Episode 596: How to Earn 70% of Your Income Through Ebooks and Cookbooks with Megan Ellam

EBT596 – Megan Ellam

Supercut  00:00

Hey, food bloggers, check out our new SEO supercut, a bonus 15 minute episode capturing highlights from SEO episodes we have recorded recently. Go to eatblogtalk.com/SEOsupercut to get access today. 

Intro 00:16

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

Megan Porta  00:53

I am always so inspired by people who figure out how to just absolutely crush a revenue stream that does not involve advertising on your blog. Megan Ellam from Mad Creations, joins me in this value packed incredible episode to talk about her successes as an ebook creator and a hard copy cookbook creator, her first launch for her first ebook. You guys, $25,000 with a small subscriber list, not many email subscribers. I think she had maybe under 200 she said, That is incredible. And she has just crushed the ebook and cookbook scene since she has somewhere over 70 cookbooks and ebooks total, and this is a huge portion of her revenue. Her ebooks and cookbooks alone account for 60 to 70% of her revenue each year. She gives us all the information in the episode. She really doesn’t hold back. She tells us what we need to think through some marketing strategies to consider. And I love what she said about just listening to what people want from you and produce something above and beyond what they can find in a bookstore. I predict this is going to be one of the favorite episodes of 2024. Enjoy this one, friends. It is episode number 596 sponsored by rankiq. 

Sponsor  02:20

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Megan Porta  03:50

Megan Ellam is an Australian-based author, photographer, and recipe developer, best known for Mad Creations and 365 Keto Club. Since 2017, Megan has shared her low-carb recipes and weight loss journey, leading to the self-publication of over 10 keto cookbooks and more than 60 eBooks, including two World Gourmand Cookbook Award winners! A passionate foodie, Megan runs Mad Creations alongside her partner in love and life, Dave Hunter.

Megan Porta  04:18

Megan, thank you so much for being here, especially considering knowing it is the middle of the night. You’re recording this interview. You’re a rock star. Thank you so much. 

Megan Ellam  04:28

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

Megan Porta  04:30

Yes, and by the way, if anyone else wants to be a guest, you can talk to me about other times we don’t have to do in the middle of the night, but wow, I appreciate you, and we’ll get through this, you can go back to bed, Megan. 

Megan Ellam  04:43

Yay. 

Megan Porta  04:44

Yay. Okay, so I’m super excited about this topic. You have created so many eBooks and books, and it’s been, it’s become kind of a normal part of your revenue stream, which I love. Love this topic so much. But before we get in. To all of that. Do you have a fun fact to share with us?

Megan Ellam  05:03

I do. I guess it’s it’s cooking based. But I actually started cooking before I can even remember. My mom apparently said I started to learn to cook, or wanted to cook before I could even reach the kitchen bench. But by the age of seven to eight, I was cooking for my entire family most of the nights I was pescetarian, so it was kind of my way of getting what I wanted. But I actually started developing all my own recipes from then. I never used any cookbooks or any recipes. I just cooked from scratch. And yeah, it was apparently just in me. So it’s no strange thing that I’m doing what I’m doing now.

Megan Porta  05:41

I guess by seven or eight years old is so cool. So it’s one of those things that was literally baked into you from the time you were born. Yeah, wow, yeah, okay. I love that. A lot of people get on the podcast and and they say I had didn’t start cooking until I was 30 or 40. Like that is such a unique perspective to bring, but I absolutely love it. So you are meant to do what you’re doing, is the message, yeah, all right. Well, very cool. I would love to hear more about your business, your blog, anything you want to tell us about your blog or your books, how you got into all of that? Yeah, tell us.

