BONUS Episode: Advanced Food Bloggers Falling Through The Cracks (+How to Access the Info We Actually Need) with Melissa Erdelac

EBT – Bonus episode

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 achieve your freedom, whether that’s financial, personal, or professional.

I’m Megan Porta and I’ve been a food blogger for over 13 years. I understand how isolating food blogging can be at times. 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  00:38

This is only the second bonus episode I have ever published here on Eat Blog Talk. So it’s kind of an exciting day, three episodes in one week. I invited my good friend, Melissa Erdelac. She is the blogger over at MamaGourmand, to chat with me about something really exciting that we put into motion I don’t know last spring, and now we’re finally starting to announce it, we will be hosting an event for the more advanced food blogger. We talked about all the details in the episodes, so I won’t give you any details now. But I will just say if you are tired of falling through the cracks as a more seasoned food blogger, then be sure to listen to this episode and consider applying to come to our event. We define what seasoned food blogger means in the episode too. So you know if you apply or not, we’re just so excited about this. This is something that we both have felt so passionately about for a long time. And it feels just really good and right, that this is all coming together. So we hope that you will be a part of it with us. I just hope that you really enjoy the episode as well. 

Megan Porta  01:44

All right, well, welcome, Melissa. We are here to talk about Flavor Media Summit and how advanced food bloggers just seem to be falling through the cracks these days. Welcome to the podcast. 

Melissa Erdelac  01:57

Hey, Megan, so good to chat with you, as always. 

Megan Porta  02:00

Yeah, I was just talking with someone about this the other day, and it’s like, it’s so easy to become stagnant in your business and not try new things. Like when you’re trying to get on an ad network and stuff like you’re constantly chasing traffic, and how am I gonna get more traffic again. And then in I’m at the point where I continue to grow at a steady rate, but I’m not having like those big, like, you know, spikes, and I think and I’m comfortable with that. But yet, then it’s not really inspiring to change things or do something different or, and that’s kind of that my biggest struggle, someone that’s been doing this for seven years making, you know, living from it, and and it’s just like the, the continual motivation and inspiration seems to kind of be lacking.

Melissa Erdelac  02:00

So we’re going to talk about yeah, just like focusing on the advanced food blogger, I guess, and kind of giving people some background about what struggles we saw with food bloggers in our kind of same general experience level, and then what we decided to do about it, so I guess we can just get started with that. From my perspective, I feel like, it’s just assumed that once a food blogger gets to a certain point in their business, or maybe a certain traffic point, or a financial point that they don’t necessarily need help, they don’t need resources, they don’t need direction. And I think this is definitely not the case. In fact, I feel like we need more direction than a lot of the newer food bloggers, because the newer crowd tends to just dig in more and they have they seem to have more, I don’t know they’re fresher. And they have they just have more desire to learn. And we’re kind of to the point where, I don’t know, we just, we kind of like I said earlier, we just fall through the cracks.

Megan Porta  04:00

Yeah, you do. Like when you start out as a food blogger, you’re so inspired. And there’s like, new projects that you’ve never done before. And there’s this thing called getting into an ad network and getting a lot of traffic. And that’s like really alluring, like, oh, I want that. I’ve never had that before. But when where we’re at so you’ve been doing this seven, eight years, and I’m on your, like, 13 I think I just hit. It’s like I’ve, we’ve we’ve done that. And it’s not exciting anymore. So it’s just like we’re in kind of the space where we still really enjoy what we do. But there’s not that same new excitement.

Melissa Erdelac  04:37

Yeah, and you kind of as your income grows, you kind of take some things off your plate. So you check out of certain aspects of your business to like, I don’t like doing this so I’m going to have someone else do it. But then you’re not really staying up on the newest trends. And then my problem is I don’t tell those people that are doing those things to do anything different, because I’m not aware of what that different thing is.

Megan Porta  05:07

Yeah, that’s so true. I was thinking about this last night how when we start outsourcing when we become a little bit more seasoned. Yeah, we kind of trust those people that we outsource to to do the thing. But then how often do we check back in with them to make sure that they’re doing things the right way? And do we even stay on top of what is the right way?

Melissa Erdelac  05:27

Yeah, I don’t, I don’t. And I it’s just as a matter of like, hey, try this now. And it makes such a big difference, but it just hadn’t has to be more in the forefront of our minds.

Megan Porta  05:39

Yeah. So is seasoned food bloggers, ourselves that you and I, we’ve been friends for a long time we met way back. What year did we meet? I don’t know. 20…?

Melissa Erdelac  05:49

I remember locking eyes with you in the bathroom. 

