Episode 744: From Beauty YouTuber to Food Blogger – How To Reinvent Your Blog (Instead of Quitting) With Kelsey Smith

EBT744 – Kelsey Smith

[00:00:00]  Supercut 

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[00:00:15] Megan Porta

What do you do when the thing you’ve built starts to drain your joy? If you’re Kelsey Smith, you pivot intentionally, incrementally and without ever giving up. In this episode, Kelsey shares her wild ride from her early beauty YouTube days in 2008, so long ago, to building a thriving food blog By Kelsey Smith that now out earns her freelance work. We talk about the power of incremental intentional change, how to navigate traffic drops and burnout, why shifting your focus can reignite your creativity, and the systems that keep her business growing. If you are pivoting, starting over, or reinventing yourself mid journey, this conversation will spark your next move.

[00:00:50] Intro   

Hi food bloggers, I’m Megan Porta and this is Eat Blog Talk, your space for support, inspiration and strategies to grow your blog and your freedom. Whether that’s personal, professional or financial, you are not alone on this journey.

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[00:02:52]  Megan Porta 

Hello, Kelsey. How are you today?

[00:02:54]  Kelsey Smith 

Hey, I’m doing great. How are you?

[00:02:56]  Megan Porta 

I’m good. So excited. You’re my second interview of the day. Super excited to hear about your story. You have such an incredible story to share. I think this will be really encouraging for food bloggers. Before we get to that, do you have a fun fact to share with us?

[00:03:11]  Kelsey Smith 

I do. So I actually started my first blog in 2002. If anybody else was part of the Zanga LiveJournal crowd. Oh, I like to joke that I’ve been chronically online since 1999, but it’s not a joke. It’s very real.

[00:03:30]  Megan Porta 

So wait, what is the LiveJournal thing? What was that called?

[00:03:33]  Kelsey Smith 

LiveJournal was a blogging website that you could use back in the day. And it was kind of a social media platform in itself. Before social media.

[00:03:41]  Megan Porta 

Wow, that’s even before my time. I remember some pretty archaic platforms, but that one does not ring bell. That’s crazy. You literally have been online, I mean, 2002. So that’s. I’m bad at math, but that’s almost 25, 23 years.

[00:03:58]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah.

[00:03:58]  Megan Porta 

Oh, gosh. Well, your story aligns with that because you have so much baked into your amazing story. Your food blog is called By Kelsey Smith, correct?

[00:04:09]  Kelsey Smith 

That’s right.

[00:04:10]  Megan Porta 

Okay, so we’re going to get to that. But I think it would just be so great to talk through your journey because it’s been such a lively one and, and so many lessons and you’ve been through so many eras in your time as a YouTube creator and just content creator in general. So I guess let’s talk from the start.Like, where did you start online.

[00:04:34]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah. So I’d always been really into personal blogging online. I always had some kind of personal blog all throughout middle school, all throughout high school. But my content creator journey started in 2008. It was the summer between high school and. And college. My parents had moved out of state and so I was there temporarily and I was.

[00:04:53]   

I was bored. My friend Sam had introduced me to YouTube as a place to learn about makeup. Makeup was something that I was really interested in at the time, but I was very intimidated by it. So I would spend hours watching YouTube makeup tutorials at the same time. During this time when I’m like so bored at my parents house, I really wanted to dye my hair red and I wanted to use professional dye.

[00:05:18]   

I didn’t want to use boxed dye. And I didn’t know how to do it. I was looking up online, like, how to mix, what developer I should get, what dye I should get, and there just wasn’t any information out there. I found on livejournal a random comment someone had left with their formula for their hair.

[00:05:35]   

And I was like, well, let me just film a video on my webcam. I’ll document the journey. We’ll see how this turns out, and I’ll upload it to YouTube then. Yeah, that’s really what kicked it off for me.

[00:05:47]  Megan Porta 

It’s so funny to hear people’s stories because it really is just like one little spark of a. Of inspiration. And it can be something as minute as how to dye my hair. It can all start there.

[00:05:59]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah, well. And it was a completely different landscape on YouTube back then. Like, there weren’t professional content creators at the time. I uploaded my very first video. The YouTube Partner Program was only like eight months old at the time.

[00:06:11]  Megan Porta 

Oh, wow.

[00:06:12]  Kelsey Smith 

So there really weren’t people doing it professionally. It was very community oriented.

[00:06:17]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Yeah. Lots of evolution. My son just showed me the other day the first ever YouTube video. Have you ever seen this?

[00:06:24]  Kelsey Smith 

I have.

[00:06:25]  Megan Porta 

Oh, my gosh. It was. It made me laugh so hard. And it was just like a guy at the zoo and he’s like, here’s the elephant or something. And it was so unpolished and fast. And I was like, oh, my gosh.

