Episode 32Oct 7, 2022· 39:20
Replay - All Things Food Blogging with Cathy Dean of Healthy Ambitions
About this episode
In replay this episode of the Bloggy Friends Show, we're talking all things food blogging with Cathy Dean of Healthy Ambitions!
https://healthyambitions.co/
More Show Notes From This Episode:
What’s up my bloggy friends! I'm slowly updating the show notes for this and every episode of The Bloggy Friends Show. My new home base for all things Bloggy Friends can be found here:…
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Full transcript
00:00
Welcome to the Bloggy Friends show.
00:15
What's up, Bloggy Friends?
00:16
Famous Ashley Grant here, and I'm so excited to bring you today's interview with Kathy
00:20
Dean of Healthy Ambitions.
00:24
To get started, she's going to tell you a little bit about what her blog is and what
00:28
she does.
00:29
So, Kathy, take it away.
00:31
Thanks so much, Ashley, for having me on the show.
00:34
Like she said, my name is Kathy Dean.
00:36
I have a health and wellness blog called Healthy Ambitions that focuses on the keto diet.
00:43
Most of what I have on the website are yummy keto recipes showing people just how fun and
00:48
comforting keto food can actually be.
00:51
And they also just have some informational and educational videos.
00:55
I also have some educational and informational articles on the website as well.
01:00
So keto food blog.
01:03
That is, you know, they say riches are in the niches and that is definitely a very niche
01:08
blog.
01:09
So I want to know what was it that led you to starting Healthy Ambitions?
01:12
Well, actually, I started the keto diet a good year before I looked into blogging.
01:19
And I kind of I kind of fell into it.
01:21
It's not something I initially was seeking to do, but I would make all these keto recipes
01:27
for our friends when they would come over.
01:30
And so many of them would say that I need to either, you know, do a cookbook or do cooking
01:34
classes for friends or open up a bakery.
01:38
And all that seemed like a lot of work to have to open up a bakery or to doing cooking
01:42
shows for friends.
01:45
But then I was just online and I came across people talking about blogging, blogging for
01:51
money.
01:52
And of course, you know, I obviously as someone who was passionate about the keto diet, I
01:55
was already following other keto food bloggers too.
01:58
So in researching this, I thought this might be a great avenue for me to be able to share
02:04
the recipes with everybody and make a little bit of money at it too.
02:07
You know, Kathy, that's really interesting what led you to starting your own blog.
02:11
I'm curious, do you believe that the riches are in the niches for bloggers?
02:15
Oh, goodness, absolutely.
02:16
In fact, I talk to other bloggers quite often just being in the blogging community.
02:25
And one thing I always tell people because I connect with a lot of other food bloggers
02:28
and a lot of them just want a lot of them want to just write all the recipes they love
02:32
to write about.
02:33
In fact, there's one food blogger that I'm kind of mentoring.
02:35
He's a baby blogger and they have a very niche site as far as the name goes.
02:42
But then I found recipes on their website that were completely different from kind of
02:46
the initial message.
02:47
And his response was, well, my wife really wanted to put this recipe on the website.
02:52
But one thing that I've noticed today in today's world is everyone's on a specialty diet.
02:57
And so when they are searching for recipes, they're searching for keto or vegan or paleo
03:02
or Whole30.
03:03
You know, they're looking for very specific recipes or they may be looking for just desserts
03:08
or just that.
03:10
And so they're gonna look for those bloggers that specialize in that diet that they are
03:15
looking at.
03:16
And so that's, you know, I think that the days of just general blogging are really over.
03:22
People are looking for the people that are specializing within the niche and the very
03:26
specific part of that niche.
03:29
So would you say that the age of the lifestyle blogger is dead or would you say that it kind
03:33
of depends on what your current following is?
03:35
I think it definitely depends on the following.
03:38
I think to be a lifestyle blogger today, even to start out as one, I think you have to have
03:43
a very dynamic personality.
03:45
Like the average person is, I don't feel will make it as a lifestyle blogger.
03:52
If somebody already has a huge following on Instagram or whatever the social platform,
03:57
they might be able to get away with it that they already have an audience that looks to
04:01
them.
04:02
But I think for basically a nobody starting out, I think trying to do just a general lifestyle
04:07
blog, people are not going to have a reason to go to their website because again, they're
04:12
going to be looking for somebody who specializes in what they're looking for.
04:16
I definitely agree with that.
04:18
It's kind of funny because you see all these celebrities that are starting these lifestyle
04:22
blogs.
04:23
You've got your Gwyneth Paltrow, even Kim Kardashian had a blog and Holly Madison of
04:27
former Girls Next Door fame, she's got a blog as well.
