222. What's the recipe for building a lucrative brand out of a food blog? (f. Stacie Vaughan)
Dreaming of turning a side dish into the main course of your professional life or brand? 🥗 Today, our guest Stacie Vaughan, a successful food blogger, shares her journey from scratch to a thriving food blogging entrepreneur. Discover the secret sauce behind a blog that feeds both the soul and the bank account. Bloggers are often underrated, but Stacie's story shows how powerful and profitable a blogging business can truly be. Let's dive in!
Episode transcription
Phil
 Do you relish the thought of turning a side dish into the main course of your professional life or brand?
lauren
Wondering what the secret sauce is behind a blog that feeds the soul and the bank account?
phil
Our guest Stacie Vaughan, a food blogger, has cooked up a storm.
lauren
Today, she's here to share the hearty helpings of knowledge she's gathered on her journey to becoming a food blogging entrepreneur.
Perfecting the recipe for a prosperous online presence that started from scratch.
phil
I think that bloggers are often underrated, or how would I say it? People don't realize what goes into blogging and how big a blogging business can be. Do you know what I mean? People think it's like a side hustle, that's a cute business. But in this job, or a hobby, we have encountered so many amazing, many of them women, that are powerhouses, and that have incredible businesses behind them, that are anything but a hobby.
Don't you feel like that about Stacie, Lauren?
lauren
Without question. Stacie on the outside, seems very sweet and soft spoken and unsure and tentative, but below the surface, Stacie is a business mogul and a powerhouse. And you would never, ever, ever know that Stacie, with her cats running around her home and spending time with her, with her daughter, I remember you saying this on our brand audit call, and creating these recipes. I think it's just so easy to misjudge a blog by its surface without understanding that blogs are actually incredibly powerful and often can be very, very successful businesses. So I think it's very easy to misjudge blogging as a business.
And Stacie, I think that you are living proof of that how successful you can become as a blogger.
Stacie
Thank you.
lauren
So welcome to Brand Therapy.
stacie
Thank you for having me.
lauren
So I think it would be useful first for us to kind of break down for our listener what your history is with blogging. Could you kind of just sort of like paint a picture for us of what inspired you to start your blog?
stacie
Before I started a blog, I was an accountant. I worked in public practice accounting, I did, um, corporate accounting, personal taxation, and I really did not like it. I was very bored. And I had a chronic pain condition, so I had trouble sitting. So I had to leave my job, I had to sell my house, and then I was home with my kids, and my kids went to school, and I needed something to do during the day because I had, I needed something to do that I could do on the couch, and I don't know, I just stumbled into the world of blogging, and I realized, geez, this is kind of interesting, you know. This is something that keeps me busy, and I just got right involved, because I find with me, like, um, when I start something, like, I get right into it, and I got right into blogging. But when I started out, more so into, like, the reviews and giveaways, so I was really into giveaways at first, like, I was entering giveaways, And then I did my own giveaways. I was doing book reviews. So I was all over the place.
And this is back in 2008. So it's been a, I've been doing this a while and it started as a hobby just for something to keep me busy when my kids were at school. And I remember when this company, I think it was like a pillowcase company for, for your kid to color on the pillow and do a design and they emailed me and said, we want to send you a pillowcase and will you write about us?
And I was just like blown away. I'm like, Oh my god, someone wants to send me something and me write about them. So I got my daughter to color the pillowcase and took pictures and I wrote about them. Um, and that's kind of how it started was with reviews, giveaways, and then I kinda did that for up until like 2015.
So in 20, I think it was 2012, my parents bought me a DSLR for Christmas. Cause I've always been interested in food. I, when I was younger, I used to read my mom's cookbooks. I used to make recipes. I'd create recipes and it's always been something I was interested in. And I was always interested in photography too.
So I started practicing with my camera. I took like an online photography course. And all my first set of pictures were terrible, like I'd actually stick the casserole on the stove at night time and take a picture of it. Well you can see the elements in the background, it is so bad. Anyway, so that's how, like I guess photography wasn't as big back then like in 2012 like it is now.
