How Britney-Brown Chamberlain Grew Her Food Blog to a $20K/month Business

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom: If you want to grow your blog, which most of us do, we know that ranking on Google and other platforms is a big deal, but let’s be real. SEO tools can be complicated and expensive. That’s why I want to introduce you to KeySearch. It’s an easy-to-understand and affordable SEO toolkit designed with creators in mind. With KeySearch, you get keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, a backlink checker and more all for way less than other SEO tools. And it’s not just for Google. They also have tools for sites like YouTube and Pinterest because as we know, millions of people are searching for content on those platforms as well. Maybe you want a data-driven strategy. Their Foresight feature, which is available on the Pro Plan, uses AI to analyze your site’s niche authority and rankings and then recommends personalized keywords for your content. Just plug in your domain and let KeySearch do the heavy lifting. KeySearch has been trusted by bloggers for over a decade because of its simplicity and affordability. Plans start at $24 a month for the Starter plan or $48 a month for the Pro plan. But because you’re a Food Blogger Pro listener, you get an even better deal if you go to KeySearch.co/fbp and use the code FOOD at checkout, you’ll get your first month completely free. Again, that’s KeySearch.co/fbp and use the coupon code FOOD to get your first month for free. If SEO has felt complicated or expensive, KeySearch makes it simple and affordable so you can focus on what you do best, create amazing content.

Ann Morrissey: Hey there, Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team here, you’re listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. In this episode, we had the opportunity to chat with Britney Brown-Chamberlain, the food blogger. Behind Britney Breaks Bread. You’ll hear about how she went from a $ 200-a-month blog to a $ 20,000-month business, and she’ll also dive into the strategic approach behind the concept of active, passive income, offering practical advice on SEO and trend analysis. That’s not all. Britney will also dive into her social media strategy, how she balances creating content she loves with what her audience craves, and the importance of high-quality content that reflects her unique style. Plus, she goes beyond blogging and talks all about her cookbook, Bake Until Golden Brown, brand partnerships, and the difference between marketing content versus a physical product. If you’re looking to take your blog to the next level and really turn it into a business, you’ll definitely find a lot of great insights in this episode. And now, without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Britney, welcome to the podcast.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Thank you so much. Oh, so happy to be here and very chat with you today.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we are going to be talking about, believe it or not, your blog, your social following, and building your business through the years. And one of the great things about your story is you have built this successful business. We’re going to be talking about your cookbook, building your blog to over 500,000 pages, views a month, building your Instagram, following, working with sponsors, and you’ve done it all within the past five years. And sometimes we’ll interview people pinch of beyond being an extreme example, Hey, we started this in 2010, and it’s like people are like, ah, I don’t want to work on something for 15 years. I want to get it to a point where I can start to see some of those successes within the first year or two years, three years. And you’ve done that. You’ve had some of those successes, you’ve broken through some of those page view markers that are really significant and you’ve done it all within the last five years, really. So talk to me about when we were chatting, you talked about getting serious at a certain point, really starting to take it serious. Talk to me about that season. When did you really start to take this serious and what was your headspace around it as you thought about building this into a business?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Sure. So I started my blog in October, 2019 and it was just a fun, something that I started on a whim. I didn’t think it would ever amount to what it is today, and I spent the majority of 20 20, 21 and half of 22 just praying that I could turn this into a full-time position. In 2021 October, I had my son and I was still working a full-time job and three months, I think I was on maternity leave for about six months. And it came to a point where I had a ton of sponsored work. However, I didn’t have a lot of income from my blog itself. I was on media at the time, didn’t really have that many page views or sessions. I think my checks were maybe $200 a month on a good month. But

Bjork Ostrom: It’s something you can kind of start to feel it. You can see, okay, there’s something here,

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: But I had no idea how to increase it. It wasn’t sustainable for me with a young infant to keep pushing the pavement by doing all of this sponsored work because all of this is a ton of work, but I just didn’t feel that it was sustainable for me and my lifestyle. So I actually had a friend who was doing a mastermind, her name is Eden. She runs the blog Sweet Tea and Thyme, and I don’t know when she started doing her mastermind, but I just decided to reach out and say, Hey, when’s your next mastermind? Could I take part? I signed up, I did the course. She provided a wealth of knowledge, so much so that I was able to take my 200, $200 checks to upwards of 5K and then I think it was like 10 K and recently it was almost 20.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And this is a month. This is how much you’re earning a month, which is life changing.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Absolutely. It was my prayer that I never had to go back to corporate America and

