Episode 696: How to Successfully Start a Second Food Blog (+Reach 100k Page Views Quickly) With Barbara Curry

EBT696 – Barbara Curry

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

Megan Porta  00:37

Have you ever considered starting a second blog? Maybe you have a first food blog and you’ve tossed around the idea of starting a second and you just don’t know if it’s worthwhile, if it’s going to be able to be monetized quickly.All of those questions certainly run through your head. Well, I have Barbara Curry on this interview with me and she is the blogger at Butter and Baggage, but she’s also started a second blog within the past year called Easy Southern Desserts. And let me tell you, she has done so well with this blog.

[00:01:10]   

She was a part of my mastermind group last year and it was so fun having a front row seat and watching her success. With the second blog, she goes through all the components that are successful and why. With her second blog, she really does not hold back. She gives us all the details, challenges that she faced along the way, things she would do differently, the ways that she gets traffic and how she’s monetized.

[00:01:38]   

And then she gives advice and encouragement. If you ever have thought about starting a second blog just to have that diversification and having a more solid foundation under your blogging business, definitely listen to this episode. I think you’ll be really encouraged by it. This is episode number 696 and I hope you love it.

[00:02:00] Sponsor   

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[00:02:18] Megan Porta  

Barbara Curry is the creator of Butter and Baggage and Easy Southern Desserts, where she shares her passion for approachable home cooked Southern recipes. She started Butter and baggage in 2014, bringing decades of experience to help home cooks create delicious meals with confidence. In 2024, she launched Easy Southern Desserts to focus exclusively on indulgent, foolproof sweets inspired by Southern traditions. Through her blogs, she combines tested recipes with practical tips to make baking and cooking both Stress free and enjoy.

[00:02:50]   

Barbara, welcome back as a multi repeat guest. Correct.

[00:02:55]  Barbara Curry 

One other time. Yes. Thank you.

[00:02:57]  Megan Porta 

Has it only been one other? Yeah, I feel like we did a couple. I’ll have to look, but okay. Well, welcome back. It’s so great to have you here again.

[00:03:04]  Barbara Curry 

Thanks.

[00:03:05]  Megan Porta 

Today we’re going to talk about your amazingly successful second food blog that you’ve started. And we’ll get into that first. You have another fun fact to share with us though.

[00:03:15]  Barbara Curry 

I do. My kids helped me come up with it. So when my youngest daughter was in middle school, we did taekwondo together. And so I am a black belt in taekwondo. What?

[00:03:27]  Megan Porta 

I didn’t know this about you. Yes, you are not. So do you still. Do you still do it?

[00:03:33]  Barbara Curry 

No, no, we did it. It was just a great thing for us to do together. We did it for a couple of years and then we broke our board and then it was like, okay, it’s time to do something else.

[00:03:43]  Megan Porta 

Oh, my gosh.

[00:03:45]  Barbara Curry 

It was fun. It was a great bonding thing. But yeah.

[00:03:48]  Megan Porta 

And did your girls get black belts too?

[00:03:51]  Barbara Curry 

Just one of. I just did it with my youngest one.

[00:03:53]  Megan Porta 

Okay.

[00:03:54]  Barbara Curry 

But yes, she did. We got them together. So that was fun.

[00:03:57]  Megan Porta 

That is so fun. I love that. I won’t mess with you, Barbara. Yeah, Throw me under the table.

[00:04:02]  Barbara Curry 

Watch out.

[00:04:03]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:04:04]  Barbara Curry 

I got a mean kick.

[00:04:06]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:04:08]  Barbara Curry 

Oh, my gosh.

[00:04:09]  Megan Porta 

That’s hilarious. All right, well, thank you for sharing that. So let’s talk about your blogs. I know Butter and Baggage has been around for a while. Do you want to tell us about Butter and Baggage?

[00:04:20]  Barbara Curry 

Sure. So I started Butter and Baggage in actually the end of 2013. I was practicing attorney full time and but kind of wanted to bond with my older daughter who started was in high school and started just a fashion blog that she was doing. I’m like, I can do this. So I started it just to kind of have something that we could do together we could talk about. So I just did. I posted recipes and it was like, had no idea what I was doing. And then in 2018, I decided to like really put some effort into it and try to make it a business and turned it into a business. In 2018, 2019, I was monetized and that’s kind of where I’ve been. Yeah. Just keep moving along.

[00:05:02]  Megan Porta 

Right.

[00:05:03]  Barbara Curry 

And it’s a Southern food blog. So I focus on really the top things are casseroles and biscuits and really kind of Southern comfort food.

[00:05:12]  Megan Porta 

All those delicious Southern foods we all drool over.

[00:05:15]  Barbara Curry 

Yeah, we had some of that down in Savannah.

