Greetings! Guess who.
Yep! You’re right. It’s me Bjork. I’m the nerd in the virtual Pinch of Yum basement. I’m also Lindsay’s husband. I’m also the star of the video from this post that Lindsay recently shared. #hiddentalent
I show up once a month to give an update on everything that’s happening behind the scenes at Pinch of Yum. I share the blog’s income, expenses, and traffic stats. I usually wrap up the post by sharing some tips or takeaways that we’re learning as we grow the blog.
This month’s report is going to be a little bit different though. For the first time ever I won’t be sharing any tips.
You might be saying “What?!? No tips? But I love tips!”
To which I would reply with (adjusted emphasis and a slight pause): “…no tips, from me.”
Kiersten from Oh My Veggies is going to be sharing some tips that she learned as she grew her blog’s RPM from $1.55 to over $19 in less than two years! She recently wrote an eBook about it called How to Monetize Your Food Blog (FYI: the eBook links in this post are affiliate links).
I’d highly recommend the book. I read it. I loved it. I learned from it. I think it’s worth every single penny that you’ll pay for it.
More on that in a bit. First, the numbers…
Income
- BlogHer (now SheKnows) – $6,959.23
- Bluehost – $5,750
- sovrn – $3,127.05
- Tasty Food Photography – $3,113.50
- The Creamy Cauliflower Sauce eCookbook – $1,482.75
- Ziplist – $1,111.97
- Swoop (BlogHer) – $1,021.65*
- Google AdSense – $848.09
- Genesis Theme – $761.79
- Elegant Themes – $252.50
*We didn’t have the totals for Swoop at the time of publishing this post, so we took last month’s income and adjusted for traffic.
Total Income:: $24,428.53
Expenses
- Macbook Pro – $3,145.61
- eBook Affiliates – $1,046.02
- Travel – $912.65
- Support Staff – $606.71
- Amazon S3 and Cloudfront – $472.85
- Food Expenses- $353.65
- PayPal Transaction Percentage – $220.48
- Media Temple (Hosting) – $107.14
- Misc. Expenses – $96.08
- LeadPages – $67.00
- Vimeo – $59.95
- Adobe Creative Cloud – $53.55
- PayPal Website Payments Pro – $30.00
- ViralTag – $28.00
- QuickBooks – $26.95
- Treehouse – $25.00
- Time Doctor – $19.98
- VaultPress – $15.00
- E-Junkie – $15.00
- Rafflecopter – $7.99
Total Expenses: $7,309.61
Net Profit: $17,118.92
P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about some of the ways that you can monetize a food blog, we encourage you to download this free ebook, “16 Ways to Monetize Your Food Blog,” from our sister site, Food Blogger Pro!
Thoughts On Income
Display Advertisers
In January’s report, I shared 10 important mindsets for bloggers. One of those mindsets was “1% ∞” (one percent infinity). The idea with this mindset is that you are forever trying to improve, even if it’s just a little bit. With blogging (or business or non-profit), you win by improving a little bit, day after day, forever.
Kiersten’s monetization eBook was a good reminder to me that we need to apply the concept of 1% ∞ to our display advertising on Pinch of Yum. Display advertising turned into “set it and forget” type income for us, as opposed to what it should be, which is something that we continually tweak, track, and adjusting. Applying 1% ∞ to display advertising will results in drastic improvements (over time). So, we’re starting the process of applying to other ad networks and we’re being diligent about tracking and following along with the performance of these networks.
Rpm
RPM stands for page revenue per thousand impressions. Or, in other words, RPM shows you the average revenue you earn from every 1,000 page views on your blog.
If you want to learn more about RPM (and some other important advertising terms) then be sure to check out this post on Food Blogger Pro.
Traffic
Below are some screenshots from Google Analytics. You can click on these images to view a larger size.
Traffic Overview
Top Ten Traffic Sources
Mobile Vs. Desktop Traffic
Thoughts On Traffic
Mobile For The Win!
It’s official. For the first time ever Pinch of Yum has received more traffic from mobile phones than from desktop computers. Want to see an interesting stat? Check this out:
Percentage of Visitors (to Pinch of Yum) Using a Desktop Computer
- 2011: 98.55%
- 2012: 68.57%
- 2013: 50.33%
- 2014: 37.87%
See a trend?