Megan Ellam  06:20

Okay, so I started Mad cCeations in 2017 it’s a low carb website that has membership and and a eCommerce store attached to it. And that was pretty much from the the start, but prior to blogging on, from a background of marketing, business development and cooking. So it was also a natural progression, I guess, to go into it and do it from a business perspective, with the cooking skills of cooking from a very young age and professionally and that as well too. So yeah, we kicked off when low carb keto was at the height of things, and I put my foot to the pedal and tried my very best to make the business work from the start, with full intentions of publishing books, from the minute, I created a name for the business and everything. So we went into it knowing that ad revenue was something that was a long term goal, because obviously you’re not going to get it straight away. But yeah, we we knew we had to make money to make the business work. So I launched my first two books. I did two books at once, three months, no, four months after, I actually started the website. So yeah, it was pretty much straight in there trying to get, you know, as much money through the door and that I could give up my day job and and I was able to do that within a week of love of launching our first book. So, yeah, it’s been a bit of a bit of a week. Yeah, we launched pre sales of our two cookbooks, which were $30 each in ironically, today marks seven years since I launched those two books. So we launched them at seven o’clock at night. Yeah, within a few days, we’d done $25,000 in pre sales. What? So I thought, you know, Christmas is not too far away. I’ll publish another book. I’ll get into ebooks. And yeah, I gave my notice for my job that I’ve been in for a long time, and that was for a month that I had to give the notice for, but worked it in tandem with the website and trying to publish new recipes to a website, trying to build all your social presence and stuff, because it was all brand new. I had been a blogger before, but I was never making money from it, and it was just a hobby because, you know, a friend said, oh, you know, you should do a website. And, you know, back in those days, no one knew anyone. No one knew what they were doing. You know, you had blue host as your host, and I had a website crash.

Megan Porta  08:56

Oh my gosh, yes, you know, evolve in through that lovely journey. 

Megan Ellam  09:00

Yes, it was. It was a rocky start before I hit, you know, having focus with this. When I sat down with a friend and I said, okay, like, this is what I want to earn every month. This is what the business is going to be. These are the brands I’m going to work with, you know, I’m going to publish X amount of books. They’re going to have this kind of feel, yeah, I was just had this focus to make money so I could make it, you know, my full time job,

Megan Porta  09:27

Right? And you did it. 

Megan Ellam  09:28

And we did it. 

Megan Porta  09:30

Okay. I have so many questions. So did you have a huge email list when you launched your first book? 

Megan Ellam  09:36

I had none. So when I launched, like I said, low carb, and keto is taking off. And I’m an Australian, so the local seats iro had launched a book that was, you know, telling people that they should be on a low carb diet. I had to do it myself personally, because I was morbidly obese, so I was actually losing weight while I was producing all these recipes in these books as well. I lost 30 kilos in five months. So putting that on a Facebook group and Facebook page also in 2017 as we know, Facebook was easy to grow compared to now, like you go backwards if rather than go forwards. These days for my page anyway, so yeah, by the time we launched, we had about 5000 followers on Facebook, which is nothing, and I probably had less on my website. So I didn’t have a huge following. I only probably had a few 100 on the mailing list, but it was just that I was constantly marketing and saying, like, I put some of the recipes from the book onto the website, and I said, print them off. Now if you don’t want the book, and you know, kept showing all this photography and that that I was doing and teasing people. And I actually did these first two books with all black black background. So all the food was shot in a black box, and every page was a black page with white. Writing don’t ever do, but it was a really good marketing way to do two different books. So like you know, where everything’s normally white with black, it was black with white, and it was kind of a design nightmare for graphic designers to get every little pixel out of images and stuff like that too. But they turned out really interesting. And people that, oh, that’s what you’ve got to do, is your niche? I’m like, No, I’m not going to shoot in black. So, yeah, you know that was just, I guess luck that we were just pushing it constantly. 

Megan Porta  11:19

Like $25,000 for that first launch and you had a couple 100 subscribers. You must, I mean, you have a background in marketing, so that clearly helped you. Like, what am I missing? I’ve, I don’t hear this story ever. This is so inspiring. I want to know more. What little tidbits?

