Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug show. My name is Doug Cunnington. And today I’m pumped to interview actually sort of a local in the Colorado area here Sarah Bond, and she is the vegetarian food blogger behind the popular site. Live, eat, learn. She started the blog in 2015 and started a couple of niche sites along the way.
Those are. Brew Booch and Bone Appetrite, which is a fun name. I love the word play there. And she’s built the sites up to over 1 million readers per month and now blogs full time from Denver. So welcome, Sarah. How’s it going today? Hi, good. How are you? Doing really well. And yeah, I, I didn’t realize you were local and I heard your interview a while back on niche pursuit.
So shout out to, to Spencer and that podcast out there. And I was like, Oh, I should reach out. And I realized that we have a lot of overlapping interests of course with blogging, but I, I love cooking and I, I was a huge, I still am a big Alton Brown fan of Good Eats and watch like a ton of Food Network.
And you know, I love cooking at home and then we both have herding dogs, which is kind of cool. So yeah, again, a ton of overlap and I feel like we could be friends. But today we’re going to, we’re going to talk about And just kind of like working in this industry for a few years as we’re recording this, it is March 19th.
And I want to ask some pretty direct questions, like right up front about the core update rolling out with Google and maybe back into some of the helpful content update from last September as well. So right now, a lot of folks are sort of devastated with Either their sites being de indexed, they were already in rough shape from the helpful content update.
So how are your sites doing these days?
Sarah: Yeah, so I just took a peek at search console because it’s something I’ve been actively trying to avoid partially just because I feel like at this point, there’s not much I can do about it. If it’s still rolling out. I guess that’s mostly it, but I did take a peek and we are seeing some softening on the recipe site and then I’m sure the niche sites also are seeing a bit of a dip, but it’s not a free fall, which is good.
But we’ve been doing a lot of work in the past couple of months, especially with the helpful content update. Just trying to really amp up the, the content to be a lot less verbose and like wordy and just really getting it succinct and ultra, ultra helpful, basically. So hoping that that has sort of prevented the absolute freefall that I’ve been hearing some chatter of, but it’s a little soon to tell if it’s going to continue.
Doug: First, I want to commend you for not even looking and I feel bad because you literally opened up search console for the first time in weeks. It sounds like, and people you should learn, learn from Sarah for not, not looking at the analytics when literally it’s like you have to wait for this thing to run.
So no need to stress yourself out and I apologize for forcing you to look at it.
Sarah: No, it had to be done.
Doug: All right. And then a helpful content update. Did you see any issues with that back in September, October timeframe?
Sarah: I want to take a peek. Yes. Yeah. So similarly, we saw, um, it was a bit of a, a downward turn.
And we got it going back up right before this March update. So, again, that was just, I think a lot of going through and updating posts. Cause at this point we have like 1500 posts in the library. And a lot of them are really old back when it was really our, I guess our norm to not keyword stuff, but like to over optimize posts.
And so we’re kind of going through now and de optimizing posts and taking away. All that long tail keyword chasing type of stuff and really getting it to the point and getting it super helpful. So, I think that did help, but yeah, it’s, it’s too soon to tell now, like what this new update is wanting from us.
So, we are planning probably in the next four to six months doing like a complete overhaul of all the content going through and really getting them all on the same page but definitely need some data before we start that project to know what’s going on. What kind of things we should be looking for changing all that.
Doug: Okay, cool. So what we’re going to do is talk a little bit about your background. We’ll talk a little bit about sort of your early, early days blogging. Cause I know obviously things have changed a lot and your site’s been around since 2015. And then we’ll talk about some more advanced stuff along with like email video on social media, which after we had connected, it took a little while for us to be able to set this up.
But one of your videos popped up for me on Instagram completely organically. And I was like, Hey, wait a second. I think I know this site. And then I was like, Oh yeah, that’s Sarah. So that that’s kind of cool. And obviously it like went viral on some degree because it showed up on my feed. And I usually look at like food, guitars and dogs on Instagram.
So it popped up. It’s a nice job on that. And then we’ll talk about. You know, just diversifying and it sounds like you have, uh, overall. So first off, let’s talk about those early days blogging and why you started your blog.
Sarah: Yeah. So I started it, I think, similarly to a lot of people back in 2015, it was really sort of like lifestyle diary entry type content.
So I had studied nutrition in college and I had just graduated and I realized I had no idea how to cook. And so I started live, eat, learn. As the name kind of, tells, I started it as a way of documenting my learning how to cook. And so the idea was that I would pick up an ingredient from the grocery store and then cook it into a bunch of recipes and just sort of learn how to cook ingredient by ingredient.
So it definitely started out with me not really having any idea how to cook, just understanding the fundamentals of, of health and nutrition. And then obviously, nine years later, I do know how to cook. Um, I’ve since gone to get my masters in sensory science, which is a type of food science. So really sort of building up my education, credentials, and then experience just cooking.
And then along the way, I started my two niche site, um, and those are both like passion projects. So the one started because my kombucha recipe, which I think I published in like the first year of blogging. It went like viral on Pinterest back when you could go viral on Pinterest and on Google.
And I was just getting so many questions about like the Small little particular aspects of kombucha by email that I just figured I’ll just put all these emails that I’ve written into article form and then I can just send them a link to the article. So that sort of was, uh, my night, I don’t know, like a real passion project.
I don’t really add to it much anymore because I feel like I’ve just answered everything there is to answer about how to brew kombucha. And then as you mentioned, I have a dog and so when I adopted my dog, I thought I need to build a whole business around her. So I started my dog food recipe site called Bon Appétreat.
Doug: Okay. And just curious about, so you have a master’s in, what did you say, sensory science?