Part of the reason for the drastic change in those numbers is due to the fact that a lot of our traffic comes from Pinterest, and a lot of Pinterest users are using the mobile version of the app. I’d be interested to here if other bloggers have similar mobile percentages. Have you seen a similar trend away from visitors using a desktop computer?
Meet Kiersten
A little over a week ago I sat down at a coffee shop and read through Kiersten’s book, How to Monetize Your Food Blog. I found myself highlighting, taking notes, and thinking “this would be perfect for the people that read the Pinch of Yum income reports.”
I love how Kiersten is able to take the complicated concepts behind monetizing a blog and present it in an easy to read, value-packed eBook. The best part? She has solid proof that shows how her income has increased as she applied the advice to her own blog. Be sure to check out the graph where she shares her blog’s page views and total ad revenue over time.
If you’re interested, you can purchase the book here or click on the image below.
Without further ado, here’s Kiersten from Oh My Veggies. Take it away Kiersten!
Hi there! I’m so excited that Bjork and Lindsay asked me to stop in today to share my story of how I took Oh My Veggies from a hobby to a business. I’m a big fan of Pinch of Yum–both the food (hello, creamy cauliflower sauce!) and the tips about blogging and photography. While my blog is my full-time job now, it’s important to me that I monetize with integrity and in a way that’s not annoying or pushy, and I think Bjork and Lindsay are a great example of this kind of monetization.
When I started blogging, making money from it wasn’t on my radar at all. I hoped that I could get free samples of food in the mail (yeah, I admit it!), but that was about it. I didn’t even know you could make money from blogging and even once I did realize it, I never really thought that I would. (I tend to doubt myself like that.) When I finally set out to monetize almost a year into blogging, my only goal was to cover the cost of hosting–which was $4.95 at the time. Clearly I dream big, right? When my first check arrived, it was for about $50, and I was elated. Not only did I have this awesome hobby that I loved, but I was making money from it!
As my traffic grew, my income started to go up with it. Soon I was making a few hundred dollars a month from my hobby and it became a reliable source of part-time income. And then I got laid off from my job and panic set in. I knew it would take me a while to find a new job (I have a degree in Library & Information Studies–no one’s exactly knocking down my door to hire me!), so I decided to give full-time food blogging a try. I gave myself a 4-month deadline: if I wasn’t making a full-time living from food blogging by December, I would start looking for a job and go back to blogging as a hobby.
And then I hustled! A friend of mine told me that I should set up backfill for BlogHer, so I did that. I began to do a lot of experimentation with ad networks–trying new ones, figuring out the best order to put them in, finding the right number of ads to put on my blog. I started using affiliate programs and began signing up for blogger networks for sponsored post opportunities. I concentrated on my content and figuring out what my readers were looking for–I stopped posting what I wanted to post and started taking a more reader-centric approach to blogging. I had the eye of the tiger. By the 4th month of my full-time blogging experiment, I was making a full-time income between my ads, affiliate programs, and sponsored posts. Victory!
Now, not only am I making a living from my blog, but I’m making enough that I’ve been able to expand Oh My Veggies and add four contributors. I also have an assistant, photographers that I work with, a graphic designer on retainer, and a recipe tester. It never stops being completely surreal to me that the blog I started on a whim has turned into a legit business.
Five Tips For Blogging Full-Time
I really have about eleventy-billion tips for blogging full-time. I’m full of tips! And opinions! Like a piñata of knowledge. Okay, maybe not a piñata. That’s weird. But what I’m getting at is, I’ve learned a lot along the way. Here are five tips that have helped me the most.
1. Up Your Ad Game!
I feel so bummed whenever I hear a blogger say that they don’t understand ads, so they don’t bother optimizing them. Nooooo! Don’t say that! When you don’t optimize your ads, you are leaving money on the table, so it’s important to take the time to do it. I didn’t understand ads when I started either and you know what I did? I learned them. Having one ad network simply isn’t enough. Most ad networks don’t have ads 100% of the time and you need to have other networks lined up beneath your primary ad network so when that network doesn’t have ads to display, it will default to your secondary network. And if you have a few networks lined up, even better! Most ad spots on my blog run 3-4 different ad networks. You can see in this chart from my ebook how my RPM increased as I optimized my ads.
