In episode 213 we talk with Kalyn Franke, a successful blogger who pivoted when her travel blog struggled during the pandemic so she pivoted and is now running 4 sites.

We cover information about picking a topic that appeals to you and your audience, how multiple sites can help with financial security and ways to master the workload of blogging multiple sites.

Listen on the player in this post or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.

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Guest Details

Connect with Into The Cookie Jar
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After traffic to her travel blogs fell during COVID, Kalyn started up another site, Into the Cookie Jar. She focused primarily on cookie recipes with some additional desserts. From the success of ICJ, Kalyn decided to start 2 additional sites and now runs 4 websites across different niches, including food.

Takeaways

  • When you niche down, you can take your readers on a journey with you into this new specific topic that intrigues you and actually grow your audience.
  • One benefit to bloggers starting a new niche blog is they already know how to blog and the skills needed to be successful aren’t new.
  • When you invest in building a quality site with good content and valuable SEO, then if you find there’s a seasonal dip, you can move to another blog and focus on that and come back to the other site when it needs you.
  • Having a honed in topic allows your audience to want to stay on your blog longer because everything is relevant.
  • When you have multiple sites and you have limited time, you are forced to figure out where the ROI is in your business.
  • You don’t need to be everywhere. Go where your audience is.
  • Interlinking in a niche site is beneficial to Google to know what you offer your audience.
  • Use your analytics to see what hidden gems are being checked out, look for a theme and then decide if you have a niche topic already desired.

More on Monetization?

Cynthia Samanian shares how you can continue to diversify your revenue streams by sharing online cooking classes in episode 208.

Transcript

Click for full text.

Intro:

Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, where food bloggers come to get their fill of the latest tips, tricks, and insights into the world of food blogging. If you feel that hunger for information will provide you with the tools you need to add value to your blog. And we’ll also ensure you’re taking care of yourself because food blogging is a demanding job. Now, please welcome your host. Megan Porta.

Megan Porta:

Hey awesome food bloggers. Do you struggle with knowing exactly what you should be doing to move the needle forward in your business? Do you struggle with knowing what to focus on next? If so, if this sounds like you, I have two solutions for you. Number one is mastermind groups. There is so much power in getting people together and helping to solve each other’s problems. At Eat Blog Talk, we have put together our own mastermind groups and we are hosting these weekly. You can join at any time. You can try it out for a month or you can sign up for a quarter or you can go all in and sign up for an entire year. Come join us. See if it’s a great fit for you, and this will really help you to solve those problems you’re having in your business and give you clarity about what you should be doing next to move your business forward.

The next solution is the Eat Blog Talk membership. I have spent all of 2021 so far putting so much value inside of the membership. It is such a supportive and wonderful place to be for food bloggers. We are learning so much from each other. We are joining together in monthly intensive calls, where we focus on very specific parts of food blogging in order to grow our businesses in massive ways. We also have guest experts come in and join us very regularly to talk about really specific parts of food blogging. We get one-on-one access to these experts such as Matt Molen from email crush, Casey Markee from Mediawyse. So many great people are joining us in these sessions and they are super valuable. There are so many reasons why you should be in the membership. I could not even start touching on all of it. If you’re tired of wandering around aimlessly in your business and not knowing what to focus on, give the membership a try for free for two weeks. Go to eatblogtalk.com. You can sign up for the masterminds there, and you can also start the process of getting into the membership for two weeks, just to check it out. The rest of us can’t wait to see you inside.

What’s up food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk. This podcast is for you, food bloggers wanting value and clarity to help you find greater success in your business. Super excited. I have Kaylyn Franke with me today from intothecookiejar.com. We’re going to have a super fun chat about expanding your business by running multiple niche blogs. After traffic to her travel blog fell during COVID Kaylin started up another site, into the cookie jar. She focused primarily on cookie recipes with some additional desserts from the success of, Into The Cookie Jar. Kalyn decided to start two additional sites and now runs four websites across different niches, including food. I am so excited to hear more about this, Kalyn. It’s so intriguing, but first we all want to hear your fun fact.