04:31
It's really fascinating to me that the people who are trying to actually make big money,
04:36
they are not having the success that they're looking for because they're expecting to be
04:40
like a reality TV star when they're just the average Joe down the street.
04:45
Oh yeah, I completely agree.
04:47
The Gwyneth Paltrow's and the Kardashians, they already have a public face.
04:53
People already know who their name is.
04:56
Me, Cathy Dean, nobody knows who I am.
04:59
They're not going to go online and Google Cathy Dean in the news or what's Cathy wearing
05:05
today.
05:06
Nobody's going to do that.
05:07
They want to go see what the Kardashians are wearing.
05:09
They want to see what Gwyneth Paltrow is eating or selling or what products that she's promoting
05:14
because she's a celebrity.
05:16
So that's, again, even though they may not have blogged before, they already have a built
05:21
in audience as celebrities.
05:23
And it's just not fair.
05:25
It's not.
05:26
It's totally not fair.
05:27
It's much harder for us little people to get our name out there.
05:30
So I am kind of curious.
05:32
It is quite a niche, a super niche, if you will, that you're doing keto specific recipes.
05:39
So if you had to do it over, what if anything would you do differently?
05:43
I think differently, definitely not the super niche within the food niche.
05:48
I'm very satisfied with doing that.
05:52
What I tend to do though, I tend to get very distracted by different products and different
05:57
services that I want to try out or different courses.
06:00
And so I think to do it differently, I heavily believe in investing in the business.
06:05
If you're going to have a blogging business, you need to invest in the right courses and
06:09
the right tools, but it needs to be at the right time.
06:13
It's very easy to see some of these blogger bundles for $37.
06:17
And I can tell you, you're going to waste $37 most of the time because you'll follow
06:21
it away and never get back to it because it's too much content to consume at once.
06:26
So to do it over again, I think I would basically slow my roll and buy fewer things until I
06:34
succeed and finish implementing the strategies I've currently learned.
06:39
That's a fair point.
06:40
I do have to say, I kind of disagree about not buying the bundles because I personally
06:45
have subscribed to a few bundles.
06:46
And the reason I did that is there was like a Pinterest course or something that I was
06:50
already considering.
06:51
And if it was in a bundle, I'd go ahead and grab it just so that I could have it.
06:55
But I do agree with you that if you go into a bundle like that and you don't at least
06:59
have a plan, then you can get completely overwhelmed and then you get stuck in your shiny object
07:04
syndrome.
07:05
And while you're sitting there going through all these things, you're like, wow, this is
07:08
way too overwhelming.
07:09
Let me just go back to my day job and suck it up.
07:12
So if someone's looking to actually make this into a business, I definitely agree, slow
07:18
your roll.
07:19
That's kind of why one of the bloggers that you and I follow together actually is Alex
07:25
and Lauren of Create and Go.
07:26
And one of my favorite pieces of advice that they have is regarding social media is they
07:30
say don't be on every single platform.
07:32
They say start with one and get good at it and then move on.
07:36
What do you say to that?
07:37
And it's very interesting that you ask that because I think they may be the first people
07:41
that I've heard give that advice.
07:43
You got the Gary Bander checks of the world that say put yourself out there everywhere.
07:50
And I have a hard time not trying to be everywhere, but the advice is actually very solid, you
07:57
know, especially for my niche being the food niche.
08:00
Pinterest is where it's at.
08:01
It just is.
08:03
Pinterest drives 75% of all the traffic to my website.
08:07
You know, I have a Facebook account.
08:09
I have Instagram.
08:11
I get one or two clicks from those platforms in a single day versus hundreds from Pinterest.
08:18
So as far as the return on my time or return on my time investment, it doesn't even make
08:22
sense to focus on these platforms that are not getting the click throughs to my blog.
08:27
My focus needs to be on the platform that is going to return the clicks to my website.
08:33
Now Pinterest may not be it for every niche.
08:36
That is very good for my niche.
08:38
Other niches may do better on Facebook or LinkedIn.
08:41
So it's really you've got to figure out where the bulk of your audience is and focus on
08:47
that platform.
08:48
Okay.
08:49
So in speaking about social media, I'm going to bring something up that wasn't in our initial
08:55
questions list.
08:56
I have to ask you, I know one social media you're on is TikTok.
09:04
I'm kind of curious how that played out.
09:06
How did you end up on TikTok and are you seeing any traction in terms of engagement on your
09:09
blog?
09:10
Okay.
09:11
So you surprised me with this one.
09:14
That's funny.
09:15
You know, when I first heard about TikTok, I think I kind of had the same attitude as
09:21
most people my age and especially the Gen X crowd that it was just for teenagers.
09:28
It was done.
09:29
There's no point in having it for business.