[00:06:36]  Kelsey Smith 

And yet we were all watching, like, the same videos. They still spread. It’s crazy.

[00:06:42]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, it is so crazy. So that was back in. Give us kind of a year when that YouTube interest started.

[00:06:48]  Kelsey Smith 

That was 2008. And then about a year later, in 2009, I was accepted to the YouTube Partner Program. And I think a really big moment for me was I told my parents about the news that I was in the Partner Program and was making money. And my dad’s reaction to it was really important to me because my dad’s a businessman and he was impressed and he was bragging about me to his coworkers.

[00:07:14]   

He was telling his friends about it. And I realized, wow, my dad sees the potential in this to become a business. Like, maybe that could be something for me. I had thought about it as a hobby for sure. I hadn’t even told my friends about my little hobby. It was just something I did on my little corner of the Internet.

[00:07:38]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I think that’s how a lot of us start. We do it, especially back then, a little bit secretively, not telling anyone because it just seemed I don’t know, too vulnerable and risky and like, kind of weird in a way. Like nobody else is going to understand this.

[00:07:53]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah, very vulnerable. It is. You’re showing a side of yourself that maybe the people in your real life don’t know about. Yeah. Makeup wasn’t something I was known for among my friends. So interesting. Might have been unusual to find out that Kelsey had a makeup YouTube channel.

[00:08:11]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:08:11]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah. Embarrassment was always an emotion. Since I was a kid, embarrassment was a big emotion for me. That was something that I really struggled with. So I was very self conscious about it. I revealed it to my boyfriend in college that, by the way, I have this secret Internet life. And he was so supportive.

[00:08:29]   

My parents were supportive, my siblings were supportive, but that just. I. Even then, I didn’t really have the confidence. Plus, I had, you know, dealing with imposter syndrome. Like, is my content even good? I’m not getting a ton of views. Like, I’m not feeling super confident about this. And then in addition, I was a student in college at this point.

[00:08:49]   

I’m very busy in school. I went to Florida State, Go Knolls. I was on the executive board of. I was in a co ed community service fraternity called Alpha Phi Omega. I was very involved in that on campus. So I was also really, really busy. So even though I was making money doing my YouTube channel, I did decide to back away from it.

[00:09:09]   

I wasn’t ready to go public with it and I had this big fear of being found out, so I decided to let it go. It’s funny because I actually was eventually found out by my best friend. Oh, no.

[00:09:20]  Megan Porta 

What happened there?

[00:09:21]  Kelsey Smith 

She sent me a text message asking for advice about a makeup palette. At that point, she knew I was into makeup and she said some sort of like, subtle comment about, oh, well, you’re a beauty guru, so I thought I would ask you. And beauty guru is the term people were using to talk about beauty YouTubers back then.So I was like, I’ve been found out.

[00:09:44]  Megan Porta 

She knows.

[00:09:46]  Kelsey Smith 

So she kind of left it open to allow me to come clean. And I did. And again, she was really supportive of it.

[00:09:52]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, of course. I know. I don’t know why. We get it in our heads that the people who love us most are not going to be supportive. But it is that whole embarrassment thing, like, because the two worlds can be so different and they. It just feels like they’re going to collide and explode somehow.

[00:10:09]  Kelsey Smith 

Yes. And I did have friends online friends who were getting flack from people in their real lives. And so I was Just convinced that that’s what was going to happen to me.

[00:10:19]  Megan Porta 

I’m so glad it didn’t and that you kept going. So you were in college, you took a break from YouTube, and then what happened from there?

[00:10:27]  Kelsey Smith 

So I moved in the next year with my friend Megan and a couple of our other friends, and we were just two peas in a pod when it came to cooking. We were cooking left and right, trying new things. We did a vegan challenge where we went vegan for a week and made vegan food together.

[00:10:43]   

Like, we just had so much fun. We were really well aligned. And I think it was her idea of, hey, we should start a blog and document this and share it with our friends and family. And I had been thinking this in the back of my mind, but then to have her verbalize it, I was just like, yes, let’s do it.

[00:11:01]   

And doing it with somebody else then really gave me the confidence that I needed to go out there and be bold and tell my friends about it from the get go. And that made a huge difference. We had so much family support. Like, I cannot express how supportive our whole community was. Like, our friends, our family, our parents and their friends, they’re sharing it out on Facebook.

[00:11:24]   

Like, my uncle was one of the most supportive people of my website. I was finding out from friends of friends, they’re like, oh, you write. What tasty food. I’ve been following that blog for months. I had no idea it was you. And it was just word of mouth had spread. So it was.

[00:11:40]   

It was just such a good feeling after years of blogging in secret.

