Monetize Your Content with Bjork Ostrom

In This Episode

• [02:14] – Stephan welcomes Bjork Ostrom. Bjork shares his origin story, starting with his passion for creating things and transitioning to digital content creation.
• [13:52] – Bjork describes his system for identifying content that resonates with his core audiences and how he and his wife launched Food Blogger Pro to help others in the food blogging community.
• [17:59] – Bjork explains how to use Google Search Console to view top queries, core web vitals, and performance data.
• [26:38] – Bjork offers tips for using structured data to enhance search results and provide clear signals to search engines.
• [35:18] – Bjork discusses the balance between maximizing ad revenue and providing a good user experience.
• [46:34] – Bjork emphasizes the importance of sharing specific stories and practical advice for creators.
• [50:48] – Bjork provides resources for listeners to learn more about his work, including Pinch of Yum, Food Blogger Pro, and the software tool Clariti.

Jump to Links and Resources

Bjork, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Hey, thanks. I still have a little bit of coffee. If anybody’s listening, they can’t see it, but it’s like the one inch—it’s iced coffee. There’s the melted ice on top, but technically, I’m staying within the bio line that I do. I have a little bit of coffee here. I’m super excited to talk to you, and hopefully, we can come away with some nuggets for the audience here.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, first of all, I’d love to hear your origin story, your superhero origin story, because I’m sure you didn’t just wake up one day, and suddenly a Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro were just there for you. There’s some sort of origin story or hero’s journey there that brought you to where you’re at now.

Yeah, totally. So, here’s a quick story: I was working at a nonprofit in Minnesota. My wife was a fourth-grade teacher, and I have always been fascinated with creating things. In 8th grade, I went to the inventor’s fair.

I invented a wall where you could plug it in anywhere on the wall. We called it the Wonder Wall. I had this vision. Oasis could have had the background music for the commercial when it launched. But I’ve always, at my core, really loved the idea of creating things. And in that case, it was a physical thing. But in our case, what we do now is a lot of digital things.

In 2010, I was working at a nonprofit. Lindsay was a teacher, and we were like, “what could we create?” Lindsay was really into recipe development. We had just recently been married, so she was making food for both of us, which was new for her. She was posting content on Facebook at the time, just casually.  

And I had just listened to Gary Vaynerchuk‘s. I had a 30-minute commute, and I would listen to podcasts and audiobooks. And I just randomly came across it. Gary Vaynerchuk had, I think it was his first book called Crush It!. In that book, he talks about this. If you are really into worms, you can become the go-to guy for all things worms on the Internet and make a career out of that. So I thought, okay, if you can do worming, you can probably do that with food.

And researched it a little bit. And there were kind of two opinions. Some of the things I read were like, “Hey, if you’re going to create content on the Internet about food, you’ll have to do it out of passion and joy because you’ll never make money from it.”

The other opinion was this—kind of Gary Vaynerchuk, crush it opinion—around, like, “Hey, you can kind of create a community and an income from anything online because you have the Internet. You can access all those people.” Lindsay and I kind of came together and said, “What would it look like if we tried to build something, and that thing was content about food on the Internet to see if we could make money from it? ” So that was the origin story.  

The best way to do it is to find the platform most aligned with how you want to create content.

Along the way, I would write articles. And content about how we earned income from the site, starting at about $20. That slowly grew over time, $40, $100, $1,000, $2,000, $10,000 a month. As we were doing that, a lot of people who were already creating content or were interested in creating content came to us and said, “Hey, can you help us understand all the different components that go into this? How do you start a WordPress site? How do you take good pictures? How do you show up high on Google?” 

From there, we launched Food Blogger Pro, a community of food creators from all different genres, niches, diets and considerations. They are all generally people who are trying to build, and many of them are doing it at a really high level: building, scaling, and growing food-related sites. So we’ve been at it for 14 years, continuing to learn, show up daily, and publish content.

Amazing. Are you bullish and optimistic about where AI is heading and how much change we’ve seen in recent months with Google and algorithms? Or are you thinking maybe I need to be coming up with some other plan B?

Yeah, totally. 

I’m bullish on the ability to create things online in the future. I would say I’m not bullish on that journey, looking the same way it has over the past decade. For us, there’s just like zero chance that somebody will have the same journey as somebody who started in 2010. The landscape is so different, but in a lot of ways, it’s easier because more people are doing it today; more businesses are paying for working with an influencer, a creator, or a brand today than there were 15 or 14 years ago. So, in that sense, I’m bullish. 

There’s also probably more competition. So I think you probably have to be better than you would have been ten years ago as a creator. But I would say for somebody looking to start doing what we have done, which is building a business around creating content on the internet. The best way to do it is to find the platform most aligned with how you want to create content. So, for you and I, we do podcasts. That means we enjoy talking to people and asking questions. We’re curious. That’s a great platform for you. It’s a great platform for me.  And we’ve kind of found that we work within that.