Megan Porta  05:53

Oh, my gosh. That just seems fitting for us. I don’t know why. But yeah. And we’ve been like blogging friends for a long time. And we’ve just kept in touch over the years and tried to stay on top of algorithm changes and all the updates and trends and everything. And we’ve kind of grown together. And then we recently just together had this realization that there was a huge gap in our space, which is exactly what we’re talking about. And we decided that this topic deserves attention, we need to actually fill this gap somehow. Yeah, so we are going to do that. We were also talking about how there are ways to fill gaps, but they’re really hard like, you can get involved in a high quality mastermind like the Eat BlogTalk mastermind, or you can attend a retreat, which is also very valuable.

Melissa Erdelac  06:50

Yeah. And I think what this spurred from what’s kind of the things that we saw the biggest value or the bang for our buck, like was the masterminds because you’re workshopping things together, you’re actively listening, getting ideas versus like a Facebook group where you’re just kind of like, you’re getting bombarded with information. So masterminds worked really well. And then blog retreats worked really well for us, because I mean, we would just to the nth degree of the mastermind, live and breathe our businesses for a few days. And we always just came out of those just so revitalized, and with these friendships that were magical on every level, because you know, as bloggers, like, we have personal friends, but they have no idea what we do. And they have no like, you can’t even begin to talk about your work life, which is kind of is all consuming. It’s like all I think about. So you get these friendships that they know exactly every inch of your life and what it’s like, and like, those were our two magical things. So we’re like, how do we do this together and create that for a slightly larger group of people?

Megan Porta  08:09

And just to point out, too, that mastermind groups, they can be more high dollar. So if you don’t have the money to invest in something like that, I mean, I know a lot of people want to be a part of it. But to be in a really high quality one, you do need to have money to invest. So not everybody has that. So that’s kind of what we married, like the idea of the retreat that was so magical, and the mastermind groups, and we thought we would just put together a two day just intensive workshop-style event that would kind of fill that gap that wasn’t as high of an investment, but was highly valuable.

Melissa Erdelac  08:48

Yeah, and that you could still and more intimate than a large scale conference where because that, unlike, let’s face it, like that’s the best part of conferences is making those connections with people and especially when you’re an advanced food blogger, you’re not really gleaning the information as much as connecting with other people. And so to marry those two things, where you still are getting information, personalized to our levels, and getting those strong friendships and connections in a smaller group where you’re able to kind of talk to people and actually have time to connect, and I don’t know get those little, like nuggets of information from people that are so valuable.

Megan Porta  09:37

Yeah, I think it’s going to be really good because especially this year, things are changing so rapidly. I feel like every week I’m like oh another update. Oh wait, there’s another update. It’s just like, one thing after another that’s bombarding our like our businesses and it’s a lot so I feel like this is really good timing because we can I just show up to support our friends and new people that we get to meet in a new way.

Melissa Erdelac  10:06

Yeah, and I kind of feel like the time is now like you and I both aren’t doomsday people at all like, but I kind of feel like this shift in our businesses where it was almost like maybe five or six years ago, when everything turned to more SEO focused, and like UX and keywords instead of like, you know, that narrative blog style that some of us might have started off with. And it was really easy to get traffic from Pinterest, and you really didn’t have to do much. And then all of a sudden, it became very scientific. And we all had to become SEO experts. And it was just I remember it, like people were like, Oh, my God, the process shots and it wasn’t like the end of the world. And it was, okay, now we’re all here, we survived. And now I feel like we’re kind of going through another metamorphosis of things with possibility of the third party cookies, the AI, you know, it’s just like, we are all smart people, we will all survive this. It’s just a matter of learning the science of what we have to do.

Megan Porta  11:14

And we have to stick together. That’s such a key element to when you find a tribe of people who are on the same page, and who just have that desire to stick together and figure this out together. Because we will we’ve figured it all out. Like you said, we’ve, we’ve come this far, we’re not going to give up now. Yeah. Should we talk about some details about the event? Like our vision for it? 

Melissa Erdelac  11:36

Yeah, yeah. So we both love to travel. And so we were like, being, it being in a cool place that people were inspired to go to was kind of forefront of our mind, I used to live in Denver for a while we both love Denver, it’s kind of a central area, it’s easy to get to. So we landed on that for our location. And then it’s early May. May 2nd and 3rd of 2024, which we figured be good time, the weather will be good there, you know, you’ll still be able to enjoy some hiking and stuff if you extend it. And it’s kind of before that crazy storm of the end of the year, and all of that. So hopefully, it’s time that works out for a lot of people.