Now you have to have professional pictures to be able to succeed, but back then you could do like really amateur stuff. And anyway, so I just kind of started with that and then I realized, you know, I really like food and I think I want to just focus on that because I saw that food brought the most people to my blog and it was something that I was more interested in and also it monetized better than reviews and giveaways and I was just burned out from doing that many reviews and giveaways and it wasn't really my passion.
So I left that behind. I actually deleted most of them off my website. Deleted like 10, 000 posts in the last two years off my website. I had like 15, 000 posts at one point, and now I think I have like 1,400.
lauren
What are the benefits of doing that?
stacie
Um, well, I had an SEO audit and they said to do that. They said that you need to get rid of like the thin, content, stuff that doesn't relate to your niche, stuff that's not getting traffic, like the stuff that was more personal to me. I know indexed. Like there's some makeovers, like room makeovers. I know when to next those because I'm like, oh, I want to keep, you know, the before and afters of my room makeovers and stuff.
But other than that, like I've been, and I'm actually going through another SEO audit right now with someone and going through the same process where I'm looking at, posts seeing if I can redo them and if I can't redo them, like, and they don't fit and I'm deleting them. So I'm tightening things down even more.
phil
Like spring cleaning almost. Yeah.
stacie
And it feels good to do it. Like you feel like you're, I felt like I was a hoarder kinda with all these junk posts and now I'm just like cleaning up. Cleaning house. So it feels really good to do that.
lauren
So, what are the pros and cons of having a career as a creator? As someone who's been doing it for a while.
stacie
First of all, the pros. I would say, like, I don't want to do anything else the rest of my life. I love, love, love, love what I do. I wake up every day excited. to work. It doesn't even feel like work. And I remember my dad saying that the best kind of job you have is one where it doesn't feel like you're working.
And this feels like that to me. I'd say like you're your own boss. You can work as much as or as little as you want. However, a caveat to that is you need to work a lot because that's one of the cons is you have to work a lot.
You can be creative. So, yes, you can, like, look and see what search, what, what stuff people are searching for, but you also have that outlet where you want, like, I want to make something, like, really different Create a recipe that no one else has ever thought of.
So you can be really creative with what you do, with your website design. It's also really fun. I find it really fun. Like there's some aspects that aren't fun, but most of it is fun. Uh, it's fun to make money. Make your own money and something and something you built yourself too. Yeah. Like something, you know, like I created this from scratch when I was talking to my accountant, I'm like, What did I say to him?
I'm like, so is my website considered an asset? And he goes, well, did you buy it? And I'm like, no, but I created it. So it's worth something, you know, like I could sell it and it's worth something that I made, but it's not something I bought, you know? So he was trying to like figure out, like, he didn't really understand that, but I guess I think it's like an asset that you created.
stacie
Can I chime in on that? I just got a message from a dear friend, Sophia. I won't give her last name cause I don't know if it's public information yet, but she just sold her blog for six figures.
lauren
Seriously?
phil
Yeah, she messaged me this morning and said the deal is done, and you better believe your website is a business asset. In exactly the same way, a business asset that is brick and mortar. It is exactly, exactly the same. There's a website called Flippa, actually a friend of mine through a home swap is their director of marketing. Isn't that cool? It's actually, Lauren, you and I thought about buying a, a blog on that website and then I met the director of marketing for that website when I stayed at his house in Amsterdam.
Yeah, we switched houses.
lauren
That's so funny.
Anyways, he sent me a, uh, a community that's for sale, a blog that's for sale that was Adobe related this morning. And it's, uh, listed for sale for a hundred thousand dollars. It has 20, 000 members are in the community. So you better believe this stuff can be sold. And these things are sold on a daily basis.
stacie
I told my daughter, I'm like, if I ever die, make sure you don't let my website go, you better sell it. I know that's kind of morbid, but I'm like, yeah, make sure I think I even put that in my will to like, so that my family was not really familiar with like the online world. So they would know like if something ever happened to me to not just let my website go. You meet other bloggers. That's one of the best things is meeting other people in the industry. Like some of my best friends are bloggers. You help people and also you're always learning. I find this is an industry where you always have to be reading the trends, like everything's changing so quickly and you have to be following like the industry experts like Phil and just keeping on top of what's, what's going on.