Kalyn Franke:

Sure. Thank you for having me. So my fun fact is when I was in elementary school, my bedroom was featured in a design magazine, not from my own doing, by my grandmother she actually painted an Alice in Wonderland mural all over my wall. So my mom still has the magazine where my grandma and I are faking a tea party in front of this mural and talking about her artwork. That would be my fun fact.

Megan:

Oh gosh. That’s the coolest thing ever. I’m sure you have tons of pictures.

Kalyn:

Somewhere. During my teenage years I painted over it. You know, 13 years old, Alice in Wonderland wasn’t as cool anymore. But when I was a kid, it was definitely the coolest bedroom.

Megan:

Oh my goodness. That’s so cool. I love it. So your grandma has an artistic flair. Oh, that’s amazing. My mother is an incredible artist. She’s the most talented person I know. I just get so envious of people who have that just natural ability to produce art like that. It’s the coolest thing ever. So cool. I’m glad you shared that. Okay. So let’s talk about your story with your blogs, because this is really cool too. I love how you saw an opportunity or a need really, to change and shift during COVID. You had travel blogs. Oh my gosh. My husband is in the travel business and it’s been a rough year for travel people. So you saw that need and immediately just did it. Okay, I need to change and you changed. So I want you to just talk through that. How long did it take you to change? What happened to your travel blogs? Are they completely non-existent and how this past year has evolved for you with your blogs?

Kalyn:

Sure. My first blog is, and was called Girl Gone London. That’s all about UK travel and specifically Americans coming to the UK because I live here now with my British husband, but I am American. If your audience can’t tell by my accent. So that blog was all about the UK and that was really my first blog. Funnily enough I worked in international education, which also really relies on travel. So that was my day job for a lot of years. Then COVID happened overnight, obviously everywhere in the world, but particularly the UK, people weren’t allowed in, we were on lockdown and my day job at the time, which relied on students traveling here, was basically gone overnight. I took a couple of days to, once we realized that this was serious and it wasn’t just going away in a couple of weeks like we all seem to think at the time, I had to decide what to do.

A couple of weeks before the pandemic, I had finally taken a cookie decorating class in person before we knew what was happening. Just because I’d always been interested in learning how to do it. I’ve always liked baking as a hobby and had just finally started to get into it. I thought, if travel isn’t going to come back for who knows how long, I’m not sure what’s happening with my job or what else I can do. Maybe I’ll start another site. I decided to start Into The Cookie Jar because I thought people talked about niching down and doing what you were good at. So I thought, I’ll kind of take my readers on this journey of me learning how to bake and decorate cookies. So Into The Cookie Jar was born. Because we were on lock down here for almost the whole year, I had a lot of time that I wouldn’t have had.

I spent just 10 hours a day baking, decorating cookies, and taking pictures. I already knew how to blog. So that was the one benefit I didn’t have to start over in that sense. So I just focused on Into The Cookie Jar and it was about five or six months from March last year where I was able to monetize with Mediavine and had grown my email list to 2000 people that were reading the recipes that I was sending out. I sort of realized in all of this craziness, I was able to pivot, which was really nice, but I also had this fear of I’ve had something happen to my main site and now I’ve pivoted, but what happens if something happens to this site? So then I decided, I’m enjoying starting another blog.

It was easier for me because I already knew what I was doing with blogging. So I decided to start two more and my husband also has started one. But mine, I decided to start one on American travel, which I had faith that would come back a lot faster than maybe international and another one, which is about productivity and working from home. With your food blogging audience, there’s so much potential. My husband has actually started his own food site and there’s tons of potential in food to start multiple sites. But that’s kind of how I ended up with four sites when I had one at the start of the pandemic. Now I’m super into the idea of everybody having multiple blogs.