Sarah: Yeah, it’s called sensory science. It’s a type of food science.
Doug: What kind of job or careers would someone get after that?
Sarah: So a lot of my friends from school work in like the food industry. So basically like any product that you buy at the grocery store has likely been through like a sensory team.
So specifically when I was getting my master’s, I was working on Hellman’s mayonnaise. So I spent like six months with a panel of people who were trained in only how to taste mayonnaise. And they would like, You know, taste the different attributes of it and figure out why one competitor is doing better than another or whatever.
So, um, that’s like a very, like, very distant, like, very common example, I’d say, of what most people do in sensory science. But yeah, when I graduated, I basically had like a fork in the road where I could have got a job in that, but also the blog at that point was like, I guess, probably five years old.
So then I thought, like, if I give it full time hours. I could probably take it somewhere. So yeah, I never actually ended up working in the field just to took all the knowledge and things I learned and apply it to my recipes.
Doug: When you started the program, did you know, when you started grad school, rather, when, did you know that you might continue on with a blog or did you, were you thinking, Hey, I’m going to be an industry, you know, food scientist.
Sarah: I had a feeling that I would continue with the blog because I was seeing that growth chart But it was more of like, well, one, just to add some, like, you know, credibility to the recipes I was making and to learn like the fundamentals of how the recipes work. But then also like as a backup, like if the blog didn’t take off, I would have credentials outside of just my bachelors.
To like potentially get a real job.
Doug: The other side note, are you a beer drinker?
Sarah: Yeah, I live in Denver
Doug: Yeah, it’s perfect. Yeah. I was going to say I was a homebrewer, I guess I still am a homebrewer, but I’ve like, I haven’t brewed as much, but I got big into, uh, the BJCP beer judge certification program. So, I mean, we, we don’t treat it as scientifically as y’all did in, in school and everything.
But we really nerded out on, on the, Beer tasting. Have you ever studied or looked at BJCP or Cicerone or anything like that?
Sarah: No. I don’t think, I don’t know if I would be that good at it because like I actually have like not that good of like a palate. Like when we would do like the actual tests in school, like I was never that good at it, but.
The idea, if you’re like a real sensory scientist, is that you’re just hiring people who are good at it and then you’re just reading the data. So
Doug: Yeah, well, worst case scenario, you just drink a bunch of beer. So it usually turns out just fine. So, okay, cool. So you, I find that so. So interesting. And then you were able to pivot and probably, I mean, obviously you’re self employed, so that’s a huge difference from, you know, working at a big, probably, you know, an industrial food production facility and like that’s a completely different world.
And I look, I really like being self employed. So I assume you, you enjoy it too. It’s a good move. Okay. Great. So those were sort of the early years you started blogging. Did you know anything about blogging or writing specifically?
Sarah: I think everything at that point that I had learned was through podcasts.
So I just, like, even when I was in school and like early days, I was listening to podcasts. Mostly a lot of like food blogging podcasts, but a lot of content creation kind of podcast just to like, get me thinking about moving from like that old school diary style of blogging to, I guess, the more modern way of creating content.
Doug: Okay. And I’m going to jump ahead a little bit here because you know, it’s kind of a hot topic with AI and you know, it was really over over the last, I would say. 16, 18 months or so when AI became like a real sort of impactful thing. And before that, some people were playing with like Jasper, but people weren’t publishing as much content.
And obviously Google has been reacting and maybe overreacting a little bit. So as AI was popping up, were you using it in any fashion? Can you talk about. Either your adoption or lack of adoption for AI over, say, like the last year and a half or so.
Sarah: Yeah, I would say it’s definitely been a part of our our strategy.
And I think when it first came out, it was like, we really went for it. And now he’s kind of taken a step back a bit. So when it first came out, it was like, also when we were really at a stage of like, I guess going after these like long tail, tail keywords that weren’t necessarily recipes. Cause.
Before that, I was always just doing recipes like that was the main content I was creating. But I realized with AI, I could go after like different kinds of keywords like more informational type of articles related to cooking. And so we did use a good bit of that along with like having an editor go and make sure it sounds human and like fix like the hallucinations and things that happen with AI.
But during the helpful content update, we really got hit on a lot of those articles. And I don’t know if it’s because Because they were AI written, or if it’s because they were really keyword chasing type articles that weren’t necessarily made for like our core readership, so we definitely had like a audit of those, I don’t know, 200 or so articles we 410 deleted a lot of them.
And now I would say like AI is used sometimes for like social captions and things, but like most of the content is. By human writers without the help of AI now.
Doug: What does your team look like?
Sarah: It’s small. It’s there’s two writers. I do all the recipe creation and photography and video. And then I have a couple who helps me.
They’ll do like how to guides on like vegetables and things. So like how to cut broccoli, how to steam asparagus, stuff like that. Where, where I don’t feel, feel like it really needs to be me, but it could, it could be like sort of more faceless. So. Yeah, I guess four of us and everyone’s contractors.
There’s no, no one full time except me.
Doug: Do your other writers have any specific qualifications and how did you find them?
Sarah: They’re all bloggers. So they’re just qualified by also writing their own things. They’re all in different niches. So I think that helps just so that we’re not competing with each other.
I never, I never feel like I’m giving them something that’s directly competing with each other. Something they have. So, um, yeah, I think just from their own experience in
Doug: blogging. Okay. And then you mentioned, ah, it’s a pretty small team. Is that intentional? You want it to be small. So, or maybe for a specific reason, I won’t load the question at all, but why is it small?
Sarah: I think we just haven’t I haven’t got to the point where I can really think of a way to hand more off without handing off the things that I think are I really love doing or I need to be doing, you know? So I’ve handed off like writing because I feel like they can emulate my voice well enough that it’s not noticeable that it’s not me.