The cons, I would say it's a ton of work. A lot, a lot, a lot of work. I pretty much work almost every day. Except when I had surgery recently, but I took a couple days off for that, but you pretty much have to work all the time at first. And once you get big enough, you can delegate and have a team. And I've been able to do that a bit. So kind of lightening my load that way.
Dealing with online trolls. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but like haters, sometimes I'll get messages from people or emails just from random internet people sending mean messages.
So you just kind of have to not let that get to you. Another thing is like the algorithms are always changing. Like with Facebook, Google, with all their updates and stuff, you always have to be on top of everything. And it's a bit frustrating. The tech issues, I'm not very technical at all. So tech issues like really scare me.
So I've actually outsourced that sort of thing. And I recommend doing that if you're not good at tech stuff.
stacie
That's such good advice, because I think even getting hung up on the tech can, in so many instances, prevent people from moving forward with a business idea. They're like, I don't know how to do that.
I wouldn't even know where to begin. So they don't.
stacie
Don't spend time trying to figure out if that's not your forte. Like, find an expert that can do that and, like, get quotes and figure out which one, what option's best. Like, I have a guy. that does all my tech stuff and if I have tech questions I email him and he fixes things for me like whether it's like a plugin or adding code.
There's lots of companies out there that do that and yeah and I guess one other thing that was really hard for me was to learn to delegate. I wanted to do everything myself because I'm the type of person who thinks like to get it done right you got to do it yourself and if you do that you're not going to be able to grow. You need to, you need to let some things go and train, you need to find good people to hire, and that's kind of difficult, and you have to train them, and yeah, there's, you're going to go through a lot of people that aren't good until you find your gems.
lauren
That's such, such great insight. Really, really amazing. And I agree with what you were saying, Phil. It's very inspiring and honestly, very empowering to know that you can be a blogger without being technical. I think most people imagine that bloggers know how to run and build their own websites and know how to do all the SEO stuff. And it's cool that you're living proof, Stacie, that that's, that's true. You know, not the truth.
stacie
Oh, it's totally not the truth. I'm more of the creative side than the tech side. I'm like so lost when it comes to that. And that's why I think your host can help you get a good host and like your tech guy. It's just a lot less stressful than like trying to Google stuff yourself and figure it out. And then you could break something and make it worse.
phil
There's another thing that I think is extremely magical and, and key to your success, and that is you taking this seriously as a business from the beginning, and not treating this as a hobby. Even if it was a hobby, let's say to start, it was something you were exploring, I always hear from you that it's something that you've taken seriously, you've treated it like a business, so guess what, it's become a business.
That is so powerful.
stacie
Yeah, I agree. I mean, it was something that I always, like, I did it pretty much every day since, like, 2008. It was something I worked on every day, even when my kids were younger. And I remember I didn't make any money until, like, 2010. It took me a while and I didn't start out to make money, it just kind of like happened and then I think in 2010 I made 5,000.
I remember someone paid me 20 to write a blog post and I was like over the moon, I'm like, oh my god, someone's paying me 20 to write about Halloween costumes or something. Um, and then I realized like, oh, I think it's a lot easier now to monetize than it was then because there's more resources nowadays.
phil
I can relate to that, Stacey. For me, video creation has been the same thing. I actually, it cost me more money than I made in the early days. I had to hire an editor, cause I'm like, there ain't no way I'm gonna, If I, if I have to edit the video, the video's not gonna get live. Again, I treat it like a business, even if I'm not making money from this right away.
But I don't even know if I thought about that explicitly. I think for me it was more like, I really enjoy this, so I'm going to keep doing it. And even if I need to spend a little money to get it done, I'm going to benefit from it in so many other ways. And then it's become a business. In fact, it's become my primary business.
Last year, my income was 50 percent client, 50 percent creator work. And I could have never anticipated or told you that was going to happen. And how cool is that?
phil
Yeah, that's awesome. And I think, yeah, you have to really Don't get into this business just because you want to make money. You have to really love it because I think if you don't love it, you're not going to stick around because it is a lot of work.