[00:05:17]  Megan Porta 

Oh, yeah, right.

[00:05:19]  Barbara Curry 

I hope you got some good biscuits.

[00:05:21]  Megan Porta 

We don’t get comfort or Southern comfort food up here in Minnesota ever. So it was so nice to be down there where all of that food was rampant and so delicious. Every time I look at your blog or Instagram, I follow you on Instagram closely and I am always like, oh, gosh, that looks so good.

[00:05:38]   

All of your stuff looks amazing. And then you’ve been in Eat Blog Talk Mastermind a couple times and you’ve just been really into growing your business and you’ve done such a good job. It’s been so fun to have a front row seat watching you just grow in explosive ways. And one of the new ventures you’ve dug into is creating a second blog.

[00:06:00]   

Honestly, when food bloggers start second blogs, we never know is it going to go well, is it not? And yours just totally took off in such an amazing way. Super excited to hear about it.

[00:06:12]  Barbara Curry 

So kind of what what went into it was I decided in September of 2023 to take early retirement from my law practice and just focus full time on Butter and Baggage. And so I did that and it just gave me a little bit more time to think and strategize and think about what I wanted to do kind of going forward and they’re rest of my life kind of thing.

[00:06:39]   

And I was just always inspired by this book. It was a memoir about Jill Kerr Conway, and she was the first female president of smith College in 1975-1985. So when she left, I mean, she was just a trailblazer for women’s rights and just opened so many doors. But when she left the College, she was 50 years old and she started a whole other career and she’s a really famous author after that.

[00:07:07]   

And so it always just stuck with me, like, what am I going to do? Do I want to practice law the rest of my life? And. And I’m just not a relaxing kind of person. I can’t see me ever retiring. That, to me, seems like the most boring thing in the world. So, you know, I started the blog and then took early retirement and started working on it and it just kind of started getting a little dull.

[00:07:32]   

And I was kind of getting tired of just doing casseroles and biscuits and I did a lot of desserts on Butter and Baggage and they were very popular with my audience. But Google just never saw me as an authority on desserts. And it was just really frustrating. No matter what I did, it just was.

[00:07:50]   

I was not an authority. They would push other posts, but not hardly any of my desserts. So I had about 200 dessert posts on Butter and Baggage, but there’s probably only three. Three or four that got any traffic. So I started exploring doing a second blog. And first I kind of thought about, well, maybe I could buy one or maybe.And this was in the spring of 2024, when. Yeah, so when the algorithm changes were going crazy and people were losing traffic. And my thought was that, well, maybe not buying another site is really a great idea. I’m not really going to get my money’s worth out of it. And so I decided I would just start a one.

[00:08:31]   

And then the next step was like, what do I. What do I do? I knew I wanted to do desserts. And everyone says to niche down. I thought, well, I’ll do one on pies. I really like pies. But I thought, this isn’t very practical. I’m going to run out of ideas for pies eventually.

[00:08:46]   

And when you’re making those mini desserts, pies are really hard to share. So, you know, what are you going to do with all those pies? Like cookies and cupcakes? Like, you could share, but pies are kind of hard. Like you want a piece of pie, you know, and it’s just hard. So I did a little bit broader and just focused on Easy Southern Desserts so that I could kind of maybe niche down within that.

[00:09:09]   

But it was still broad enough that I could kind of figure it out. And I felt like that would be enough, that I would never get tired of it. If I got tired of pies, I just work on cakes or something. So that’s kind of how kind of the thought process that I had going into it.

[00:09:24]   

And I also wanted another revenue stream. It was, you know, we didn’t know what Google was doing. I didn’t have very many revenue streams at all just because working full time, it was just really hard to focus on more than one revenue stream. And I thought, well, this would be something I really enjoy doing.

[00:09:42]   

I really like to make desserts. Let’s try this out. Another thing was that there was no market. There was. When I checked the market, there was no Southern dessert blogs. There are just dessert blogs and there are Southern blogs that have desserts, but no, just Southern dessert blogs. And so like, wow, there’s this gap in the market.

[00:10:04]   

Maybe, maybe no one’s searching for it, but no one else is actually doing this. So let me give this a try. So that’s kind of what went into my thinking for, you know, why I wanted to start a second Blog, I.

[00:10:16]  Megan Porta 

Can’t remember, did you take the existing recipes from Butter and Baggage and put them on your second blog to start?

[00:10:22]  Barbara Curry 

I was very careful about that. And I think that’s kind of something important to be aware of is like how much do you bring over? So I did not. I picked a few, actually pulled 20, and most of those were like how to soften butter, how to soften cream cheese. And then I had about maybe 10 actual recipe posts and I tried to just to pick one for kind of each category or one or two for each category so that when I started I would have at least something in each of the categories.