But for other people, it might be writing; Substack might be a great solution. 

Maybe it’s Twitter if you’re really good at short-form content. So, find the platform that’s the best fit for you. And then I would say, experiment with the things you feel best suited to sell. We know people who used to be teachers, and they are good at creating short-form content that they post on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. They post short-form video content and then sell resources to teachers. That’s the thing that they sell. 

In our case, we do a podcast, and we sell sponsorships against that podcast. So, if you do a Substack, you might sell a subscription. So I think the opportunity is to discover what you are really good at, how you want to create, and then think about how you want to sell against that attention that you’re getting. You can still do it with a blog and get search traffic from that. I think the thing I don’t know about, and I’d actually be interested in your thoughts on, is that we’re kind of walking this tightrope.

It feels like the tightrope is on one side, which is how it’s been, with ten blue links on a search result. On the other side, it’s like Google AI answers or ChatGPT. I don’t really know how that’s going to all play out. It feels like Google doesn’t really know either. 

So, I think that’s the question: if this is your first year getting into a thing, do you expend all of your effort trying to show up high-end search results as your main effort, knowing there might be a flipped switch? And Google now provides the majority of its answers in a chat interface or Google AI answers overview.

I don’t see that in the foreseeable future, like two or three months, but maybe in two or three years, that will be the primary way people get their information. That’s where I would say I’m not bullish on that; I’m more curious, but I am bullish on the future of people creating a business online as creators, selling things adjacent to the tension they get by publishing things they create online.

Yeah, my take on it is to diversify your traffic and income sources so that you are not overly reliant on one platform, tool, or algorithm. And yeah, just relax and trust. As a man of faith, I believe that everything happens for us—not to us. Everything happens for a reason. So if we’re meant to get disrupted by some big change in Google, then welcome it because that’s part of the divine plan.

You can try and make the right decisions, or you can make decisions right.

Yeah. And I think a similar idea to what you’re saying is that this is kind of a mindset we’ve had just around decision-making. You can try and make the right decisions, or you can make decisions right. And I think, as people contemplate, what will I do? Like, what’s my approach going to be? Where am I going to create content? I think a lot of it is to make the decision, and once you’ve made that decision, stick with it and not hop over to the next thing or go somewhere else. I really want to try and get good at a thing, understand it, and spend time with it. 

And that feels like where the magic is, where you are committed to becoming a musician. Let’s say that to use that as an analogy, the best way to do that is to get really good at understanding music and then, in tandem with that, get really good at an instrument. But you might not know how that plays out. You might be a studio musician, a stage traveling musician, or a singer-songwriter. But if you are a good musician, there’s going to be opportunities for you. I think similarly, if you are a good creator, understand how to connect with people, discover what the needs are that people have, and create content around that, that’s where the opportunity is.

Platforms will change, and algorithms will change. But if you’re committed to showing up every day and becoming an incredible musician after a decade, you’re going to get there. I think you have to have some inborn talent with any of this stuff. But if you really commit to it, you’ll get there eventually. Where you’ll end up being is unknown. All of that stuff changes very quickly in the world that we’re in. But what doesn’t change is people’s desire to consume good content and connect with people.

And it seems like that’s more of a mindset than a strategy or set of tactics.

Yeah, totally. And I think there’s this balance in  The world that we’re in, where it’s like, you need to have a mindset that allows you to show up.  Our parent company is called TinyBit, and TinyBit is all about getting a TinyBit better every day, forever. That’s what we’re about. That’s why we’re still 14 years later, showing up, doing this.

Our parent company is called TinyBit, and it is all about getting a TinyBit better every day, forever.

I’m doing a podcast interview after this, just before we had a team meeting, still in the weeds of what we’re doing, trying to get a TinyBit better. That’s very much mindset.

What does it look like to do this for a long period of time? I think most people underestimate the amount of time that it takes. Not always. Sometimes, you can have a viral video that kicks off your next decade of success, but it’s really hard work for the most part. So that’s a mindset.  But within that, you also need to know the tactics, and use the music example, If you have a saxophone, the appropriate way to get it ready before you play is to read notes and learn the different keys.  

In our world, you also need to know the best SEO practices. There are a lot of tactics in the world of search that are really important. You also have to have really good content that people resonate with. However, there are a lot of tactics and best practices that you need to understand in order to be successful. And it’s really the balance or the marriage of those two things that will allow you to be successful as a creator.

Yeah. So, let’s dive into that a little bit more. What sort of strategy process or system do you have for choosing content or identifying content that resonates with your core audience? And then how do you make it more viral, more appealing, even more so? And also to the search engines.