[00:11:45]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Oh, gosh, I’m so glad you had that support. It does feel so good when your personal life shows the support of a budding and professional life. So that was in 2010 when you and your roommate started it?

[00:11:59]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah, that was in 2010. We mostly. We mostly survived on word of mouth. I, at the time, had an internship at a PR agency where I was learning how to write press releases and send pitches to editors. And I even sent. I sent a pitch to the Tampa Tribune. That’s my hometown newspaper back in Tampa.

[00:12:17]   

I sent a pitch about, hey, we’re two Tampa food bloggers. We’re in Tallahassee, we and I. So funny. I found my original pitch and I wrote, we get hundreds, sometimes thousands of views every month. That’s so funny. Oh, if baby Kelsey could see me now, she would be so happy for me.

[00:12:40]  Megan Porta 

That is so great that you found the pitch and that you have the exact wording. Oh, my goodness. I love it.

[00:12:46]  Kelsey Smith 

I know it was a little artifact of history, but so then we did that for a couple years together. But then after a couple of years I could see What Tasty Food becoming a business, but I didn’t really see how to get it there. We were making money at the time. We had an ad network called Food Buzz.

[00:13:04]  Megan Porta 

Oh yes, I remember Food Buzz. Remember that?

[00:13:06]  Kelsey Smith 

Yep. I was there making all of $2 a month. The sponsorships and social media stuff really wasn’t big yet. I didn’t see the long term goal, but I had been on YouTube, making a little more money doing YouTube. So I was like, you know what, we’re graduating. It is time for me to pivot.

[00:13:26]   

I want to go back to YouTube, give this another shot. I’m going to be open and public about it with my friends and family. I fell into a little bit of the lifestyle trap because I thought, oh well, I’ll do a little bit of everything. I’ll have some recipes, I’ll have my makeup, maybe I’ll do some crafts and other things.

[00:13:46]   

And so I started my own website, Modern Martha, just after I graduated from college.

[00:13:51]  Megan Porta 

Okay, and then how did that go? How did that unfold?

[00:13:56]  Kelsey Smith 

Well, it made me really wish that I just hadn’t left YouTube the first time because then I saw all these people that I was with in like a cohort with initially, and they were all way up here and I felt like I had been left behind and then falling into the lifestyle trap.

[00:14:12]   

I know it works for some people, but for me it really didn’t because I didn’t have one central topic. People weren’t returning to see more content because it was just a little hodgepodge. It was a little bit of a mishmash of everything. So I really don’t think that served me well. But I was starting my career at the time professionally, and a lot of the skills I had taught myself as a blogger served me so well professionally.

[00:14:40]   

Like basic coding, Photoshop, WordPress, video editing, and then vice versa. A lot of things that I was learning in my professional world came back and supported my blogging journey. Like photography, I learned lightroom through work. Like it was all very mutually beneficial. So that part felt really good. But like, over the long term, my YouTube channel really stalled out.

[00:15:06]   

I had built up my website separately. It was kind of a catch all for anything that didn’t end up in a YouTube channel. Sometimes I’d just throw something up, like a single photo and a single paragraph of text. There’s a lot of thin content. But like I. My YouTube channel had like kind of capped out at like 20,000 subscribers.

[00:15:23]   

And I, I had accumulated more than 2 million views on my long form videos. But returning viewers were really low. I actually had a consultation at one point, I think it was around like 2015. I had a consultation with a multi channel network. It was kind of like an ad agency where they analyzed my content and they said, Kelsey, looking at your different buckets of content, your beauty content actually performs the worst.

[00:15:48]   

Your DIY crafting videos and your food content is your top performing. You really should pursue that. And we would really encourage you to pursue that. I was not ready to hear that advice. That was not the advice I wanted. Oh, that’s for me, so passionate about makeup. And I had spent a decade at that point building this channel that was makeup centric and I could not imagine pivoting. It felt like I had sunk all this time into it and that it would be such a waste.

[00:16:22]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I feel like that is something that so many people listening can relate to, whether it’s a food niche that no longer serves them or just really old outdated content that doesn’t align anymore.

[00:16:35]  Kelsey Smith 

Absolutely.

[00:16:36]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. It’s hard to say goodbye to a type of a business or a niche of a business. That’s like a real grieving situation. I think it is.

[00:16:45]  Kelsey Smith 

And it. And not being ready to receive advice, that is something that I’ve noticed in myself and others. Sometimes you have to be ready to make the change. And I have a tendency to when I receive advice. Sometimes I’m like, I know you’re probably right. I’m not there right now. I’m just gonna file this away and I’ll come back to it later.

[00:17:06]   

Yeah, so that’s what I did. I filed it away. I knew that they were probably right and I came back to it when I was ready. And looking back now, I definitely let my passion for makeup get in the way of turning my blog into a business. I wanted my blog to be a business, but I wasn’t ready to treat it like a business.

