to disconnect from the business sometimes? Do we have to disconnect from the business sometimes? It’s very fun too.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, right.

Sarah Cobacho: I just wanted your lifestyle ideas on this.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Do you feel like you want to disconnect at this point?

Sarah Cobacho: Not really. No.

Cameron Crawley: Not at all. But it’s more the feeling that we want things to be growing in the background while we go and take a break at the beach for one day off.

Bjork Ostrom: For sure.

Cameron Crawley: Because we work pretty much every day of the week. And you go to bed thinking about everything.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep.

Sarah Cobacho: We spent almost a year without taking a day off unless we were sick. And we love it. But that’s what you said before as well, our consistency and being able to keep creating. Because I’m well aware that I cannot be doing this for the next five years, not taking a day off if I want to do this for 40 years.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Right. So Lindsay and I, when we look back at the stage, because we were in a similar stage to what you were, we’re super nostalgic about it. We loved that stage. And we just loved the idea of working all the time and always having it on our mind. It was great. So I would say if you’re in that stage, awesome. Lean into it and capture that. Because there is something about… There’s this book called Big Magic. I’ve listened to it. I think Lindsay read it. And I think it’s in this book where she talks about this idea of the muse. And the muse, it’s a little bit almost spiritual. And you can take it for what you want. But she talks about the muse visiting you and she’s like… I think it’s in Big Magic. But idea being, if the muse visits you and you don’t honor it, then it kind of moves on to the next person who will honor the muse. And the muse being like an idea, a passion, an interest.

So I think as long as you feel like every day you’re excited to get up and work on the thing and get after it, awesome. I think that’s great. I think to a great degree, Lindsay and I are still in that stage. We just have more competing for our attention now with our girls at five and three. And so what we’ve had to do is just say we’re going to intentionally draw these lines in service of 10 years from now, 15 years from now. Not looking back and being like, “Shoot, we really missed this charming season of life.” But one of the reasons we are able to do that is because we probably compressed 10 years of work into five years. And now what we’re doing is we’re taking advantage of some of the flexibility of those investments that we made in terms of time into the business to allow for more flexibility.

I think we could be growing more or quicker if we were each working twice as much, but we’re just in a season where that sacrifice feels different. If we’re going to trade an evening now, the cost of that is inherently more than it was seven years ago. And so, we’re just more careful with that. But I think if you’re enjoying it and love it, it’s awesome. What a gift to be able to do that, and to be able to do it together.

Sarah Cobacho: It’s the best.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a fun thing to talk about. And some couples don’t have a lot stuff to talk about, and you guys do, which is great.

Cameron Crawley: We’re the reverse. We spend so much time together. At the end of the day, we pull out the laptop and put on a show to watch –

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. Totally. Let’s just not talk about anything for a little bit. The other thing that I think maybe surprises people with how Lindsay and I work is… It’s kind of like we have our different departments within our day-to-day, and we act almost as consultants to each other for the things that we’re working on. I think that was less intentional than it was just lucky. And I don’t know what degree you have the division of labor with what you’re working on, but it seems maybe a little bit similar where… I know the stuff I’m working on. Lindsay knows the stuff she’s working on. At this point, it’s like I don’t know when a Pinch of Yum blog post is going out. She doesn’t know who’s being interviewed on the podcast next. But I am looking at search issues that come up and working with a team to fix those.

So I think part of it too, is just naturally over time, I know if I’m stepping on Lindsay’s toes. If I’ve stepped on her toes enough, then eventually I’m like, “Okay, I know that this thing here is going to be stepping on her toes.” And I can’t even think of an example of what that would be. But I think both of you being… having a high social EQ, you start to realize what makes sense to collaborate on versus just let somebody work on independently and over time. And probably to some degree, you already know what that looks like. I mean, it’s a great joy to be able to work together and also sometimes difficult. But I think it’s made us better in the long run for it, because we have to communicate well and be clear and open on how we’re working with stuff. Yeah, that’s exactly-

Cameron Crawley: We’re very similar.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah.

Cameron Crawley: We have our own departments pretty much.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, which is great.

Sarah Cobacho: And there’s a trust.