Megan Ellam  11:40

Yeah, well, even, even since then, like, our whole thing has been just constantly, like I said, you, you’ve got all these people visiting, and they mightn’t even be following you yet. So you have your page, and that’s the business end. So you even then, I was, like, constantly showing images and stuff. And because I was trying to create, I wasn’t a great photographer. I was trying my best. I’ve become a much better photographer now, like I can get things in focus, but I was trying to create things that looked better than what I knew as good as I could do, and trying to create food that was interesting and had interesting names, and things like, I made a chicken taco, you know, out of chicken mince, crumbed in pork rinds shaped into the taco shell, and then put all the toppings in the middle of it. And that was, like one of the cup photos and stuff like that. So it was like a Keto taco that was crispy, but it was made out of chicken and pork rinds, you know. So I tried to be more interesting, and things like turning a Hungarian goulash into a Hungarian Goulash soup, which, you know, people weren’t doing in 2017 you just try to make it more interesting. So then people are, like, constantly watching, and then they’re sharing to their friends on social. So then it was just getting more momentum. Yeah, and I think by the end of that year, in 2017 like, Well, we started in March, 2017 and launched in the August. By December, we probably had 10,000 followers, which was good growth back then. 

Megan Ellam  13:03

Now you would probably get the same sort of growth with a small blog. It definitely worked, and it’s what I’ve continued to do with all of the books and that as well. And one thing we did do is we pair cookbooks with the ebook. So if you order pre sale a cookbook, you get an immediate download of the ebook. So then in a Facebook group, people are making the recipes already, or you’re saying, you know, let’s have a who cooked first giveaway, and then they’re marketing it for you, so you actually can sit back and do the work while everybody’s in there going, Oh, here’s my chicken taco, here’s my hunger and goulash soup or whatever. And they’re, they’re selling it for you and, and that’s still what we do to this day. We have, you know, who hooked it first on our last cookbook that we launched just a week ago. And, you know, in three days, everyone had cooked every recipe out of the course. And we have, you know, everyone always has sponsors and stuff like that. Are willing to give away products for promotion and stuff. So we tied that in with things that were in the book, and that it’s a company that we love, and, you know, they sent, you know, huge, big bundles of whey protein isolates and stuff like that too. People from it had cooked it. So you’re getting people seeing more and more pictures and seeing people testing it, and then they’re telling they’re giving you feedback. So even though we’ve got a team of testers, but they’re testing it out as well too. Before you if you’re going to do a print book, it’s even before you printed the book. So even when we did that $25,000 sale in 2017 I hadn’t even paid for anything like I hadn’t paid to get it printed yet, because I didn’t have print numbers. I didn’t know if one person was going to buy the book, you know, so we actually paid for our entire print run for the two books in a couple of days. Like the all the money was there to do a few 1000 books. So, you know, you’re like, Oh, we’re in profit already.

Megan Porta  14:58

So cool. I. So leading up to your launches, do you just do a heavy social media and email focus, and how long do you focus on it before you launch? 

Megan Ellam  15:08

Yeah, so if you’re brand new to it, you can do it with a long lead in. If you’ve got a lot of products in your store, you don’t want to do that, because it will stop people from buying things, because then they might want to bundle your books and stuff like that, if you know what I mean. So when I first started, I probably started leaking it from the April to the August, just like as I was doing a recipe, like I said, I shared some to the website, and I like the whole recipe went on there and and I kept saying, if you don’t want to buy the book, you can print it off, right, because it’ll be removed from the website as soon as we launch, right? So it was kind of like a little bit of a marketing ploy, because no one was really doing what we were doing at the time. I mean, big bloggers, no one was doing it. I know people in Australia that self publish, but they weren’t as actively promoting on their website as well and trying to build a website at same time. So yeah, you when you start to build up other products, you might do it closer to it. So you start showing just a recipe from the book, like not the recipe a picture. So I should say, if I’ve got chicken fried steak, I don’t do anything like that. But anyway, but I might like this amazing picture of this chicken fried steak that just looks like something that everybody wants to have a bite of. And you know, you put it on your Instagram, you put it on your Facebook page, and you’re saying, teaser, you know, new book coming soon. And then everyone’s like, Oh, my God, I want that. And then, you know, every day after that, you’re doing a different picture from it, or then when you get closer to it, you’re revealing the index to the book. And then you’re asking people, What do they want to make first from that index, or, you know, how does it look to them? So then it’s a question too. 