Megan:

Yeah. It’s such an intriguing idea and it’s really tempting, but it’s also hard because we think of our original blogs as our babies. We’re like, how could we ever spend time doing anything else? Because this is my initial blog, but you have such a good standpoint. Anything could happen. You had this fear that something else would happen to your new blog, Into The Cookie Jar. So that kind of propelled you forward to create others. I love that you not only have multiple food blogs, but you have American travel and productivity. So you’re really branching out big time. Like you said, Kalyn, you already had the blogging down. You already know how to blog and everyone listening knows how to blog. So it really isn’t that much work to start a new blog. How much time do you invest in your blogs each week, would you say?

Kalyn:

I’m lucky enough to be able to do this, do all of my sites full-time because my day job never came back. But that’s been fantastic for me to have that opportunity. So I would say per blog, maybe 10 hours a week, but obviously the benefit of having multiple blogs is that you can choose. There’s different ways of going about it. So right now, my original site on UK travel, it’s still not coming back to that site anytime soon internationally. It might be another six months or so. So I just let it sit. I focus on the other sites, which you know, is nice to feel like you’re working on things that are getting somewhere. Also when you build your site with things like SEO and long-term Pinterest search traffic, your site can just sit there for a little bit and marinate. It’s not going to fall off the cliff overnight if you transition your focus for a little bit.

Megan:

So you’re talking about five months to monetizing via ads which is incredible. I think a lot of people listening will be like yes, please. So what was the magic there? Was it just the fact that you were really, really niched do you think, or was there something additional that you did to get ads on your site that fast?

Kalyn:

I think there were a couple of things. The first thing is obviously any food blogger, anyone with a food blog in 2020, got a little bit of a boost from everybody being at home, baking and cooking and having the time for that. So that was helpful to have an audience who was ready to bake. But the other thing that, like you said, niching down was so good for me because there were a lot of Facebook groups, Facebook pages that focused specifically on cookie baking. So it wasn’t just the best food ever Facebook group. It would be the best cookies ever. There were these groups that everybody just wanted cookie recipes. So in that sense, I was able to really find my audience a lot easier because I knew exactly where they were hanging out. People hang out in Christmas cookie groups all year long because all they’re doing is just waiting for December so they can bake cookies. So in that sense, it made it so much easier to find my people.

Megan:

Do you agree with this, that just having multiple areas to focus on is beneficial to a blogger because you know, you’re not trying to deliver so many different things to a single audience. Does that make sense? So by separating them out, you’re actually benefiting the people you’re serving. Do you agree with that?

Kalyn:

I absolutely think so. I think back in the day, I started blogging in 2013 or 2014 and definitely the one blog per person made sense. People followed people for personalities. So I completely understand that perspective, but I think nowadays there is so much emphasis on SEO and on somebody who doesn’t necessarily know your site, coming to your site. It’s amazing for them to just click around really anywhere they want and everything will apply to them. Obviously not everything will apply to them, but when you have a food blog and you separate it into maybe vegetarian or meat, or this is gluten-free, or this is vegan and things like that, that works for a lot of people. But I definitely think that there is benefit in having a gluten free baking blog and someone going on your site can just spend tons of time and everything will apply to them.

Megan:

I was talking to a blogger recently who had yogurt on her site and she’s not a vegan blogger. She doesn’t say that, but she does have a lot of vegan recipes. So one of her readers was like, how could you do this? How could you ever put yogurt on your site? This isn’t a vegan ingredient and just lashed into her. She was like, Oh my gosh, I never said that I was a vegan blogger. So doing this kind of eliminates that issue. So if you are a vegan blogger, keep it all vegan on one site and then do other things on another site, if that makes sense. So eliminating people’s challenges with what they’re seeing too so they’re not conflicted.

Kalyn:

Sure. People ask the question a lot of times, Oh rebranding their main site, because maybe something’s changed in their life or now they have kids and they want to be kid-friendly. But is my existing audience going to respond and starting a new site just takes away needing to figure out anything with your existing audience, as long as you’re still interested obviously in your main topic. I feel like we all have multiple sides to ourselves and multiple interests, whether it’s food and elsewhere or multiple interests in different areas of cooking or different types of food. So it is nice to be able to actually express all those sides, but not confuse your audience. I totally agree with that.