Yep. I can speak from Lindsay’s shoes here because the type of content she’s creating is more consumer-based. We’re doing B2B content with Food Blogger Pro, where it’s like we’re talking to other bloggers or creators.

She’s creating more consumer-based content, so people who are actually going to cook recipes, but I think that’s the easiest way to talk about it. So, she views a lot of what she’s doing right now as a marketer for the free content she’s creating. Her relationship with the content is not like I’m creating content that will eventually sell a membership like we would with Food Blogger Pro. She’s looking at the fact that I have 1.4 million followers on Instagram and I am marketing this recipe to this audience.

Creating content that resonates with your core audience is crucial. It's about understanding their needs and delivering a compelling product, whether it’s a recipe or a piece of information. Share on X

The first thing you need is a good product. Sometimes, people create a product and market it as B2B or B2C, but it’s not actually a good product. So that’s where you have to start. You have to have a really compelling and really good product. For Lindsay, that starts with a lot of recipe development. It starts with a lot of interaction. With her audience to get an understanding of what they need and what they’re interested in. It’s a kind of product development. 

She spends a lot of time refining the recipe. But then she also spends a lot of time building up to when she’ll eventually publish that recipe, similar to a big movie release. So she’ll spend time talking to her audience, showcasing along the way, talking about how much she loves a certain recipe. So then, when she does launch, similar to the first day that a new Star Wars movie comes out, you have people who are excited to see and interact with it.

So, from a marketing standpoint, if you create content that is monetized via ads or sponsorships, you need to think of yourself as a marketer for that content. Many of us think of creating content as marketing for the eventual product that we’re going to sell. But for some people, it is the content that they’re selling.

So that’s just a bit of a mindset piece to understand where you are. Are you somebody who’s creating content as the product, or is the content something that will eventually lead to another product? I think in terms of the actual tactics of what we look at and the considerations that we need to make from an SEO perspective, any of the considerations you have within any of the books you write around best practices, and none of those are too complicated.

In theory, what’s hard is to set up a system that you are accountable to that keeps you coming back to those best practices. So, for us, we think a lot about internal linking. Do we have links on our site that cross-link other pieces of content on our website? If we have an air fryer chicken recipe, is that linked on other site pages really strategically and organically? That would be an example.

Another example is really skimmable, easy-to-read content, and we do that with Intentional structuring of headers. So you have H1, H2, and H3, much like you would If you’re writing a paper for a College class in Microsoft Word. You do that same thing within an article you publish to a blog post. 

SEO isn't just a technical aspect; it's about creating engaging content and compelling titles that attract and retain viewers. The commitment to both quality and optimization is crucial. Share on X

We want to ensure that we have all of Google’s core web vitals, which are indicators it has around, like what a healthy website looks like. That all of those are in check.  And for any of you that haven’t done that, it’s really important to set up a Google Search Console, which is this Free tool from Google that gives you insight into how Google views your site, what keywords people are using to find your site, and where there are issues. It’s like a dashboard that you can look at and get an understanding of all things Google. It pairs really well with Google Analytics.

We look at all of these best practices pretty consistently, but it’s important that we pair those with content that people actually want and are interested in. That marketing piece comes in, and it gets people excited about it and ensures it’s a good product.

Yeah. Google Search Console is a great tool. For our listeners who are already set up with it, what would you tell them are some of the low-hanging fruit and actionable insights that you can glean from using Google Search Console? Could you maybe give some examples that were helpful for your business?

Yeah, for sure. What you’ll see depends a little bit on how your site is set up and what information you have within it, but it’s broken out into different areas. One of the areas that’s interesting to see just right off the bat is this area under performance called search results. When you go into that area, you can see an overview of a certain time period.

So, I think it defaults to this. But you can see over the last three months that you have shown me information for my site on search results. You can also see the total number of clicks to your site. You can see total impressions; you can see the average click-through rate. So, how many times would the impressions be? How many times does somebody see your site on a search results page? How many times do people click on it? Click-through rate: The total clicks are divided by total impressions.

But it’s really interesting that you can see the top queries if you scroll down in that area. So, what are the terms people are typing in to get to your site? So, for a Pinch of Yum, like when we look at it, it’s a recipe, pasta salad, air fryer chicken breast recipe. These are all really important queries for us because they bring a lot of traffic. 

But if we look at foodbloggerpro.com, it gets a lot less traffic. It’ll be things like the self-branded food blogger pro recipe sharing website, food photography tips, and Food Blogger Pro Podcast. So, it just gives you a little bit of an overview of how you are getting people to your website via Google. 

The other important area is the core web vital area that I mentioned before. That’s under an area within the Google Search Console called experience. If you click on core web vitals, you can see the grade that Google is giving you for your website’s mobile and desktop experiences. Anyone in the world of search knows this well, so it won’t be new information.