09:32
And so I kind of just ignored it.
09:34
And then to bring Gary VanderTrucks name up again, I was watching one of his YouTube videos
09:39
and he actually said, if you have an online business and you're not on TikTok, you're
09:45
an idiot.
09:47
And I thought, well, that seems pretty bold.
09:51
But part of his point in all that is TikTok was so new and it was growing beyond the teen
09:58
scene into the millennials and into the Gen Xers.
10:01
And especially when COVID hit, everybody kind of flocked to TikTok, I think out of sheer
10:06
boredom.
10:08
And as a result, it was actually a very easy platform to grow on.
10:12
And it is my biggest following.
10:13
I have, I think, 68,000 followers on TikTok.
10:17
It's ridiculous.
10:20
And I have actually had videos go viral.
10:23
Like I had my chocolate ice cream video go viral.
10:26
And just like Instagram, you have a link in bio.
10:29
And so I can have a video and basically call to action at the end of my video, tell my
10:33
viewers to go click the link in bio to go find the recipe.
10:37
And so I have actually, I've had better luck driving traffic to my website through TikTok
10:42
than I have Instagram.
10:45
So it was really, it was not something I planned on doing, but I jumped in it and it's such
10:51
a fun platform.
10:53
And it's so different from other platforms because there's no expectation to actually
10:57
be good.
10:58
Like you can just be dumb and goofy and build a following and people like it.
11:06
And so it's actually, I've driven people to recipes.
11:11
And I've also gotten a lot of signups to my email list through TikTok, people wanting
11:15
to know more about keto.
11:17
Now it's interesting you say what you said about Gary Vaynerchuk and how if you weren't
11:22
on it, you're an idiot.
11:23
The reason I say that it's interesting is because it seems like lately new platforms
11:28
are coming out, like Clubhouse and well now we have TikTok and we have all these new things.
11:34
And it kind of feels like for a new blogger who's trying to figure out where in the world
11:39
they should focus, it's starting to become a, well, where should I focus?
11:44
Because if I am new and I want to get in on something new, well, shouldn't I jump on that
11:47
train too?
11:48
What do you think?
11:49
It can be very difficult and very overwhelming because again, you don't want to spend your
11:53
time that's not going to be lucrative for your business.
11:57
That's not going to benefit your business.
11:59
You know, and again, there's a ton of stuff coming out.
12:02
I actually have, I am on Clubhouse.
12:04
I finally got my Clubhouse invite.
12:06
I would be if they weren't freaking, you know, iPhone only people.
12:10
They are exclusive to iPhone.
12:12
I'm sure they'll release it to you Android users at some point too.
12:15
Maybe not.
12:17
But I did find very quickly as fascinating as Clubhouse is, there wasn't going to be
12:23
a lot of driving traffic back to my website for me.
12:27
So I think you just got to kind of gauge it pretty quickly on, I think you can figure
12:31
it out within a couple of weeks.
12:32
Is this going to be a beneficial platform or not?
12:35
I'll still check in with Clubhouse every now and then.
12:38
But the other thing, I think probably the other reason I kind of latched onto TikTok
12:43
though, even though I really try not to spread myself too thin on social media, is I also
12:49
have a YouTube channel and YouTube can be very, very overwhelming because there's so
12:56
much that goes into it between shooting the video and editing and adding music and B-roll
13:00
and all kinds of crazy stuff.
13:03
I felt like TikTok gave me and I tell new bloggers or people looking at YouTube all
13:08
the time, use TikTok as a way to get used to being on camera.
13:13
So there's a benefit for TikTok or that kind of platform that goes beyond driving traffic.
13:19
There's also the practicing your skill, practicing being on camera and getting over being camera
13:25
shy.
13:26
There's things I've done on TikTok that two years ago I would have been like, there's
13:29
no way I would ever put myself on camera and do this.
13:32
But yeah, there's so many out there and I have been invited to other platforms.
13:37
There's Clapper that I checked out.
13:40
I very quickly decided I hated that platform.
13:44
I think when TikTok was, there was a threat of TikTok being banned in America.
13:48
People were jumping over to a platform called Triller and there was a couple of others.
13:53
But again, I checked them out just to see and none of them kind of gave me the vibe
13:59
that it was going to be worth my while.
14:01
So I think you really check them out, but then kind of go with your gut too.
14:06
And also what is everyone else in the industry doing?
14:09
Like there's a ton of different social media is coming out, but where are the big people
14:14
in your niche hanging out?
14:15
Are they actually going out to all these platforms and really growing an audience or are they
14:20
still sticking to just a few main ones?
14:23
That's some really solid advice.