But at this point, like we’re publishing like five to seven articles a week and I’m like, we don’t need to be publishing More than that necessarily. So what would hiring someone else do? And then also like with all these updates, it kind of makes me nervous to hire more people and take on more responsibility of, um, especially with an employee, like having someone rely on us for income, I think would put a lot more pressure.
Like I might’ve actually checked search console. If I had like more people than just me relying on this as a full time income
Doug: Yeah, and I think that’s great. I I hear a lot of people and they Scale up too fast and I I don’t know. I I’m with you. I want a small team. I only have like One or two assistants to help a very small amount and it’s exactly what you’re saying It’s like you have responsibility to give them work to do and it has to be roi positive for them, but for you so that it’s worth the trouble.
And I think sometimes people, they get excited and they’re like, Oh, I want to have a big team for, for some reason. But usually it’s just more of more stress.
Sarah: Yeah. And I, I struggle with it too, because I see a lot of content creators who go from being like the creative person behind it to the manager. And I don’t really want to be a manager.
I want to keep doing what I’m doing. So yeah, I, I’ve also learned that like, Okay. I can hire people in my personal life to do things I don’t want to do, like someone to help clean my house or like grocery delivery, like things that actually take hours out of your week. I’ll just hire those things out versus, you know, finding someone to fill a role that I actually want to do.
Doug: Can you talk about how storytelling and your credentials help you blog and I guess sort of the the impact of that from All or for all your blogs really?
Sarah: Yeah I think it’s really important right now as we go into this new era of ai generated content and Sites that are created solely for the purpose of SEO.
Um, I think it’s really important to have a personal brand or at least a brand that people recognize if you want it to be faceless. Falling back on those credentials to show your experience and why you have the authority to write about these things. So one thing we’ve been doing as we go back and like update all this old content.
And as we go forward with creating content is really how can we make this so clear that I’m Sarah, I have a degree in nutrition. I studied food science. I’ve been doing this for 10 years. Like, here’s why you should trust me. Because. I don’t know. It’s, it’s scary with like the Google updates and everything happening.
So I want people to remember me and the brand that I’ve created so that, you know, when Google takes them to results, they don’t trust or when an algorithm shifts they’ll recognize me and come back to the site. So yeah, I’ve, and like how we’re doing that is like. Like if you’re scrolling through one of my recipes, you’ll see like a picture of me at the beginning saying like, this is by Sarah bond with a link to my about page.
You’ll see like, and you’ll see more soon because the site’s getting redesigned. So we’re going to add a bunch more functionality for like really making it super obvious, but there’s going to be like breakout boxes that’ll say like Sarah’s tip with a picture of me. Sort of bringing that humanity into it and then like through recipe videos and yeah trying to just really like Personalize it and make it abundantly clear who it’s by and why I should be writing about it
Doug: You mentioned that you you do all the photography and recipe development and the videos, too Can you talk a little bit about the the skills that you needed to develop to do that?
Or were you already a photographer and that sort of thing?
Sarah: I had been doing photography, so I did like, I don’t know, senior portraits in high school, and then I went to college, and I was a photographer for the newspaper, and so when I started the blog, I was like, I am a good photographer, I know what I’m doing, but then like, if you look at my early food photos, they are so bad, because I just was so used to like, people doing all the work, and then I just hold the camera.
So food, yeah, food photography was definitely a very steep learning curve. And I’m always still learning. And so, yeah, I definitely don’t think having experience as a photographer is necessary to do your own photos. I did some courses I did, um, from Broma Bakery. She has a food photography course.
I did that one just to like understand the concepts of like food photography. And then I think it’s just like making yourself try. Specifically like with video. I hadn’t. I hadn’t like taken the plunge into doing video and then I just made myself do it. And like every recipe made myself shoot a video.
And so now I’m at a point where like, I’m pretty proud of them. So yeah, I guess just going for it. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. Just like all this stuff is like, you have to learn through experience and then you realize, You made a mistake and just don’t do it again. So, so with the, with the photography, do you use a DSLR or mirrorless, or just use your phone these days?
Or what are you using for photos?
Sarah: I think it’s a, it’s a DSLR. I think it’s a Nikon D eight 10. Yeah. Which is probably due for an upgrade. Cause I bought it probably five years ago, but yeah, I still use the DSLR for all the photography. And then I just use my phone for all the videography.
Doug: Okay, then what kind of phone do you have, just like an iPhone something?
Sarah: I think it’s just an iPhone 15. Like the latest one. Yeah, I always, I’m not, I never used to be the type of person who would buy like the newest iPhone. But now that I’m doing all my video on the phone, it makes such a difference. And so I’ll usually just buy the latest one with like the biggest storage and the nicest camera because it’s so much easier than using a DSLR for, especially if you’re creating content for social media, like it’s made for that.
Doug: I usually get the latest phone, but long stretches in between. So funny enough, I have a, I have the 10 right now. The X it’s like, it was about seven years old now. And now it’s almost like a game, like how long can I keep it? But I’ll get a 15 pro or whatever the best I can get whenever I do it.
But it’s, it’s about time I just, somehow I haven’t dropped it and broken it.
Sarah: Oh yeah, mine’s always being dropped and things it’s covered in cracks, but the camera still works. So
Doug: So what one follow up so you have the Nikon do you? What lens do you use if you happen to remember? It’s not super important.
Is it the kit lens just a little zoom or something?
Sarah: It’s a 24 to 70
Doug: it’s a pretty nice one. Yeah. Okay. That sounds like a nice one. So that’s like a, that’s a pretty pro level lens.
Sarah: Okay. It was a splurge, but I bought it at the same time as the camera and it’s lasted that long and it’s, it’s. Yeah. It’s the only lens I use.