Megan:

Oh, you said that so well. That was perfect. So which of your sites does the best financially, which brings in the most revenue and do you feel more secure having multiple sites? I’m sure you do, just kind of spread out.

Kalyn:

Sure. The answer kind of goes hand in hand because which one does better financially does depend on seasonality. So Into The Cookie Jar was my best one over the holidays because everyone wanted to bake. The other food site that my husband runs is more summer seasonality. So that was just doing amazing over the holidays. Now that we’re looking into the summer for me, my American travel site is doing the best, but that kind of answers the second question as well. I feel so much more secure knowing that I have these different sources of income and that I’m not just relying on one site and it doesn’t have to do with just seasonality. I’ve been hit in the past by Google algorithm updates and overnight lost two thirds of my traffic.

Megan:

Been there.

Kalyn:

You put so much energy in these things and it’s obviously hard just from a perspective of not knowing what to do to fix it, but it can also be really hard if you are relying on your family’s income from one site. That can be a huge overnight life shift that you can wake up one day and just suddenly something like that has happened. In the holidays, I love to focus on Into The Cookie Jar. I can’t wait for this upcoming holiday season to just put all of my time and energy into that and know that it’s going to do really well. I don’t have to focus on the ones that maybe seasonally aren’t doing as well. So I feel like I sleep a lot better at night just having these diverse streams coming in.

Megan:

Oh my gosh. I think that’s so smart. As you were talking, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be great to have four blogs that each focus on a season so that you don’t have to worry about that seasonality thing because we all feel it, all of us anyway, who just have one blog, which I think is most of us. For me, summer months, a huge dip in traffic. I do not get much traction for summer recipes. I have a good blogger friend who does only summer recipes or she has a focus on grilling and more summer foods. So her dip is during the winter months, which is totally opposite for me. Let’s see summer food and then obviously cookies or baking. Then for spring you could do pies or Easter themed food, I’d have to think more about that.

Then fall, it could be apples, pumpkin recipes. There’s so many pumpkin recipes to make. Oh goodness. Well, I’ve been thinking about starting a second site recently just for the same reasons. My husband is looking just to help me out a little bit. So I was like, we should totally come up with something separate, but it is scary. It’s really scary to think about having to manage, not just another blog, but also social media. So what are your thoughts on that? Is it just insane to manage all of those social media accounts?

Kalyn:

What I would say is having multiple sites actually, and what you’ve just said is basically what everyone says to me when thinking about multiple sites and what I thought about it too, like it’s going to be so much work. I’m going to have four different Pinterest accounts, four different Facebook pages, and it’s going to be too much. But what I’ll say is that when you have multiple sites and you have limited time, you are forced to actually figure out where the ROI is in your business. That has been so freeing for me, just speaking personally when I had just one site. That was all I had to focus on. So I felt like I needed to be everywhere. I needed to be on Instagram. I needed to be on YouTube. I needed to be on TikToK, Facebook, Pinterest, you name it.

I needed to be there because that’s what everyone else was doing. But when you have multiple sites, unless you have a team, which I don’t, I do not think it’s possible for the majority of people to manage that much. So I had to really quickly decide, first of all, where is my audience for this particular site? What do I enjoy spending my time on? So for instance, Into The Cookie Jar doesn’t have an Instagram. I know it’s really popular in the food blogging community. Everyone has a beautiful Instagram. That’s not really my thing in terms of the social media I enjoy. Also I wasn’t planning on working with brands as much. So I didn’t feel like I needed it. So I don’t have an Instagram. I just focus on Pinterest and I have a Facebook group for Into The Cookie Jar, which again is easy because it’s just about cookies.