[00:10:56]   

And then I started with about 10 new recipes. So, you know, I started with I think about 30 recipes, you know, on the day that it went live. But the there’s just some issues with that because you’ve got cannibalization. So if you’ve got the same recipe on both sites. So if you’re the way I was advised to do it, and this is what I’m doing now is if I’m going to use the same recipe on both sides sites, I will no index it on Butter and Baggage and I will put the recipe on Easy Southern Desserts.

[00:11:31]   

But at the bottom below the recipe card, I write I first published this recipe for strawberry cupcakes on my Southern food blog, Butter and Baggage. So I give it the canonical link back to Butter and Baggage. So that’s what I was advised to do in bringing over those some posts. I think if I had to do it again, like these were posts that were not getting any traffic for Butter Baggage.

[00:11:59]   

So it was not hurting Butter and Baggage at all. They were maybe getting like three clicks a year. So it didn’t hurt them any. And they need. And so I would just update them and, and put them over. And so what I’m doing now is I’m gradually pulling some over. So I won’t pull over any of the ones that have any kind of traffic, you know, significant traffic.

[00:12:23]   

You know, there’s like five or something. But the other ones I am like re-photographing and then just completely rewriting and putting them over there. And if there’s just no traffic at all on Butter and Baggage, they’re just like old from 2014, then I am deleting them and redirecting them. But if they got some traffic or I think there might be some backlinks or anything like that, then I’m just no indexing them.

[00:12:45]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, so you went into it with the strategy. It’s not like you went in like just let’s try this. And totally blind. You had something to a foundation to stand on.

[00:12:56]  Barbara Curry 

Yeah. I talked to a couple people that had started a second blog to kind of see what they had done. And some. I think another big thing I was worried about was link spam. And so, and that’s what other people kind of advised me about also. And I know there are different opinions, but what I decided to do is really be clean between the two sites.

[00:13:18]   

So I link back and forth between the two sites, although the time but all the links are no follow links. So I’m not getting any. I’m not manipulated. I don’t want Google to think I am trying to get authority from Butter and Baggage to Easy Southern Desserts. So I make all of them no follow.

[00:13:35]   

And that’s just something I chose to do. Someone else had done that and suggested it and so that’s the route I decided to go. But I know other people do it different ways. I’m not sure there’s one right way, but that thought just to be extra careful. And at that time LinkedIn, Google was really focusing on link spam. So I wanted to be really clean. So yeah, that’s what I did.

[00:13:55]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:13:57]  Barbara Curry 

But there, there are kind of a lot of challenges to starting a second blog that I didn’t really think about. I mean, I gave some thought to it. It wasn’t like I went into a blind. I’d been doing this for a while, but there’s only so much time in the day. And starting a second blog, you think, oh well, I know how to do it.

[00:14:14]   

So it’s not going to take as much time, but it takes just as much time as your other blog. And if you want it to grow quickly, then you’re going to have to give something up. And so I was willing to let Butter and Baggage kind of be stagnant and not grow in order to get the content up and Easy Southern Desserts that I needed to.

[00:14:36]   

And so I think you have to decide what are you going to be willing to give up if you want your second site to grow quickly. If you are just fine just letting it go inch by inch, you know, slowly, then you know, you can just add a little bit at a time.

[00:14:52]   

But I really, my focus was to try to get it to. I wanted it to be monetized within 18 months and I wanted it to, I wanted, I started it in May and I wanted to have enough content up so that by time we got to the fourth quarter where desserts are really big, that maybe I could get enough traffic to, you know, get monetized sooner.

[00:15:15]   

So in order to do that, I really had to cut back on what I was doing on Butter and Baggage, and I also had to get help. So I think those were the two big things that I learned that I don’t know how you can start a second site without those two things.

[00:15:32]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, and what did you get help with specifically?

[00:15:35]  Barbara Curry 

Well, I hired Alex Harrelson with Honeycomb Media to set up the site and to help with my logo and to do a lot of the technical things, you know, behind the scenes and to kind of help with strategy and things like that. So she was great help with that. I hired a writer, so I have a writer that’s really great.

[00:15:55]   

I have help with email and then I have, like, help with the, you know, just kind of little tasks. Those are the, the big tasks, the just kind of the behind the scenes. Now, some people are really great at the starting, you know, WordPress and starting something new, and it might not take them very much time.

[00:16:11]   

For me, I knew that was not my strong suit, and that would take up an enormous amount of time for me to lear that. And I wanted something, I wanted to work and I didn’t want to have to worry about that. So that’s why I hired that out. And I think that that worked fine for me.

[00:16:26]   

And then the other thing that I did, and I think that anyone is going to have to do this, is when you start a new site, you have to pick one platform. And because you’re trying to get content out and that takes time, you’ve got to develop the recipes. I mean, even if you have a bunch of recipes, you still have to photograph them and write them, and.