I’ve got like a ton of lenses that I bought just like when I was getting started with the photography, but I pretty much never take this lens off. So yeah, big investment, but use it every day.
Doug: And what, what success have you seen with, I guess, a bigger focus on video really?
Sarah: Big success. Yeah. Um, and it wasn’t until that, that video that I think you saw, I had that one go like crazy viral and then one a couple months before.
And I’ve always been pretty hesitant to like put all my, to put too much effort into like the social media bucket because Google historically has been like where I get most of my traffic and it still is. But just with the way that Google has been changing, I thought I need to diversify these.
traffic sources. And so I started putting a lot more effort into video. Got pretty decent at it. Studied like storytelling, like voiceovers in the video. Cause I think that has a huge impact on how long people are going to watch your video and if they’re going to want the recipe or engage with it.
So yeah, I had two videos recently that I think those two things came together. Like the storytelling really got through to people. And then just like, I think it was just because they’re really easy recipes. And so those have become like my number one and two posts like shot above all my other posts that have historically been like, It’s made a huge impact.
Doug: All right. And how, how much, so the question that I want to ask is how much like grinding did you do where like, there was no success, right? You’re maybe you’re getting a few views or whatever before things started to work. Cause usually when you, I was talking to one of my friends, his name’s, uh, Take him take him and he’s on YouTube and he showed me his, his graph of just like his growth.
So he has like 250, 000 subscribers in the personal finance space, which is like super competitive and basically it was a year and a half of nothing. It looks like he didn’t even have a. A channel and then it took maybe a year to hit a hundred K and then he was like, it took like a month to hit the other hundred K and it, he was just like, the algorithm likes me now.
So how long of a grind was it with video? And you’re like trying and trying and trying and then nothing happened.
Sarah: I’d say probably a year of like posting a real every day until I got like real traction. And now, like, like what he said, like, I think two weeks ago we were celebrating a hundred K and like, now we’re about to hit 200 K on Instagram.
And like, yeah, that’s just, it’s just crazy. So. Yeah. And like, there’s also tools now. I think, I think it’s owned by Meta, but many chat is like what people use on Instagram to like send people the link to their DMs. So now there’s actually like a viable route for people to get to the recipe. Whereas before people would like see it and they wouldn’t actually go through to your site.
And so that’s kind of why I was like, why would I do it if they’re not landing on my site? But now like Instagram is a huge traffic source because people are finding the recipe. So yeah, I think it was just kind of like the perfect storm of all of those things happening at once, but it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t just kept posting.
Doug: Right, and I’m going to repeat it back to make sure I heard it right. So you posted, so you’ve been blogging for years, you’ve been successful. And then you posted videos daily on reels for about a year before you really got traction. Yeah. All right.
Sarah: Yeah. That’s great. Like I was stuck at like, I remember it was like 29.
1 K followers and I was like, I can’t even get to like 0. 2. I’m just going to use like a 0. 1. And so just, yeah, I just kind of thought like, it’s never going to happen. But yeah, it’s, it’s hard too. Cause like, while that’s like, it’s fun to have like followers and it’s fun to have engagement on Instagram.
It’s like, you know, it’s an algorithm too, that you’re at the peril of. So I guess now it’s just like another thing to keep a balance of with. The Google traffic and rarely do like Google keywords go hand in hand with like catchy Instagram videos. So now I’m trying to balance the content creation with like, you know, one post that might get some Google traffic and then a post on Instagram that has, you know, a search volume of 50, but like, I think people will like it.
Doug: So right and Let’s see here You mentioned that you’re publishing Almost daily so five to seven new pieces of content per week And I take it is some of that like on social media. Is that included with the five to seven?
Sarah: That’s all like posts on the websites
Doug: Okay, so that’s a pretty aggressive schedule and you I mean you do have a lean team But like everyone’s producing like more than one thing per week at least So, can you share any tips around Publishing that much content?
Sarah: So I would say definitely batching. So I’ll do like I’ll batch cook days basically, where if I’m in the kitchen, I’m going to cook like three to four recipes while I have like the lights set up and have my camera out. And I’m like in the mindset of doing that. And then I would say also something that I’ve recently started doing is, if I’m not in the mood to do something, then I just won’t do it, but I’ll do something else to move me forward.
Because I used to get in this rut where I didn’t want to do something. So I would just like scroll Reddit or TikTok instead of doing the thing I had to do. But now I have like a list of things that I could do instead. And so then it’s like, well, these things need to get done. So until I’m in the mood to edit this reel or write that post, I’m still going to be moving forward, but it’s just going to be in something that my brain wants to do at that moment.
So I would say between those two things, it’s really helped like with efficiency and just getting things, Um, and then, yeah, having like a writing team helps a lot just because to look at like a blank screen and need to fill it is just not something I like doing. And it’s one of those things where I’ll just procrastinate.
So, having writers for me personally has helped a lot.
Doug: And you mentioned. You have like 1500 posts on the recipe site and then that doesn’t even count the other two sites. So do you have any sort of like regular maintenance that you’re doing because it is so much content and like basically you could spend a decent chunk of time just going and making sure things are updated or are products still available or is there a better product for this thing now?
So how do you handle that amount of content and the legacy of the website?
Sarah: Um, Yeah. We have sort of a routine of going through and I used to be better about it, but generally I’ll go through each site and update one article a day, and that’s just looking at the structure of it, making sure the links all work making sure it’s not over optimized and then like bringing it up to date with like the tip boxes that we’ve added or adding photos to the recipe or to something that we’ve recently started doing.