I found my audience, it wasn’t hard to grow. Facebook just sent me loads of traffic over the holidays, and that’s it. I don’t have anything else for that. My other sites, some of them, I have less than that. I just focus on organic traffic for one of them. I guess there is a superhuman out there who could do it all. But I think for most of us, I think we’re right in thinking that just sounds like a lot of extra time. I do not have the hours in a day. But once you pick and choose, you realize you don’t need to be everywhere. That’s actually been really freeing and nice to say I have a successful blog and also I don’t like Instagram, so I’m not on it. It’s just a nice way to go about your business. Just doing things that really are bringing you the page views or the money or whatever it is you’re after

Megan:

Kalyn, it sounds like you’re the queen of the anti FOMO because we all fall into that FOMO trap where we fear we’re missing out. That is honestly the reason that so many people dive into all the platforms because we hear, Oh my gosh, everything is going on over at TikTok. You’ve got to go check that out. So we do it because we hear that we’re supposed to, and everyone else is doing it, but you’re just like, nope, sorry. That’s not where my people are. That’s not where I need to be. I’m not interested. So I actually really respect that. That’s amazing. I feel like you could teach a class on how to overcome FOMO.

Kalyn:

That’s so funny. This is the thing; you’re forced into that perspective because I have four websites and there’s one of me. You can’t do it all. If you’re just forced into this new way of thinking that I think can be really beneficial and actually really good for business because spending all of that time on stuff that actually, when you look at the hard numbers, for me, I’m blogging for the money and the freedom that it gives me. So I’m not just in it to have a certain amount of followers on a social media site. But if you look into how many hours that people spend that are wasted on these things that don’t bring anything back into their business. Then they also stress them out. It just becomes a no-brainer.

Megan:

It reminds me of Parkinson’s law that work expands to fill the time you allot for it or something like that.T hat kind of applies here with what you’re saying. So you have a certain amount of time to work on so many blogs and you only have that much time. You’re only a single person. So that is the time you make it happen. You spend that time. So if we have one blog and we’ve got all these different accounts, of course we’re going to spend time on all of them. But this just makes me think we should all sit down and evaluate what platforms we actually need. I mean, maybe we are spending time on things right now that we don’t need to be.

Kalyn:

I did have a Facebook page for Into The Cookie Jar and I was posting consistently. Finally I was like, maybe I should check if this is doing anything. I dug into my analytics and checked things. Because often we always have stuff on a scheduler. Many of us do. I wasn’t actually on my Facebook page posting, I scheduled it on Facebook and then just kind of let it run. But then I looked back at it and I was like, Oh, this isn’t really doing anything. I’m not sure why I think I need to have one except everybody says that you need to have one. I have a group, but not a page and a Pinterest, but not an Instagram. People, just take a hard look at where you show up online and whether you need to be there because often yeah, you might not need to be.

Megan:

How long do you push? Because I’ve pushed on my Facebook page for almost 11 years. Considering how long I’ve been doing this, I have not as many followers as I should. So how long do I do that? Everyone tells you, you have to manage your Facebook page. You have to keep up with it just because, because you’re a food blogger, but really do I need to? I don’t get traffic from Facebook. Nothing significant anyway. My platforms are Pinterest and I enjoy Instagram so I can’t see letting go of that, but I’ve been so tempted over the years just to let Facebook go and die because it gives me nothing.

Kalyn:

I think maybe that stemmed from an age in blogging where it was about, I am one person and I am on all of these sites and that’s not to say that people don’t have loyal readers these days. That’s all great. But I don’t know. I’ve never looked up a food recipe or looked up a travel itinerary or looked up something and then gone to their Facebook page or then been disappointed if they didn’t have a Facebook page. I mean, some social media presence is obviously super important for a lot of people. But if you’re doing great on Pinterest or Into The Cookie Jar I can send them to a Facebook group. I’ve never had anyone say, why don’t you have a Facebook page?

Megan:

Nobody’s going to complain. Especially if there’s nobody there. There’s nobody there. Who’s going to complain about it? That’s kind of funny. I’m like, what am I doing? I don’t know. Sometimes I look at something that I’m doing within my business and think what in the world. Things have changed so much and I haven’t adapted. This just reminds me that I need to sometimes look at what’s going on in the individual parts of my business and just evaluate and see, does something need to change? Do I need to let go of this? This is really enlightening for me. So make a case for this. You’ve said a lot of things, but if someone’s on the fence and they’re like, Kaylyn, I really want to start a second blog, but I don’t know. What would you say to them? Yes, you should do it because.