[00:16:48]   

And so that’s going to take time. So when I started it, I didn’t do any platforms at all until probably two months in. And then I decided I would do Pinterest, and that would be the only platform I would do. So I’m not doing like a little bit on Facebook and Instagram. I’m doing nothing.

[00:17:03]   

There’s nothing at all there. And I’m just focusing on Pinterest. And Pinterest is now bringing me quite a bit of traffic. Not as much as, I mean, it hasn’t been that long, but I am still getting quite a bit of traffic from Pinterest. And my thought is that once that gets going really good and strong and I get the content up that I want to, then then I’ll pick another platform. But there is just no way that you can do all the platforms. It’s hard to do them on one site.

[00:17:30]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:17:31]  Barbara Curry 

And to do them on two. But it might not be Pinterest. Like if you’re really active on Facebook or Instagram, then do. Being more active with a second site isn’t going to be as much work. But I think with Pinterest it’s some for me, I chose that because I could hire some. I have someone help me with that and I could tell them, you know, okay, do these pins and, and they could at least get some up.

[00:17:54]   

And so she’s been. I just have a VA that helps me with the, with Pinterest. And so like for Instagram you can’t really hire that out. I mean you have to make. You can, but it’s pretty expensive and it’s difficult. So I think that’s the easiest thing for me was to pick Pinterest for the platform.

[00:18:14]  Megan Porta 

And Pinterest is just kind of a no brainer for getting traffic for food blogs. There’s such a visual component that I feel like if you’re not sure that Pinterest probably is a good avenue to go and then obviously Google. So you’re getting consistent Google traffic on your second blog still.

[00:18:33]  Barbara Curry 

Well, I would say that the way my traffic comes, and I think this is probably true for most new sites because you don’t have any, you know, start with no domain authority, you’re not going to get much Google traffic. So the way I got traffic, like right now, the majority of my traffic is still Discover traffic.

[00:18:52]   

And Discover for some reason picks up new blogs and I’ve been featured, I’ve gotten several times where I can just tell it’s Discover traffic and I’ll get thousands and thousands of views from Discover for a day or two. And it’s like, you know, wow. So and it’s happened, I don’t know, probably about once a month Discover will pick up one of mine and it won’t always be huge, but I can tell that Discover is picking it up and it’s coming through as direct traffic.

[00:19:22]   

So that’s one. There’s nothing you can do to do that, but it’s just like whatever. So that’s where I get a lot of my traffic. The things that I did on purpose to try to get traffic other than Google traffic was I promoted on my, like I included in my emails. So every email that I sent out I put a recipe on the bottom of it for Easy Southern Desserts.

[00:19:46]   

So I was directing my email subscribers from Butter and Baggage over there. I know my audience likes desserts, so it was a natural fit. And I would get, you know, every time I sent out an email for Butter and Baggage, I’d get like 300 views over on Easy Southern Desserts on the new recipe.

[00:20:02]   

So that helped. The other, other things that I did to get traffic were just to post it like everywhere. Like I added it to MSN galleries, I’m part of MSN. And so I would add it to my MSN galleries and that still gets me a lot of traffic. And I know a lot of people can’t get on MSN, it’s closed.

[00:20:21]   

But if you know someone that’s doing MSN galleries, contact them and ask them if they’ll use your content. Because we’re always looking for content and it’s not like, you know, if you’re doing MSN galleries, you need content. And if you’re just starting out, most bloggers are more than willing to add you to their MSN galleries and fill it in.

[00:20:45]  Sponsor

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[00:21:04]    

Can I ask you a question about that? So you do MSN galleries consistently? So you. It’s like a roundup, right. So if you are looking for content, you want other people to contribute their recipes for your roundups?

[00:21:15]  Barbara Curry 

I put mine, you know, I put mine in. But you want to make them different. And if I do like, I don’t know, like 10 brunch recipes or 29 brunch recipes, I might only have 10. So I’m gonna need like 19 more to fill it in, that type of thing. So, you know, that’s what, that’s kind of what we do, just to fill it in with other people’s content.

[00:21:34]   

Sure. So that was a way that I got, I still get a lot of traffic and that’s kind of, that’s kind of dumped into direct traffic on your analytics. Sometimes it’ll be ms, but if someone’s on their phone, I believe then it’s going to show up as direct traffic. But I can tell, I know what I’ve posted in MSN in my galleries and then I know it’s doing well on MSN and it’s like all of a sudden I get a big spike.

[00:21:58]   

So when you have the volume that I’ve got on my second site, it’s really easy to figure out most of the time. Where your traffic is coming from based on kind of what you’ve done. But then I promoted it. Other places that anyone. You can do Newsbreak and get some exposure. I think Newsbreak is open to anyone.