Lining up ad networks like this is often referred to as setting up a waterfall. I talk about it a lot in my ebook and it’s really the key to my blog’s success. While I make income from other areas too (it’s important to diversify!), ads are my bread-and-butter. And once you have your waterfall set up, it doesn’t end there. I make sure each network is performing as it should and if it’s not, I swap it out for another one. It might sound intimidating, but if I could teach myself to do it, there’s no reason why you can’t either. Don’t psych yourself out before you even start.
2. If You Want Your Blog To Be a Business, Treat It Like One
Because you can’t have it both ways! One mistake that I often see bloggers make is that when they want to take their blog full-time, they still treat their blog like it’s a hobby.
When I was laid off, I set up an editorial calendar for myself and I have rarely strayed from it. I make it a point to respond to every question asked about a recipe and every reader email. I take the time to test all of my recipes a few times before posting them–even if something turns out perfect the first time. (Now that I have contributors writing for Oh My Veggies, my cousin helps with recipe testing too!) The fact that I make an income from my food blog doesn’t make me a professional blogger–it’s the fact that I put time into it and take a business-like approach to it that makes me a professional blogger.
I also invest a lot of my income back into Oh My Veggies. I used my first big check from BlogHer to pay for a professional blog design. The more money I make, the more I spend on my business–and it always pays off! Having a well-designed blog and good hosting will definitely help your blog’s traffic, but even small investments can have a big pay off. If you struggle with photography, invest in lessons! If you’re unfamiliar with basic HTML, go buy some books about it! Oh, and if you struggle with monetization? BUY MY BOOK! (That was totally shameless, huh?)
3. Don’t Quit Your Day Job (Yet)
Okay, maybe you can quit your day job, but I wouldn’t suggest doing that until you’re making at least some income from your blog. I was lucky in that the decision was made for me because I was laid off, but I was already making a part-time income from blogging at that point. But I think it’s a mistake to quit your job before you’re making money–not just because you might not be able to pay your rent, but because I believe when you’re under that kind of pressure to make things happen, it can lead you to make the wrong decisions for your blog since it forces you to think in the short-term, rather than the long-term. While you might make a lot of money doing 5 sponsored posts a week, it’s going to drive away readers, which will make it difficult for you to get to the next level.
If you can, cut your work hours or find a part-time job as your blog revenue grows–this gives you an intermediate step between working full-time and quitting your job to blog full-time and lets you have the time you need to grow your blog without all that added pressure.
4. Content First, Monetization Second
My focus with Oh My Veggies is never, “How can I make money?” Instead, it’s always, “How can I help my readers? What do they want to see?” Especially if you’re monetizing through ads, you need to focus on creating useful content that people want to read and, even more importantly, share. (My golden rule of blogging is “Never post anything that you wouldn’t read on someone else’s blog.”)
Part of this is coming up with a hook. There are a lot of blogs out there and you need to figure out what makes yours different. Why should people subscribe to your blog instead of someone else’s? What are you offering that no one else does? With Oh My Veggies, I realized that simply being a vegetarian food blog wasn’t enough, so I honed in on easy vegetarian meal ideas. While we still do the occasional dessert or snack, most of our posts are everyday dinner types of recipes. When people know what to expect from your blog, it will help you build a loyal readership.
5. Diversify, But Do It Your Way
Diversifying your income streams doesn’t mean you have to do everything. It’s probably best that you don’t! Find a few things that you’re good at and stick to doing those well. When I first started blogging full-time, other bloggers told me that it was impossible to be a professional blogger and not do sponsored posts (some people even equate professional blogging with doing marketing!), so I started doing them. And I didn’t enjoy it at all! They are just not for me, so a few months ago, I decided not to do them anymore. Don’t feel pressure to monetize in ways that aren’t right for your blog or your personality.
There are very few overnight successes in the blogging world. I can’t speak for anyone else, but Oh My Veggies has only been successful because I have put an obscene amount of time and effort into it, but I really, truly love what I do, so it’s worth it to me. Food blogging is not an effortless way to make money from home–anyone who tells you that is either lying or they’re not doing it right! But if you have a passion for it, know that you can make an income from your food blog. I am no different from any other food blogger, so if I was able to do it, you can too!
Bjork here again.
Can we all give a virtual round of applause for Kiersten? Solid, practical, and valuable advice. Good stuff!
Here’s that link one more time if you’d like to purchase her eBook: How to Monetize Your Food Blog.
Because Of You
It’s really true. It’s because of you (yes, you!) that this thing we call Pinch of Yum can exist as it does today. Thanks so much for reading, tweeting, commenting or emailing. We love hearing from you!