Cameron Crawley: I think it’s perfect. Yeah.

Sarah Cobacho: Yeah, I think I trust his judgment 100%.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Cameron Crawley: And I don’t have to think about the recipes at all, which is amazing. I just lay in bed all day and…

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, exactly.

Cameron Crawley: Awesome.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a great job, if you can find it. That’s awesome. Any other last questions to wrap it up?

Cameron Crawley: Because with considering a community down the line, probably like a year or so away, and you’ve built Food Blogger Pro, maybe if you could give any advice on that, what’s the system, the best system for doing that, outsourcing?

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Yep, totally. So I think with a community, there’s a ton of different ways to approach it. I think it’s super smart to think about doing it, just in general. This isn’t exactly community, but I know creators, food creators who kind of have a free community. And what they do is they curate a group of people who join them. Maybe it’s on a Facebook group, maybe it’s on a membership platform like Circle, and that’s what they use as their community. There could be a community that’s community-forward and then education in the background. Or there could be, I think this is Food Blogger Pro, the education-forward with a community component in the background. So part of it would just depend on what your approach would want to be. I went through a course and the course was… It’s called Pillars of Productivity. It’s by this author and creator, his name is Tiago Forte. It was great.

It was like six video lessons that were 20 to 30 minutes long. And then there was a community element and it was on Circle, a platform. But the reason I signed up was to go through the education. And then if you had some questions along the way, you’d ask in the community area. But you can also take the approach of saying, “Hey, we want to really develop a group of our raving fans, the people who are going to be the number one most interested people in what we’re doing,” and really curate that. We experimented with that a little bit with Pinch of Yum. We had what was called a VIP group, which was a Facebook group. We went to that group with questions of which logo do you like better? Or, “Hey, we’re thinking of doing these three recipes. Which one do you think we should do?” It just allows people to participate.

I think if it’s going to be something that you are asking people to sign up and pay for, there usually has to be some transformational element. You’re signing up like this, and then after you go through, then you’re going to be this. Like, we’re going to help you get from here to there, and here’s how we’re going to help you do it. So broadly speaking, I think community, much like a website, could be used in multiple different instances for multiple different purposes. But I think if the purpose is to create recurring revenue like Food Blogger Pro, there has to be transformational component, which usually means an educational component. Unless you’re doing something like curating a group of seven people and you’re going to have a mastermind to help people become… to help people eat vegan or something like that. So organizing and facilitating a group versus educating people on a thing to do.

A couple of the platforms. So Circle is one. I think it’s circle.so is maybe the site. Memberful, they’re our podcast sponsor, but they’re also a great company that allows you to spin up a membership site relatively easily. I would look into a pre-existing solution versus trying to build something on top of WordPress, and then just do it as community dot, as opposed to trying to integrate it in with the site, just setting it up on a separate URL.

Cameron Crawley: Oh, really? What would be the advantage of that? Just to make it easier?

Bjork Ostrom: Well, the advantage of it is that you can use an entirely different system outside of WordPress to run the platform. So in Google’s case, they have Gemini, which is their AI solution. But if you go to Gemini, it’s gemini.google.com, that’s an entirely different URL because it’s an entirely different technology stack.

Cameron Crawley: I get it.

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s the difference between… As soon as you do the community.plantbaes.com, that’s a different… It’s outside of WordPress, it’s outside of your stack, and it allows you to just run an entirely different technology. Versus-

Cameron Crawley: Oops, sorry.

Sarah Cobacho: Sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: … plantbaes.com/community as the-

Cameron Crawley: Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: That would be, I think, the… If it was me, that’s the approach that I would take.

Cameron Crawley: Okay, cool.

Sarah Cobacho: Thank you. That’s very helpful.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Well, hey, super fun to connect, to hear about your story. You guys are doing really good work, and continued success in building what you’re building. So if there’s ever anything we can do, reach out.

Cameron Crawley: Thank you so much.

Sarah Cobacho: Thank you so much. Thank you for being-

Cameron Crawley: So grateful.

Sarah Cobacho: … so generous with your time. And you know that we really appreciate you.

Cameron Crawley: Yeah.

Emily Walker: 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 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.