14:24
And one thing that I have said before, I'm pretty sure I've said it on this podcast and
14:28
I've said it in articles that I've written, even if you're not going to get on all of
14:31
the social media platforms, I highly recommend that you at least get an account on each of
14:35
them so that you can secure your handles and don't make the mistake I did.
14:39
I'm known on the interwebs as famous Ashley Grant, but I could only get famous Ashley
14:43
Grant on a couple of the platforms that are out there.
14:46
And the thing that sucks about that is sometimes I'll actually get emails from people asking
14:50
if it's me when they're trying to find out who it is they're trying to follow.
14:55
So if you're going to grab your handle, make sure that you are doing one very important
14:58
thing and that is to at least post at least once a week or at the very, very bare minimum
15:04
once every other week.
15:05
And the reason you want to do that is Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, they all have policies
15:10
within their terms and conditions that says if you are a squatter, which basically means
15:15
that you are hanging onto a handle but not using it, they will actually remove you from
15:19
the platform.
15:20
So make sure you get your handles and at least take advantage of the link in bio.
15:25
That way you can at least drive traffic and start building your domain authority.
15:28
But make sure that you are at least posting once in a while, even if it's just a photo
15:31
that you don't really care about or a tweet or something, anything that you're not really
15:36
trying to drive traffic, you just need to make sure that you're keeping it active so
15:40
you don't lose it.
15:41
It's kind of a use it or lose it situation.
15:43
Hey bloggy friends, just wanted to chime in here real quick and let you know that if you
15:47
need content for your business blog, I can help you out.
15:51
Go to HireAWriterToday.com and we can talk about everything you need to know for putting
15:57
content on your business blog or your hobby blog, whichever it is that you are starting.
16:02
I want to help you give a voice to your website.
16:05
And now back to the show.
16:07
So I think we've covered a lot of really awesome stuff so far, but I'm curious, Kathy, what
16:11
advice would you give to brand new baby bloggers?
16:14
I think the first piece of advice is no matter what people tell you on YouTube, the people
16:19
that are out there driving the Lamborghini is promising, you can get rich making money
16:23
online.
16:25
It's a lot of work.
16:27
Do not expect results in a month.
16:29
Don't expect to explode and go viral your first month of year, even your first six months.
16:33
One thing I have learned again, just networking within the blogging community, the majority
16:39
of bloggers who have made this into a full-time income, it took them three to five years,
16:44
not three to five months.
16:45
They weren't sticking six figures in the first year.
16:48
There are a few of those outliers out there, but they are few and far between.
16:54
Most people never succeed at blogging because they become impatient and they give up before
17:00
they've ever given themselves a chance to actually succeed.
17:04
You've got to be in it for the long haul.
17:06
You've got to be in it for years, not months.
17:09
Again, you've got to invest in the right tools.
17:12
Don't try to do everything for free until you're making money.
17:15
There is a whole adage, you've got to spend money to make money.
17:20
There's some truth in that because if you aren't starting with the right tools, you're
17:23
just going to make it that much harder on yourself.
17:26
That doesn't mean go and spend thousands upon thousands of dollars at the beginning, but
17:31
you pay for hosting.
17:32
Don't try to go to WordPress.com for free or blogger.
17:37
Pay for the hosting, pay for your domain, and then start investing in the tools at the
17:42
right time.
17:43
Again, you've got to be patient.
17:46
So many times I'll have newbie bloggers, they're like, I've been blogging for six weeks and
17:51
I'm just not getting any traffic.
17:54
I hear this all the time.
17:57
They're like, I'm on Pinterest.
17:59
And then just the other day I said, well, let me see your Pinterest account.
18:02
They had created a total of 17 pins, 17.
18:07
And I'm like, sweetie, I've got thousands of pins that I have personally created over the
18:12
past couple of years.
18:14
You are just not going to go anywhere just yet.
18:17
It's been a few weeks, 17 pins, keep creating.
18:20
So what's interesting about what you're saying is I have actually known bloggers who have
18:25
put their whole heart and soul into it.
18:27
They've spent 40 plus hours a week trying to build up a following and they still fail.
18:32
And one of the biggest things that I've noticed with the people that are doing things like
18:35
this is they're writing all over the map.
18:38
It kind of goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning is the riches are in
18:41
the niches.
18:42
And what's funny is my own personal blog, the famous Ashley Grant blog, it is very much
18:48
a I just write whatever I want to.
18:50
And I use it not so much to be a money making blog as much as I use it for like a portfolio.
18:57
Now, I am doing some testing on my own websites that people don't actually know that are me
19:03
that I own, just to kind of put the proof in the pudding, if you will.
19:09
And I have been working with a lot of ghost blogging clients that are having the same
19:12
things where they're very niche and so they're getting massive page views, they're getting
19:16
massive traction.