We’re using a portion of this month’s income from Pinch of Yum to support a special project at the Children’s Shelter of Cebu, an orphanage where Lindsay and I lived and worked for a year. The special project we’re supporting this month is new carpet for the school.
The kids and staff at CSC take really good care of the buildings and grounds. That being said, the time has come to get new carpet in the school, so we’re excited to use some of the income from Pinch of Yum to chip in and help them get a little bit closer to their fundraising goal. Thanks for helping to make this possible!
I’ve discovered you this past month and your work is great 🙂 I also follow you now on Instagram:)
Hi Bjork, great insight of the blog and I find all of these reports very useful. I had a questions in regards to the waterfall strategy that you use with your ad networks. How do you use the waterfall strategy without slowing down the load time of pages? Since it takes time for one network to see if it can fill the ad and then past it on the next? I would appreciate what strategy pinch of yum uses in regards to the waterfall strategy. Thanks and keep up the great work.
What a great post! I signed up for Food Blogger Pro today and can’t contain my excitement! (Doing Virtual cartwheels!) This year I wanted to still work from home but somehow incorporate cooking, teaching and using cool technology. I believe food blogging is the answer to my heart’s prayer! On a side note: I work in the technical training field and I’m so impressed by the quality of the training. A million Thank Yous for all you do! Your passion has ignited mine!
I’ve just discovered you this past month and I just have to say, very inspiring! I also follow you now on Instagram and love all of the food pics you post. Keep doing what you do and you have a new fan for life!
Thank you Dave!
I was planning to buy Kiersten’s book, this post has sealed the deal!
I have a question for Kiersten and also for Bjork..in your experience, what should be the minimum blog traffic before going in for cascaded ads or even to be considered for Blogher.
Do you recommend monetizing with ads for blogs that have a small amount of traffic?
Thanks
I don’t know if BlogHer has minimum traffic requirements, but I don’t think it’s ever too early to monetize as long as you have the right expectations. When you start out, the money you make might just be enough to cover hosting or the ingredients you’re buying and not much else, but as your traffic grows, your income will too.
Thanks..my expectations are realistic enough, I hope 🙂
With Blogher, the only way to know is to try I guess..I am also not sure if they only entertain US bloggers..More than half my visitors are from the US..do you think they might look at that..makes sense if their advertisers are from there, I suppose..
I noticed that at BlogHer, it says that they don’t accept wordpress.com. However, doesn’t your Food Blogger Pro teaches us to use wordpress.com as a platform make our blogs?
Great question Linda. It’s a really important concept to understand so I’m glad you asked.
We actually recommend that you don’t use WordPress.com, but instead setup a self-hosted WordPress.org site. We talk about this in the first part of the Getting Started course.
Let me know if you have any other questions about it.
Hi Bjork and Lindsay, what a great post! I’m a fashion blogger over at http://www.NajaDiamond.com and stumbled across your blog about 6 months ago and have been checking back and taking notes on how to monetize my fashion blog ever since. Every month I learn something new that can be applied to my blog. This month I decided to stop cyber lurking 😉 and leave a comment telling you how excellent this post was! Kiersten had some AMAZING tips and I will be purchasing her ebook I loved them so much. Thanks again for doing this monthly, it helps me tremendously!
Fashionably yours,
Naja
I’m so glad you did!
Really nice to e-meet you Naja. 🙂 Thanks so much for following along with the blog over the past 6 months. We really appreciate it!
It’s really good to see that you are contributing to a social cause.
My wife just got accepted to Blogher and we have 14 days to decide….
Right now she just uses adsense but I had been planning on setting up DFP and running multiple ad networks through it. Obviously I cannot do that with Blogher.
I’m nervous about how restrictive the program is.
I’m sitting here trying to analyze you site to see if you earn a better CPM with Blogher versus some of your other networks. I understand all the restrictions but could you shed some light on this months Blogher CPM versus your other networks?
Thanks for these insightful income reports!
Hey Donnie,
Yeah, the BlogHer restrictions are a bummer. I know that Kiersten decided to opt out of BlogHer because of the restrictions. We’re still okay with them but have noticed the CPMs dip quite a bit lately (when compared to some other ad networks). I’d check out Kiersten’s eBook to get her first hand feedback on why she switched left BlogHer.