Bjork Ostrom: This was the motivator for that. You talked about sponsored content, you were able to get sponsored content, work with brands. You also had your son and it sounds like what was happening at that time, excuse me, was this idea that you kind of had tasted what it was like to have this entrepreneurial pursuit, this thing that you were building, but it was tied to you landing a deal, getting a brand, working with that brand. And there’s anybody who’s done brand a sponsorship knows there’s an inherent amount of stress within that. And so it sounds like the next evolution out of that was it’s not less work, but it’s just a different type of work and also a work that isn’t quite as tied to you do work and then you get paid for it. It was a little bit more like, Hey, if I can build up some passive income from the site, maybe I can take a day or two and not have to worry about responding to a thing or working with a partner or brand and still make $500 in a day when you’re not doing work. Is that what you were after?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Absolutely, and I think that there’s a misnomer in that log work is passive income, but I call it active passive income. You’re still doing work, you’re still on your feet cooking and testing and all those things, but there’s a lot more freedom in that work and that I can do what I want to do as opposed to running ideas by a brand and saying, I have this idea, this idea and this idea, which sounds good to you. What’s your deadline? Fighting for what I think is a fair wage for X amount of videos and photos and usage rights and things like that. And then you have certain brands where they’ll reach out to you on a Friday and won’t work on Tuesday or Monday and you’re like, Hey, this is not sustainable. However, I don’t have another source of income right now, so I kind of need to do it. And I just didn’t see that as sustainable in any way, shape or form.

Bjork Ostrom: I’ve heard people talk about, and I think this is a good framework for thinking about this type of income where if it’s scalable, if it’s repeatable and if it’s transferable and within the world of business, the more that you increase those types of income, scalable, repeatable, transferable, the more valuable that type of income can be. And I think brand partnerships, there’s maybe some ways that you can do that can be scalable, that can be repeatable, that can be transferable, but not as much as work on a blog that’s connected to ads and that’s very scalable. You can do multiple recipes in a day if you need to. You can work with somebody else who helps create those recipes. It’s scalable, repeatable, and someday if somebody else came over and took that over, it’d be able to transfer over to them. And so even if we never sell a thing that we’re working on, we never sell our blog, it’s still a more valuable type of income because it just feels better to have that as a source of income for a lot of people. So go ahead. Go ahead.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: You don’t have to worry about budget and if they like you or not, or am I going to get more work? Can I get a year-long contract, or I’m only looking for one-time work? There’s a lot that it is up for the air up in the air when you work with brands. And this is not to say that I don’t like working with brands because I genuinely do, especially if the product or campaign aligns with what I am already doing. I recently worked with Crisco. I love working with Crisco because I bake with it all the time. So when they reached out, I was like, absolutely would love to work with you. Let’s make a pound cake or something like that. But it’s just there’s to me and how I feel and how I think and how I work, I just didn’t feel like it was something that I wanted to do constantly.

Bjork Ostrom: For sure.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Kind of on a hamster wheel. Okay. Well, and then you have to do the whole aspect where you’re chasing down your check, which is not, a lot of times people don’t really talk to you about that. Just in the contract does not mean that they’re going to pay you on time. I actually had an experience where I received the check in the mail and it bounced.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, interesting.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And suddenly you’re doing a job which you’re not excited about. You’re the billing department, you’re accounts receivable. For some people they like that. And totally, there’s some people who have massive success working with brands. It’s all that they do. Their focus is that, which is great. That’s the nice thing about this world that we live in is you can create your own job description. And it sounds like for somebody like you, the job that you wanted to be doing was having, focusing a little bit more on the editorial type content, I’m going to decide to make this thing as opposed to sponsored content, which is like, we’re going to decide together what I’m going to make. And I think that autonomy can feel really good sometimes. So tell me about what happened between $200 a month to $20,000 a month. What was that transformation like for Britney? How did you get to a point where you grew your business and what in between there that was most helpful for you?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: I don’t think there was any one sole thing that helped catapult that specific metric. However, again, the mastermind was very helpful because I started doing search engine optimization on my blog posts. I got a couple audits from Casey Markee on my website just to make sure that everything was firing as it should. I also did free blogging calls with Arson from TopHatRank in addition to one of his programs. It was a backlink program where he just assisted with me getting more backlinks because at the time I had virtually my backlinks were very low and all of these things were all very helpful. I guess on the front end, I was also doing a ton of keyword research, making sure that, I won’t say niching down, but making sure that the recipes that I was creating would resonate with my readers. And so I think just time and just constantly putting the pedal to the metal and releasing as many recipes as I possibly could and just being authentic to myself. I think that was probably one of the most important factors as to what led to this growth.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. Pointing out real quick. We did an interview with Eden a few years ago now. We’ve done interviews with Arson and then Casey as well. So for anybody who’s listening to the podcast now, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com/podcast and search for those. We’ve also done some great; we just wrapped up a great Live Q&A with Casey, so for anybody who’s a member, be sure to check that out. That was in February. If you had to say three things that you did, if you did have to pick the most three influential things, it sounds like maybe one of them would be having a reader or user focused mindset. Hey, is this going to be helpful for the reader? Is this going to be helpful for the user? And finding that middle ground between, is this helpful for them? Is it interesting for them doing some keyword research around it to see if there’s an opportunity? And then also seeing if it’s something that you wanted to post about and that was within your niche or your focus. Does that kind of triangulation feel accurate for at least one of those key takeaways that came from working with these experts?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Absolutely. I think also more importantly of those three, knowing who your audience is and kind of what you appeal to, I appeal to the things that I like. So I’m not going to post something that I personally wouldn’t eat. And I find that staying true to myself and posting things that I think are delicious is what resonates with my audience as well. I think that there are people out there who want to try new things, and I specifically put this on my blog. My blog is a place for people who traditional recipes with a twist. So you’ll get collard greens with smoked turkey, but there’s going to be a little something different in there that makes it grandma’s recipe but also yours. And I think that that’s what I appeal to, that’s who I am, and I think that that’s what resonates with my readers and helps to retain them.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. So that is a key takeaway. Are there two other things that you can think of that you could point out, Hey, this transition from 200 to 20K, which is such a great marker and massive growth. I dunno what that percentage growth is, but it’s really significant. Anything else that you could point to over that period of time? Sounds like it was maybe like a three, four year period of time where you were able to experience this growth. Anything that you could point to that was like, Hey, this was really helpful,