So just bringing it all to the same level and I’ll try and do And that takes like 15 minutes for per site. So every morning I’ll try and go through the three sites and do that. But the libraries of the two smaller sites are a lot smaller. I think they each have like 150 articles. So it’s not as much of a feat to go through those.
Doug: And for the, the smaller sites, the kombucha site and the dog recipe site, it’s a dog recipe site, right? Like yeah, it’s recipes By the way what’s your dog’s name rhubarb rhubarb great and then does it’s it’s a lady dog. Is that right? All right. Yeah, does rhubarb get to take like when when you cook it is rhubarb like great This is tasting day and like I got all this extra food or like how does that work?
Sarah: He knows because for the dog blog I have like Uh, I have like a piece of like turf that I shoot everything on so I can like drive home that it’s like dog food stuff. And she knows when the turf comes out that it’s time to model. So she gets excited about those.
Doug: Yeah. Okay. That’s pretty funny. Yeah.
Yeah. My, my dog would, would know right away. Like, oh yeah, it’s, it’s recipe day. Um, and you know, funny thing, I don’t even remember what I was going to ask now. I’m just like, I want to talk about dogs
Sarah: basically about our dogs. Yeah. I wasn’t even going to start, I had no like plans of starting a dog site, but I’m also like a chronic domain buyer.
And so I had to just like buy domains when I see they’re available. And so I was just like looking one day and Bon Appetit was available. And so it was like, well, I need to buy it and I need to. Start a whole business around it, I guess, because that’s such a great name. So yeah,
Doug: what’s the focus there? Is it also vegetarian or does rhubarb eat meat? Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah. Okay. So that one has, yeah. Fruits, veggies and meat stuff. Yeah.
Doug: Okay, so I think we were talking about content. Sorry for the tangent, folks. This, this tends to happen, but you have a note here about content clustering, and I think, you know, with, with the amount of content that you have and the amount that you’re publishing, it could become a little bit overwhelming and sort of directionless if you have just like so much content and you don’t have a plan.
So can you, can you talk about your strategy there? Yeah.
Sarah: This has been in the last few years that I’ve really focused on this. And the idea being that if I can find these clusters that Google sees me an authority in, like in my case, chickpeas, like I had a bunch of chickpea recipes doing really well.
Then the idea is that if I publish more chickpea recipes, Google’s going to rank them higher because I’m the chickpea authority. So it’s really helped just like in content ideation, because then I can look at a cluster in this case, like chickpeas and really think of everything someone would need to know about that ingredient or about that cooking method or whatever the topic is, and then it helps me to find those gaps and then fill them basically.
So, yeah, so it’s kind of going by, I’ll do it like seasonally by ingredient or by method or by holiday. Just basically like general categories, I guess. And just kind of figure out which ones are doing well. And then It’s kind of like an easier way of, I don’t know, finding topic ideas that will probably rank or do well on Google.
Doug: One, one thing I’ve been thinking about in the last couple of weeks, but it’s a layer on top of an idea I had before. So one thing that I’ve said for a while, when I get a question specifically and I don’t know the answer and it’s a kind of obscure SEO question, I usually just say, you know what? Bye.
Don’t worry about the SEO like the right SEO thing because Google might change their mind Anyway, and just think about the end user and whatever makes most sense for them And usually I mean it’s a cop out because I don’t know the answer But at the same time like Google kind of wants you to just do that Anyway, if you pay attention to the subtext and there’s they’re like right for people So if you just forget about SEO and you’re right for people, that’s great One other thing baked into it again much deeper in the subtext is around keyword research and I think maybe there’s some chatter Currently on March 19 March 19th when we’re recording this of like sites that were super optimized around like keywords That they are being hit and they’re catching some penalties and such so that brings me to the point Of this, this question I’m finally getting to.
So are there some keywords or really recipes where you’re like, this is a cool recipe, it hasn’t been done before. There’s no keyword research on it, but you’re like, I’m publishing this because I’m interested in it, which goes back to like early blogging days where you’re like, I’m writing this. For, you know, myself or like this core audience and like, just F Google F anything else, like this is for the people that it’s for.
So how much do you think about that? Where you’re like, I’m writing this cause good.
Sarah: Yeah. So historically I didn’t do that. Because it was like, I didn’t have a social presence. So it’s like, if someone’s not going to find it on Google, then they’re not going to find it. But that first video that I was talking about that went viral, it was for marry me chickpeas, which there chickpeas because everyone’s looking for marry me chicken.
But I had that like in my list of ideas for years and I just didn’t do it because. The search volume issue. I was like, I’m just going to do it. Cause I think people will like it. I like it. I’m in the chickpea cluster. Like I have a chickpea authority, so I’m just going to try it. And that one has gone absolutely crazy and I don’t know if there’s search volume for it now, but it’s my number one post now.
So yeah, I feel like, and it kind of like, I don’t know, in a way, I think it feeds the Google beast too, because it’s now Google is seeing all this traffic. To this post and they’re seeing me even more as an authority and chickpeas or vegetarian food or whatever. So even though it didn’t, you know, start out as something that I guess was big on Google or had search volumes for Google, I think in a roundabout way, it does, it does pay off in the end in the search.
So yeah, it’s, it’s a lot more fun when you create things that your readers actually want, instead of just chasing keywords. Yeah, it’s a balance.
Doug: Yeah, that’s a perfect example. Thank you. I think it’ll be very interesting if It does shift that way and we’ll have to wait and see how, you know, so many things shape up, but I think it’ll be cool if it does go back to like sort of the early blogging days where people didn’t really, they were just trying to create something interesting to do it versus Hey, I want to try and rank for this keyword to sell some kind of, you know, random product that I’ve never owned before.