But for anybody who’s not in the world of search, this would be a good area to look at, to see like, hey, literally will tell you this needs improvement, this is poor, or this is good. And these probably aren’t going to be things that somebody who’s nontechnical is going to fix on their own, but It would be a good thing to look at and loop somebody in who is technical to help with it.

For example, we have a friend who’s the director of a summer camp for kids. I pulled up his site the other day, and it was not mobile-friendly. And I was like, “okay, I have to have a conversation with him about getting this set up so that your website is mobile-friendly.” So that’s a really obvious example of low-hanging fruit.

You can look at a query level or a specific query and see how that has performed over time in terms of where it’s ranked.

One more interesting thing to see is the performance of a certain keyword or query over time. We were talking about it before. You can go into the Google Search Console. You can also see the top-performing pieces of content. But, if you want, you can look at a query level or a specific query and see how that has performed over time in terms of where it’s ranked. And that’s interesting to keep an eye on because if you have a keyword or query that people are using, that’s really important. And then you notice the average position of that drops. Then, you need to start looking at how to get that backup in search results. That would be the other thing you could explore and pay attention to within the Google Search Console: keeping an eye on the position of those most important keywords.

Right? And so that’s where, let’s say, your interlinking might come into play where if you haven’t already interlinked pages that are about that topic, you’re trying to get the top performing page that you have on the site for that particular keyword to rank higher because it’s dropped over time. Then, you can make some adjustments in terms of how you interlink and get that page, inheriting more link equity.

Yeah. And you can even build a little bit of a marketing playbook for your content. And that playbook could include strategic interlinking. It could include, in our case, we have a newsletter. And so maybe if we see something starting to drop, we could say, “hey, we want to bring some attention to this.” We want to share it with people. Knowing that often, if you share something, people will share It with their friends, or they might link to it. You can think about mentioning it on social.  Maybe you could revisit it and see if that specific page lacks information, and you could add information if it needs more so you could kind of develop your own.

We think of it almost as like a car wash, where, like, if one of these queries gets a little bit dirty, what do we do to bring it through the car wash? And there’s, you know, anybody who’s gone through a long car wash knows that there are seven different things that you can pay for the full car wash, and it gives you the wax and the dry and all of that. Similarly, if you notice keywords starting to drop or not perform as well, or a certain page does not perform as well, you could look at it and say, like, “Okay, what are the seven different things, the seven different options that I have in front of me that could allow me to, say, shine a little spotlight on it or just clean it up that will potentially allow it to perform better.” 

And if you start to do that. And you repeat that over time, you’ll start to understand the impact that some of those things can have. And as much as possible, it’s nice to do those things in isolation. So you can see, does this have an impact? Does it not have an impact? We’ve been using a tool called SEO Testing, and it’s not perfect, but it allows you to get a little bit of an idea of, like, “okay, if we’re going to make this change, let’s see a before and after analysis of the date when we made this change and did the position increase? Did the click-through increase?” 

When diving into content creation, make sure you're on the right platform for your strengths, and always be ready to adapt to the changing landscape and increasing competition. Share on X

Another thing you could do is look at the description for the article or the blog post and edit and improve it. Google doesn’t always take that meta description, but it often does. And if it’s a compelling meta description, that might increase the click-through rate. So, there are a lot of things you can do if you notice that the click-through rate starts to drop, but those are just a few of the approaches we take.

Yeah, awesome. And it’s really simple to start digging into this stuff in the Google Search Console. As you said, go to the performance option there, and then you’ll see that you can tick those two squares that show the CTR and the average position. Then, you will see each of those two metrics on the chart below. And then, you can pick under the section for, let’s say, the queries that are the top queries. Pick one of those queries which will become part of the filter options. So now you’re seeing data only for that particular query. It’s that simple. 

Conversely, you go to the list of landing pages and pick one of those landing pages. And as you said for your example on Pinch of Yum, the air fryer chicken recipe that is performing really well might be one of those landing pages that perform quite well on your overall list. So you click that, which will make the filter option for showing all the keywords and queries that bring in traffic to that page. Then, you can start dialing in on a page-by-page level. So it’s very actionable, 

Very actionable. There are also some red flags, like mega red flag areas, that you could check out. We had somebody that we knew who once had what’s called a manual action. Where it’s like Google essentially putting a big red X over your site. I think she had unsubscribed from emails, so she didn’t know. And so it wasn’t until she had gone into Google Search Console and clicked on manual actions area that she was like, “Oh my gosh, this is why suddenly I don’t have any traffic.” 

Similarly, there’s an area called security issues. Those are just like a direct letter from Google saying that this is an issue that you need to fix and that it can have a huge impact on your site. Last, I’ll mention that there’s also structured data; we don’t have to dive deep into that. However, the Google search console will also give you information about the structured data that it sees on your site and opportunities that you have to improve, change, or adjust how it shows up for us; the big ones are recipes. 