19:17
And as they start getting the traction, it doesn't take them as much time.
19:22
So one particular client of mine, they're in the podcast space, and they're starting
19:28
to get really good page views on things about podcasting.
19:33
Now that didn't happen overnight.
19:35
And it certainly wasn't fast.
19:37
Like it took a long time.
19:38
They had a lot of really good solid pieces, but they did the keyword research and they
19:42
stayed in their niche, they stayed in their lane.
19:45
And so I'm kind of curious, what would you say to the person who hasn't quite figured
19:50
out what their niche is and they're just kind of playing around at this point, but still
19:54
hoping, oh, something's going to go viral?
19:57
And for the most part, I think the days of going viral is they're not what they used
20:02
to be.
20:03
They're just not what they used to be.
20:04
It's not impossible, but it's much more difficult to go viral these days.
20:09
For the people that are trying to figure out what they want to do, a lot of times they
20:12
at least have a general idea.
20:16
They want a family blog, but do they write about marriage or parenting?
20:21
And what I tell them is at least have a broad topic and you can have a few categories underneath
20:27
that broad topic.
20:28
But then as you see what articles are actually getting the engagement, what articles are
20:33
actually getting the page views, you need to pivot and niche down with the stuff that
20:39
people are interested in.
20:41
I think too often, sometimes people are like, well, I want to write about this because it's
20:45
what I want to write about.
20:48
And you've got to be very careful about that because if this is going to be a business,
20:53
you need to think about serving your customer, which is your reader.
20:58
I understand the wanting to serve your customer, but at the same time, what about, can't I
21:04
just follow my passion?
21:06
I think it comes down to what your goal is.
21:10
If your goal is to make money, then your passion can be great, but does your passion going
21:15
to make money or is your passion going to make money?
21:19
And there's a good way to find a good way to find out.
21:22
And again, what I tell people is go check out other blogs within that niche that you're
21:26
passionate about research.
21:28
How are they monetizing?
21:30
Is this actually an idea that can be monetized?
21:34
And if it's your passion and it can be monetized, I say go for it.
21:38
But if you have a passion, I know a lot of people, they like, I just wanted to do book
21:42
reviews and I'm like, that's cool.
21:46
But you might be able to get some affiliate income by recommending books.
21:52
You might be able to get some ad revenue, but to make any money in ad revenue, you need
21:56
a large amount of traffic coming into your website.
22:00
I don't know personally that having just a book review website is going to be very lucrative
22:04
as a full-time income.
22:06
And so you've got to be able to balance the topic that you want to talk about with, hey,
22:12
having a business.
22:14
And again, it's about where your goals are.
22:16
Is it more important to be passionate about it or is it more important to grow a business?
22:20
One of my favorite bloggers is Natalie Sisson.
22:22
She's formerly known as the Suitcase Entrepreneur and now she just is on natalysisson.com.
22:27
And one of the things that she talks about a lot is finding the sweet spot.
22:31
And I've heard it referred to different ways.
22:34
I've heard it as the triangle of you're looking for what you can do, what people will pay
22:40
you for and what you enjoy.
22:43
And to find that sweet spot in all three of those is sometimes very difficult, but that's
22:47
why you shouldn't just expect that if you do start a website that it's going to immediately
22:52
just take off.
22:53
And what's interesting is, you know, healthy ambitions, there's nothing in the domain name
23:00
that says keto.
23:02
And so I'm kind of curious if when you started it, were you thinking immediately it was definitely
23:08
going to be keto or did you have something else in mind when you first began?
23:13
So I'm actually, I'm glad you asked that because I intentionally did not have keto in the name.
23:19
Even though I knew starting out it was going to be keto, I didn't want the name to be held
23:25
down to that word.
23:26
And here's why.
23:28
When we started as a family, our healthy journey, which was many, many years before we found
23:33
keto, we went through several different ways of eating.
23:37
We started out just clean eating.
23:39
Then we tried different things like the Daniel Plan or paleo.
23:42
We even went vegan for six months.
23:44
But you like bacon.
23:46
I really love bacon and a quick, quick funny story.
23:50
So my husband has always had really bad cholesterol.
23:54
And so I did a lot of research and I thought the vegan diet was going to like cure him.
23:58
Like, I'm like, I've got this.
24:00
I'm going to fix you.
24:01
You're going to be so healthy because we're going to go vegan and your numbers are going
24:04
to drop to perfect numbers.
24:08
And then six months later, we found out that the vegan diet was awful for him because it
24:13
wasn't so much the fat in his diet that was raising his cholesterol.
24:17
It was how his body was reacting to carbs and the glucose and insulin spikes as a result.