And I’m saying that as a person who like, Literally, I built sites like that for a few years. So like, uh, I mean, I understand like why people did it and it’s what, you know, people were talking about and we thought that’s what we were supposed to be doing. And then we ended up in some sort of like perverse situation where like, people are writing really horrible content in a bulk fashion with AI.
And it’s like, of course, this is the way it’s going to turn out. Right. Yeah. So, okay. Do you have any follow ups or, I had no question, but.
Sarah: Not really. That’s the only example I can think of recently where I just went for it on a recipe or like a piece of content that I just thought people would like.
Yeah. So, I mean, I think people should try it out and just see how it goes because Yeah, it brings a little more life into what you’re doing. And I think it also kind of like pushes the burnout down the road where it’s like, I’m actually enjoying this again and I’m not just trying to feed the machine anymore.
Doug: Okay. Well, that’s another perfect example too, because I decided I wasn’t going to play along with the YouTube algorithm as much and just started publishing what I wanted, really focusing more on the podcast, which doesn’t have. really the keyword component that we focus on with blogging or even on YouTube.
And then the other problem, I don’t know if you saw a bunch of YouTubers in the last year, they’re like, I’m going to quit YouTube. I’m burnt out, blah, blah, blah. It’s because they created a job they hated by accident. And then they started earning a bunch of money. And then they were like, Oh, I have to keep creating these videos.
And I hate blogging. Everything about what I’m doing now. And they have, you know, like an existential crisis and they get burnt out, but I’ve been able to like, not get burned out because I’m not, actually, I’m not earning any money from YouTube directly, which is like completely intentional, but if you, if you don’t watch it, like you’re in bad with the wrong people and you’re like, Oh shit, this is not where I want to be.
So anyway. Yeah.
Sarah: It takes away like the reason why you started doing it in the first place. Kind of similar to like my fear of becoming a manager. If I were to hire people, it’s like, I want to stay connected to it. And I also want to stay connected to the reason why I started it. Even though every pressure on the outside is to make you want to.
you know, do what they want, create, like, yeah. so
Doug: exactly. Okay. So let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about monetization. So there’s a lot of different ways to monetize a website and just want to get into maybe the breakdown and structure of where the revenue is coming from. And you, this shifts over time.
So just in broad strokes, how does it look?
Sarah: Yeah. It’s mostly ad revenue. Okay. I’m with raptive for ads. And so I’d say most of the income is from that. And we do like Amazon affiliates, but that’s such a small earner. And then I have a few eBooks that do pretty well specifically with the kombucha site, because it’s such a.
Niche topic that people are like really thirsty for information. I have a ebook there that does pretty well, but for the most part, it’s just ad revenue.
Doug: Yeah. Uh, just compliment you on the they’re thirsty for information. I hope everybody is good. And I, I, I brewed a booch for. I was maybe like five years or so you know, with the homebrewing beer, you know, some of my friends were doing that too.
It was pretty fun. I never, um, I enjoy the commercial stuff, but often it’s filled with sugar and I never really back sweetened mine so much. So you end up, you know, it’s not as tasty without sugar, but yeah, it’s a pretty fun, fun thing to do if people haven’t tried it. It’s pretty cool. So how’d you get into it?
Did you get obsessed and you have, you’re, you’re brewing some all the time these days? Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I got into it just because I was buying it so much. And I was like a student who couldn’t afford to be spending 5 a day on kombucha bottles. So then I did the math and was like, it’s like 20 cents to make it myself.
Less than that even, I think so. And I just, it’s just like a fun project. Like it doesn’t take that much time. It’s like 15 minutes every couple of weeks. So, yeah, it’s just fun to like play around with flavors and stuff. So Yeah, I started a Facebook group for that site just because it gets so many questions.
So I started a Facebook group so people can hopefully like answer each other’s questions. And so that Facebook group does very well. It’s very active and I’m just lightly in there. So yeah, it’s just like a fun community to see what everyone’s brewing and flavors they’re making and stuff.
Doug: Well, what’s your go to flavor these days then?
Sarah: I like pineapple as my favorite.
Doug: Nice. And then do you like I don’t know how you say, is it a secondary fermentation? Do you put the fruit in up front or do you put it in a couple of days after?
Sarah: Yeah. So you do the first fermentation, which is like making the kombucha out of tea. And then once it’s like, once it tastes pretty good, then you bottle it and then you add the flavors to it. So, and then you let it carbonate in the bottles.
Doug: Okay, cool. Again, we could go on a huge tangent here, but I won’t, uh, subject everybody to this. All right. Let’s talk about selling those eBooks. So it sounds like you, you wrote them yourself. So what’s the price point? How do you market them? How does that look?
Sarah: Yeah. So the one on the, on the vegetarian site is it’s kind of like a meal plan. So it does really well around January when people are making big changes. So that one is like all the recipes are unique to the meal plan. It basically tells you what to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 21 days.
So that one does like decently well, beginning of the year. The kombucha one is, it’s basically like all articles on my site put into a prettier form that they could print off if they wanted to. So that one is on a pay what you want model. So they can just, they just have to pay at least a dollar.
But I’d say on average people give me five to 10. So yeah, I mean, they, they do pretty well. I saw them on gum road. Which I’m considering moving over to convert kit because that’s my email provider. Just to kind of like put everything in one system and potentially take away some of those fees for selling.
But yeah, they pretty much just run on autopilot. When people sign up for the email lists, either through like the vegetarian route or the kombucha route, there’ll be offered those things. And then if they show interest, then they get a whole series of emails related to that. So
Doug: The vegetarian book. So it’s a 20 day or 21 day plan, right?
Yeah. So what happens after the 21 days? It sounds like there’s an opportunity here, right? Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah. And I thought that like, so basically at the end of the 21 days, I have like a guide on how to like, cause the idea with that one is that you’re taking away like things from your diet, like gluten and like meat and dairy and sugar.