We have code on our site. It’s kind of like a garage sale. So you could have a garage sale and put no signage out, and people might come to it and realize, “Oh, this is a garage sale.” Now I understand I’m going to come and shop at this garage sale, but it’s much more effective if you like to put a big sign out that says garage sale. Similarly, with a blog post or an article, you can put a sign for Google or other search engines that tells them what the content is. So when they come and crawl your site, they don’t have to infer or understand. It looks like this might be a recipe. You just have that sign, which is represented as code on your site. People don’t necessarily see it, but it’s coded within your site, and they look at it and say, “Oh, I see, this as a recipe,” or “Oh, I see this as a comment or a FAQ section or a video.”

Everybody must understand what structured data is for the type of content that you’re creating. It’s different for every piece of content.

Everybody must understand what structured data is for the type of content that you’re creating. It’s different for every piece of content, so recipes versus product reviews versus movie theater times. All of that information is structured data that shows up as code behind your site. But it’s really important to get that right as well.

Yeah, for sure. There are many different aspects to this structured data. So a blog post has different structured data on it than, let’s say, the homepage or the about page versus a product page. So you have structured data for products that might have stock availability, price, the different parameters or options like colors, and all that sort of stuff, including sizes. But for blog posts, you’ve got article-type information that’s being put into the structured data markup. And then, for an about page, you’d have organization markup or the author markup. This is a person; this is a company and our corporation. And here are the URLs of their social profiles, their Wikipedia article, and the various other profiles that they have, maybe on about me or Bloomberg.com, etcetera.

This helps your page rank higher and gives Google much clearer signals about the data elements you have for the knowledge graph. So you’re more likely to get knowledge panels and things like that for your brand, name, company, etcetera.

Yep. And Google has a great resource. If anybody were just to Google Introduction to Structured Data, Google would include Google in the Google search, and they have this great article that kind of gives you an overview. They actually use, I think, recipes as an example, and they show you the code, what it looks like, and then how they take that code and interpret it in the search result. As you said, including that in your article can help create a more compelling search result that encourages people to click and interact with it. So, all of that is like the technical component of what we do. 

But then there’s also the reality of the actual product itself. The content has to be good, it has to be helpful. And so that’s where it’s a little bit of the art and science of what exists within the world of SEO, which you know well, right?

And speaking of the art of it, creating that curiosity gap for, you know, I’m not talking about click-baiting, but doing something that you’re actually under-promising and over-delivering, not the other way around. So it’s not clickbait, but it actually is super compelling. It creates that curiosity for the searcher, who is more inclined to click on it because they’re genuinely curious about the answer. So, how do you incorporate curiosity?

Yes, for sure. I think it’s curiosity. Also, just like in the example, we’re naturally more inclined to click on an image than we are just text. And so if you have questions, in our world, in the world of recipes, search results can have an image, and it’s going to be much more compelling for somebody if they can see an image of a chocolate chip cookie versus just seeing the text. I think of the days when I would wholesale shoes and sell them on eBay, and you’d have to pay extra for things like bolded text, to have like stars, or have an image. I don’t remember, but I think you’d have to pay extra.

The nice thing about the world of search is that you don’t have to pay extra for it if it’s an organic search. You just have to make sure that you’re structuring your content correctly. And if you do that, you get these little bonus features that will make it more compelling. But also, to your point, creating a title that is intriguing for people as well, that draws people in. I feel like YouTube, you see this a lot. People are really strategic about structuring a YouTube title to encourage people to click, but it only works if people click. The video itself is really engaging.

I think of Casey Neistat as a YouTube creator. He is also good at creating really compelling titles for his YouTube videos. But he’s also really good at creating a video that, once you start watching, you don’t want to stop watching.

Right. I love his Do What You Can’t. You know that video, that’s amazing.

Yes. Yeah. He has, whether it’s these kind of outlandish things that he’s doing, like snowboarding down the streets of New York behind a car or these intriguing, compelling titles where you’re like, what is that? I want to learn more about it. You get into it, and then you keep watching it. That feels like where the magic really is.

Yeah. I’ll tell you, just in the thumbnails, there’s so much science to that. I forgot what the stat was that I heard from an interview with. I think it’s MrBeast, his dedicated thumbnail expert, who makes a lot of money. Like, yeah, because it’s an important job or something. Like, it’s crazy. And what they spent per thumbnail to create was many, many thousands of dollars. I forget how much.

It’s like, wow.

You look at it, and there’s like 20 iterations and testing and changing, and yeah, for sure you realize, again, it’s like the art and science of content. That’s like they go through kind of a scientific method to come up with the best thumbnail that’s going to perform for this video that they’ve already spent—probably a million dollars just to create the video itself.