So, just find something that you really, like a niche that you're really into. And for me that was, that's what the food blogging thing is something I'm really into. And I guess for you it'd be the videos and stuff, so.
lauren
Is there any other important advice that you wished you'd learned early on as a blogger?
Oh, yes, I've got lots of advice that I will give you.
lauren
Lay it on us.
stacie
So, like I said, like I started and I was all over the place. I wish I would have found my niche early on and focused just on what I focus on now. I think I would have been ahead if I would have done that, um, because I'm kind of playing catch up.
So, I think find your niche, also to write for your readers. Figure out what people want and write for them. Like don't write for search engines, write for your readers. Cause they're the ones that are like going to be keeping your blog going, not search engines, although that does help, but you have to write for people.
And yeah, basically knowing your audience and giving them what they want and focusing on quality and not quantity. Even if you publish one good post a week, that's better than publishing, like, five mediocre, thin content posts a week. I wish I would have focused more on that at the beginning than just churning out thousands of posts and then having to delete them later on.
lauren
Very, very good insight.
phil
And such a good reminder in the landscape of like AI tools. You know what I mean? Where you hop in and you're like, you're trying to do everything that you're supposed to do for search. And by the time you do everything you're supposed to do to get it to rank on keywords and et cetera, then the post has lost its soul or its purpose.
It's so easy for that to happen. It's a good reminder.
stacie
Yeah, it's important to inject your personality into your posts. Like, be helpful, but also inject your personality in there. Make you stand out a bit.
lauren
Have you explored using AI for your blog in any way?
stacie
Yeah, I have actually, I have ChatGPT, like I use it, so that's what I was going to say, like for inspiration for my content sometimes.
I have some pillars, like I have like dessert salads are like big on my site, pasta salads, so I'll go on to ChatGPT and I'll be like, give me some recipe ideas for this kind of recipe and it'll spit out like a big list. of different kinds of dessert salads. I'm like, Oh, this one looks interesting. I would never have thought of that.
So it's good for that way and the content inspiration. And I have another blog called busy day dinners that I started last year. And I've used Koala, I don't know if you've heard of Koala. No. It's kind of, it's like um, AI and you can like put in like your headings and it gives you an outline and then it'll write the post for you and then what I do is I look at that for my other blog and then I'll like take parts of it, edit it, add my own spin into it and then I'll use that for my other blog.
So I kind of use AI for that blog because. It's a lot of work to have two blogs, so.
lauren
Other than using chatGPT, where else do you get inspiration for your content?
stacie
Sometimes I'll just be in the shower and just something will come to me. I'm like, oh, this would be really good. Just random spots, like, or you wake up in the morning, like, oh, I need to do this or like, I'll make a recipe and the think this would be good if I switch this around or, and also to like looking at what's popular on your blog. And doing similar things, but changing it a bit. For example, like easy soup recipes do really well on my site. Those dessert fluff salads are really popular. So I'll think of different flavors and then I'll look and see like, does this have any search traffic and I'll do ones with search traffic, but I'll also do ones without just so I keep it well rounded or just cause I think, Oh, this would be really good.
And I think this might do good on social. Um, keyword research tools, like SEM rush, rank IQ. I think I've used that before. Just to give you ideas. Like, so I'll have a big list. in Google Docs and then I'll say like, oh, this is what I want to make. And also old family recipes too are really good, like stuff that my grandma would make.
And my grandma had written out recipes that I, that I had in a box. So I've made some of her recipes, like some, her zucchini bread, I've done that. She has another recipe that I haven't done yet. It's for, it's for these, um, Pickles, like, I think they're, I can't even pronounce it, it's like Polish pickles or something.