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: The audit with Casey 100%. Because there were a lot of things that was wrong with my website that was probably not helping to my Google rankings, but the audit as well as keyword research, I think that that’s integral because beforehand I was doing things like I wanted to make a lavender blueberry pie. Who’s looking for that? Literally no one. And while my SEO might’ve been on point for that specific post, it was just sitting there dormant, not getting any traffic. So I think doing recipes that you love, but finding a place for them, you can add the twist in there. It doesn’t necessarily need to be an H1 or even an H2, but put it in your recipe list and your key ingredients and that way you can still do the same recipe while still fitting into fitting it into something that people are actually looking for.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, there’s something that’s required for us when we have this mindset of we are marketing the content that we create. We aren’t usually content marketers, meaning we’re creating content to sell something else. We’ll talk about your cookbook in a little bit. We’re usually creating content and then marketing it. And part of marketing is novelty, and it feels like that’s what you’re getting at a little bit is how do you create novelty in the recipe that you are creating in order to stand out, in order to be different, because that’s what’s required with any type of marketing, but especially when you’re marketing content in a saturated industry. How did you evolve your brand to get to a point where you said, this is how I’m going to be different, this is how I’m going to be novel. Was that something that happened organically? Did you have to do work around understanding what that was for you?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Honestly, I am not by any stress of the imagination a marketer or I don’t have, I’m a scientist by education. I was a cancer researcher before I did this. I know absolutely nothing about marketing. What I can say is that I’ve always just stayed true to myself. I’ve never tried to be someone that I wasn’t. And I think that perhaps that is my quote marketing, but as far as marketing is concerned, I just try my best. I have somebody who manages my Pinterest. I don’t boost my posts on Instagram. I kind of just press in and pray that people like it. But I always try my best to make content that I love. If it looks boring to me, I won’t post it. If it’s a recipe that kind of falls flat, I won’t post it. I just try to make sure that my content is as good as it can possibly be and go from there. Well, I mean also too, I do look at trends. I dunno if that’s considered marketing or just research, but I think there is something to be said if Easter’s coming up, you should probably look into maybe a lamb or whatever specifically fits in your niche to posts during that time that people that would appeal to your readers. But yeah, I am not any, I have no marketing skills whatsoever, at least none that I have learned or would consider this to be marketing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I would push back against that a little bit. I would say you probably are a marketer. I think you’re probably being humble about it because what you’ve done is you’ve created a business that you are talking about a product. The product is the content, and people are responding to that and brands are as well. You have these brands who are coming to you and saying like, Hey, we’re interested in partnering with you on this thing. And so I think maybe not in the traditional sense, there’s traditional marketers where you’re building a spreadsheet and you’re analyzing content flow, but I think what you’re doing is marketing and you’re having success with it. You’re building a multi six figure business, and what you’re doing is creating a really compelling product, sharing that with the world, and people are responding to that. And I think a lot of what it comes back to in this conversation, and it’s important to point out, is that it’s actually not necessarily tactics driven. It’s not like, Hey, I’ve done this really unique thing where I boost a post on Instagram and then it gets discovered, and when it gets discovered, then I stop boosting it. And then it has this viral coefficient where two people are sharing it and it’s like, no, actually, it’s just it’s product. And the product is the content. And I think sometimes we can get lost in the tactics and we can say, Hey, what’s working right now? What’s the thing that is going to blow up my following or allow me to get a bunch of traffic? And I think if you don’t have good content, none of the tactics work. If you do have good content, the tactics will help. And I think what you’ve done, and I think what’s important to point out is leading with the product. The product is the content. The content has to be good after. And I think this is also important. You’re hustling to get advice to get insight from industry experts on how to multiply the reach of that content. So within that world, you had talked about a couple of different things. One was keyword research. Is there a tool that you especially like and is that something that you’re still doing as a part of your process?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Oh, absolutely. Every day. In fact, I was on KeySearch a couple minutes before we hopped on the call, but I use KeySearch and I supplement that with Semrush, just the free version. And I look what’s trending at specific times of the year when I should post it always.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about that specifically? Where do you find those trends? And then how do you make a decision around when to post?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Yeah, sure. So for instance, I was looking up, oh goodness, I can actually just check this really quickly.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it real time.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Let’s see. Let’s go to my history. I recently looked, okay, yeah, I post a Cajun seafood gumbo yesterday, and that is currently trending now, and it also trends in December. So I’m kind of always thinking about Q3 and Q4. Those are when ad spend is most high. And so I try my best to post things throughout the year that will also trend during the holidays because that maximizes revenue. And so yeah, I go to KeySearch, I’ll say,