And so the idea is that you like reintroduce those things and see how you feel. Okay. There’s definitely opportunity there. Yeah. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. So yeah, for like regular maintenance. So it’s like an elimination diet ish. Yeah. Okay. All right. That’s cool. How many of those do you sell per, uh, whatever in the January or so?
Do you know? Or just for a ballpark?
Sarah: Oh, I don’t even know. Probably not that many, because I don’t even sell it that hard. Probably like 50 to 100.
Doug: Okay. So it’s not a huge thing.
Sarah: That one’s 21.
Doug: Okay. Great. So like a dollar a day for the, for the play. That’s pretty cool. Obviously the, I mean, your own products are a great margin.
So do you, I mean, have you thought about doing more of those? You kind of mentioned you’re like, you see some opportunity, but there’s all this other stuff. So how do you prioritize like creating more products to sell to the audience? I obviously have an email list so you can promote whatever you want.
Sarah: Yeah. I think time is just the limiter there. Yeah, I think, I think there is room, especially just for making something more general that people would like. Especially now is like I’m starting to actually gain like a, an audience who recognizes me like on social and on email. Whereas before I was kind of banking on people from Google who have no idea who I am potentially buying these things.
Now it’s like people know me, so I think they are more likely to buy something that I’m selling, but I just haven’t figured out what that would be.
Doug: Okay. And then how big is the email list?
Sarah: Uh, I think it’s like 45, 000 right now.
Doug: Oh, shit. That’s big. Yeah.
Sarah: Well, I used to like clean out my cold subscribers like crazy, like every month I would delete like 1000 people.
So I think that really stunted my growth. And my idea was like, well, they’re not reading it anyways. But I hired Matt Mullen, like two years ago. And he basically was like, stop doing that. Because we don’t really have good data on when people are opening them or not. So they could be opening, they couldn’t be clicking.
And you could be deleting them. So I’ve stopped doing that and like open rates have not gone down. Click rates have not gone down. So yeah, now I’m just, now it’s growing like crazy.
Doug: Awesome. Awesome. So it is a converting pretty well from social media then people are hopping over and signing up.
Sarah: Um, that’s a good question.
I’m not really sure the route most people are taking. It did hugely spike when I I inserted basically like a, box to subscribe that just says, do you want to save this recipe? And if you want to save the recipe, I’ll email it to you. Before that I had like all these different types of opt ins depending on the page they were on.
Like do you want to get my free air fryer series or my ebook or whatever? And those did decent. But once I included the save this recipe onto each recipe, it like tripled the amount of people signing up every day. Cause it just meets them where they’re at. Like they just want that recipe. They don’t want a whole series on air frying.
They just want the air fryer veggies.
Doug: So that’s brilliant that it makes sense that it’s converting so well. That’s really awesome. Okay. Yeah. So I guess you will, you’ll need to figure out how to sell them some more stuff then because it starts getting expensive, right? To have that many people on a list.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. ConvertKit just started a program. I don’t know if it’s still in pilot or if it’s available. Um, To everyone, but they just started like, programmatic ads and emails. So now if you get my email, you’re going to have an ad in it. And that has like, fortunately been paying for the service, which is quite expensive.
But yeah, I think there’s definitely opportunity to like do a little more with that list than just send them to the recipes.
Doug: So any other tips with email, like do you have an auto responder or how does your you know, sending schedule look?
Sarah: Yeah. I’m pretty aggressive with it because it’s so expensive.
I am trying to get the value out of it. So I’ve basically at this point tried to make it as automated as possible. So when someone joins the email list, basically through any of the channels, whether it be the vegetarian site or kombucha or the dog site, They’ll get a welcome series, just introducing them to the site and the kind of content we produce.
And then I’ll include like five days of like really my most engaging or relevant or clickable content. And then once they finish that welcome series, they’ll go into like my forever series. And then at this point, it’s like two years long. So if you join it today, you’ll get content for two years. And that goes out Monday and Friday.
So in total, I think I’m sending four emails a week to people. So they’ll get like that forever series. They’ll get like an RSS once a week. And then once a week, they’ll get a broadcast with like seasonal stuff. And that’s all automated.
Doug: Yeah. Very cool. And then. Wow, how often do you sell in those emails?
Sarah: I think they have like in the footer.
They have like, are you interested in this? And then if they come on that, it triggers like going down the rabbit hole of like sort of engaging them about that product. But like I said, there’s only two of them. And I think a lot of people when they’re there aren’t necessarily looking for like a 21 day meal plan reset thing So yeah, this is definitely giving me some ideas to maybe create something a bit more Engaging for the average person.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah, we don’t like brainstorm because it’s like People were just looking for recipes like they’re just looking for recipes and I understand that like you’re not trying to buy a product or You’re not trying to like engage anything beyond that. So it is a little bit tougher, but at the same time, it’s like, that’s a lot of people.
So the volume of folks, like, even if you sell a little bit, like some people will be at the right place at the right time to buy whatever it is you’re selling. Yeah. Hmm. Interesting. Well, one thing I was gonna ask earlier, or what were you gonna say, Sarah? Go ahead.
Sarah: No, I’m just going to brainstorm that I’m writing that down
Doug: One thing I was gonna say I was gonna compliment you on the way you’ve structured your business and the way you’ve diversified and how you have strategically looked at things over time and you’re like This seems a little bit off.
I need to do something a little bit different. And you also seem like you don’t stress out too much about stuff. Although I just met you, so I’m not sure that’s accurate. But I was going to ask you if you have any like business coaching and you mentioned like you had an email consultant perhaps helped you out, but any other like overall business coaching that you’ve taken?