[00:17:27]   

So now I’ve definitely separated a bit. People talk about feeling passionate about their websites all the time. My passion now is learning and teaching others and creating a community. And the makeup thing, it’s like, yeah, that was my hobby at the time. I almost never wear makeup anymore. It’s so funny. Like, I can see like somebody in a food, a certain niche having a hard time abandoning it.

[00:17:58]   

And I see it all the time, like in Facebook groups, people talking about, well, I used to be a vegan, but I’m not vegan anymore, but I’ve got this vegan blog. Like, what do I do? And looking back, I really wish I had just made the switch.

[00:18:09]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, it happens all the time. People start blogs surrounding kid food and then their kids grow up and they don’t make kid food anymore. There’s all kinds of things that can transpire. But I love how you, you see your central focus now as being community based and teaching and, and not necessarily makeup or.

[00:18:31]  Kelsey Smith 

Right.

[00:18:31]  Megan Porta 

Vegan recipes or whatever.

[00:18:32]  Kelsey Smith 

When I think about the types of recipes I want to write, I really have like niched down and picked a central topic that’s performing well. And then my passion isn’t my subject. My passion is what I do and why I do it.

[00:18:48]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I think that’s a great approach. It’s so smart. So once you got back into YouTube, how did things go from there?

[00:18:57]  Kelsey Smith 

A really like defining moment for me was joining Food Bloggers Central on Facebook.

[00:19:03]  Megan Porta 

Okay.

[00:19:04]  Kelsey Smith 

A friend, a social media friend invited me and at the time I was like, I’m a beauty YouTuber. I just have a few recipes. Like, I guess I’ll just join and I’ll see what this is about. I am so glad that I joined because even though, again, I wasn’t really ready to transition to food blogging at that point, I was passively listening to everything, reading every post, absorbing the information.

[00:19:29]   

Like, I had never heard of MediaVine up until that point. I had never heard of Big Scoots hosting. I had never heard of so many of these things. And I knew about SEO. I had learned about SEO from work, but I didn’t know how to conduct keyword research. So all of these things I’m slowly picking up along the way.

[00:19:48]   

So that was a huge turning point for my website. So like, my website is still there in the background, slowly gaining momentum over time. My YouTube, I very much feel like stalled out, but my website was just on slow and steady pace. And so that I always felt like I had that in the background.

[00:20:05]   

But then a couple things happened all at once. My husband and I, we were in Denver, Colorado at the time and we knew we wanted to start a family, we wanted to move closer to family. So we decided to move across the country. I left my corporate job, I decided to go freelance full time. And then the very same week that I find out I’m pregnant, the pandemic hits and the world locks down.

[00:20:30]  Megan Porta 

Wow, that’s a lot at once.

[00:20:32]  Kelsey Smith 

It was a lot at once. I was so stressed. I cannot express to you how stressed I was. During this time, I was like, I just changed my whole career. At first I thought that the full time freelance thing would be a temporary, transitional thing as I moved and I was like, and then I’m starting a family and then when I go back to work, I’ll probably go back corporate.Like, yeah, that’s kind of the path I saw for myself. But yeah, everything changed.

[00:20:59]  Megan Porta 

So.

[00:21:00]  Kelsey Smith 

And then everything changed for the better too. So for my website at least, the pandemic hit and then my traffic spiked and in less than two months, my traffic had more than doubled. I qualified for MediaVine and it was so sudden and unexpected. Like, I really was not prepared for it. I was very excited for it.

[00:21:19]   

Like I said, like, mentally I wasn’t there. I was very focused on growing my freelance business and I was very focused on my pregnancy. I had a high risk pregnancy, so I still sat on it for a little bit, but I did a lot in the background. Like I said, I’m learning about SEO, I’m learning about thin content, I’m learning about optimization, I’m learning about photography and backdrops and things like that.

[00:21:40]   

So I’m like slowly working on back end stuff. And then when my son was about 1 years old, that’s when I finally decided, like, okay, I think I’m ready now. I’m ready. I want to revisit this. I want to redo this. I want to do it right, I want to do it intentionally.And this is my business. This is not my hobby. And so it was a full reset.

[00:22:02]  Megan Porta 

And that reset happened in about 2021ish, beginning of 2021.

[00:22:07]  Kelsey Smith 

Okay, 2021. I relaunched my website. It was by Kelsey Smith. I used to be called Modern Martha. It was supposed to be an homage to Martha Stewart. A little bit of everything, crafts and food and whatever. But I was advised also by a lawyer, you might not want to hinge your brand on somebody else’s.

[00:22:28]   

That’s.