We’re just getting to the point where we’re starting to be intentional about keeping track and comparing ad networks. Stay tuned in future reports for more info. 🙂
Love your blog!! Just amazing!
You guys are a great inspiration!
keep it up!
I love getting your e-newsletters. This was such a great post. I have referred back to it several times. Thank you again for your hard work! 🙂
Hi Lindsay,
This is such a detailed and inspiring post. Love the way you document facts and figures to such a granular level..
Keep up the great work.
Lindsay and Bjork,
I know that we have never met in real life, but I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to share all these details with everyone. It is so refreshing to come across people like you who are not only so open and honest, but also real and genuinely kind. Thank you!! What you do is amazing and you deserve every good thing that comes your way!
Thanks again!!
Camille
Thanks for stopping by Camille! You guys (well, girls, technically) have a great site! 🙂
I teach cooking classed in my home ..and now want to start a food blog that I can eventually monotize and would appreciate your expert advise on the type of blog I should start with wordpress.org? and hosting sites that are reliable. thank you. for any info you can provide. .
Sure thing Kathy! We actually have a quick tutorial on this page: https://pinchofyum.com/resources/how-to-start-a-food-blog
Otherwise Food Blogger Pro would help provide some specific step-by-step directions: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Just discovered your website, it’s amazing! Your “income” section is fascinating, the photography is beautiful and you give such helpful tips. Thank you!
Thanks Ariane! Really appreciate that! 🙂
Hey!
I found this fabulous blog after it was advertised in ‘Waitrose Kitchen’ magazine in the UK. (How fun is that!). I just started out on my blogging adventure 12 weeks ago and I am slowing getting to grips with ads etc… Although, like you guys, my Husband deals with everything other than the blog content.
I just had a couple of questions, and I am sorry if people have already asked them…. but…
Do you think Kierstens book would relate to me in the UK or is it US based? I think it sounds fantastic, but I just wondered if it would be beneficial to me in England.
Also, I was just wondering how you earn money through the Genesis Framework? I noticed you have the link at the bottom of the blog, just wondered how that all came about?
Thank you for sharing this information every month, It’s a super clever idea!
Charlie 🙂
Hey Charlie! We had someone send us a picture of that Waitrose article. So fun!
1. I’m not sure how advertising would be different in the UK vs US, but I’m pretty darn sure that the concepts and ideas would be worth the $15 cost of the eBook, even if some of the companies that Kiersten mentions are different.
2. We’re part of the affiliate program – https://wpengine.com/affiliate/
Let me know if you have any other questions.
This is the first time I’ve seen these income reports. That’s awesome that you share those + all those good tips. I’m gonna have to go back through the archives!
Thanks!
I just wanted to take a minute to say I have been reading this series for quite a while now, I love it, thank you so much for all that you share. I am also so excited to see Kiersten in this month’s post. I have the utmost amount of respect for how open and honest all of you are, it is so encouraging and inspiring. I love that as a community there are so many people willing to share their experiences and knowledge with others. So much gratitude and love to you all.
Thanks for following along Beth. We really appreciate it!
So true! It’s an awesome community.
Hello, I absolutely love your blog, both the food posts as well as the traffic and income reports. Your blog is so honest, real and refreshing. You are truly inspiring.
I have been contemplating starting a foodie blog for quite a few months now, but I’m not quite sure where to start. Do you recommend purchasing a domain or using a blogger site (like Google or tumbler) to start out?
Thank for your time,
Karissa
Thanks Karissa!
I’d really encourage you to setup a self-hosted WordPress site. You’ll have to pay for hosting, but it’s well worth it in the long run.
Here’s quick overview of how to do that: https://pinchofyum.com/resources/how-to-start-a-food-blog
Food Blogger Pro is a $1 for the first month if you want to have some video tutorials that walk you through the process: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/
I meant to type Bjork 🙂 .
Close enough. 🙂
Thanks for the post! I always read your income reports and the honesty in them is refreshing. I’ve loved Oh My Veggies for a while now and bought the ebook and read it on a night; it’s fabulous! Thank you Bjorn/Lindsay and Kiersten!
Hey guys! The whole mobile migration doesn’t impact my blog yet (which is still a hobby without a ton of traffic), but my full time job is working for an ecommerce retailer and we’ve been seeing this trend outpace itself over the past couple months. Big concern since conversion is much lower on mobile. We’re at the point (like you) that we have to assume our customers are interacting with our mobile site instead of the fun, pretty desktop site as well as reading our large format emails on a small screen. Mobile is definitely impacting the way everyone does business!