Bjork Ostrom: Which I will say is marketer mindset. Okay, I’ll take it. By the end of this call, I’m going to convince you that you are a marketer.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: I’ll take it.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: And so I have a list of things, just a really rudimentary list on my phone in the notes of recipes that I think of that I want to do. And I write them down and I check them on KeySearch. If they’re trending now, I probably will save them for next year. If they trend in the summertime, I’m going to start working on them now. And if they’re something that will trend, say next month and December, if I can fit them in now, I’ll post it now. If I can fit it in December, then it’s probably going to go up in November. And so that’s kind of my thought process. And then not to be so robotic about everything because there are things that I genuinely just want to post and don’t care if they rank because there are things that I enjoy and I think that my readers would enjoy it as well. But yeah, there are times where I just say, Hey, this sounds good and I want to post it, so I’m going to do it. It’s

Bjork Ostrom: Inspired content.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: And in fact, last year I had just finished my cookbook and I really missed blogging. I wasn’t able to blog as much as I would’ve liked because I was writing a cookbook. Not to say that that was a bad thing or anything, but I just missed the process.

Bjork Ostrom: Takes time.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: I just missed the process of blogging. My blog is my baby, so I felt like I was kind of neglecting it for a little bit. But my first recipe that I released after the cookbook was done was my Nutella beignets. And I had not gone viral on social media yet, and I literally posted a four second clip of me grabbing a Nutella beignet opening it up and watching the Nutella come out. It was nice and gooey and all that stuff. And it has 20 million views on Instagram right now, but the key word research on it is like 50. It’s checks and balances. But yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: It’s one of the interesting things that we need to do as creators is start to understand how content plays in different spaces. And the world of search is massively different than the world of social, and yet within the same day we are creating on both of those spaces and publishing on both of those spaces. And I think what you said is a really important point because there isn’t for somebody who wants to be in both places, and there’s a lot of people who don’t, but for those who want to be in both places, and I think in the current landscape of digital content creation, it’s very helpful to have a strong social following as it relates to search. Those I think more than ever are interrelated. And so people who do have a strong search follow or social following, I think have an advantage within search. Not that it’s like you have to have a good social following, but I think it just helps. But your point is an important one to reflect on because you could have done keyword research for an hour around that specific recipe and came out of it thinking this probably isn’t a good thing for me to post because not a lot of people are searching for it. But if you created a really compelling visual piece of content and that went up on Instagram and that went viral, there’s no doubt that that’s important for your business and your brand and probably bleeds over into search a little bit. People are probably doing some version of search around that recipe around your brand. And that’s where I think we need to lean into not only being a scientist, but we also need to think about being an artist and understanding is there something that we can create that would go on social that people would respond to and engage with, knowing that there’s going to be some positive ripple effects that come from that for our brand. So I think it’s important to point that out. I think it’s felt in a very real way for people who have that engagement on social. If you were to rank order by importance the different parts of your business, what would that look like? Would there be something that you’d point out as the top? And if let’s say, let’s pick five, what would the top five parts of your business be most valuable? Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. So here’s a funny thing. On the Food Blogger Pro podcast, I don’t often talk about Food Blogger Pro membership. It’s a huge part of what we do, and the reality is the majority of our time as a team is spent thinking about and working with the Food Blogger Pro members. So we wanted to take some time to remind people that if you want to take the next step, go beyond just this podcast, you can join Food Blogger Pro if you’re interested. All you need to do is go to foodbloggerpro.com. We’re going to tell you more about what a membership entails, and if you’re interested in signing up, you can just hit the join now button. What does that mean? Well, we have a community forum where there’s the Food Blogger Pro industry experts, many names from which you probably recognize from this podcast. We also have deals and discounts on some of the most popular and important tools for food creators and food bloggers. We have courses that dive deep on photography and video and social media applications. We do Live Q&As with industry experts. Recently, we had a conversation with an SEO expert named Eddie from Raptive where he talked about republishing and how to be strategic with your approach to republishing and why that’s important. We do these Coaching Calls where I jump on with a creator and we talk about how we can look at their business and grow their business. And the cool thing is for those of you who listen to this podcast, we actually have a members-only podcast called FBP on the Go where we take some of these video lessons that we’re doing, like these Coaching Calls or these Live Q&A with experts, and we roll those up into a podcast. So if you don’t have time to sit down and watch those, you can actually just listen to them like you do this podcast, but it’s a members-only podcast. So if you’re interested, again, you can go to food blogger pro.com and check it out. It’s a great next step for anybody who’s been listening to the podcast for a long time and wants to dive deeper into growing and building and scaling their business.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Well, just really quickly, I just wanted to speak to a point that you made as far as having a strong social presence and also balancing that with the idea of being an artist as well, because that’s how so many of these TikTok trends start. And it also can help with increasing the, what is it called, the volume, the key keyword volume. I think it was like those TikTok cinnamon rolls. Who was looking for that before somebody posted that viral recipe?

