BlogHer Food: Your Blog is Great... Now What

Amy Sherman, Jaden Hair, and Helen Dujardin

Jaden: I started my blog to keep track of my recipes. No one read it except my husband and my mother in law. Now 2 1/2 years later, I have made a career of it. I'm on TV 2 to 3 times a month and am about to launch a TLC cooking show. The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook comes out in 2 weeks.

Helen: I was looking for a job and my mom suggested I start a blog to catalog recipes. My mom initially was the only reader, but it grew in readership and people started leaving comments. I started getting small writing gigs, small photography gigs and they got bigger and bigger.

Amy: I'm Amy Sherman. I've been blogging since 2003. Like my 2 colleagues, I started blogging just as an outlet. It has allowed me to completely change my career. I am now a cookbook author. I am now a paid blogger for Epicurious and Glam and soon will be writing for Frommers.

Jaden - I call it professional blogging because I treat it as a business and it is a big part of my income. Everything I do points back to my blog.

Helen: I also call myself a professional blogger. It's my full time job. I am my editor. I am my own boss.

Amy: My blog has always been my portfolio of my writing and my cooking. I don't consider it a profession. I think of myself as lucky because I have a page rank of 6 and that helps people find me.

You mention that money is important, and without sharing numbers, can you share the percentage of income your blog represents for you.
Jaden: When I first started, I had FoodBuzz ads and that was 100% of my income, even though it was only about $50 a month. Now freelance writing is 50% of my income.

Helen: I've only put ads on my blog last month and for 3 full years I didn't have ads. Right now ads are 50% of my revenue because I have just started to get good jobs.

Amy: For me, I have no ads on my site because I think my site is an ad for me. I would rather have people hire me than be distracted by ads.

Elise believes that if you have less than 1,500 uniques a day, you shouldn't bother with ads.
Jaden: I don't agree with that. $50 a month is still $50.
Helen: To me, it wasn't about the money, it was about control over placement.

Jaden: For me, it's no work because you just put in the ad code once.

"Marla from Family Fresh Cooking. We just put ads on our page. There's a lot of things I don't want to see on our site. My husband is all about putting ads in, and I keep taking them out. What are your thoughts about info links?"
Jaden: "You should stick with a higher quality network like BlogHer and FoodBuzz."

Amy: It's important to monitor what's going on. During the election, there was a flurry of political ads. You need to be aware of what's going on, and many people switch.
Jaden: There are some networks that pay on inventory and others guarantee a certain amount no matter what they sell. FoodBuzz and Cooking Village guarantees payment regardless of what they sell.

Let's talk about non-advertising professional opportunities your blog has led to?
Helen: Becoming a private chef in people's homes was my first opportunity from my blog. People started to ask if I catered, if I would travel, and I said sure if you pay my travel. Then it was writing. First they didn't pay, gave me certificates and small gifts. Then it became photography gigs. Now it's all together, I'm doing it all, and making money.
Jaden: Traditional media was one of my first opportunities outside of my blog. I approached a tiny local free newspaper and said, "If you will publish a recipe and a photo, I will give it to you for free." I also went to a small ABC affiliate and I asked them if I could come on.
Then a bigger newspaper and bigger TV station called me, and bigger and bigger.
There is so much opportunity right now. If it's not online, it's offline. Look around you in your community and see what you can add.

Amy: Look at these two different styles. Helen had opportunities come her way and Jaden made her opportunities.
For me, it was a bit of both. I wrote a post about why I love Jacques Pepin. His PR firm, KQED, noticed and they asked if they could take over my blog. I told them no, but we worked out a deal where I wrote for them once a week for six months for free. Then I quit and two weeks later, they asked if I would come back if they paid me. So of course I felt like an idiot for writing for free for six months.
Dannon also hired me to do recipe development for their new yogurt flavors in 2004. They paid me $5,000 for 13 recipes and some blog type editorial content. I got all excited and decided to change my career because all I needed was one client like that per month, but it turns out many don't have deep pockets like Dannon.
I've also done some proactive reaching out like Jaden and have suggested putting their recipes on my blog. For some of these tiny companies, they have told me that they got more traffic from my blog than they got on their own and that my page rank is higher than theirs.
If there's one big takeaway that we would like you to have, it's that you need to get out there. The only way you're going to impress people is by meeting them. Step away from the computer.

