Category: Blogging

Hey friends! I’m diving into a new project, and I thought it would be fun to take you along for the ride! I’m a full-time food blogger (you can find me over at I Heart Vegetables), and I’m working on a second blog!

You can see the work in progress at Pass Me a Spoon.

I’ve been thinking about starting a second site for a while, and I’ve seen more and more content creators go down this road, so I thought I’d share the why behind it. I’m also planning to blog my way through the process of growing a site in 2023.

Why Start a Second Site

This is usually the first question people as. Why start a second site? The simple answer is to diversify my income. Rather than have all my eggs in one blog-basket, spreading out my income streams across two sites could be a good way to set myself up for the future. But the other reason is that it’s fun to think about something different! I’ve been writing about healthy vegetarian recipes for over 10 years, so doing something in a slightly different space feels like a fun creative endeavor.

Now, I’m not straying far from my current space. My second site is still a food blog, but my plan is to focus more on cocktails, desserts, appetizers, and recipes for entertaining.

Starting from Scratch or Buying a Site

While I toyed around with starting a second site from scratch, I was curious about what it would look like to buy a blog from someone else. Buying and selling websites has become its own industry, and I shopped around on sites like Niche Investor to get a sense of how it worked and how sites are priced. Generally, “starter sites” that have content on the site but aren’t making any income yet, cost around $1,000. Sites making money through ads, affiliates, or digital products can range from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

My hesitation with buying one of these starter sites was that a lot of the content felt… thin. Maybe even a little spammy. Since this industry has popped up, lots of people have been trying to create starter sites to quickly turn a profit. So I wasn’t sure I wanted to go that route.

How I Found My Site

I ended up purchasing a site from an Instagram friend. We’d been connected for years and we’d chat about blogging and food photography sometimes. I saw her mention in her stories that her domain was going to expire, and she wasn’t planning to continue her blog. I asked her if she’d ever consider selling her site, and she said she hadn’t thought about it. I explained how I’d seen other people do it, and we started negotiating prices and contracts.

In the end, we both felt good about it, and we made a deal! I purchased her site at the end of January, and since then, I’ve been flipping it. I’ll share more about what the process has been like in the second post!

Check out my second blog here: Pass Me a Spoon

If you’ve been blogging for more than a few months, you may have broken links hiding on your site. Luckily, this common problem is easy to fix!

What are broken links?

Broken links are URLs that no longer link to an active page. The link is still clickable, but it doesn’t take the user to the desired destination. Having a lot of broken links on your site can hurt your ranking in search engines.

What causes broken links?

Broken links can happen for several reasons. Maybe you linked to a site that no longer exists, or perhaps you changed the URL for a post and forgot to create a redirect. If your site allows users to link a URL in the comments, you may notice a lot of broken links from old comments.

How do you fix broken links?

There is a free plugin called Broken Link Checker that can make checking links quick & easy. Plus, you can easily bulk-remove any broken links you don’t need anymore. This tool can also help you find places where you might have accidentally linked to the wrong place.

When I first ran this plugin, I had hundreds of broken links on my site, mainly from blog comments. I was able to quickly bulk select the broken links and unlink them, so the comment remained, but the broken links were removed. Now, I can regularly check to see if there are links to fix.

Here’s an example from Virginia Bloggers:

I found a couple of URLs that weren’t working anymore. It was easy to jump to the URL and see where the problem was. The first one just needed an updated URL, and the second link was from an old post that I removed. It only took a minute or two to fix it!

Fixing or removing broken links can help improve your blog’s SEO, so it’s a good thing to do regularly. If you have questions, leave them in the comments below!

This post contains affiliate links which means if you sign up for InVideo, I get a small portion of the fee, at no additional cost to you.

I’ll be the first to admit that video is not my area of expertise. While I’m getting a little better with practice, it was the editing software that really intimidated me. While I’d love to eventually learn all the complicated video software programs, I just don’t have time for that right now.

That’s why I almost fell out of my chair when a blogger friend told me about InVideo. It’s basically like Canva for video. It has tons of templates and video formats so whether you’re creating an Instagram story or a YouTube video, you can find exactly the right template. You can also build videos from scratch.

I’m sure you’ve heard that video is the way of the future. Brands are willing to pay more for video content. Search engines are looking for video content. Instagram algorithms are all about video. But video can be intimidating and the software programs can be time-consuming to figure out.

That’s why I was THRILLED to find this solution. InVideo makes it super easy to add text overlays or background music, and they have a huge library of music, stock photos, and videos to choose from!

You can stitch videos together, whether it’s a screen recording from your phone or a video you shot on your DLSR camera. You simply upload the video clip then drag it and drop it into InVideo. You can add text, music, remove the sound, or add special effects.

I love that the templates are an easy way to get started, but you can also start from a totally blank canvas if you want to build your own. Their media library comes with tons of stock photos and videos. I signed up for the Business account which means I have access to more stock photos and videos, but there are still great options with the free plan!

I literally can’t believe how much easier it is to edit video with InVideo! They have different plans depending on what you need, and the free plan offers tons of features! I signed up for the business plan, but the free plan offers plenty to get you started!

Here’s an example of a video I made for a sponsored post. I put my phone on a tripod, shot the clips individually, stitched them together, sped up the footage, then added music and captions!

If you’re looking to get started with video, I think this is a great option. I love that it’s so easy to use!

Give InVideo a try and let me know what you think!

A few years ago, I set a goal to hit 100,000 pageviews. I’d been blogging at I Heart Vegetables since 2010, but I didn’t really take it seriously until 2016. In order to hit my goal, I focused on a few key areas that I knew would drive long-term, sustainable traffic. I hit my 100K goal in January of 2018!