Bjork Ostrom: Literally the term TikTok, cinnamon rolls.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: And then,

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, they would be searching cinnamon rolls, they would be searching TikTok, but there probably before it went viral, there probably wasn’t anybody searching TikTok Cinnamon roll.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Sure. And that can lead to another huge opportunity for income because it’s viral. Everybody’s looking for it, and everybody’s going to go to your page. And I think another thing was the butter boards from, what was that, 20 22, 20 23. And that also kind of exploded. I don’t know if it’s still, it’s not something I’ve researched recently, but the top five pillars of my business that I would deem most valuable, well, number one, of course, it’s going to be my website. It’s my first born, it’s my main driver of income. Second, I would say is Instagram. For me personally, that’s where I’ve had the most success. I don’t really get much of a return on TikTok. Pinterest is okay, and I know Pinterest is a huge driver for a lot of people. Thirdly, let me rearrange that. Second is going to be my email list. I think that that is, honestly, if I could put that number one with my website, I would, because I think that your readers are your friends and they’re going to be your number one supporters. When you release a cookbook or you want to do a cooking class or just anything, they’re your people. Then it would be the Instagram and then probably the Pinterest. And number five is probably myself, because I word of mouth, I’m talking about my blog no matter where.

Bjork Ostrom: I love that. I love that. Here’s why I love that. I think it’s organic conversation with other people around our goals and our ambitions is really underrated. And can you talk a little bit more about how you talk about what you’re doing with other people and why that’s beneficial?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: It’s so funny because a lot of people are, they still cannot wrap their heads around the concept that people make money off of a blog. But I mean, I will find a way to inch in the conversation about my blog. At any moment’s, notice even getting my hair done, my hairdresser will say, oh, I saw your Instagram. You have a food blog? Yeah, I actually do have a food blog, and this is why you just,

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, perfect opportunity to talk about it.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: He’s like, yeah. And a lot of people don’t think that I take my own pictures and I’m just like, Nope, it’s all me. For instance, if I’m getting my nails done, this happened two weeks ago. The nail tech said that she really loves bolognese, and I’m like, really? You should try my short rib bolognese. It’s on my blog. If I’m out at the holiday party, I’ll just strike up conversation with the person that I’m sitting next to and I’ll say, yeah, what do you do? And they say, oh, I don’t know. I work in tech. And I’m like, oh, okay. That’s nice. And then of course they’re going to say, what do you do? And I’m like, oh, I’m a blue blogger, and the name of my blog is Britney Breaks Bread. You should go to it. This is how you spell it. Not specifically in that I make it as organic and not as pushy as I’m explaining. But you find a way to kind of smush it in there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure. And this is what I think happens, whether it’s talking about what we’re doing or a lot of times it’s like something I’m trying to figure out a problem I’m working through is naturally what happens when you share that with somebody is they go to work trying to make connections, or if it’s a problem that you share, it’s trying to understand the problem to help figure out a solution. And naturally that’s what people do. When you are doing that, do you perceive the benefit to be kind of like, Hey, they might visit and become a follower, or is it something beyond that, then they might share it with other people. What does that look like when you think about kind of sharing it out in the world?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: I think truly it’s both. I think we hope for both. And if it’s just one, then that’s great. If it’s neither, then I did my best. But yeah, the hope is always that someone will one visit and two share a recipe or just a link simply saying, I made this recipe. It tasted really good, and you should try it too. Yeah, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. So tell me about your cookbook and would that be like six, seven? Would that be on the list?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: It would be on the list, because I feel like my cookbook, here it is, by the way. It was such a fun experience. I always wanted to do a cookbook because I figured it’s one thing to be in a digital space and another thing to be in people’s kitchens permanently, even if it’s in someone’s kitchen and collecting dust, it’s there and they support it and hopefully made something out of it. But the cookbook came about. I was actually four months pregnant, and my friend from Bake From Scratch magazine, Brian Hart, he reached out and I was actually talking on my Instagram stories about how I wanted to do an ebook. I had done an ebook back in 2020, and I was going to do another one because I knew I was going to be on maternity leave, and I wanted something to generate income without me having to constantly either do sponsored work or have to upload recipes. So I said, I’m going to do an ebook. And I was asking people what did they want to see in the ebook? It was going to be primarily baking. And he said, you want to write a cookbook? I hear, and I said, yeah, I really, really want to write a cookbook cookbook. And we had a conversation and out of that conversation, he offered me a deal. And of course, I wasn’t ever going to say no. And it’s just been such a dream come true to just have this book of recipes In my kitchen with me and knowing I can look at all the photos and I know exactly where I was when these are rose sugar churros, and it’s such Another thing about the cookbook too, is that I feel like as someone who does keyword research at times, it can kind of stump your creativity because again, you’re trying to find things that fit within a certain place. And with the cookbook, you can basically do whatever you want to do. These are recipes that I love, recipes that I’ve written down years and years ago, just waiting for an opportunity for them to come to fruition and see the light of day. So that’s where this baby comes.