Interesting Alley. Yeah, it’s easy to forget that most people are not seeing the site as I see it (99% of the time I am using a monitor that’s 15″ or larger when viewing Pinch of Yum).
Out of everything I have read since I started blogging, this post and this thread has probably been the most informative! I feel like the more I know about blogging, the more I don’t know.
I thought in order to really “get in” in the blogging world, you had to be associated with BlogHer. I applied and was denied. Probably for a good reason…I have a ton to learn! But it is great to know there are other options out there. I really had no idea.
Related to the previous comments above by Lindsay and Kierston about adding personality and stories, I have been on both sides of the coin. Before I started blogging myself, I normally didn’t want to read the stories and just wanted to get to the recipe. Now that I am blogging myself, the stories and personalities are more important to me than the recipe itself! Isn’t that funny?
And Bjork, you have me convinced. If you like Kierston’s book that much then I’m sold!
Awesome! So happy to hear that the post (and comments) have been informative. 🙂 Yeah, there are LOTS of other options out there. We’re just starting to explore the possibilities in regards to ad networks. We’ll be sure to keep you updated in futures posts.
I think you’ll find Kiersten’s eBook to be really helpful.
This has been such a helpful post! I’ve re-read it a few times and I just bought Kiersten’s e-book and can’t wait to start reading it today!
I did, however, have one question for Kiersten: In this post you say, ” I concentrated on my content and figuring out what my readers were looking for–I stopped posting what I wanted to post and started taking a more reader-centric approach to blogging.” Was what you wanted to post much different from what your readers were looking for? I assume you still post things that you want to be posting. I only ask because I’ve only had my food blog up and running for about 5 months now and I feel like I’m still struggling to find my “niche” . I go back and forth between posting recipes that I think people will like, recipes that my husband will eat, and healthy recipes that I try to eat more of. I feel like I still don’t have too many dedicated readers, so it is kind of hard to know what exactly to focus on and what my readers (future readers) want to see. Do you have any advice on that? Thanks so much!
Well, when I started, my blog was very much a hobby and it reflected what I ate. So if I happened to be on a sweet potato kick, I might post several sweet potato recipes in a row. It was more about my whims and sharing what I ate, vs. sharing recipes that I thought other people would make. Now, I plan out my editorial calendar at least a month in advance and I make sure that ingredients or recipe types aren’t repeated too often. In short, I switched from blogging what I was eating to eating what I was blogging. Every month, I think of themes based on what’s in season, the weather, upcoming holidays, and plan out our posts according to those. I think once you find your niche, you’ll have an easier time figuring out what to post. We all need a little time to test the waters before we hone in on exactly what we want to write about on our blogs!
I also stopped blogging about myself so much. I used to do posts where I wrote about what I did over the weekend and I realized that no one cared. 🙂 Which sounds sad, but really, who am I to people that they would care about my weekend?! To be honest, I skip over those posts when I see them on other blogs too unless I know the blogger is either a really compelling writer or has a very interesting life. And I’m not a writer and I’m pretty boring, so I knew that if I wanted to build a readership, it wasn’t going to be based on posts about my weekend!
I’m so glad you included your thoughts on the writing part of food blogging Kiersten, because my experience has been totally different. I’ve found that people really enjoy when I share bits and pieces of our life (or at least they act like they do? ha!) and I feel like I can connect with my readers more by sharing what’s actually going on in my life. I especially love hearing from readers who can relate to our stories and experiences. And ironically, those are just about the only posts that I am compelled to click on on other people’s blogs – the ones with stories or life pictures always draw me in much more than just a recipe post! I just really appreciate having your opinion on that element of blogging, since it’s good for other bloggers to see that not everyone has to do it the same way in order to make it work! 🙂 XO
I guess this kind of came off the wrong way–I definitely draw from what’s going on in my life when I write my recipe posts and I think readers enjoy connecting with bloggers like that, but no one really wanted to read a post that was basically, “This weekend we went to Trader Joe’s. Then we went to lunch. I bought this awesome plate at a thrift store.” Or they didn’t from me! 🙂 So I stopped writing posts that were ONLY about me and started weaving that stuff into the rest of my blog, which I think is a much better fit for me.
Thanks, Kiersten!! That is super helpful and I really appreciate you taking the time to respond 🙂