[00:22:19]   

I know some people, like Mandy from Semi Homemade Kitchen. She does a lot with Facebook groups. I am not really active on Facebook, so that was not something that I chose to do. But I know that that’s another avenue for getting traffic and a lot of people have been successful with that. You can add it to Flipboard.

[00:22:40]   

I add it to Trivet, Foodyab, Food Gawker Recipe, Lion South You, every platform I can think of. When I do a new post on Easy Southern Desserts, it goes there. And even if it’s only going to get 50 views a month, those are going to add up and it’s going to kind of especially starting off, show Google gods that you’re right.

[00:23:02]  Megan Porta 

Don’t discount those 50 views a month options at all.

[00:23:07]  Barbara Curry 

No, I’ll take them.

[00:23:10]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so in addition to everything that you’ve mentioned, is there any other way that you’ve gotten traffic. Traffic traction?

[00:23:19]  Barbara Curry 

I would say one of the things that I’ve done that has helped a lot was if you’re a member of Kit. I make the second blog, my first choice in the creator profile. So anyone that signs up for Butter and Baggage, like I said, my audience likes desserts. Their recommendation, the first recommendation they’re going to get is to Easy Southern Desserts.

[00:23:40]   

And so I’ve gotten lots of email subscribers that way. So I’m up to. I started started on May 9th and I’ve got 7,500 email subscribers. And most of those are from the recommendations from Easy Southern…from Butter and Baggage. So I promoted in my emails, I do it in the creator profile.

[00:24:00]   

And so now I’ve gotten emails subscribers. And every time I send an email, then, you know, I’m getting page views that way. I also just asked my friends to promote it in their emails. And, and so, you know, they would do it. And you know, I think this is the blogging community. Everyone is willing to help people out and I’m always willing to, you know, just add like this is someone, someone new that’s out there.You know, give them a try. And so you don’t, I don’t know, just try to put yourself everywhere you can and just use kind of the friendships that you have in the blogging community to kind of help out.

[00:24:35]  Megan Porta 

That’s why they’re there, right? To support you. And you Support them and in return. Yeah, it’s great. Okay, well, I am curious to know about monetization because I know you got into an ad network pretty quickly. How long did that take?

[00:24:48]  Barbara Curry 

I did. So I’m on Raptive and with Raptive, if you have. I’m not at the premier level. So if you’re at the premier level, you get. You’re automatically monetized as soon as you started. But I’m not at that level. So I had to have 30,000 follow page views to be monetized. So I started on May 9th and like I said, my hope was to get monetized within 18 months.

[00:25:13]   

And obviously I was hoping to do it sooner than that, but that was kind of my, I think, realistic goal in starting a new blog. And I didn’t, I didn’t know that starting a second blog would be different from starting a new one, but it really is very different as far as just the resources that you have from.

[00:25:30]  Megan Porta 

Your first blog and knowledge and all of the stuff.

[00:25:33]  Barbara Curry 

Yes, and the knowledge. Oh my gosh, yes, the knowledge. But anyway, I started on May 9 and I had had 30,000 page views in three months. And so I was able to get monetized with Raptive in three months. And it was just doing those things that I said. I really focused on content and that was kind of my one thing as to my one focus was on content and not on anything else, just the content.

[00:25:56]   

And then so that was August and then I came into fourth quarter just really strong and I had over a hundred thousand page views each month of the fourth quarter, which was just phenomenal for me. I was just like crazy. I couldn’t believe it. And then, you know, it dropped, stayed kind of high in January, which I was surprised, but it’s kind of dropped back down.

[00:26:19]   

I would say to Normal what what I would think normal would be, which is between around 40 to 50,000 page views a month. And for me, I’m not really sure, like, what are peaks and valleys for a dessert blog? You know, what are going to be good months. I would have thought January would be a really bad month, but it was a really good month, so that’s great.

[00:26:39]   

Who eats desserts in January?

[00:26:41]  Megan Porta 

I know, gosh, someone’s out there doing it.

[00:26:45]  Barbara Curry 

That’s kind of where I am. And you know, I think a lot of it is just luck by getting pulled into Discover, but I think that Discover pulls in new blogs that have good photographs. So someone starting out might not have. Have the experience that I have taking photographs and you know, my first photographs, Butter and Baggage would not have been picked up on Discover or anywhere else.

[00:27:12]   

So you can’t really compare starting a brand new blog with starting a second blog because, you know, I knew what I was doing and well, I kind of think I know what I’m doing. Sometimes I’m not really sure about it. I have a lot more knowledge than I had to start with and you know, I knew how to write a post and I knew what SEO.