Bjork Ostrom: Love that. Bake Until Golden Brown. We’ll link to it in the show notes as well. I think there’s all of these benefits that come from a book. One is, and you alluded to this a little bit, almost the psychology and a contrast against building a digital business, which is having a physical thing. There’s a legacy component to it. It’s showing up in a physical form as opposed to just a digital form. And I think that’s unquantifiable, but undeniable. I think there’s also a business benefit, which is as a creator who has a traditionally published book, there is something that inevitably allows you to be perceived. Yeah, there’s a trust component to it, and I think part of that might fall over into the world of search. It’s hard to know all of those pieces come together, but with people for sure as well, people who come to your site and see that you have a traditionally published cookbook, what did you learn in the process that you would do the same or do different if you were to do it again?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: I think in the process of compiling recipes and things like that and baking, of course, there’s always technical things that I’ve learned along the way. I won’t bore you with them because a lot of things are just how to mix ingredients and temperature control and your oven temperature and things like that. I think I became such a better baker, but more

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s like the technical skills. You refined those. Yeah.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Yeah, because there, there’s 105 recipes in here, and in order to bring to light the things that mattered the most to me, the recipes that I really wanted to be in the book, there were certain things that I had to learn. I’m not a trained pastry chef, and there are things that I had to step back, become a student again, and learn how to do certain things, and it all paid off. I can basically feel like I could bake anything at this point. Are there certain things that are a little harder for me? Sure. But I feel like coming out of the process, I feel like I can literally make anything, however,

Bjork Ostrom: And that was forged in the fire of deliverables, and it’s a different type of pressure when you’re doing a cookbook like that.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: I would also say that writing the cookbook helped with my blogging process and that I can make two to three recipes in a day and just learn how to map out my day, what’s in the oven, what can be on the stove, is there anything that can set in the fridge? And I can just kind of plan out my recipes in that way. Just the processes that I can now work through as opposed to just starting something, one thing start to finish. So I’m able to roll out more recipes on a almost daily basis as opposed to before. But one thing I will say, I would probably have done better, this is the marketing component because This is why I say I’m not a marketer. I wished that I could have done more about amplifying the book when it came to building the recipes and creating the content and the photos and things like that. I felt very, very confident in doing so. However, I was just not sure how to get people to buy the book. How do you say, Hey, this book is phenomenal. Please buy it. And in fact, that kind of is my strategy right now. I love the book so much, but I don’t know how to always market to people to get them to buy in the digital space. I went to, I did a flea market. My friend Wildberry, her name is Bridget. She does a big market, and she was gracious enough to give me a stand for one of her field days, and I sold 20 books that day, and I was ecstatic about it. People came to my stand, 60% of the people that I met with bought and some people bought two. So if that’s something that I could change and something that I could learn for, should I do a subsequent book? I would like to either take a class or hire someone or something of that magnitude so that I can Push the book further.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s almost like there’s this switch that happens, and we kind of talked about this earlier where it’s like you had developed these skills and this expertise around marketing your content, but there’s a shift that happens once you do have an actual product, and now you are creating content that needs to be content marketing for a product. So it’s that shift from marketing content to content marketing, and that suddenly feels very different. And the other hard thing is it’s an expectation shift with your audience. They are used to getting a thing. That thing is free. The way as a business that we monetize is we work with the brand or we monetize via ads, and now suddenly it’s like, oh, I need to put a credit card in and buy a thing, otherwise I don’t get it. And that’s a big shift in terms of how we are crafting and creating content. So what you’re saying makes complete sense. The other thing that is this new reality is for the most part, it feels like publisher’s expectation is that you are the one doing the marketing and the selling. And it’s not necessarily like they’re going to put a huge amount of effort and a massive team behind this. It seems like most common now, I’m not an expert in books, but it seems like most common now is this expectation that you have a following and you are going to promote that and sell this thing, which I think is oftentimes harder than people think. It’s like, I have 50,000 followers or a hundred thousand followers. I’m going to create this product, cookbook, whatever it might be. Oh, I don’t know, maybe 10% of my audience is going to buy it. And it’s like, oh, actually, that’d be a pretty good conversion rate. That would be