Megan Porta  12:26

And we have a vision for just kind of a smaller, more intimate crowd, we’ve decided not to extend it past 50 attendees just to make it really easy for people to collaborate and get to know each other. And really workshop together, we will have some sponsors there as well. And we want each attendee to be able to have access to each sponsor, and the speakers as well. So we really wanted to focus on just making this a really small, trying to think of the opposite word of crowded, what’s the half of the word of credit, non-crowded event,

Melissa Erdelac  13:02

I just think like, the word that always comes to mind is like breathable, you know you have time to make those connections to get the information to have, you know, just, I don’t know, I’m personally a little introverted, which I think is surprises people that I need that time to like decompress, and kind of like that space. And that’s kind of all, always what has been the hardest part for me of a large conference.

Megan Porta  13:32

I think a lot of bloggers are introverts. And I can see that it’s hard for a lot of people, being in a really big event center with just a lot of people is really hard for a lot of us. So we want to kind of take the pressure off in that way and just kind of ease people in let’s do this together. It’s not going to be overwhelming or anything like that. 

Melissa Erdelac  13:54

Yeah, yeah. 

Megan Porta  13:55

And then also, we kind of have a vision for the way the sessions will go. So we’re going to make them like we said, kind of workshop style. And as opposed to kind of your traditional, like, here are my slides, here’s my presentation. We want to make it much more collaborative, we’re going to have facilitators on hand just in case the attendees want to interact with the speakers. And we’ve really chosen the speakers intentionally based on topics because there are a few topics that are really relevant to the more seasoned food blogger that we really want to be sure to touch on.

Melissa Erdelac  14:32

Yeah, and for the speakers, too. We’ve been very deliberate about talking to them about expectations that this isn’t a very, you know, light topical presentation. Like we want you to be very transparent about what you do. Share your tactics, and do it in a way where we are all coming away from it with valuable information that and actionable information that we can use right away instead of once again, to plan the breathable, like you’re not walking away from sessions and just being like, oh my gosh, I have so much to do, how am I even going to do this? But you know, right away how you’re going to do it in your business, and it’s already kind of started for you.

Megan Porta  15:19

Yeah, some of it, we’re going to have the speakers kind of talk you through. So I know, like in our AI session, we’re going to have that speaker, like, open your laptop, here’s, you know, like open chat GPT we’re gonna right, fill in the blank. And so you actually do have something started. So you’re, like, you’ve said, you don’t get home and we’re like, oh, gosh, there’s this list. I don’t even know where to start. I’ve been there so many times where I’m like, I have more overwhelm now than any time during the year because yes, like, it’s, it’s good. But then do you actually do it? 

Melissa Erdelac  15:52

Yeah, yeah. Because you go home and you jump right back into life, like you still have your to do list for your business. And you still have all the other million things set.

Megan Porta  16:02

So true. And then we also are prioritizing mindset, this time, because of everything we’re talking about, we just want to make sure that people walk away, come in and walk away just with as little overwhelm as possible, we’re going to do more inviting in a guest speaker who is going to focus on business mindset, breath work, he’s going to do some, like smaller group meditation type stuff, just so that we can, you know, focus on retaining everything. I think, also like just being more creative and walking away with the information that we’ve learned, as opposed to like, shut down, I’m, I’m checked out sort of thing. So we’re really excited about that.

Melissa Erdelac  16:46

Yes, is he is going to be magical. And it’s like, I think with anything that’s entrepreneurial, like it’s about getting out of your own way. And Brad is going to talk about kind of manifesting success in business mindset. And, you know, it’s one thing to have the information or to know the things that you have to do. But another thing to get rid of those blockages that are stopping you from becoming more successful, which I just feel like is the root of everything of being success. So that is going to be a huge overarching theme of it. And yes, Brad’s going to talk to us about the business mindset and the creativity, and you know, all of that, but then he’s also going to be there to do small group sessions and kind of walking you through how to do that personally, in your own business. And we’re talking like, he’s going to be able to work with people that are like, in groups of like four or five, so he can really dig in and teach you those tools, which is going to be huge. Like, that is something I am so excited for.

Megan Porta  17:59

Me too. I know, I think mindset is the most underrated thing. We don’t think about it enough. We’re just trying to always consume information in our businesses and like what’s going on with SEO, what’s relevant keyword research, and we don’t take the time to actually think about those blockages that you talked about, if we don’t address them, and I think that keeps us from success. I think that is the key right there. And if we can just get to the root of some of those blocks, then we can move forward so much more easily.

Melissa Erdelac  18:30

Yeah. Because we are constantly barraged with information. And sometimes it’s, it’s easy to mistake like I have all the information. Why isn’t this working? How am I preventing it from working? And I think we really have to dig down into that. I think that’s going to be huge.