[00:27:31]   

I, I knew what that word meant and I knew how to try to optimize for it. And some of it is just. I like, I had a good photograph of this chocolate fudge frosting and I mean, I didn’t think it was a phenomenal photograph, but I mean, it looks good and Discover picked it up and then the next week it got picked up by South Your Mouth.

[00:27:51]   

And the combination of those two things, the traffic from those two got that keyword to number two and Google. So I am number two for chocolate fudge frosting, which is crazy. I mean, so it’s not all domain authority. I mean, because I have no domain authority. And so I think, you know, it, it just is that knowledge.

[00:28:16]   

Like I know sort of how to write a post and I don’t have any, you know, bad posts that are pulling me down. They’re all, you know, brand new posts and, and fairly good photography. So I think that that’s what helps a second blog that you really can’t get with the first blog.

[00:28:34]   

I mean, you can start a first blog and think that you know everything, but you’re gonna, you’ve gotta learn as you go and you’re not gonna know everything when you start out. So I think that’s really the difference.

[00:28:45]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And you also use Butter and Baggage a little bit to help boost and support like with your email list that tremendously helped you get, get subscribers for Easy Southern Desserts, right?

[00:28:55]  Barbara Curry 

Oh, absolutely. I don’t even know how many years it took me to get 7,000. Yeah, I mean, subscribers maybe like four or five years. So yeah, it’s. And the people that are there, I don’t know if it’s just different from desserts than other other blogs, but I get hardly no unsubscribers. It’s just really odd.

[00:29:19]  Megan Porta 

That’s great.

[00:29:20]  Barbara Curry 

I don’t know.

[00:29:21]  Megan Porta 

Oh my gosh.

[00:29:22]  Barbara Curry 

You know, you’re just learning, you know, you don’t know. But I think that it is a, a niche that’s, that has potential for growing.

[00:29:30]  Megan Porta 

So you started with seeing a gap, though. I think that’s probably one of the keys here is that you saw that there were no other specific east like Southern dessert blogs. So that was kind of one like, okay, there’s a gap, you’re going to fill it. You have the knowledge. You are a Southern food blogger anyways, you’ve got that expertise, you can fill in that gap.

[00:29:51]   

Also you’ve been a food blogger for so many years. You have all of that knowledge and all the skills that come along with it. So that kind of just always like the perfect storm for you.

[00:30:03]  Barbara Curry 

And I think it was. And something, there’s something about people in the South. I didn’t realize it wasn’t like this all over the country, but I’ve been told it’s not like this. But in the south, maybe not now anymore, but at least when I was growing up and definitely at my husband’s home in Kentucky, they had dessert every night.

[00:30:21]   

So his mom made dessert every night. And that was not unusual. And so I think that’s what makes. It just makes sense because people in the south eat a lot of desserts and they’re easy. They’re not like complicated desserts because you made them every night, right?

[00:30:40]  Megan Porta 

They can’t be. They have to be easy.

[00:30:41]  Barbara Curry 

Well, I mean you would like make a pie and it would be good for a couple nights, but I mean they still had dessert every night. And I think just that mindset that maybe, you know, people from the south, they know that Southern people are going to know how to make desserts because yeah.

[00:30:58]   

It’s not just on. It’s just not, not just on holidays, you know, it’s, it’s every day.

[00:31:02]  Megan Porta 

That’s such an interesting concept. We don’t do that here in the Northlands.

[00:31:07]  Barbara Curry 

Not like a really great healthy onset. No one that I’m recommending.

[00:31:14]  Megan Porta 

Barbara said we have to eat desserts every single night, every single day. I mean I would like to. That would be amazing. But I like the custom. Do you have any. Okay, your blog is almost. Your second blog is almost a year old or is it just over a year?

[00:31:31]  Barbara Curry 

Oh, it. What is today?

[00:31:33]  Megan Porta 

This.

[00:31:33]  Barbara Curry 

It’s going to be the ninth. So yesterday.

[00:31:37]  Megan Porta 

We’re approaching the one year birthday.

[00:31:38]  Barbara Curry 

One year.

[00:31:39]  Megan Porta 

Happy birthday, Southern Desserts. Do you have things that you’ve learned if you could go back a year ago that you would do differently?

[00:31:47]  Barbara Curry 

I don’t think I realized how much time it was going to take. So what I did was I really just like pushed for content. That was what I was focusing on. I’ve been doing four posts a week. So one to Butter and Baggage and three to eat these Southern desserts for a year now.

[00:32:00]   

And that is not sustainable. That’s just a lot. So I think that you get in your mindset, okay, you can push forward and you can do really hard things for a short period of time, but you can’t do that forever. And so that’s. It’s been kind of hard to get in a routine like, okay, how am I going to make this many desserts?