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Actually, yeah. And the difficult part about that too is that the algorithm is, say you have even 500,000 followers, many of those people are actually seeing that content. Furthermore, how many of those people who actually see the content will actually translate that into going to your website or a website, Amazon, whatever, and actually buying said product. So that’s tricky.

Bjork Ostrom: And I was just having a friend, a conversation with a friend last week who does a lot of cookbook sales. He has kind of a publisher type business, and he was talking about they’ve tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of cookbooks that they’ve sold. But he is marketer first food person. Second, he’s partnering with people, but he comes in as a marketer, and a lot of what they’re doing is paid advertising and funnels and events and things like that. I think maybe that’s what you’re getting to a little bit when you say not a marketer, not a specific type of marketer maybe. And I think for most of us who are really good at organic to get into the world of paid is a very different game. And it’s like, oh man, I’m going to pay for a thing. And suddenly you have the risk of had another friend who had a course. It’s like he paid a hundred thousand in a year and he made 90,000. You start to get into that world where there is that potential risk. And so it’s a very different game, but I think your takeaway is a good one for anybody who’s thinking about it, which is to understand that’s a very different game to market a product.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: It’s a huge pivot.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So how about, you talked about your website, email list, Pinterest, Instagram yourself as kind of the most valuable platforms that you have or canvases to create on. How about this, and it might be related a little bit, but sources of revenue, if you were to say your top three most important sources of revenue, my guess is the first one would be the website would second be brand partnerships and sponsorships. And still, is that something you’re still pursuing, it sounds like? Yes.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: It’s not something that I’m actively pursuing, but it is something that I will entertain.

Bjork Ostrom: So if you get inbound, you’ll have those conversations?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not something that I am always very excited to do, unless it’s a brand that, again, I’m already working with or a product that I’m using very often. There are a couple of brands I think I might call pitch this year because I do love their product so much and I do spend a lot of money on them. So it would be aligned for me to work with ’em, but I’m not actively pursuing brands. My third revenue stream would be the cookbook in my eco cookbooks.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yep. Can you talk about on the brand side of things, what does that look like? Are brands reaching out through Instagram? And if it is a brand that’s aligned, how do you handle that process? I think we all can have so much to learn from our respective processes and systems for working with brands and sponsors.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: So if I receive an email from a brand that I think would be a good fit to work with, I literally ask them what they’re looking for, what’s their timeline, what’s their budget, most importantly, and then we kind of negotiate further. I see if their timeline is going to fit with my schedule or if I have to move a couple things around and it’s worth it to do so then I will do it. I will accommodate that. If it’s something that even though it’s a brand that I like, if it’s not something that I can accommodate or if the money is under a certain threshold and it’s just not worth it to me, then it’s not something that I’ll take on.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. And are you doing that all on your own, like putting together an agreement and doing the negotiation? Yeah. What’s your advice

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: For

Bjork Ostrom: People who want to do that but maybe feel intimidated?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: I am a team of not many. It’s me and I have someone who helps out with my blog posts writing every once in a while, and Simple Pin Media manages my Pinterest, but all the other stuff is just me.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: So yeah, I’m doing all the negotiating, responding to emails, reviewing the contracts and all that fun stuff.