24:24
So after vegan failed miserably for us, I researched again and then I discovered keto
24:32
and started researching the science behind keto.
24:34
And so I presented it to my husband.
24:36
I'm like, next we're going to swing the opposite way.
24:39
We're going to go all the way from vegan to keto, which is a pretty wide swing if you've
24:43
done both diets.
24:45
So it was kind of funny.
24:46
But back to the reason, and keto has worked wonderful.
24:50
He's at his lowest weight since he was in boot camp and his numbers are the best they've
24:55
ever been.
24:56
He's about to turn 50 and his blood results are better than they've ever been in his life.
25:00
But I can't say for sure that five, 10 years down the road that keto is going to continue
25:06
to be as effective for us as it is now.
25:10
And so knowing that we have gone through different ways of eating over the course of a decade,
25:16
if we decided to pivot our diet away from keto, I didn't want to affect the brand of
25:22
the website and have to pivot the entire domain or start from scratch.
25:28
So healthy ambitions, it really means that we truly are, our ambition is to be healthy
25:34
and we are on a healthy journey.
25:37
And I firmly believe that you should never stop learning about health.
25:42
And the more we learn, sometimes we do pivot in our habits and how we eat.
25:48
And I wanted the website to be able to move with us in that case.
25:52
Getting back to something that we kind of touched on earlier, can people still start
25:57
profitable blogs?
25:58
I mean, unfortunately, one of the biggest things I hear online is, oh, well, the only
26:02
people who can make money blogging are those who blog about blogging.
26:05
What do you say to that?
26:06
I really hate it when I hear people say that.
26:08
Now, the making money online niche, teaching others how to blog can be absolutely very
26:14
lucrative and kudos to the people that do that.
26:17
However, me personally, as a consumer, I don't want you teaching me how to blog unless you
26:23
have already proven you can do it in a totally different niche.
26:26
The courses that I chose when I first started blogging, which are the Create and Go courses
26:32
that Alex Narny and Laura McManus put out, they only launched these courses after they
26:38
had grown their health and wellness blog to six figures.
26:41
So the proof was in the pudding.
26:43
They already proved they could do it and now they're going to teach others.
26:46
I see a lot of people trying to jump into that space and they've never succeeded at
26:52
blogging.
26:53
So can other niches though be successful?
26:56
Absolutely.
26:57
The vast majority of people online that are Google searching stuff, they are not Google
27:01
searching how to make money online.
27:04
They are looking how to do exercise.
27:06
They're looking for recipes.
27:08
They're wondering where they should go in Italy for their next vacation.
27:13
The vast majority of people are not looking in that niche.
27:18
And so there's just, I think, while that is very lucrative, to say that is the only money
27:23
making niche, I think is very narrow minded because most people are not Google searching
27:29
that.
27:30
In fact, if you actually look at traffic to those websites, while they make a lot of money,
27:35
they are not getting 100,000 page views a month.
27:39
They just happen to have a high dollar product that makes them money, but they're really
27:43
getting closer to 30, 40,000 page views a month where food bloggers, the niche that
27:47
I'm in, is not uncommon to get millions of page views a month for your larger food blog.
27:54
So a food blog can get millions of page views.
27:57
That sounds really good to the person who's listening to this.
28:01
But here's the real question.
28:02
Are you at a million page views a month?
28:05
And if not, what are your goals for the future?
28:07
And if the goal is millions of page views, how do you intend to get there?
28:11
Oh, goodness, though, I'm definitely not in the million page view rank yet.
28:16
Right now I'm hovering at around 38,000 page views a month.
28:20
Very excited about that.
28:22
I'm two years into blogging.
28:24
So the fact that I have reached the milestone that I am at, I am beyond pleased.
28:30
My next goal is 100,000 page views.
28:33
I hope to be to a million page views in the future, but I got to look at the next milestone.
28:39
And for me, the next milestone is 100,000.
28:42
Once I reach that, then it's going to be that 500,000 mark, and then only after that, I'll
28:47
be eyeballing that one million page views a month.
28:50
And projecting right now, just kind of looking how my traffic has grown over the past two
28:56
years, I think within another year, I should be at that 100 page views mark.
29:05
So I think we were kind of projecting just the money we were making off of ad revenue,
29:09
and it was kind of doubling year over year.
29:12
And so if it continues to double year over year, I will be making a full-time income
29:17
by year five.
29:18
Do you have a plan to make it so?
29:20
Yeah, right now it's about I'm starting to scale the business, which means investing
29:26
money back into the business.
29:28
So hiring people to help out, hiring writers.
29:32
I still develop my own recipes.
29:34
I think it's important as a food blogger to make sure I know how to cook keto.