Kalyn:

Okay. So the first reason that I would say is like we talked about, being able to express different sides of yourself and really hone in to those niches for yourself without confusing your audience. I think that’s always a great thing. This is for someone starting a new site. So obviously a lot of people have fantastic sites that are their one blog and it’s just about food, all kinds of food. But if you’re thinking of starting a new site, it just gives you this avenue to explore something new. Which can never be a bad thing. But when it comes down to your actual business and why I really believe in this, I think nowadays niching down is where it’s at in terms of successful sites, successful social media followings. In terms of having your audience just be super engaged because you know that whoever’s gonna to open that email on your email list is totally interested in basically all of the content on your site. That’s a great thing for social media. But the other thing is organic traffic is so important these days as well, especially with all the changes in social media and Pinterest deciding overnight that suddenly your account is dipped for no reason. I did talk about the Google algorithm updates that I’ve experienced in the past, but I’m still a super firm believer that SEO and organic traffic is really the best long-term option. I’ve experienced this with my sites and I’m not an SEO expert, but in my experience, Google rewards sites that are niche down more and more. I think that has to do with the way that you can basically interlink on your site to such a great extent.

You don’t just have one gluten-free recipe on your new gluten-free site. You’ve got 100 gluten-free recipes and Google must look at that and think, this person knows what they’re talking about. So it’s good for Google. It’s good for your social media. I was saying before, just in today’s day and age, you don’t know what’s going to happen online. If you are in a position like I am where my blogging income is basically our income and it’s all about the blogs. Having multiple sites just means that if one is dipping, I can focus on why this is dipping without also panicking that I need to run out and get a day job that I don’t want tomorrow. So I feel like it’s a great idea to diversify. People always talk about diversifying your revenue streams on your one site, but diversifying your revenue streams throughout multiple sites is even more of a sure bet than just having one site.

I think the number one objection like we’ve talked about is people saying I do not have enough time. If you are already overwhelmed at the thought of having a second site, obviously don’t worry about it, but I know a lot of people are on the fence or they’re thinking about it and you would be surprised how quickly you can grow a second site because you already know what you’re doing. You already know how to blog. You’re just blogging about a different topic. So you’re not spending all of that time, relearning all this stuff that we all associate with, how long it takes to start a blog. You’re really starting ahead in the game and it’s not as overwhelming as you might think, as long as you’ve been blogging for a little while.

Megan:

Well, you just convinced me. That was like the best case ever. Oh my gosh. Thank you for saying all of that Kalyn. So what if somebody doesn’t know what to focus on? What are your recommendations for picking a super specific niche?

Kalyn:

I think the first thing to do is figure out if anything on your existing site is really where you spend a lot of time on creating that content on that site. So some people decide to start a second site because they’re like, Oh, actually I’ve really gotten into kid’s lunch recipes, but it doesn’t really fit on this site and they choose to do a second site. So you can think about what you’re already doing. But also for me, I switched into a completely different niche, but also I did something that I was really interested in, but hadn’t had the time to before because it wasn’t bringing me in money, as bad as that sounds. I only have so much time and I have hobbies, but I didn’t have time for another hobby. So I thought I would love to get good at and to learn more about cookie decorating.

I do a lot of Royal icing decorating tutorials on my site. Just really get more into cookie baking. So if I combine this interest with the new site, I can explore this new side of myself or something I want to learn while also sharing it with my audience and sharing these recipes. I feel like there’s always something that people are holding back from their main sites or a part of themselves that they haven’t explored, like in the food world yet, or a type of cooking, or maybe you now have kids, but you didn’t when you started your site. So now you’re doing lots of hidden vegetable meals when your audience of experienced chefs aren’t interested in your hidden vegetable recipes. So just being in tune with yourself and there’s going to be something that’s just been in the back of your mind, I’d like to explore this more or I really, really enjoy this, but it doesn’t seem to fit on my main site and also doing keyword research. If you’re wanting to start multiple sites really, to diversify your revenue stream, using whatever keyword research tools that you use and just seeing what comes up around topics that you type in can really give people ideas of what people are searching for that you might not have thought of.