[00:22:28]  Megan Porta 

That’s risky. That’s a good call.

[00:22:31]  Kelsey Smith 

So ultimately I decided I would just be myself. So that’s where Kelsey Smith comes from. I relaunched Strictly as a recipe website. Yeah. And I’ve been doing that ever since. And I’m just, I’m so, so glad that I did. Another, like, really, really pivotal moment for me was learning about Tastemaker. The Tastemaker conference.

[00:22:51]   

I actually learned about that from Jenna Urban. I know she’s been a guest on your show.

[00:22:55]  Megan Porta 

I love Jenna. She’s a friend of good friend of mine. I love her.

[00:22:58]  Kelsey Smith 

I had actually met her in my professional Life.

[00:23:00]  Megan Porta 

Oh, you’re kidding.

[00:23:01]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah, when I was a social media manager, I met her, she was a at the time doing like local food blogging in Texas and we had a restaurant in Texas and yeah, so I worked with her professionally and then I continued to follow her over the years and then she posted this video of her attending Tastemaker.

[00:23:18]   

I was like that sounds so cool. Like I want to be there. I want to meet all these food bloggers. I want to find community. Because like I said, I joined Food Blogger Central but was a very passive participant.

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[00:24:44]  Kelsey Smith 

It took me years to make my first post. I think I joined in 2017 and probably didn’t even post for the first time until like 2023. Yeah, so I very much felt I was blogging on an island until I attended my first conference. And like let me tell you, the sessions were great but the community was even better.

[00:25:01]   

Like getting to meet other people, hearing their stories. You’re seeing people from all walks of life. They’re work. Some people are blogging part time, some people are blogging as a hobby. Some people have kids and are full time stay at home parents and full time bloggers. And some people have full time corporate jobs and their blog.

[00:25:21]   

Some people have multiple blogs, some people run their websites and do zero social media. Like it was so valuable to be able to hear all these other versions of like what this could look like.

[00:25:32]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, there is nothing like the in person connection. Conferences and retreats are where it’s at. I mean if you haven’t experienced it. I think every food blogger listening needs to experience that on some level.

[00:25:43]  Kelsey Smith 

I definitely recommend it. And it was really nice. I met Christie from On my kids plate and I met her on TikTok.

[00:25:53]  Megan Porta 

Oh, interesting.

[00:25:54]  Kelsey Smith 

She found out I was going to the conference and she was like, hey, we should probably meet up and say hi and whatever. And I never felt like alone for a moment at the conference. Like there was always somebody, there’s always somebody that, oh, I follow you. Like, yeah, how crazy to meet you in person.

[00:26:09]   

This is so. It was so nice. Like it was such a good feeling. I left feeling so revved up and excited and really seeing the future of where I could take this. So something that has kind of changed for me is I was making slow and gradual changes over time, but now I’ve adopted that mindset of like incremental change much more intentionally and kind of setting a roadmap for myself.

[00:26:35]   

I know that I get overwhelmed when I try to do everything and be everything everywhere all at once. So I know that I need to tackle one or two things at a time. Perfect that and then I can move on to the next thing. Perfect that and move on to the next thing.

[00:26:50]   

That’s just what works well for me. So SEO was something that I really dug my teeth into and I felt like, okay, I can do this. It’s back end. I’m not forward facing. I was very burned out on social media. Having been a social media manager, having done YouTube for so long, I felt so burned out by having my face all the time, like in my face, right?

[00:27:11]   

So I was like, let me work on back end stuff for a while. So I did that. I worked on SEO for a while. I worked on improving my photography for a while. Then I was finally ready to get back into video, but I wasn’t ready to put my face on for a while.

[00:27:24]   

Then I get into, okay, well now I’ll put my face on camera. And then when the Google Core update happened last year, that blew up everything, I decided, well, this is a great opportunity. I really should work on my email list. So let me do that. Let me build my welcome email series and let me actually send emails.

[00:27:43]   

That would be a great start.

[00:27:45]  Megan Porta 

That is a good place to start.

[00:27:47]  Kelsey Smith 

So making incremental improvements in a way that feels approachable and manageable, that’s not going to stress me out and make me want to quit. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve quit a couple times, but yeah, every time come back a little stronger and a little wiser.

[00:28:02]  Megan Porta 

That is so. And just inspiring. I love the way that you have taken hiccups in our space and just kind of refocused instead of, you know, I mean, I think it’s so easy to see the HCU and all the traffic loss that happened and just be like, I’m done. I’m, I can’t do this, I can’t handle it.

[00:28:25]   

And hyper focusing on the challenges. But instead you were just like, okay, I’m going to move to email and focus this way for a while and then if something in your email explodes, then turn this way. I feel like that is how we should all be thinking.