Megan Porta  18:50

And a lot of us don’t even know that it’s us like yeah, oh, it’s me, that’s preventing it out. It was someone else. So let’s talk about who the summit is for because it is definitely not for everyone. So we can kind of define that. So you know, if you should apply if you’d be a good fit, we decided we wanted it to be. This was hard, because it’s like, where do you draw the line with some things, but we wanted it to be more for the seasoned food blogger. How do you define seasoned? I don’t know. But we decided, you know, you should be monetized in some way. Not necessarily ads. I mean, preferably, yes, you have been in an ad network for a while. But that’s not a make or break thing. If you are not monetized through ads, we would prefer that you’re monetized in some way. Maybe you’re doing like selling cookbooks or ebooks or, you know, online cooking classes or something else that you’re really have a lean into.

Melissa Erdelac  19:45

Yeah, I would say you’re kind of more out of that learning phase of how this all works and more into like the leveling up phase. So or making a salary from your business and looking to how do I grow my business even more?

Megan Porta  20:11

Yeah. And also, one quality we really want people to have is just a willingness to share knowledge, you’re not going to show up and either be, you know, too afraid to speak up or too afraid to share what you know, I run across just, I mean, not many, but just a handful of food bloggers who are like, I don’t know if I want to share this. I’m like, no, no, we want you to come and share your knowledge and also ready to glean knowledge from others. 

Melissa Erdelac  20:40

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a huge point, the collaborativeness of this. And I think like, yes, if you are that type of person that not only likes to share what’s working for you, but also offer ideas to other people. That is totally the type of person that we’re looking for to attend this, we can’t we all, we want this to be a collective and to all grow together.

Megan Porta  21:09

Yeah. And we have a vision that we’re not going to come in clusters and just sit with the same people we really want people to, you know, I know it’s hard, and it’s not comfortable, it can be scary going to an event and you know, going out of your comfort zone and meeting new people. But we really want to encourage that too. So we will do that at the event. But hopefully you’ll if you come you will be willing to maybe set out a new table or something and get to know some new people because we’re going to really get to know each other well, during the course of the two days.

Melissa Erdelac  21:43

Yeah, yeah, in to gather all this information, we have a brief application that we would love for everyone to fill out. And that way, we could just kind of see if you’re a right fit for it. If this is something that will work for you. We want it to work for on both ends, like for the group of people and for you, too. So that application and the tickets are on our website.

Megan Porta  22:11

Yep. And you can actually, if you want to go check it out, you can go to flavormediasummit.net. And there are some just obvious links at the top that you can click through. You can also check out our speakers, maybe we could talk through a few of the speakers and topics too 

Melissa Erdelac  22:28

Okay.

Megan Porta  22:29

I am super excited about Ty Kilgore. He’s going to be there. And he’s going to be kind of our go-to SEO guy. He is from Everything Digital Marketing, and he’s just going to probably give us relevant SEO information. I know that he does a lot of work with food bloggers, one on one. So he’s very relevant in our world. So I’m really excited about that. Who are you most excited about?

Melissa Erdelac  22:53

Well, I just wanted to say one thing about that too, that I think why he really pertains to this conference, is he’s kind of next level SEO. I like his approach to it, because he takes the posts that you’re already ranking for, and then levels up your keywords to kind of keep building so you’re using the same post, but you keep on leveling up, which I think is really applicable to our businesses.

Megan Porta  23:20

Yeah, so true. I’m curious who you are most excited to hear from because we’re, we’re gonna peek in on the sessions, too. I’m excited as well.

Melissa Erdelac  23:29

Yeah. So Carrie Garcia is from Fat Girl Hedonist. And she does Instagram and Tik Tok and she’s like crushing on those things, which is something that I completely ignore. Like, I’m just like, going back to once again, like you’re just stagnant in your business. And like, you know, what, this is working for me, why do I have to do this, but like to be inspired by branching out into new platforms, and just what it could possibly how it can grow your business. So I’m excited and inspired by her and excited to hear her sessions.

Megan Porta  24:08

She is crushing it. I love her. And then we do have a lot of speakers talking about things about ways to diversify your income, which I think is a point of interest for a lot of advanced food bloggers. So we’ve got Anjali from The Picky Eater is going to speak, she’s going to talk about affiliate marketing. And when Melissa and I talked to her, just to have a brief call before we selected her as a speaker. We were so impressed by the new kind of novel things that she’s doing to get affiliate money. Immediately. We’re like, Yes, please. You need to come speak because it’s stuff that you I don’t think of and I don’t think that most people think about.