Bjork Ostrom: For somebody who’s never done, let’s say they get inbound, they’ve never done a negotiation, what’s your advice for them on how to handle that? Well, and also you talked a little bit before we press record around thinking strategically around potentially turning a one-off deal. Hey, could you do a blog post? Could you do an Instagram reel into something that’s a little bit more long-term? If you could speak to those two things.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: So if it’s your first time receiving an email from a company and they would like to work with you, I would say don’t be afraid to name your price and don’t undercut yourself, because if they’re reaching out, clearly they already are enjoying your content and clearly you have something unique to offer. So that would be my number one with a bullet. Number two would be stick to the timeline and if you are interested in parlaying that one project into a sustainable relationship where you’re getting more work, I would say perhaps give them a little bit more than what they’re asking for. I try to do this with almost all of the brands that I work with, because I always like to provide more than less, or even not less, but just what they’re asking for. This prevents the need to reshoot. It prevents the need to have a ton of back and forth. So I won’t say I supply everything. I think that you may be undercutting yourself on that, but it’s important to give them just a tiny bit more than what they ask for so that they can see that there’s value in your work. And to translate that into more posts. I actually very much did this last year. At the beginning of the year, there was a brand that I love working with and they did not want to meet my price. And I told them that I would throw in a blog post to supplement or to justify the price, gave them my blog stats and they agreed to it. So I would say use your metrics to your advantage, especially if there ever is a time where a brand says, oh no, that’s too much, or it’s not something we can accommodate right now, we’ll reach back out. And you say, hold on, wait a second. I can throw this in too. If it’s within, it’s with the reason.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Love that. We had a conversation on the podcast with Justin Moore who wrote a book called Sponsor Magnet. One of the things he talks about is understanding the brand’s needs so you can craft a deliverable for them that matches those needs. And it sounds like there’s budget considerations always, but then deliverables as well. And if you feel like it’s within reason to increase deliverables in order to justify budget, that’s a great negotiation strategy as opposed to just coming down on budget. I think it’s wise to look at all those multiple angles like that, and a good reminder for us as we have those conversations with brands. So Britney, it’s been really fun for me to hear your story, especially because it’s inspiring to think about, Hey, what does it look like to get after it? To learn from experts, to have those conversations around things that you could do better, but then also to continually show up every day, which it sounds like you’ve really done and you’ve done it by not having a team of five people running around. It’s like you are the person doing it, which is a good reminder as well. You have a family, you’re making time for them, and you’re doing this hard work as well. So it’s inspiring to see you achieve those things that it seems like you set out to achieve. What does the next 2, 3, 4 years look like for you? As you start to look out, what are the things that you’re starting to think about doing? Or is it kind of like, Hey, I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing and see what it looks like to just press repeat on that to continue with it?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: For the most part, I think I would like to continue doing what I’m already doing. I’m happy, I’m having fun. I’m playing with food and doing fun recipes and it seems to be resonating with my readers, and so that’s awesome. But maybe we’ll have another cookbook to come out soon.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Alright. A little tease. We can have you back on.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: That would be awesome

Bjork Ostrom: When that happens. That’s great. And then how about if you were to go back 2020, right? As you’re starting to get into it, what would your advice be to yourself if you were to go back and have a conversation with Britney 2020 version?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Yeah, I think back then I really wish that I would have had more direction at the time. I was again working a corporate job and that was my main focus. But it’s also difficult too because I had so much fun doing the food stuff and the Instagram thing. And it was also a really unique time because the pandemic was afoot and I think everybody was, was on Instagram because there was nothing else to do and everybody was pinning things. So it was a bit of an interesting time. But yeah, I would probably just say to myself to enjoy it, but perhaps have more of a direction in what you want this to become.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s great. And got there eventually. But it’s like what you’re saying is fast track that like, hey, focus in on a specific thing. Maybe it’s like lean into the business component of it a little bit more around keyword research and the science or research part of it, which you already naturally are that, which I think makes a lot of sense. So for anybody who wants to follow along with what you’re doing to connect with you, buy the cookbook, where’s the best place to do that?

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: So you can go to britneybreaksbread.com. It’s B-R-I-T-N-E-Y, breaks bread.com, and all the information, all my recipes can be found there. You can order the cookbook, you can find all of my social media links and lots of fun things to cook too.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Britney, thanks so much for coming on. It was great to talk to you.

Britney Brown-Chamberlain: Thank you for having me.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. We are kicking off a brand new month and spring is just around the corner. So I wanted to hop in and update you on what you can expect to see in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. If you are not yet a Food Blogger Pro member, we would love to have you. The Food Blogger Pro membership is filled with incredible resources for all types of food creators. We have courses monthly live q and as, monthly coaching calls, a member forum, and lots of experts in the food blogging space who are always available to answer your questions. And if you already are a Food Blogger Pro member, here’s what you’ll see in the membership this month on Thursday, March 6th, we have a brand new coaching call that will be going live on the site and on Food Blogger Pro on the go, our members only podcast. This coaching call will be with Shayma from The Spice Spoon and is a really great call for longtime food bloggers who are looking to breathe new life into their food blog, update old posts, or just think about their business in a fresh way. Next up, we have an updated course that will be going live on Thursday, March 13th. We will be giving a huge facelift to our affiliate marketing course. We’re really excited about it and definitely check it out. Last but not least, in March, we’ll be hosting our live Q&A on Thursday, March 20th. This Q&A will be all about the business of blogging. We’ll be chatting LLCs, contracts and website policies for food creators with our great legal expert, Danielle Liss. While it’s perhaps not the most exciting topic, it’s a super valuable topic for all business owners and food creators and you won’t want to miss it. And that’s what we have on deck for this month. It’s going to be a really great month in the membership. We’re looking forward to it. And if you would like to join us, just head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more.