Sarah: It’s not necessarily business coaching, but I work with foodie digital. They, I don’t know if you’ve heard of nerd press but a lot of food bloggers use them, they basically are like your tech people that like manage your plugins and the tech of your site. So I was looking for someone like that.
And I found foodie digital. Who’s kind of like their counterpart. But they also do a lot of SEO Coaching and strategy. Cause I needed someone like to help with the tech. Like I don’t ever want to touch plugins cause that scares me. But then like the SEO thing and like the business coaching has kind of been like an added bonus.
And that’s really what it’s turned into. So we’ll have monthly calls where we just kind of go through the content strategy and talk about, you know, what’s happening in the online space, what’s happening with the updates. And that’s partially why I didn’t even look at search console because like I have a meeting with her next week and I’m like, that’s when we’ll talk about it.
So yeah, it’s not necessarily business coaching, but it has definitely turned into that. Yeah. Okay. And they’re amazing.
Doug: Very good. And then, so I was going to say that earlier, and then as we were talking, I see, I feel like there’s a lot of opportunities for you to do like different stuff and everyone’s priority is different.
So I’m like applying my lens to like what you’re doing and I’m like, how do you prioritize the work? Cause you meant earlier you mentioned like us, you know, there’s a time constraint, right? We all have. the same number of hours, but you have other things going on and there’s other things you need to do.
So when you were talking about like your email list, you don’t sell super often. It’s kind of a soft, offer very soft. Just people would have to get to the bottom of the email and be at the right place at the right time. But then I’m like, if you develop more products, then, you know, some would be a flop, but some would be bigger than you expected.
And you know, it’s a different audience coming from social media. So it kind of opened things up a little bit, or at least it changes things and offers that wouldn’t work from your SEO traffic would work for the SEO or sorry for this. Social media traffic and email subscribers that are coming in. So I’m like, you need more products.
Like the margins are so high. Like why work with you know, whatever there’s ad agencies out there. Like you could also work directly with companies and have them run ads and then you cut out that agency and then, I mean, they take whatever, 35 percent or 40 percent anyway, Yeah, it’s crazy. So have you thought about like developing more products or working directly with companies to get direct deals?
Sarah: I definitely have not considered working directly with companies because that is just, you know, I don’t know. That’s a whole different ballgame. I think But I think something to supplement the ad income would be really useful. Especially with like, there’s a lot of changes happening in how ads are going to be presented to people where they’re going to start paying a lot less with third party cookies going away.
So, yeah, I think there is something to be said for creating my own product. And I have friends who have done it, um, like really big, like baking bloggers who will make like these. And they’re printed cookbooks that they just get printed on demand, I think, but and I know those do really well, so I guess it’s just, um, like, I’m, I’m such a digital person and I have like maybe 20 cookbooks in total that I can’t imagine buying something like that, but I don’t know if that can be applied to everybody, you know, I think a lot of people like to have something physical
Doug: right? Yeah. Okay. Well, anyway, we’ll talk later. I think there’s, there’s some stuff here. I don’t know. Cause it’s like, ah, I know everything takes a lot of time, but like when I look at this or, I mean, the thing is like the social media is working out for you. So, but it is a treadmill of like doing work and I’m like, Oh, I wonder if you could like balance creating new products along with you know, the normal grind of creating the content you have to create.
Sarah: okay. Because this pace of content is also, I think. Not, not necessary and not sustainable. But mostly I don’t think it’s necessary. Like, I think if we came out with like three new pieces of content on the site, like on the recipe site a week, that would, that would still sustain us while leaving room for creating other like passive income sources.
Doug: Yeah, and I love that. That’s a perfect example. It’s just like, all right, people are doing work. They could still do work. It’s just on a thing that would have like a much bigger ROI than just like a regular piece of content. So, and when, I mean, you have like 1500 pieces of content and plus all the social media stuff.
Okay. All right. I’ll get off that Soapbox for a second quickly. I want to talk about YouTube. So what are you doing on YouTube? Are you publishing short form content because it fits with the reels or are you doing longer form stuff, too?
Sarah: No, it’s all short form now. So basically whatever reel I film, I post on Instagram and TikTok, YouTube shorts, Facebook reels, and Pinterest.
Just like spread it everywhere. Um, Upload it. So I’ll, I’ll do like the vertical as a YouTube short. But I want people who land on my site on the recipe page to be able to see that video. And it’s not a great user experience to put that vertical video in like the recipe card. So I will put it into horizontal form and I’ll kind of crop the video into a square.
And then on the other side of the horizontal screen, I’ll have the transcripts of my voiceover. So they’re really short, they’re like 20 to 30 seconds, but then at least people see like a horizontal recognizable YouTube video when they’re on the recipe site like on the recipe, and then they can like still watch the video and still get the benefit of having like the step by step without me having to like do a whole produced long form video, which at this time would just be a lot to produce.
Doug: Got it. Okay. Very cool. Well, I think I’ve learned a ton. I’ve had a fun time talking to you Yeah, so is there is there anything else that we should cover before we wrap it up and let people know where they could find you?
Sarah: I don’t think so. That’s pretty much What do you think? Yeah, I think we pretty much covered everything I do in my day to day.
Doug: All right. Cool. Well, I’ll, I’ll put the links so people could find, you know, all the blogs, all the places that you’re at, but what’s the main place that you want people to go to check out more stuff and connect with you?
Sarah: Yeah. You can find me everywhere on live, eat, learn. So on social, I’m not, and then live, live, eat, learn is my, is my vegetarian food blog.
Doug: All right. Very good. Yeah. I’ll put all the links out there and thanks a lot, Sarah.
Sarah: All right. Thanks.