29:39
But hiring out different other job functions, whether it's writing or having somebody helped
29:43
me to optimize my articles for SEO, hiring somebody for Pinterest.
29:49
And so there's just there's other job functions that if I can hire those out, then I can focus
29:55
on other things like creating more recipes.
29:57
I can focus on getting YouTube videos recorded because that is in itself another revenue
30:02
stream.
30:03
And eventually, I'm also planning on starting to create small cookbooks to go along for
30:09
my website.
30:10
So as far as I'm a firm believer that if you're going to grow your business, you've got to
30:17
start hiring a team to help you is it is impossible in my book, maybe not for some super bloggers,
30:23
but for myself, it will be impossible to grow to the level I want to without hiring help.
30:28
I'm so glad.
30:29
I'm so glad you said that.
30:31
Now, regarding help, you know, if you're listening to this and you're thinking about starting
30:35
a blog of your own and you and you're dreaming of hiring a team and things like that, don't
30:40
feel like you have to go in thinking, oh, my goodness, I'm going to spend all this money,
30:44
you know, upfront.
30:45
One of the big things to think about is once you do start making money, that's when you
30:49
can start thinking about help.
30:51
And it doesn't mean you have to hire someone full time.
30:53
One of my favorite bloggers.
30:55
Well, she started in blogging, but she's actually a money mindset coach is Denise Duffield Thomas.
31:00
And one of the things that she says in her book, Get Rich Lucky Bitch, is that yes, and
31:04
it's really called that one of the things she says in her book, Get Rich Lucky Bitch
31:08
is that when she first started hiring help, she only hired someone for five hours a week.
31:14
Now, at the current stage you're at as a blogger, yeah, five hours a week might seem like, whoa,
31:20
that could be, you know, 100 or $200, depending on how much you're paying the person per hour.
31:24
But it's not that you have to start today doing that.
31:28
If you're just now starting out and you're you paid your $12.99 for your domain and you
31:33
paid your $100 for your managed WordPress hosting for for a year.
31:38
That's not to say that, okay, tomorrow you have to start paying $100 a week to someone
31:42
to help you.
31:43
It's more about saying this is something you're aspiring to that you're you're trying to work
31:47
towards.
31:48
One of the things that I did for GoDaddy is I wrote a business plan for bloggers.
31:53
And I'll leave a link in the show notes for that.
31:55
But basically what it is, is a one page plan basically trying to get you to to think about
32:00
your blog as a business.
32:02
If you're wanting to do this as something that you ever plan on making money at, you've
32:06
got to start thinking about that from the beginning.
32:09
And you know, don't feel like you have to just commit to one niche.
32:12
I mean, I love the fact that Cathy was saying that her healthy ambitions, although she knew
32:16
she wanted it to be keto, she didn't make it strictly keto.
32:19
So if you're thinking about starting a blog, just play with it.
32:23
You can buy any domain you want and just play with it and see what happens.
32:26
Because who knows, you might go into it thinking you want to write about, I don't know, raising
32:31
iguanas and then decide you hate iguanas all of a sudden.
32:34
So there's a lot to be said about playing and learning and not feeling like when you
32:40
go into something, you have to commit full, full force.
32:44
Well, Cathy, we've covered a lot.
32:45
I mean, we've we've we've talked about how to get started.
32:48
We will actually know that's something I would like to say.
32:51
Let's go back.
32:52
Let's circle back for a second.
32:55
Let's say you have someone who's coming to you, and they don't even have a blog.
32:59
They don't even have an idea.
33:00
They haven't written a single word.
33:01
They haven't done anything.
33:03
All they know is they want to start a blog.
33:06
What's the very, very first step that they should take?
33:09
Well, the first step is they need to know what they want to write about or at least
33:12
have a general idea.
33:14
I'm a firm believer in investing in a blogging course.
33:18
But if you don't even know what you want to write about or have an idea of what you want
33:22
to write about, you may want to hold off on throwing down a few hundred dollars until
33:27
you are really ready to start and start producing and start putting together your website.
33:32
One of the things that I'm going to add to that is we did say that you shouldn't start
33:37
with a free website like WordPress.com or blogger.
33:41
And I even actually have talked about this in the past that whenever I started a blogger.com
33:45
site, I did have it hacked and I was just starting to gain traction.
33:49
I was finally starting to make money and I was actually making quite a bit of money with
33:53
it.
33:54
And I started getting on the news.
33:55
I was starting to get people knowing who I was and then the damn thing got hacked.
34:02
So the website got hacked and when that happened, it was by spam bots.
34:08
So I had no recourse.
34:09
I had nothing I could do.
34:10
I literally had to start from scratch.
34:12
I fought like hell to get the domain back into my own property, which also sucked.