And then this hurried chicken, I have that on my site too. Because I do a lot of like vintage, old fashioned recipes. And church cookbooks are really good too. If you look at those old church cookbooks, um, you can get a lot of ideas from them as well.
lauren
So interesting. I love it.
phil
If you're wondering why I'm quiet over here, it's cause I Googled dessert salad.
stacie
Okay.
phil
I didn't even know what that was. And now I'm like staring at your recipe of Snickers and green apples, which looks so good. And I want to try it.
stacie
They're really popular in the US like in the Midwest.
lauren
Is it like as a dessert? Do people eat it as a dessert?
stacie
As a dessert or side dish.
lauren
Oh my gosh.
stacie
I remember my mom used to make this, it was my great grandmother's recipe, it had like, it was pineapples, jello salad. And it had like pineapple in it, and then some kind of like a yellow jello, lemon jello maybe, and like cheddar cheese. And we'd have that every Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner as a side dish.
phil
My great grandmother was famous for those. Well I guess we both come from kind of the same like, family.area. So I guess I have. Why am I acting like I don't know what a dessert salad is? I've been eating them all my life.
stacie
Fluff salad. That's another name for them as well. The fluff salad because they have Cool Whip in them. I don't know if they grant, I don't know if Nanny's had that in Cool Whip. Might have. My sister knows how to make it. I should actually do that one for my website. That would be a good one to do.
lauren
I've literally never heard of dessert salad before until we had had our call with you a few months ago.
stacie
Yeah, they're different.
lauren
Yeah, absolutely.
phil
So let's talk business. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I was going to say, let's talk business because we've kind of laid the land. Also, Stacey, I don't you don't need to disclose how much money you make, but I want people to take you seriously. We set this up. But like, I don't think people have any idea how much of a business your business is. It's so delightfully impressive.
lauren
It is. Yes. So, my question for you, how have you monetized your brand in different ways? Like, where does your business make money?
stacie
Well, the most, the best way it makes money is ads. So I have an ad network, and they put ads on my site, and just when people view in the ads, they could get like less than a penny per person, but like it, you make up for it in volume.
So that's like the best way I've made money, and I've had months, I've had months where I've made, not very many, I wish I had more, but where I've made over six figures in one month. So I could, you can make a lot of money doing this. I wish every month was like that, but I make quite a bit of money doing this.
I've actually incorporated in the last two years and I should have done a lot sooner because taxes are really, really bad. Oh my God. Yeah. They're just awful. Yeah. So ads. And then another way you can make money is sponsored posts. And I'm actually working with a company now on a series of sponsor posts.
lauren
Great! I remember we talked about that during our brand audit, so that's very exciting to hear.
stacie
If you go on my Instagram, you'll see I did one for Highliner. I'm working with them. right now. So they've been awesome. Yeah. And with, with, with sponsored posts, like you can negotiate your rates, like they'll offer you what they want to give you and you can negotiate and you just have to be careful with contracts.
Like make sure you read your contracts really good. Also, I have a store and I don't make very much at my store though. I would like to focus on that a bit more, but I have a store where I have like eBooks, like just cookbooks, eCookbooks and printables. And another way is affiliate links. Um, I don't even make like a thousand dollars a month on affiliate links, but they're still there.
I would like to get, make more at that, but I don't know. Yeah, it can add up. It's better than nothing. Yeah, it adds up. It gets a little bit of money. I mean, cause it's expensive to run a blog. Like it's very, very expensive. Like my email list, cause I, everything's American, right? All my expenses are American and I'm in Canada.
So I got to deal with the exchange rate. So my email list is like, just for paying, it's like almost 1, 000 a month on my credit card to pay for my email list. And then my hosting is, I think, 250 US a month. And then I have like, my daughter that works for me, and I have to pay her salary. So everything adds up.
It's not cheap, which is why I have the ads on there. That's why, I mean, they're a necessary evil to have ads. I mean, you got to be able to pay yourself, make it worth your while because you don't want to, you wouldn't be doing this for free. No one's going to work for free, right? You wouldn't be like, it's so expensive and you got to make it worth your while.
stacie
I didn't realize that you could make ad revenue just from people seeing your ads. I don't know why I always thought it was click based.
No, it's cool. It's impression based. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Like, there's a thing called like RPM. It's like revenue per mil, I think it's like per thousand views. Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. So every thousand views, you get this amount. I had changes all the time based on, yeah. So there's two main ad networks out there that I would recommend, like Mediavine. And then Raptive is the other one. I think they're the ones that pay the best, or they're the most, I don't know, like I would, if I was starting a blog, I would probably wait to go wouldn't monetize until I could get with one of them.