And to have the right tools. For example, Tubebuddy is a tool that will allow you to split-test the thumbnails and see which ones are the winners. So that’s part of the science part. If you’re not using the proper tools for the job, then you’re just kind of guessing or, I don’t know, winging it as you go along.

Yep. That’s great.

Yeah. Speaking of testing and figuring out what works and what doesn’t, I noticed on the Pinch of Yum site that, let’s take the air fryer chicken breast recipe. The only thing that stays on the right-hand side is an ad. And I’m curious how you came to the conclusion that only the ad should be sticky, and everything else, like the follow us and subscribe to our newsletter, scrolls away.

Yeah. So, there’s the desktop version. If anybody were to go to the Pinto Bean recipe, they would scroll through it. Eventually, they get to the end of the right-hand sidebar, and as they continue scrolling, the ad will stick. So, just some background context around why that’s happening. For those who aren’t familiar with the ad industry or ad world, those will refresh.

And so whenever those refresh, it’s a new impression on a new ad. So, part of it is us. The primary way that we’re earning money from Pinch of Yum is through advertising. And so that’s when we think of optimization. We’re thinking of optimizing to get more people to the site. And then, when we have people on the site optimizing around an ad experience, that is optimal. Optimal means it earns well, but it isn’t completely crushing in terms of the number of ads and where we are. We’re actually, and if anybody goes to Pinterest, we can kind of get a feel for it.

If you’re not using the proper tools for the job, then you’re just kind of guessing or winging it as you go along.

We’re within the advertiser that we work with lower quartile in terms of the number of ads that we run. I would estimate that we leave ten to $20 of RPM, RPM being how much you are earning per 1000 page views that people have on your site. We’re leaving ten to $20 on the table. So, it would equate to hundreds of thousands or more of money that we’re leaving on the table. But it’s not just like leaving that on the table. 

Our bet is that it’s better to have an experience that people will want to come back to than to try and maximize every single impression by earning as much as you can. And it still is. You go to it, and it’s like. There are ads on the site throughout. There’s a lower-third ad, a video ad that will play, and ads that stick on the sidebar. 

So, the simple answer is that it sticks there because that’s our primary mechanism for monetization. I think we would have that there if it was email, which is really important to us. Or if we’re primarily earning through Instagram-sponsored content relationships, we’d have that there. We earn through those, but it’s not the primary way we earn income for a Pinch of Yum. 

Another example would be if we had made product sales in the past. We’ve made meal plans, and those have been successful, but not to the degree that running ads on the site is. If we were to start today, that would probably look different. I think we would probably focus on a newsletter. We would think about a Substack. We’d have a sponsorship. 

We’d probably look to start within a niche community, meaning, for us, it would be like families with kids under five and two working parents and how to put meals on the table consistently, like homemade meals. That would probably be the product that we would look at. If that’s what we’re doing today, we’d shift the focus. But it’s just like, for us, the primary mechanism is ads. And so the reason that we have that stick there is just because that’s the most valuable thing.

I think your idea is actually a really good one to look at adding something in addition to that email sign-up or follow buttons is actually a really good idea. So, I’m making a mental note to myself to maybe include an additional box along with that ad on the desktop that then scrolls along with it some type of prompt.

So, yeah, I was just talking with my friend Greg Merrilies, a guest on this show multiple times and the founder of Studio 1 Design, and he showed me a cool implementation of this. It’s on zing.coach. If you go to their fitness library and blog, you’ll see that they are calling out to try the Zing platform. Sticky on the right-hand side of each blog post, but also on the left-hand side, there’s this table of contents. This article has this, and this. And it’s sticky.

I love that.

You can jump to the different sections just by clicking on them.

Yeah, that’s really cool. I love that. You know, the one thing we’re always thinking through is that about 80% of our traffic now is mobile. And so we’re balancing this world of desktop versus mobile optimization, but hundreds of thousands of people still would be on the desktop.

The incremental lift that you get from followers and email subscribers can go a long way, I think. I really like that implementation a lot. I’m looking at it right now. See, we’ve been building in that table of contents at the top of a page, and people can click to go through it, but I think it’s really slick to have that on the side. That’s cool.

Yeah. So we were talking about advertising, and that’s your main income for the Pinch of Yum. Are you finding one particular partnership to be the most lucrative? Like, is it Mediavine, Raptive, formerly AdThrive? Is it Freestar? Who did you end up partnering with, and why?

Yep. We’ve had a longstanding relationship with AdThrive, now Raptive, and we know lots of people who use Mediavine. I’m not familiar with the third one that you shared.

Yeah, Freestar.

Freestar. Okay, so, yeah, we’ve worked with Raptive for a really long time. And in our world, there’s a lot of people who bounce back and forth, you know, different platforms, ad networks, but for us, a huge part of how we think through things, whether it be like hosting team members, vendors, advertising partners, is like, we have a good working relationship.