[00:28:40]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah. And I do have like some fail safes. Like, I still do my freelance work. Within two years of launching, relaunching my website, my blog income had surf past my freelance work.

[00:28:54]  Megan Porta 

That’s amazing.

[00:28:55]  Kelsey Smith 

That was a huge milestone for me. But I kept at the freelance work. Just before the core update, I had said to a blogging friend, I could leave my job at this point, I could just blog full time. But the income diversification aspect of maintaining my freelance work, kind of nice. Because your website, you can spend hours and hours spinning your wheels and you don’t know that you’re really going to get paid for that time you spent versus freelance.I’m paid hourly. I’m going to get paid.

[00:29:23]  Megan Porta 

Right?

[00:29:23]  Kelsey Smith 

So that, that too gives me the confidence to, you know what, my website’s down this month, but it’s okay. I can pick up a few hours here, I can do this there. And I love to see when other bloggers take their blogging skills and turn those into side ventures. Like the bloggers who are also doing photography for other people or social media management for other people, or campaign development for other people. Like, I love to hear about that.

[00:29:51]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I love that too. That’s always so inspiring. You’ve already given us so many, so much encouragement. Just being a blogger in 2025, I feel like, is really tricky. It’s new territory that not even you or I have experienced. This is crazy change territory that we’re in right now. Do you have additional encouragement or, I don’t know, just tips or something to keep people going during this time?

[00:30:19]  Kelsey Smith 

I would say just buckle down and focus on smaller things. It can be so overwhelming when you look at the big picture all the time. If you just log in to your analytics dashboard and you see it tanking, that’s a terrible feeling. But instead I try to look at smaller things that I can improve on.

[00:30:35]   

Like right now, I’ve really been focusing on improving my backend systems and organization. So making sure that I have a schedule that I’m following that makes me feel so good to have. For example, Mondays I like to recipe test, tackle my inbox. I leave it open, the afternoon open so I’m like flexible.

[00:30:55]   

And then the next day I’m shooting, the next day I’m editing, you know, having some things, but then also improving my systems. Like, my Airtable is a thing of beauty right now. Like, when I first started using Airtable, I had been using Trello before for project management and it was just keeping track of new ideas.

[00:31:14]   

It’s pretty rudimentary. Yeah. Then I joined Airtable and got into that, built up a database, felt pretty good about it, but knew it could be better. I got to talk with Kylie from Kylie Cooks about some improvements to my Airtable and now I’m so happy with it. So I always just try to find, like an opportunity for growth when I, when I’m not seeing the big picture, I’m like, okay, let’s forget the big picture for a minute.Let me, let me zoom in.

[00:31:40]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, okay. There’s so much magic there. And if something is not making you feel good, if you’re looking at your numbers and you feel like crap, that is your cue to turn away. I hear this so much. People are like, oh my gosh, my numbers are down. They’re down, they’re down. And that’s all they can focus.

[00:31:55]   

It’s almost like they’re so hyper focused that they can’t look away. Like there’s something magnetic just pulling their eyeballs to the bad numbers. But you need to look away because it’s not good. It’s not going to improve your numbers when you’re looking at them and feeling bad.

[00:32:10]  Kelsey Smith 

Absolutely not. And I have been guilty of, oh, refreshing my Google Analytics and staring at my Google Analytics.

[00:32:18]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:32:18]  Kelsey Smith 

Spending way too much time just looking at numbers and not actually doing anything to change it. I think I just, throughout the course of my blogging journey, have spent so much time spinning my wheels. I’m done with that.

[00:32:30]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, same. And I think we all get to the point where we get so frustrated with ourselves that we say that either I’m done with it or I’m done with my blog. Hopefully hopefully not that. And you just, you refocus, Right? You have to find the things that make you feel good and keep moving.

[00:32:46]   

Maybe that’s starting a YouTube channel or diving into social media or starting a TikTok account, but if it’s not making you feel good, that’s your sign. Look away and find something that makes you feel good.

[00:32:59]  Kelsey Smith 

Yes. And the people who are going to be here blogging a year from now are the people who decided every single day to keep going. Yeah.

[00:33:07]  Megan Porta 

Oh, I love it. Got goosebumps. Okay. How’s your YouTube channel doing now? Are you still doing that with your food focus?

[00:33:14]  Kelsey Smith 

So I still have my YouTube channel. It’s there. It has all. It’s all food. The beauty videos are all privated. So you all cannot enjoy that. I’m so sorry, but I don’t view myself as a YouTuber. I do not have a YouTube strategy. Everything that’s there is because I have it. For other things, I definitely think of myself as a food blogger and my website is my hub.

[00:33:36]  Megan Porta 

Okay.

[00:33:36]  Kelsey Smith 

One day that will be something I tackle. That’ll be next on my. That’ll. That’s on my roadmap.