Just because they have really high quality ads and I would want to build my readership before I put ads on. Make sure you have enough traffic, and make sure it's worth your while to have ads on there because they are annoying. I know they are annoying, but they're kind of necessary to be able to continue to do this.
phil
And the ads, they enable you to treat this like work and make really awesome recipes that literally hundreds of thousands of people can enjoy.
stacie
Yeah, exactly. I mean, every, pretty much every site has ads, even like news sites and some other ads are are crazy intrusive. And even like some websites like, I don't know, I think the New York Times, like you have to pay to even view their articles.
Like, you can go on and view of my articles for free. And even if you didn't even want to, like, read the whole post, there's a little button at the top of all my posts that says jump to recipe. You can click that and it'll go right to the recipe card if you didn't want to read the tips or anything.
lauren
What are the most common pitfalls you see new bloggers fall into?
stacie
I think being consistent
is really important. A lot of people start out strong and then they fall off like they give up because it's, it's a long game. You have to be in it for the long haul because I think you're not gonna, it's not like we're build it and they will come. No, you have to really go out there and work to get people to your website.
You have to like have it optimized. Um, I also think there's a little bit of luck in there too. To just send to get people to your website, like to get Facebook traffic. I also think too, networking with other bloggers is key. Build partnerships. Blogging isn't something where you just, everyone's your competition.
No, everyone needs to work together. And what are they, what's that saying? Rising tides or something. What's that saying? They, I can't remember, but there's a saying out there where everyone, when you help someone else, it helps you.
lauren
I just looked it up. You know, a rising tide lifts all boats. Right. That's what I mean. Like, that's cute.
stacie
Yeah. Yeah. You have to help other people to help yourself because I have on Facebook, for instance, like I work with a lot of other bloggers, like where we have partnerships. I've done this for several years where. Like I'll share their stuff on my page and they'll share my stuff on their page.
And it's been working really well in that regard. I think, yeah, working with other bloggers is key. You can't, like, view everyone as your competition. They are your competition, but they're not. Like, you could help each other grow. So that's it. I think that's really important. And yeah, I guess just being patient. And working like a dog. At least I felt like I did.
phil
It's inspirational. It's really inspirational. I don't even know if you realize how inspirational it is for someone who might be in a position where they have a job that they don't love, but they don't exactly know what to do next. And I feel like you've really spelled out how it's possible. To not know everything you need to know to be able to find a job that really fulfills you.
stacie
Yeah, like you don't need to know everything because you can learn it. There's so many resources, free resources online where you can learn things. There's Facebook groups. And if you do want to take courses, like I've taken paid courses.
They're not crazy expensive either. Even like with photography, like teaching myself how to do food photography. I didn't know how to do anything at all. Like I was a terrible photographer. And I've taken courses to learn how to do that. And it's actually something I love doing. It's one of my favorite parts of the business now is food photography.
Actually, Sowald's photo was to other bloggers, other recipes.
lauren
Really? Yeah. So cool.
stacie
There's a whole industry out there where you can sell food, like you make a recipe and sell the photos. So there's lots you can do online. Like if you didn't want to work in a traditional job, like you could be a virtual assistant, you could be a blogger, you could do like tech, you could do SEO, food photography.
There's so many jobs.
phil
Finally, Stacie, we have to tell people where they can get more of you. Where can people go online to see your blog and connect with you?
stacie
So my main blog is Simply Stacey. So simplystacie.net. I'm also on Facebook. I'm on Instagram, Pinterest. And my other website is busy day dinners.
It's new last year, busydaydinners.com. And I'm also on all the platforms there. If you just want easy dinner recipes, or if you want like more vintage comfort food recipes, come to Simply Stacie.
phil
This has been so awesome. Thank you so much for sharing all of this wisdom. I think people are going to find it really inspirational and we really appreciate you hanging out with us on Brand Therapy.
stacie
Oh, thanks for having me.