[00:32:21]   

And so I think that you really have to be passionate about that second blog. And really something that you love to do. And also be a little practical, like, what are you going to do with three desserts a week? And publishing three desserts a week means that you might make five or six desserts a week.

[00:32:41]  Megan Porta 

Right?

[00:32:41]  Barbara Curry 

And that’s a lot of.

[00:32:43]  Megan Porta 

It’s a lot of food, a lot of desserts.

[00:32:47]  Barbara Curry 

And so I think just kind of the practical common sense, like, you’ve got all these desserts, what are you going to do? You got to find a group of people that you can, like, pass these off to. I don’t know. I just hate to throw things out, but I do. I especially pies, but, you know, I find, like, families that have boys, and I’m like, okay, you need desserts, you’ve got boys in your house.

[00:33:08]   

And all the little old ladies that live around me, they get cupcakes and cakes and stuff. I think it’s just the practical part of it. Like, how are you going to actually do this? How are you going to be able to create all these recipes? And some people might, like, hire a recipe developer or something like that to help with that.But it is a lot. And my goal was to get to 200 posts. So I’m at 161 now. And when I get to 200, it’s going to change because I can’t maintain this level of recipes. It’s just too hard.

So, you know, I think that’s kind of the one thing is just to be realistic about what you. You actually can do and, and just focus on that one thing and just kind of let everything else. You have to be good with not being on Instagram or, you know, all the other sites and, and not having everything, having maybe a beautiful side or, you know, all of those things that, you know, you can work on later. So that was.

[00:34:08]  Megan Porta 

Can’t do it all. You have to let some things fall away. Otherwise you will absolutely burn out and get help. You mentioned that earlier too.

[00:34:15]  Barbara Curry 

Yes, I got help. And another area that I got help in was in my techniques for desserts. Like, I made desserts, but I didn’t really care what they looked like. And I could not frost a cupcake or a cake. You know, I could throw frosting on it. So I found a friend who used to work in a bakery, and she came over and just helped me frost cupcakes and frost cakes and gave me, like, all these little tips that were just really helpful because I was so frustrated.

[00:34:44]   

Like, you take me forever to get the piping right. And she just gave me a couple of tips, like, oh, my gosh, this saved me so much time. So not only, you know, your technique, your actual cooking techniques, but, like, photographing cakes are really different than photographing casseroles. And, you know, you want that pretty slice, you know, when you got the cake sliced.

[00:35:04]   

And I just kind of couldn’t get the light in there. So, you know, I talked to a photographer that does desserts, and, you know, asked her how she got. And so she gave me a few tips for trying to get, you know, those shots. And that just helped the. Because you’re, you know, you’ll eventually learn, but I think there are people out there you can ask and that are more than willing to help you.

[00:35:24]   

And so that was. I got a lot of help. I didn’t do this by myself at all. And then I was in your mastermind group, and that was so supportive. So I joined that in 2024. And so the whole year, I had people to run by things. And what do you think about this?And just support like, that. That was just really great to have that. So, yeah, whether you’re in a mastermind or just have someone that you can connect to, that can. You can run things by, and that’s.

[00:35:54]  Megan Porta 

A huge piece of it. Just having that community to bounce things off of. If you’re not sure if something’s not working, like, what am I doing wrong? Just having the. Those other eyes to look at what you’re doing is so.

[00:36:05]  Barbara Curry 

Or even just to tell you that. Like, I didn’t know. Like, the other day, someone told me, like, ambrosia was Southern. Like, I didn’t know. I thought everyone ate ambrosia. You know what ambrosia is?

[00:36:15]  Megan Porta 

Like, I don’t even know what that is. What is it?

[00:36:17]  Barbara Curry 

It’s like this canned fruit salad with marshmallows and whipped cream.

[00:36:22]  Megan Porta 

Okay, I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard of it and seen it, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually made it or tried it. So yes. It must be Southern.

[00:36:32]  Barbara Curry 

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it’s just great to have friends from other places. And I mean, that’s just the Flavor Media conference was just so great to connect with people just from all over the place. And this first time, most of them have been in the South. I’m like, oh, my God, you’ve gotta have some biscuits.

[00:36:48]  Megan Porta 

I know. It’s amazing going to a new place of the country and exploring their food. So if somebody were asking you, Barbara, they’re like, hey, I’ve had a food blog for a couple of years. I’m thinking about starting a second one. Would you absolutely jump in and support that? Would you say, oh, my gosh, hold on, think through this.What would your reaction be?

[00:37:09]  Barbara Curry 

I would want them to really be passionate about the second one. If the only reason you’re going to start the second one is to make money, it’s going to be really hard because you’re going to get burnout. So you really have to like whatever that second one is. So just, you know, and for me, it was something that my audience liked and I like doing.