[00:33:41]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I love it. It’s there. It’s just not activated yet.

[00:33:44]  Kelsey Smith 

One day.

[00:33:45]  Megan Porta 

Yes, one day. So your YouTube channel is not a primary focus, is it just kind of something that you. A place to store your videos for now.

[00:33:54]  Kelsey Smith 

Right. Like for me, video content is still important. I love video. I will always love video. So I film a reel. That also gets uploaded to TikTok, also gets uploaded to YouTube shorts. I always make sure my recipes on my website have a. It’s long but 60 seconds, you know, a little 60 second video.

[00:34:12]   

And because I have it, I go ahead and upload that to Facebook and YouTube. But one day. Yeah, one day I’ll revisit YouTube as a YouTuber and I think it just requires a totally different strategy.

[00:34:24]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:34:25]  Kelsey Smith 

And approach and content creation in general.

[00:34:29]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. What are. I’m just trying to think of a good question to ask you because your journey spans such a wide array of years. Like what. What has been your favorite change over the years? Has it been, I don’t know, like hands and pans videos or leaving of a trend? I don’t know what it might be, but I’m curious.

[00:34:51]   

That’s a great question. Trying to think what my answer to that would be. I. I was kind of glad when the hands and pans videos started to leave the scene. I got so tired of them a little more. There were so many years when it was like that’s all you saw. No matter where you logged in, it was like just littered with the hands and the pans and the food.

[00:35:11]   

I just got so tired of it. And to see people’s faces again and to humanize video creation, video recipe creation. I loved that trend.

[00:35:21]  Kelsey Smith 

That’s true. There is a very big push for authenticity right now.

[00:35:24]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:35:25]  Kelsey Smith 

And it’s nice. It’s definitely nice to see people’s real lives. Like, I mostly do produced style videos, but every now and then I stick in one that I just filmed a little more casually and even my mom will message me or text me and be like, oh, you were so cute in your video.

[00:35:42]   

Oh, like, it was so nice to see, like, you, the real, like, the real you, you know, So I think people crave that. Yeah.

[00:35:50]  Megan Porta 

I mean, they really do.

[00:35:51]  Kelsey Smith 

The different eras of social media, it’s been so interesting to see everything from like the Wild west days to now. And not necessarily like a favorite change, but something I’ve noticed, like the people who get in early, the early bird gets the worm. Right. Like people who got into YouTube early, people who got into Mediavine early.

[00:36:13]   

And then thresholds go up over time. You need more views to be partner. You need more views to be, you know, in a certain ad network, you know, so there’s no better time to start than now. If you’re thinking about it, go ahead and do it.

[00:36:27]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And that’s something I love about Jenna, actually. She is one of those early adopters. She’s always seeing the potential in certain platforms or trends and digging into them right away just in case. She’s also very curious, but I think there’s so much value there in being one of the early, early adopters.

[00:36:47]   

There is something that is good. Yeah.

[00:36:49]  Kelsey Smith 

You think about YouTube. When I joined, people weren’t. Didn’t even think this could be a business. A lot of people weren’t making money. It launched in 2006, but they didn’t introduce monetization for its first two years. So people weren’t thinking of it as business potential. But now, like TikTok launched and people were immediately thinking, how can I monetize this?

[00:37:11]   

So the mindset has changed for sure. And it’s a little harder too, because quality standards increase over time. When I was on YouTube, initially we were just using our laptop webcams, which webcams aren’t great today. Imagine the 2008 webcams we were working with. And then over time, people started filming on point and shoot cameras and then HD camcorders and then DSLRs.

[00:37:36]   

So the bar for quality continues to get raised as well. But there’s always an opportunity to do something a little different. So the big push for authenticity, for example, somebody had to start that trend. It was hands and pans for a long time.

[00:37:54]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Who knows what it’ll be next?

[00:37:57]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah. There’s always an opportunity.

[00:37:58]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, there is. And so many different platforms to shine on. So it’s not just like, you know, the authenticity, but authenticity on Instagram, YouTube, you know, like, there’s so many. It spans so many platforms. Wow. Your story. I. I’m pulling out a few themes. So number one, don’t give up. Just keep going.

[00:38:19]   

Even if you have to shut it down for a little bit of time. Get back into it if you have the passion for it. And then number two, incremental intentional change. I love that. I wrote it down. What else do you have? For my listeners, if they are inspired by your story as well, if they’re feeling discouraged.

[00:38:38]  Kelsey Smith 

I would say just keep going. Don’t let your hustle hustle you. If you want it to be a business, you really need to think about what that’s going to take and what you need to do to get it there.