We’re not going to try and squeeze every little incremental benefit out. Like, “Hey, you could earn $5 RPM dollar, 10 RPM more over here.” What we’ve seen happen a lot is that you do that, you move to a new thing, and then it’s like those same conversations are happening where you are on one side, and then you shift back to the other. Oh, this host is the best. And that’s not to say that you should never change or ever look at other opportunities. We’re just really slow to do that. And so we’ve worked with AdThrive now Raptive for a long time. I don’t know how long, six, seven, or eight years, they’ve been a great partner.

You know the adage, hire slow, fire fast. Right?

Yeah, right, right, yeah. In our world, I think there’s the reality of switching costs, whether it’s changing hosts, ad platforms or team members. And so, definitely, if you have a situation where it’s not working out, do you want to look at another opportunity?

Yeah, for sure. But we’re not looking to squeeze every incremental dollar out of a situation, especially if we don’t know for sure if that’s going to play out that way. So, with ad partners, we’ve had a great relationship with Raptive.

Yeah. Recently, I was interviewing Chris Parker for the second time. He’s the founder of whatismyipaddress.com. So they’ve been a client for seven or eight years now, and they just recently hit a new milestone of 12 million unique visits a month.

It’s better to create an experience people want to return to than to maximize every impression for profit.

Wow, that’s incredible. The main way they’re monetizing is through ads.

It is, but they also get quite a lot of revenue from affiliate relationships, so VPN providers and different kinds of anti-scam solutions and things like that. Years ago, I introduced him to Freestar, and he’s been really happy with them. They’ve been really a pivotal key part of his business. So, yeah, he’s very happy with them. 

I see. Even when I put it up, Food52 is a client of Freestar, so it’s kind of in our world.

Yeah. I agree that there are switching costs involved, but it can be quite beneficial if your intuition tells you, hey, maybe this is time to start looking around, or maybe this is the right new provider. I wouldn’t ignore that.

Yep. No, that’s great. And even if nothing else, I’ve learned.  This is just in the world of, like, you talk about diversification. One of the ways we’ve done it is by having some commercial real estate investments, like diversifying outside of the world of digital businesses. But as we go through the process of doing different projects with those buildings, one of the things that’s amazing is,like, when you go out and get quotes, it’s like $2,000, it’s $5,000, it’s $10,000, all for the same job.

Within that, there are some considerations you need to make regarding the level of service. What opportunities do you have with an ad network? How will they serve you, and what opportunities do they have above, just like programmatic ads? But also, often, you can go out and shop and get a general idea of how broad the spectrum is. What could you be earning if it’s an ad network, or what would you be paying if it’s a vendor?

And a lot of times, that can be a pretty big spectrum. You could be making a lot more, or in the case of spending, you could be saving or spending a lot more, depending on what the project is and who the vendor is. So, at the very least, I think it’s helpful to go out and at least look at the options that are out there. And I wasn’t familiar with Freestyle. I just made a note to check it out.

I need to remind people that it’s not just the income from what you’re building, but also the collective value it represents, which can be life-changing.

Yeah. Happy to introduce you if you’re interested.

That’s great.

Okay, so let’s change tags here for just a minute. I’m curious to hear who your favorite guests on your podcast have been and why. First, maybe preface this by saying how many guests you’ve interviewed over these years.

I think we’re in the 45s now with the podcast, which is crazy. The one that we just launched is 470, I think. So, how many episodes have you done? I know you have two podcasts, so.

Yeah. So across the two shows, it’s over a thousand people. Yeah, it’s not crazy. I’m a year, almost a year ahead, on my personal development show on Get Yourself Optimized. Eight months, nine months, is how much I have already recorded, and it’s just sitting in the queue.

Yeah, that’s incredible. Would you ever change the frequency of that? So you’re publishing them more frequently?

I’ve thought about it, but this goes back to something I mentioned just a couple of minutes ago. If your intuition tells you to go for it, then do it. But my intuition is telling me, no, do not increase the frequency. Instead, I’m taking about four months off from podcast interviews, at least for that show and probably more for the show, too, so I can have the nice four-month break without worrying about running low on episodes.

I think the episodes that resonate with our audience and those that I  appreciate are any time you can get really specific on a specific platform. So, we have experts within our community. Casey Markee is an SEO expert who speaks specifically to the kind of food community. People are really interested in that whenever he comes on. We have an expert in our community named Kate Ahl, and she’s an expert within Pinterest and really understands the world of Pinterest. And I just always appreciate her insights.

We’ve had a couple of interviews with Paul Bannister, who oversees some of the technical considerations and state-of-the-industry type stuff with ads, and he’s with Raptive. I’m trying to think of the other ones that I appreciate, and they are always interesting when creators come on and share really specific stories. We had an interview with Sarah Cook, and she talked about building her site from 17,000 page views to 600,000 page views. She just kind of chronicled her journey through that process.