What are some of the Do's of Building Relationships with Bloggers
Jaden: Twitter is a great way to have non-committal conversations on Twitter. CBS came from Twitter. Developing recipes and writing for client blogs have come from Twitter.
Helen: There are days I'm way too much on Twitter. Be careful because it will eat up your time. Just like Jaden, opportunities have arisen out of Twitter. I didn't know my newspaper was on Twitter. A chef twittered that his pastry chef had just quit and I responded and he paid me twice as much as his regular chef.
I would also suggest commenting on food blogs. Don't just say "love your blog or great recipe" you should build a conversation.
Also participating in online events is huge. Sugar High Fridays. Daring Cooks. Daring Bakers. Also volunteer hosting events - especially high traffic events. Is My Blog Burning and Sticky Date list all the online events.
Amy: Tuesdays with Dorie is another great event. Also, you can come up with your own event. For example, November is pomegranite month - I'm sure many bloggers will be doing recipes around that.
Helen: Also, team up with a friend and do an event together. I noticed that my donut posts got a lot of traffic so I partnered with someone to do a donut event. We both got new readers from each other.
Amy: I try to approach Twitter the same way I approach my blog. I try to be both informative and entertaining, but I probably end up being more informative than entertaining.
I did a campaign last month with the Food Bank. I tweeted about it. Tyson saw it, then emailed me, and ended up doing a 200,000 pound donation. You never know who's listening, who's searching for keywords when you're tweeting. It could be a donation, a job, or a friend. Just put things of value out there. I am thrilled that Ruth Reichl follows me on Twitter. Rick Bayless is also very active on Twitter. You can have access to people on there that you would not be able to reach otherwise. I get overwhelmed with email, you'll have better results with Twitter DMs than email with me.

Jaden: My biggest advice is follow everyone who follows you. I have 20,000 followers and follow back 20,000 people. I manage it on Tweetdeck. I have three columns: my close friends, my @replies, and the third for everyone I follow which I definitely look at every day.
Amy: I don't use Twitter that way. I don't use Tweetdeck. I don't follow everyone back. I want to be able to listen to the people I want to pay attention to. If you say inane stuff, I will unfollow you. Make sure your tweets are thoughtful or funny. If you don't know who's funny, then follow @davidlebovitz.

Comment on Sites like tastespotting and Food Gawker and FoodieView.
Helen: These area way to showcase your new blog post and a picture. Your submission has to at least be in focus to get in. They are very visual sites.
Amy: Go check these sites out. It's like food porn. They are beautifully done. Addictive. And a great way of promoting your site.
Jaden: They will send you a lot of traffic. I don't do it much anymore, but I used to use it a lot. If they feature you, you will get huge traffic.
Amy: The one caveat is that your photos really have to be excellent. Their standards are exceedingly high. There are entire sites for rejected pics.

How do you balance your desire to get your recipe out there with putting your recipes on a recipe compilation site like Food52 and Tasty Kitchen.
Helen: You think you "own" your content, but it's out there.
Amy: There are unlimited opportunities to work for free. Let's talk a little about how to decide when to do that.
Helen: it depends on how it is asked. If it's a generic email and they don't know who I am, I put it in the bin. I have a great relationship with one online magazine, and it's starting to pay off. They left it up to me to commit to a certain amount of posts. They were just very honest. I tried it for a month. I loved the way they put the content up and it paid out with traffic. I never know how to read the canned emails, so when in doubt, I email Jaden to see what she thinks.
Jaden: "I used to take lots of opportunities and would write for free to build community. Now my time is stretched so thin that I don't write for free. Every one of my posts takes 4 to 6 hours from shopping to testing and I just can't do it for free. You never know who's going to be reading. If you're a newer blogger, even sites like Food52 have some great people look at them.
Amy: Here's my yardstick: Cash, credibility or visibility. Is it going to pay you, represent you well, or get you out there. If you put stuff on Food52, Amanda Hesser is going to be reading it. She doesn't read other things, but she does read Food52.
As a food blogger, you have a certain responsibility to not give things away for free. When Dannon offered me a gig as a recipe developer, I called a professional food writer to get her advice on how much to ask. She thanked me for not lowering the going rate, and not lowering the bar for the food industry.

