102: Write More, Write Better, and Write Smarter with Gabriela Pereira

Welcome to episode 102 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks to Gabriela Pereira about becoming a better writer and building a community around your writing.

Gabriela got her MFA in 2010, and after she graduated, she realized that a lot of people don’t actually need a formal education process in order to write. If you give yourself permission to own your creativity and writing, and if you learn a few key skills along the way, you can be a writer.

She started DIY MFA to teach others how they can do exactly that.

By focusing on the work at hand, Gabriela has been able to practice, evaluate, and fine-tune her craft and teach others how to do the same. Gabriela’s strategies about finding the right writing system, tracking productivity, staying inspired, and understanding strengths and weaknesses all play into finding one’s voice and writing style.

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101: What I Learned After Five Years of Income Reports with Bjork Ostrom

Welcome to episode 101 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks about the lessons he learned after five years of publishing Income Reports on Pinch of Yum.

The Pinch of Yum Income Reports chronicle the experiment Bjork and Lindsay started as a way to find out if it was possible to create an income from a food blog.

Spoiler alert: It is.

After five years of publishing these income reports and sharing the process of turning Pinch of Yum into a business, Bjork has learned quite a few lessons. From learning to trust his gut to building their own path to learning how to learn, the 20 lessons Bjork discusses will help anyone in pursuit of starting their own business and becoming their own boss.

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100: How FBP Listeners Have Used the Podcast to Grow Their Blogs and Businesses

Welcome to episode 100 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, we’re celebrating our 100th episode with a special community episode!

There have been 99 Food Blogger Pro Podcast episodes before this one, and we’ve heard from a lot of amazing people. From full-time bloggers to SEO experts to social media pros, this podcast has seen no shortage of inspirational interviewees!

We’re really excited about this episode because we’re hearing from you. We asked our listeners what their favorite Food Blogger Pro Podcast episode was, and we’re so excited about the response. It’s so exciting to hear which episodes came to you at a specific point in your blogging career and how the podcast helped you overcome obstacles, become more confident, and grow your business.

We hope that this episode will help you find an episode you might have missed or remind you of an episode that you’d like to go back and listen to again. Thanks so much for a great 100 episodes!

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099: Sponsored Content and Getting Paid What Your Work is Worth with Danielle Liss

Welcome to episode 99 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks with Danielle Liss from Hashtag Legal about how you can create solid sponsored content.

If you do sponsored content, you know how much work a campaign can be. From developing the recipe to aligning with the brand’s goals, many considerations go into creating solid sponsored content for a brand.

From understanding FTC guidelines to knowing the legal disclaimers all blogs should have on their sites, Danielle and her business partner cover it all at their practice, Hashtag Legal. While most bloggers want to focus on the creative side of their businesses, it’s important to have a handle on the business and legal side of things as well. Danielle saw this as an opportunity to help get bloggers to the point where they’re comfortable with pricing their work and structuring their businesses.

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098: An Architect’s Journey to Becoming a Freelance Food Photographer with Ashley McLaughlin

a headshot of Ashley McLaughlin and the title of this Food Blogger Pro Podcast episode, 'An Architect’s Journey to Becoming a Freelance Food Photographer'

Welcome to episode 98 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks with Ashley McLaughlin from Edible Perspective about becoming a full-time freelance food photographer.

Architecture and food…it doesn’t sound like there would be many similarities between the two, right? But there are, and Ashley’s background in architecture helped her understand experience, perspective, and design in a culinary setting.

After staring her blog, Edible Perspective, as a way to stay creative, Ashley’s love of food transformed into a love of photography. After a long learning process, she went from a complete novice with a DSLR to understanding exposure meters, shooting in manual mode, and writing a food photography series on her blog. Now she’s a full-time freelance food photographer who has photographed multiple cookbooks for bloggers.

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097: How to Create a Full-Time Income from Blogging Using The Egg Carton Method with Bjork Ostrom

Welcome to episode 97 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks about dividing income into multiple “eggs” in a carton of blogging income.

For a lot of us, “pro” blogging (i.e., making a full-time income from blogging) is the dream. In order to do that, however, income needs to be coming in from multiple channels.

Bjork likes to think of these “channels” as eggs in an egg carton; you need to fill your egg carton with different revenue streams in order to create a sustainable income from your blog. It’s really difficult to create a full-time blogging income from only one “egg,” so diversifying your egg carton can help you get there even sooner.

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096: How to Create the Perfect Recipe Post with Bjork Ostrom

Welcome to episode 96 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork talks about recipe plugins and why you need them.

Regardless of where you are in your blogging journey (just starting out to full-time), chances are you’ve heard the words recipe plugin before. These plugins are incredibly important for food bloggers to be aware of because they not only make your recipes look beautiful, but they also help your blog communicate with search engines like Google and Pinterest.

There are so many elements to consider when choosing a recipe plugin for your blog, and it’s important to choose one that checks off “all of the SEO boxes.” So when Bjork noticed the recipe plugin Pinch of Yum was using wasn’t quite keeping up with the times, he decided it was time to build one in-house.

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095: How Embracing the Mess Propelled a Career with Jillian Tohber Leslie from MiloTree

Welcome to episode 95 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork interviews Jillian Tohber Leslie from Catch My Party and MiloTree about making successful career changes by embracing the mess.

Last week, Bjork talked about 5 techniques you can use to keep gooing when you’re feeling overwhelmed with your blog. To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

Embrace The Mess

As with life, business isn’t always pretty. No matter how put-together someone’s business looks from the outside, you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ve had their own fair share of messy affairs to deal with in their business.

Jillian Tohber Leslie learned early in her career that the key to moving forward was embracing this messiness and using it to help propel her career and her businesses forward. She and her husband started Catch My Party, the largest party ideas site on the web, and went on to found MiloTree, a social and email growth popup that’s perfect for bloggers.

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094: How to Keep Going with Bjork Ostrom

a headshot of Bjork Ostrom and the title of this podcast episode, How to Keep Going

Welcome to episode 94 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks about how to keep going when you’re not sure you can continue.

Whether you’ve been blogging for a few months or a few years, you’ve no doubt had the thought at some point or another: How do I keep going?

Blogging can be tough. You might be fitting it in after your regular full-time job hours. You might be running your blog as a business with not enough hours in the day. You might be juggling it on the side while trying to raise a family. Whatever your situation, you’ve likely found out that blogging isn’t easy, and on some days it’s tough to imagine how you’ll keep it up.

Today, Bjork talks about some techniques that he and Lindsay have used in their businesses to help them get up in the morning and do The Work.

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093: How Finding a Niche Transformed a Business with Meggan Hill from Culinary Hill

Welcome to episode 93 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork chats with Meggan Hill from Culinary Hill about how finding a niche transformed her business.

As an internet entrepreneur, it can be tempting to try to appeal to everyone. You don’t want to send potential traffic away from your website, right?

However, successful bloggers have said time and again that a big contributor to success is finding a specific audience and sharing only content that fits that audience perfectly. In other words, finding a niche.

Meggan Hill started her blog, Culinary Hill, with an aim of pleasing everyone. And… it didn’t work out so well. Her blog did okay, but she ended up feeling discouraged and gave it up for a while. A couple years ago, though, she decided it was time to make some changes and make this blogging thing work for her. With the help of a branding agency, she was able to find a niche, free up her creativity by sticking to that niche, and nearly triple her traffic in just one year. Today, she’s here to tell us all about it.

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