So anytime somebody can come on and share a specific story is interesting. And then the last one I’ll share is that I have a friend here in the Twin Cities area who started a company called QuietLight Brokerage. His Name is Mark Daoust. And he just talks about valuing your business and buying and selling websites. And I think from that, there was kind of this realization within the food community of, like, “Oh, I have a valuable asset. I can sell it.” I think a lot of people, it wasn’t necessarily through that singular podcast, but we saw a handful of people who have transacted with quiet light and sold their site or bought sites. And what I appreciate about that is this reminder that we’re building a valuable asset. It’s not just a job. It’s not just this thing that pays the bills. It’s also a business.

Much like you, that business could go out and buy Apple stock, Which would create a market cap for Apple. We have these things that we are creating that are inherently valuable. And I think it’s important. I need to remind people that it’s not just the income you’re earning from the thing you’re building. It’s also the collective value that is represented and can often be life-changing for people. If you spend ten years building something with substantial cash flow, it represents a valuable asset that can be sold on the marketplace. That interview with Mark was good, as was his kind of partner, Joe Valley.

So, speaking of selling businesses, I don’t know if you knew this, but Pat Flynn not only has Smart Passive Income, really amazing, and has a very large podcast, but he also had a FoodTruckr, and he sold that in 2020. I don’t know if you know that.

We’ve seen food sites sold for 5 or 10 million. It’s uncommon, but not impossible.

Oh, sure. Yep. I’m friends with Matthew Gartland, the CEO of the SPI Media community, and I was on a call with the two of them. I don’t know. Maybe it was six months ago or so; we were just kind of chatting about a few things. But, yeah, that’s like a great example of a business that’s created that has cash flow, is valuable, and that you can take and sell in the marketplace. And so we’ve seen food sites listed and sold for like 5 million, 10 million. That’s uncommon, but it’s not impossible. And so, as we’re thinking about this. It’s a good reminder for people to say, like, “hey, you’re building a valuable thing in the world that can be life-changing for you.”

It’s not just income. You’re building an asset.

Yeah, totally.

That’s a good thought to end on. So, if our listeners are interested in learning more from you, checking out your podcast, becoming part of the community you’ve created, or even just getting a recipe, where should we send them?

Yeah, thanks. There are three areas that you could check out. One is pinchofyum.com. That’s the food site that we talked about, foodbloggerpro.com. That’s where we have information about our podcast and the membership. And then we also have a food, Or it’s not food specific. It’s just like for anybody publishing online: a software tool called Clariti that brings in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and WordPress data. So, all those things we had discussed bring them all into one central hub. And so that’s the software tool that we’ve been working on. So those are the three things we’re up to online and where you can follow along with us.

Awesome. Well, Bjork, that was a really great, interesting, and value packed episode. Thank you so much for being on the show and thank you listener for being part of my tribe, and we’ll catch you on the next episode. And in the meantime, have a fantastic week. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer signing off.

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Your Checklist of Actions to Take

Focus on building a strong newsletter. It’s a reliable way to reach my audience directly and offers great potential for sponsorship opportunities. 

Have a good working relationship with ad partners. Prioritize stability and long-term collaboration. Remember, changing ad partners comes with costs and risks.

Ensure my website is optimized for mobile use. A mobile-friendly site not only enhances user experience but also increases email subscribers.  

Interlink my content thoughtfully to improve SEO. This tactic can significantly boost my search rankings and keep visitors engaged on my site longer.   

Use Google Search Console to track how my images perform and optimize them. Compelling visuals can significantly enhance user click-through rates.

Maintain high-quality content and engaging titles to attract and retain my audience. Invest time in developing a compelling core product that resonates with my target demographic.

Continuous learning and regular content updates are essential. The digital landscape is always evolving, and staying ahead requires constant improvement and innovation.

Create structured data to help search engines better understand my content, improving my SEO. Ensure I’m using the correct schema types to fully leverage this tool and enhance my search visibility.

Don’t rely solely on a single traffic source or income stream. Diversify to safeguard against potential disruptions like algorithm changes or the impact of AI on search results.

Engage with Bjork Ostrom on the Food Blogger Pro website, his community for food creators. Also, listen to The Food Blogger Pro Podcast for more insightful marketing topics.

About Bjork Ostrom

Bjork Ostrom is the chief tech consultant/business advisor/taste tester at Pinch of Yum. Day-to-day, you’ll mostly see him around Food Blogger Pro, as well as hosting the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Bjork is also husband to Lindsay, dad to Solvi and Lena, and lives in Minnesota with their dog Sage. He can usually be found with a coffee in hand.