Spectator: "I'm a freelance food writer, and so many bloggers are giving away their content for such low fees, it's affecting my income."
Amy: "When sites are asking for content, network with other bloggers, see what they got out of participating."
Jaden: "Do your homework, go to Alexa.com or compete.com to look up their traffic. Get stats about that site. Don't look at absolute numbers. Look at trends."
Amy: "Look at page rank. None of these sites have code embedded in your site. They are all wrong. In my world, google page rank is all that matters."

Helen: "I use blogger and I like it. It's easy. I'm not techy. It works."
Amy: "I'm also on blogger. I like it too."
Jaden: "I'm on Wordpress and, except for a couple of days ago, I'm a fan."
Amy: "I redesigned my blog a few months ago and my designer asked me if I wanted to move over. I asked him if I absolutely had to change over I would, but if I didn't, I was happy staying."

Amy: I want to talk a little about offline events. Let's talk about success stories.
Jaden: These conferences are wonderful to meet people and have real conversations. There's an upcoming one at ClubMed in January. When you're invited to press events, GO. You never know who you're going to meet.
Amy: I'm a big believer in responding to those things you don't really want to go. I'm assuming that you're all getting emails associated with your blog inviting you to go to things, or to interview people. One of my big breaks was writing for Epicurious. I know for a fact that that was how I got my first cookbook. I got a pitch for Epicurious to interview the executive editor and I jumped at the chance. After meeting with her, I had enough info that I did several posts about her. I sent her the links and asked for the opportunity to write for Epicurious. If I had contacted her out of the blue, I can guarantee that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to write. And again, my two line bio on Epicurious is what got me a cookbook deal. You're going to get invited to things that sound boring and sound like a waste of time, but it's like dating, you're not going to know if it's worthwhile until you go.
I got invited to a travel trip in Alberta. My desire to go was about a negative two and I got a paid opportunity to write for their website.
I keep a lot of emails. I never know when I'm going to need a certain source for a different article. You never know when you're going to want to forward things. You have to share things. You should look at everything.
Helen: My motto is why not. That's how I married an Irish American. That's how I ended up in the States. It's not "why not, let's do it." it's "why not, let's talk." I never knew the resources in my own town. There are tons of media out there. Tons of people willing to hear your story, even in your own town. I pitched the local paper on an interview with my friend. They rejected it, but they liked other parts of the story and asked me to write that. Just ask. The worst they can say is no. And if it is no, it's not no forever. It's just no for now.
Amy: In general, people who care about food are interesting people. They like food. They are passionate. Getting to go to an event when people love food, you're virtually guaranteed to have fun.
Helen: Someone from my town asked me to speak at a conference about food photography. He's not paying, but I will meet local foodies, be exposed to local papers, and make great contacts there. You never know what it can lead to.
Jaden: My three pieces of advice are: 1) Treat your blog like a business. Incorporate. Pay your taxes. 2) Have a business plan or a vision board. Know what your goals are. Revisit them often. 3) Go beyond your blog. Be the leader of your community for food. The local television stations are in desperate need of content right now.

Helen: 1) My advice is take a shower. Dress for success even if you are at home. Make a timeline and be disciplined. 2) Know what you want to do. I know I won't be comfortable on TV. We all want it all and I may not be good at it all. Play to your strengths to build your credibility.