Food Blogger Pro Blog - Learn How to Start, Grow, and Monetize your Food Blog

New Course: Time Management

by Raquel on Jan 14, 2016 in New Courses

It’s new course day! And I can’t tell you how excited I am about today’s course because it is immediately applicable to problems that I am having right now.

Bjork didn’t even know this, but yesterday I had a bit of a meltdown because I was feeling like I just didn’t have enough time. Between sleeping (I need 8 hours), walking the dog 2–3 times per day, going to the gym, my “day job,” and feeding myself, I felt like I just didn’t have any time at all for my side projects.

So according to Bjork’s advice in this course, I’m going to hire someone to start feeding me so that I don’t have to do that myself.

Just kidding.

But really, finding enough time to do all of your things is hard enough. And when you finally do have some time to work on your food blog, it can be really easy to inadvertently waste some of that time doing other things that don’t matter as much.

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New Course: Asana

by Raquel on Dec 10, 2015 in New Courses

It’s new course day! Woot woot!

I am so excited about this new course because I know it will be so helpful to those of you who feel strapped for time and overwhelmed (um, everyone?!).

Here at Food Blogger Pro, we use a tool called Asana to keep on top of all the things we have to do. And as you guys know, we try to keep things fresh around here, so we generally have A LOT to keep track of. So, we looked for a system that would connect all of us, yet let each of us manage our own tasks individually. And Asana was the answer!

But then, I realized that I could use Asana for my own personal stuff, and it got a lot cooler. I now use Asana for planning my editorial calendar for my blog, planning when I need to schedule out all my social media posts, and keeping track of things that I want to put in my "back pocket" – the things that I want to do some day but don’t have the time for right now.

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A Sweet Pea Chef: A Food Blogger Pro Case Study

by Raquel on Nov 12, 2015 in Building Traffic and Growing Your Audience, Creating an Income

We recently received an email from long-time FBP members Dustin and Lacey Baier with a PDF blog post draft that Dustin wanted to share with us. In the email, he said,

"I was starting to write a post for A Sweet Pea Chef that was based off Food Blogger Pro – kind of a success story post. In part, because of the recent success we have seen and, in part, to be a good affiliate piece for Food Blogger Pro. Then I realized that, if I was in your shoes, I might want to use something like this as a case study on Food Blogger Pro or Pinch Of Yum."

Welp, we were definitely interested. We love to think that we help people here at Food Blogger Pro, but there’s nothing like hearing from bloggers who have found success through hard work, determination, and a tiny bit of help from FBP.

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New Course: MailChimp

by Raquel on Oct 15, 2015 in New Courses

You guys!! This is so crazy. I just made a course here on Food Blogger Pro. Whattt!!!

I know you all are used to Bjork’s slow, steady, and confident voice as he guides you through the terrifying and confusing world that is starting a food blog, and Lindsay’s teacher-esque tone as she helps you find your ground with social media and photography.

So if you’re totally weirded out by listening to me talk during this course – so am I! But I hope you’re okay with it. I really enjoyed making this course, and I really hope you learn something from it.

Ok, so enough of that. What the heck is this course all about? Well, let me tell you:

MailChimp!

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How to Show Conversions by Source in Google Analytics

by Raquel on Sep 24, 2015 in Quick Tips

If you’re thinking about getting serious with your food blog, then you should probably have some goals. As with everything else in life, goals help keep your blog on track and keep you moving forward. However, just having a goal often isn’t good enough. In order to make sure you meet your goals, you need to be able to track them.

Once you have your goals set up, you can look at all sorts of stats about them in your Analytics dashboard. From the total number of completions to the conversion rate (i.e. the percentage of people who completed the goal on your website), there is no shortage of information.

However, one thing that’s not super easy to visualize on a daily basis is what your conversion rate looks like from different sources. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to set up a GA dashboard to view your goal conversion rate by source.

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New Course: Blog Monetization 101

by Raquel on Sep 17, 2015 in New Courses

The course so many of you have been desperately waiting for is finally here! Well, it was here last week, but let’s just ignore that. SO EXCITED ALL OVER AGAIN!

But really. This is exciting.

One of the most common struggles we hear from our members is that they have difficulties figuring out how to monetize their blogs. We had some monetization videos up since the beginning of FBP, but they were in dire need of a refresh.

Fortunately, Bjork came to the rescue! And in this course, you actually get to see him face-to-face the whole time as he talks you through the concepts of blog monetization.

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How to Eliminate Google Analytics Spam

by Raquel on Jun 25, 2015 in Quick Tips

There has been quite a bit of chatter on the Food Blogger Pro Forum lately regarding Google Analytics and traffic spam. In fact, if I search "spam" in FBP I see 9 posts just in the month of May regarding spam referrals in Google Analytics. That’s a ton!

Because of the general concern regarding spam traffic in Google Analytics, I thought it would be helpful to do some digging and find out more about this spam traffic, what it means for your blog, and what you can do about it.

So what is spam in Google Analytics? Read on to find out!

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Announcing: The Food Blogger Pro Deals and Discounts Page!

by Emily @ FBP on Jun 24, 2015 in Business of Blogging, Food Blogger Pro News

We all love a good deal, right? But even better than getting a good deal is when you can see the value of that deal.

What’s the difference? A deal without a lot of value might be a sale on an item you will never use. “But it’s on sale! I must buy it!” And then it sits on the shelf never to be touched again until it’s inevitably tossed out. Not such a good value. A deal on something that you use every day? Now THAT’S a good value! So without further ado…

We’re announcing… the Food Blogger Pro Deals and Discounts page!

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New Course: Natural Lighting for Food Photography

by Lindsay on Jun 18, 2015 in Business of Blogging, New Courses

Oh, sweet – it’s a NEW COURSE DAY.

Because I’m happeeeeeee….

 Today we are superexcited to be releasing a new course on natural light for food photography which includes 9 lessons about how to use natural light to make the most of your food photos.

We’re calling this course Natural Lighting for Food Photography and you can find it in the Food Photography module.

This course was really fun to record because I did some things that I’ve never officially done before to test the quality of our natural light in our house.

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4 Ways Twitter Can Help You Grow Your Blog

by Raquel on Jun 9, 2015 in Building Traffic and Growing Your Audience, Social Media for Food Creators

We all love social media. We love it! I know there are some of you out there who are saying "Ugh, how can she say that?? I hate social media!" But deep down, under all that prickly disdain, you know that social media is one of the keys to blog success. And isn’t it?

While we all love social media, we all probably have a fondness for one, maybe two, platforms that really pull our heartstrings. For me, it’s Facebook. I can surf Facebook for minutes to hours every single day given half a chance.

But Twitter? Nah. Not me. Twitter was "after my time" – meaning only that Facebook was the thing right after MySpace took a dive, and it stole my heart. Twitter was late to the party, and who wants to truncate all the wonderful, descriptive things that you have to say? Let’s just say Twitter is not my cup of tea, er, coffee.

That is, Twitter was not my cup of coffee until I learned about Twitter. No, it’s not just a way for teenagers to send mass messages about their daily activities. Used properly, Twitter can be a really powerful tool. Let’s explore how some Twitter nuances can really help you grow your blog, all in 140 characters or less.

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