Megan Porta  24:51

Yeah, me too. And then our friend Monica from The Hidden Veggies is going to be there. She is one of the smartest food bloggers I know, honestly, I love her. She gets so many email subscribers, and they’re very highly targeted to her niche. And I think she gets like 10,000 or more a year, I want to say. And she kind of ties that along with product launches. And her product launches are very lucrative. She’s so successful, and so humbled too about it. So I’m really excited for her to share her strategy.

Melissa Erdelac  24:51

I’ve always thought about affiliate marketing in one way and she is not doing in that way in the revenue that she is bringing in. I mean, my mind was was blown and how she she does it from like a very SEO perspective and how she builds these relationships with these brands. I mean, it’s, it’s crazy she could sustain and her affiliate revenue alone like I’m pretty excited about that on. 

Melissa Erdelac  25:54

She’s so generous with her information. So I think she’s going to be great. Kara Meyers from Sweetly Splendid. I mean, we are all over the place with everything that we do, like not even only all our jobs, but then multiply that times, hundreds and 1000s of blog posts and content pieces you need to keep track of and constantly remember to re-promote and things like that. And Kara has like the processes, the systems, the automation, she is so on top of it. So she is going to share her strategy for that as well.

Megan Porta  26:36

Yeah, she’s amazing. She’s so smart. And then Britney and Terrance, I love Britney and Terrence. They’re from a Plant Power Couple. And they’ve really dug into working with brands in the last year in a really unique way. Not in a way that’s like one and done. Let’s get some money, but in a way that’s really sustainable and kind of long-term. And also they keep in mind like, you don’t want to burn out when you’re doing this. Yeah. So they have some really good tactics and tips that they use that they’re going to impart. 

Melissa Erdelac  27:09

Yeah. And they do it in a way, too that’s so fun. Like, that’s why I always am away from working with brands because I’m like, I am a robot I am selling like a different person. And they like they just embrace their personalities and the way they do it is so authentic and just unique.

Megan Porta  27:31

They’re so fun to I just, I just love being around them. We saw them…

Melissa Erdelac  27:35

Talk about the emphasis on fun.

Megan Porta  27:37

I know, fun. Let’s remember the fun too. Yeah, yeah, the fun. The speakers have great topics. But like, honestly, everyone we’ve talked to is like they’re gonna be so fun to just connect with and hang out with as well. I was gonna mention just Adam from he’s from Cinnamon Snail. He was on the podcast earlier this year on Eat Blog Talk. And he’s so… speaking of fun, this guy is super fun. He’s so inspiring. He built this incredible online cooking class business out totally outside of his blog. And he’s got like, the setup. And he’s again, like Monica is so willing to share his information. So this could be another avenue that people could explore just for extra monetization as well.

Melissa Erdelac  28:28

Yeah, and I mean, we, there’s more speakers, you could look at him on our website. But those were just kind of some things we wanted to highlight.

Megan Porta  28:36

So yeah, some great speakers, if you like Melissa said, go check it out. And then be sure to apply. And we will we’re not accepting like payment. So you can’t go pay, you have to apply first and get your application approved. And you will hear from us, you know very shortly within a day or two, whether or not that’s approved. And if you are, then we’ll send you to the sales page. We do have early bird pricing currently. So that is running through the end of the day on November 8. So that is coming up quickly

Melissa Erdelac  29:07

Do it before that early bird pricing goes away, which is November 8. And then once again, it’s in Denver, it’s kind of in a downtown location. So there’s tons of hotels, there’s it’s in this really cute neighborhood, there’s if you want to go with more than one person, you could get an Airbnb. The location, venues space, it’s on our website, but it’s called Varone Market. And it’s in the Lower Highlands area of Denver.

Megan Porta  29:35

Also get on our email list just so you can stay in the loop whether you apply today or not just get on that we’ll send out current information as we kind of move toward the date.

Melissa Erdelac  29:47

Yeah, and the email list. If you go to our website, there’s a sign up right there on our homepage. Or you go to our Instagram which is @flavor.media.summit, and there’s links there to our website. And you could follow us there. But I would say for sure, get on our email list because we will just be sending even if you’re just thinking about it, we’ll be sending out information like, Okay, this is the last day for this ticket pricing or this, you know, just up to date current information about the conference, so you can jump in whenever.

Megan Porta  30:22

Yeah. So again, one last time, our website flavormediasummit.net. Go there to get all the information and you can reach out to us too, if you have any questions, but yeah, I think we covered it all. Thanks, Melissa.

Melissa Erdelac  30:37

You’re welcome. Thanks, Megan.

Outro  30:41

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you posted it to your social media feed and stories. I will see you next time.