Megan:

I just thought of a quote. I’ve heard someone say this recently, and I cannot remember who said this, but I loved it. Success leaves clues. So if you go into your analytics and just look for those clues that your successful content is leaving for you, I think that would be really revealing too. An example for me, I guess would be like sauces. I started making sauce recipes, and I had no idea that they were doing well. A couple months later I went into my analytics and I was like, Oh my gosh, people are loving my sauce recipes. Who knows. I never would have known that if I didn’t dig a little bit to see those clues. So maybe you have something like that that doesn’t necessarily align with your whole blog theme. But it’s some little sub topic that you started doing that people actually love. So that could be something too. A sauce blog. Are there any sauce blogs out there? I should totally start one.

Kalyn:

Yeah, you definitely should. There’s so many things that people say, Oh, that can’t be a site. But honestly, I feel like people do sites about everything these days. Anything can be a site. A site about cucumber recipes, that can be a site.

Megan:

This has been awesome. I’m not even going to ask you for your takeaway because I feel like you did such a great job of just summing everything up that we talked about. Is there anything that you feel like we’ve missed? Kalyn, we’ve covered so much. I think everyone listening is probably like, yes, I’m going to go start a second blog. I know I am going to think about it more after our talk, but is there anything you feel like we missed?

Kalyn:

I just think in general, it’s this idea that you’ve got to shift how you view your businesses and if you at all possible try and detach yourself just a tiny bit from the idea that we all have one blog based on our personalities and that’s the limit. I think people just limit themselves by thinking like that. It’s not to say that you can’t get rid of, you can’t continue focusing on your main blog or that it’s going away, but we just get into these mindsets of how blogging works. This is how I do it. Anything outside of that is just too overwhelming or it’s just not how it’s done. But increasingly if you ask around in blogging Facebook groups, or you talk to bloggers, a lot of people are starting multiple sites. So it’s definitely going that direction. Everyone can do it.

Megan:

As far as I’m concerned, you’re the smartest blogger out there right now. This is such a smart strategy. I’m just super impressed by the way you took a travel blog and the way it tanked during COVID and just immediately pivoted. You’re my hero, Kalyn. This is so awesome. Thank you for being here. I had such a fun time talking to you, and now I’m going to go brainstorm about my sauce blog.

Kalyn:

Amazing. I can’t wait to read it.

Megan:

So before you go, do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration for food bloggers, Kalyn?

Kalyn:

Sure. So my favorite quote is, “trust your hard work. It’s unlocking doors you can’t see yet.” I just think that relates so much to starting sites in general, but starting multiple sites. You’re not going to see those extra opportunities at first, but put in the work, put in the effort and there’s going to be doors opened and opportunities that you can’t even see right now. I just find that pretty inspirational.

Megan:

Oh, that’s super inspiring. Thank you for sharing that. That’s amazing. We will put together a show notes page for you Kalyn. So if anyone wants to look at that, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/intothecookiejar. I’m excited to go look at your site. I did a little bit before we chatted, but I want to dive in a little bit more. But tell everyone the best place to find you online Kalyn.

Kalyn:

So I would suggest going straight to the site intothecookiejar.com. Like I said, I’m also on Pinterest, but I’m not on all of the socials, so you’ll have to go to the actual site to see the recipes and see what I’m up to.

Megan:

Awesome. Well, thanks again for being here and thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you next time.

Outro:

We’re glad you could join us on this episode of Eat Blog Talk. For more resources based on today’s discussion, as well as show notes and an opportunity to be on a future episode of the show, be sure to head to eatblogtalk.com. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll be here to feed you on Eat Blog Talk.


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