34:19
So that's also another thing is make sure you're purchasing the website from a legitimate
34:24
source.
34:25
But we're talking in 2009 when this was all going down.
34:28
So there's a lot that has changed and a lot that I've learned.
34:32
So security is definitely a thing.
34:35
But yeah, so I definitely agree with making sure that if you're going to do this as a
34:38
business, make sure you're using a managed WordPress site.
34:42
However, one thing I will say is if you are playing around with the idea of blogging,
34:47
go ahead and get a blogger.com.
34:49
That's totally fine.
34:50
You don't even have to have a domain.
34:51
Just play with it a little bit and see if you even like writing.
34:55
You may find out that you absolutely hate it and there's nothing wrong with that.
35:00
And here's the good news.
35:01
Just because you don't like writing doesn't mean you have to be a writer to be a blogger.
35:05
In fact, let's jam on that for a second.
35:09
I've met several bloggers lately who actually don't like writing.
35:13
They can't stand it, but they have a message and they want to serve people.
35:18
And so what they're doing is things like they're podcasting or they're YouTubing or they're
35:23
even TikToking.
35:24
And then what they're doing is they're having their stuff transcribed to turn into blog
35:28
content.
35:29
What do you think about that?
35:30
No, I actually, I totally agree with that.
35:31
And the funny thing is I'm one of the bloggers that absolutely despises writing.
35:37
There's nothing about it I like.
35:38
I love almost every other aspect of blogging.
35:41
I enjoy designing the website.
35:43
I enjoy networking with other people.
35:44
I enjoy, in my case, developing the recipes, meeting people in the community, and even
35:52
doing the videos, YouTube videos and TikTok.
35:54
I enjoy all of that.
35:55
I despise the writing aspect of it.
35:59
In fact, for quite a while, my husband was doing a lot of the writing for me because
36:04
he enjoys writing and I despise it.
36:07
And so that was working out pretty good.
36:09
So yeah, I love the idea though of almost basically doing the video and then having
36:14
somebody transcribe for you.
36:17
A lot of people can very easily get out their message talking about it, but they sit down
36:22
in front of a computer and a blank screen and suddenly their brain just, they brain
36:27
dump everything.
36:29
So even whether you're paying somebody to transcribe it or you do the video and kind
36:34
of transcribe it yourself, for those of us that despise writing, that's actually an amazing
36:40
idea.
36:41
Another thing I'll add to that that a lot of people don't even realize is a resource
36:46
is one of my favorite new things that I've been kind of becoming a little bit obsessed
36:50
with and it's known as PLR.
36:52
PLR stands for private label rights.
36:55
And basically what it is, is you can purchase a blog post or an article or even an ebook
37:01
that has actually been written by somebody else and they sell it to multiple people.
37:05
We're talking 30 people, a hundred people, sometimes as many as 500 or even a thousand
37:10
people.
37:11
Now what's cool about it is it gives you a starting point.
37:14
So if you don't like writing, you can purchase an article through this PLR stuff and they
37:20
have them for every niche.
37:21
I've seen them for gyms, I've seen them for real estate agents, I've seen them for wedding
37:25
vendors, I've seen all kinds of PLR.
37:28
And you take that piece and you add your story to it.
37:31
You add your story and your keywords.
37:33
But you have something that you can at least start with.
37:37
So I'll leave a couple of ideas in the show notes about this because PLR is something
37:41
that's just recently becoming, been coming on my radar and the more I learn about it,
37:45
the more I'm fascinated.
37:46
And I actually want to play with this myself because as a ghostwriter, I'm the type of
37:50
person that I write a post, I get paid once and then it's done.
37:55
So I'm actually toying with the idea of launching my own PLR products in a specific niche and
37:59
I won't reveal what that is just yet, but I have been talking with a couple of people.
38:03
I was going to potentially partner with someone in the health and wellness space, but that
38:07
actually fell through during the pandemic and everything.
38:10
But there will be more coming out about that.
38:12
And I do plan on interviewing some PLR writers.
38:16
So if you're a PLR writer and you're interested in being interviewed on this podcast, please
38:19
hit me up.
38:20
I'd love to chat with you and I'll leave links in the show notes for all of that.
38:25
I'm at bloggyfriends.com.
38:26
Well, Kathy, I just want to thank you so much for being here and talking to my bloggy friends.
38:32
And I just want to know one thing.
38:33
Will you be my bloggy friend?
38:35
Absolutely.
38:36
Thank you so much, Ashley.
38:37
This has been so fun to come and hang out with you today.
38:40
And make sure to go to bloggyfriends.com to get all of the show notes of this episode
38:43
and many of the other episodes.
38:45
Until next time, may your page views be high and your bounce rate below.
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