If 100,000 pageviews feels totally out of reach, that’s ok! These tips can still apply whether your goal is to hit your first 100, 1,000, or 10,000. The good news is, I’ve found that once you get the ball rolling, it gets easier to grow. I’ve heard from a lot of other bloggers that once they hit 100,000 pageviews, it was easier to keep growing. Here’s a snapshot of my pageviews from November 2017 to November 2019.

I wanted to walk you through some of the strategy shifts I made over the past few years, to really grow my site.

1. I started learning about SEO

I know SEO can feel technical and scary but it was the #1 thing that helped me grow my blog. Over 50% of my traffic comes from Google searches and that’s really good. Google search traffic is high-quality traffic because it’s people searching for what you have. So what did I actually do to take SEO seriously? I worked with an SEO expert to do an audit of my site. I invested $800 (which felt like a huge amount of money at the time) and he gave me dozens of updates and changes that I needed to make on my site.

It took me months to update old content, remove expired content, fix a URL issue, add alt tags, add headers, and fix a number of other problems. It wasn’t an immediate return on investment. I waited for months to see a real shift, but it worked. And as I fixed old content, I learned how to effectively create content moving forward.

2. I wrote about content people were searching for

One thing I learned in my SEO research was that I needed to create content people were searching for. It might be fun to make a “quinoa and feta with edamame bowl” but if no one is searching for that, the recipe won’t create any traffic. On the flip side, if I know people are searching for a “watermelon mojito smoothie” and there aren’t a lot of recipes out there that fit the bill, that’s a good recipe for me to invest my time in. It shifted my overall content strategy and forced me to plan ahead. I can’t just throw together what I have in my pantry and make a new recipe. I really have to think about what types of recipes people are looking for.

3. I cut out tasks that weren’t driving traffic

I took a look at how I was spending my time and realized things like Instagram were a total time suck. I still invest time in Instagram but I’ve significantly cut back on the time I spend on the platform. I don’t spend much time on Twitter and I’ve hired someone to handle basic social media scheduling so that I can focus my time on other things. Since Google and Pinterest were my two biggest traffic drivers, I focused my time on SEO and Pinterest.

4. I stepped up my Pinterest strategy

Pinterest is a great traffic driver for me as a food blogger, so I really focused on a pinning strategy. I signed up for Tailwind so I could easily schedule my pins and I joined a number of Tailwind Communities to find content to share and to get other people to re-pin my content. This helped me grow my Pinterest traffic, which has led to 30K-50K pageviews per month. (P.S. If you want to try Tailwind, you can use my affiliate link to join Tailwind Communities for free!)

5. I updated old content instead of creating new content

I didn’t stop creating new content entirely but I spent a significant amount of time updating old posts. I went back through every piece of content and either spruced it up or no-indexed it from my site so that Google would no longer take the post into consideration. When updating old posts, I took new photos. added more information into the content, and refreshed the recipe, if necessary. I updated the format of the post to use proper post headings and subheadings, and I make sure my recipe card was completely filled out with things like prep time, nutritional information, and serving sizes.

A lot of the work I had to do wasn’t glamourous or interesting, but the work paid off. And once I hit 100,000, it felt like it was easier to keep the ball rolling.

Here’s what my traffic looks like from November 2017 to November 2020.

I hope this helps inspired you no matter where you are on your blogging journey! If you have questions, let me know in the comments!

We recently had an in-person blogger meet up in Richmond, and I thought it would be fun to share a few key takeaways from our discussion! We chatted about lessons learned in 2019 and goals for 2020.

Here are a few of the highlights:

If you’re new to sponsored posts, start by asking for products in exchange for a post.

Whether it’s a free gym membership, a new home decor product, or food samples, many companies are happy to trade products in exchange for content. While some companies may turn you down, it doesn’t hurt to (politely) ask! When pitching a business, be sure to share a link to your website and explain why you think their product would be an excellent fit for your audience. Be clear about the benefit you’re giving to the company. Can’t find any contact info for the company you want to pitch? Try sending them a message on Instagram and ask for a marketing contact!

Don’t assume that a big audience = lots of money.

We all fall into the comparison trap from time to time. It’s easy to assume, for example, that someone with a lot of Instagram followers is killin’ it. But followers don’t instantly equal income. There are plenty of bloggers with thousands of followers and subscribers who aren’t making any money blogging. And there are plenty of bloggers with a small niche following who are making a full-time income. Don’t assume you can’t make money just because you don’t have a certain number of followers. Leverage your expertise whether that’s a unique skill, a certification, or years of experience in a certain industry!

It’s ok to take a break, rebrand, or start over. Just keep going!

Some of us have been blogging for a decade. Some of us are just starting out. Some of us are rebranding or starting over. That’s ok! Embrace where you are and enjoy the journey! The important thing is that you keep going and stay consistent. If you have a productive week and you find yourself cranking out lots of blog posts at once, consider spacing them out to give yourself some breathing room for the future. I’m currently working on blog posts that won’t go live for over a month. It took a lot of work to get that far ahead, but now I can take a day or two off without feeling like I have to play catch up.

Get inspired by books, podcasts, and other bloggers!

We all need a little boost of motivation from time to time. For me, I get energized by meeting up with other bloggers! But even if you can’t make it to a meetup, you can find inspiration at home. Check out this list of the best podcasts for bloggers. It’s a great way to learn new blogging skills while cleaning, driving, or working out. Be on the lookout for a virtual blogger book club coming soon!

What did you learn in 2019? What are your goals for 2020? Comment below and let us know!