[00:38:50]  Megan Porta 

Yes. Love that. Well, thank you, Kelsey. The story is so great. Not many people come on here with such a long history, so I love it. I love talking to people who were back during the Food Buzz days and got a taste of that. And then did you go from Food Buzz? So I went Food Buzz.And then they started offering ads and I was so excited about that. And it was. It was like $100 a month. I mean, it started out even like $50 a month. I was like, yes, this is so awesome. And then I went from Food Buzz to Blog Her, I think is what it was called. It’s now She Media, but it was Blog Her. Is that kind of the route you went to?

[00:39:33]  Kelsey Smith 

We were on food Buzz on our website. Our what? Tasty food website. And then my next website. I think I just had Google Ads for a long time.

[00:39:41]  Megan Porta 

Okay.

[00:39:42]  Kelsey Smith 

I didn’t even know there were other networks. I got so out of the loop. When I left food blogging, I kind of disconnected for a while from the community side of it. I wasn’t really in. In the know, so I didn’t know much about blogher or other monetization opportunities. Yeah, I think I just had Google Ads for a long time. And then primarily I was earning from the YouTube Partner Program.

[00:40:03]  Megan Porta 

Okay. Yeah. The only reason I knew about BlogHer was because I went to a conference and everyone was saying, oh, you need BlogHer. This is the next step.

[00:40:13]  Kelsey Smith 

See these conferences and retreats, this is where it’s at.

[00:40:16]  Megan Porta 

They are huge. Otherwise I would have been in the dark as well and would have just kept doing what I was doing.

[00:40:22]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah, well. And having taken so many breaks and Changing paths so many times. I will say it’s been a very odd feeling. When I attended my first Tastemaker, I felt like a newbie because my website was so new and it was my first time, really. It was my first time doing food blogging in a while exclusively.

[00:40:44]   

But at the same time, I had been in the game for a long time and I was coming from like a YouTube angle where most people had their websites and that’s their primary focus. So I felt a little fish out of water, a little out of place. I’m like, am when they’re saying, do you want to take the advanced course or the intermediate course? And I’m like, both.

[00:41:03]  Megan Porta 

I don’t know.

[00:41:05]  Kelsey Smith 

Both. I am both a beginner and advanced. I don’t know. A little of both.

[00:41:12]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I was there too, for a long time. My numbers in years was different than my numbers in actual, like, I don’t know, knowledge, I guess. But I can relate to all of that so well.

[00:41:26]  Kelsey Smith 

Yeah, in a way. In a way, it. The taking this very non linear path to where I’m at now has served me well. I’m very happy with where I’m at in my life. I’m very happy with where I’m at with my blog. I’m very happy with where I’m at with my family. Like, it’s all worked out just fine.

[00:41:44]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, right. And every path is so unique. Like you were saying earlier, some people do this alone, some people do it with a family, some people are moms, whatever. Every path is so unique. And I think that’s okay. We each have our own unique journeys and not to be like, well, I’m not like Kelsey, so I suck.

[00:42:02]   

That’s not the message at all. Like, embrace where you’re at and what your journey is and who you are. Even if it’s been slow going or if it feels really frustrating and your traffic is down, just embracing it I think is really important right now.

[00:42:16]  Kelsey Smith 

I absolutely agree with that.

[00:42:18]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Well, thank you, Kelsey. It was such a pleasure getting to know you and chatting with you. Thanks for sharing your story and for being vulnerable. And I think so many people are going to find value and encouragement in this.

[00:42:30]  Kelsey Smith 

I hope so.

[00:42:32]  Megan Porta 

Yay. Do you have either a favorite quote or additional words of inspiration to leave us with?

[00:42:36]  Kelsey Smith 

Yes. Something that’s really been on my mind lately. My son just started swim lessons and after his first lesson, I said, buddy, you were so brave. And he goes, no, mommy, I wasn’t brave. I was scared. I was a buddy. Being brave isn’t about not being scared. It’s about being scared and doing it anyway. I think that’s where we’re all at.

[00:43:02]  Megan Porta 

Oh, tell your son thank you for the lesson. That’s such a good one. I love it. We will put together a show notes page for you, Kelsey. If anyone wants to go look at Those, head to eatblogtalk.com KelseySmith and Kelsey is spelled with EY. Tell everyone where they can find you. Kelsey.

[00:43:18]  Kelsey Smith 

You can find me on everything ByKelseySmith. I’m on Instagram and Tic Tok for the most part, but I’m also on YouTube. I’m on Facebook and you can find my website ByKelseySmith.com awesome.

[00:43:29]  Megan Porta 

Everyone go check all of those channels out. Thank you for being here again, Kelsey. And thank you so much for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time.

[00:43:40] Outro  

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Don’t forget to rate and review Eat Blog Talk on your favorite podcast player. Thank you. And I will see you next time.