[00:37:30]   

And so I thought that it could be popular. But just do your research and make sure you really are passionate about it. And then. So I wouldn’t walk into it, you know, blindfolded. I don’t know if I would, if I would buy a. Now.

[00:37:44]  Megan Porta 

Okay.

[00:37:45]  Barbara Curry 

It’s. I think it’s so volatile that I’m not sure. I mean, maybe if you bought like a really, well, you know, blog that had been around for a long, long time and was doing, you know, really well. But just to buy a smaller blog, I’m not sure the benefit of that because I think it’s just going to have issues that you’re going to have to fix.

[00:38:04]   

And I was. I’m just so tired, still tired of fixing all my old posts on Butter and Baggage. I didn’t want to fix any more old. I just wanted everything to be fresh and clean and done the right way. And that’s why I think starting my own was for me and what I wanted to do was a better choice.

[00:38:26]   

But I would say to be passionate about it and then find people that can help you because you’re going to need help in some. Whatever area it is you just. I don’t know, most people are struggling to do one blog and so to add another one, it’s just not like a little bit more work.It really is. Is the same amount of work. So, you know, A lot. You need to have some help around.

[00:38:53]  Megan Porta 

To be able to support is mandatory. And then if somebody was like, okay, I’ve been doing this for a year. I have a second blog I started a year ago and it’s just not working. I’m so frustrated. I want to throw it into a lake. What would you say to them?

[00:39:11]  Barbara Curry 

I would just try to reach out and look for other ways to get traffic other than Google. Because, you know, sometimes it is just your domain authority and it’s going to take a while. So I would just try to look for other avenues, you know, whether it’s MSN or Facebook or Instagram, where, wherever, whatever platform, Pinterest, whatever platform you want to choose, try to find somewhere, somewhere else to bring you traffic. Because Google is not my number one traffic traffic source still for Easy Southern Desserts.

[00:39:42]  Megan Porta 

So and getting traffic from those other places can be a signal to Google. It can actually kind of like spark something like, oh, there’s social proof or whatever that is called. Yeah. Okay. And then is there any last words of wisdom that you have to impart on this topic, Barbara, before we say goodbye?

[00:40:01]  Barbara Curry 

Efficiency. So this is something that I learned that I really started doing it. It’s helped me a lot for desserts. Now it might be different, whatever your site is, but I break it up. Like when you’re making a cake, I make the cake one day I might make cakes and cupcakes and maybe two or three things one day and then I freeze them and then I frost them, photograph them another day.

[00:40:23]   

Because it just takes a lot of mental energy to develop a recipe and then to photograph it and frost it and all the decorating so I do it separate and then I, when I’m testing a recipe, I don’t make a whole cake, a whole three layer cake. I just half the recipe and make one layer and see, okay, is this the, Is it the.

[00:40:43]   

What do I need to tweak? What do I need to do about this recipe before I make a three layer cake and frost it and have the whole thing to know, oh, the cake’s not very good. So that’s kind of some efficiency things that really help. And I think trying to get into a groove like I write in the morning and I cook in the afternoon.

[00:41:01]   

And it’s not like that every day. But that’s kind of my general plan. I think having whatever your general plan is, it’s just like, okay, this is what I’m doing. And to do the amount of content that I’m doing, I really have to kind of be on a schedule or I just wouldn’t get done.

[00:41:16]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, when you have two blogs, you absolutely have to be efficient because like you said, the work doesn’t get smaller, it actually double. Like you have the same amount of work times two to do. So it’s. Yeah. Absolutely necessary. All right, well, thanks, Barbara. This is been so much fun. Always fun to talk to you.And I hope this is encouraging for people who are thinking about starting a second blog. It is doable in this.

[00:41:43]  Barbara Curry 

I think it helps your creativity a little bit because you especially been doing the same thing. You know, you take casseroles, these pictures are about the same. But now like I’m figuring out how to take pictures of cupcakes and cakes and it’s just allows you to be creative. And so I think it keeps me from getting kind of bored with doing the same thing.

[00:42:04]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, that’s actually a point. I didn’t think about like new content, new creativity to focus on. All right, well, thank you so much. We will put together a show notes page for you, Barbara. If you want to head over to peek at that, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/easysoutherndesserts and then why don’t you mention where everyone can find you.

[00:42:26]  Barbara Curry 

Well, you can find me at easysoutherndesserts.com obviously and I’m on Pinterest, but I’m no place else. Maybe next year I’ll be on Instagram and Facebook, but right now I’m just on Pinterest. But you can also find me on Butter and Baggage.

[00:42:40]  Megan Porta 

Awesome. Well, thank you, Barbara and thank you for listening, food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

[00:42:40]  Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Please share this episode with a friend who would benefit from tuning in. I will see you next time.