Megan Ellam  16:46

So then you get that interaction. So then it’s getting more reach on socials than that as well, too. So yeah, I find a lot of that really works really, really well, especially because, like, I’m a high volume seller, as in, not only selling lots of books, but I’m constantly marketing a new one. You have to do different things and just show different things. So you might actually do, you know, like we all see a sponsored post on socials, which I don’t do, by the way, but you’ll have, like, a marketing tile that’ll actually have, you know, 2995 fed up fast for whatever. That’s one of my book titles, you know. And have a little blurb about, you know, what kind of recipes are in it and what you’ll get out of it. But the next ad that I might have later in the night will just be a picture from the book. Okay, so, you know, so you’re trying to use different media that will actually appeal to different people, because we all know people are driven by different things. They might see the value in an offer coming out, or a book coming out, or the recipes and the food might be inspiring, and it might be the nutritional list, because they’re dairy free, and they want to know, you know, what recipes are dairy free, or what recipes are egg free, and all of those sort of things, because we put in a lot of extra information into our books, okay, to make things really, really valuable. 

Megan Porta  18:03

Yeah, you have a lot of books. So tell us how many eBooks and hard copy books you have. 

Megan Ellam  18:08

Okay, so we have 12 hard copy 13 hard copy books. Sorry, I just did number 13, which is a lucky number for me, and we actually sold out the entire production of that book in five days. Yeah, we didn’t want to bring another book into our house. We actually do all the logistics and stuff like that, so we set a limit. We pushed out those books. But of our hard copy books, two of our books have also won at the best of the best at the World gourmand cookbook awards, 100% self published books as well. So that’s up against published books as well. So we’ve won, you know, best diet book, and also our best of the best special categories for keto logo, and that was in 2022 and 2023 so that just shows that even books that you produce yourself without any publisher, can win at a world cookbook award. So that’s great. And yeah, ebooks, I have published 70 plus.

Megan Porta  19:06

Oh, gosh.

Megan Ellam  19:08

20 Of them are on our a part of our membership site that when people join, we’ve got a membership site that people pay either monthly or annual. They get 21 free ebooks, and they’re just mini ebooks with just a Meal, meal plans and recipes and that in them. So roughly, let’s just say 15 to 20 recipes in each but they’re pretty simple kind of meat. There’s still got to be meals, of course, but yeah, 50 plus ebooks. EBooks are amazing, though, because you can launch one, and then you can if it’s, you know, like I did last year, six years down the line, needs an upgrade. You can upgrade it, or you can pull them off, and then you can sell them at a discount before you pull them off. So then again, you’ve got more marketing capabilities with more content. And we’ve all got the power to do that, because we’ve, we’re, we’re writing recipes for our, yeah, websites, and, you know, I’m. And let’s just say, Okay, we did a launch the other day, made over 30,000 in one day, dollars, that is. And do we get that from ad revenue in one day? Some people might, but I don’t. So it’s where you’ve actually got the power to generate more income from doing these as well, and and it can even be from relaunchers, because you might have an ebook that you’ve done years ago, and you look at it now and you’re like, Oh, it does not resonate with me. It’s not me. My photography is better, my recipe writing’s better. Oh, my God, it’s terrible. Redo it. If you think the recipes in it are really good, you’ve got an opportunity there to repackage it, yeah, and if it’s an ebook, and you’ve got all the data of all the people that bought it, you give them the free update. They love you for that. But then they also go and visit your site, and they probably buy more things off you because you’ve done that, but then because you’ve repackaged it and you bought it onto the modernI saying that we’re re releasing this ebook, and again, you just do that same marketing of marketing tiles and photos. And I’ve done that with a few of mine. I’ve pulled quite a lot off my store now because they’re, they’re just done. You know, the I don’t have the time to redo it. I prefer to, like we do with some recipes on our website. You’ll trash some. You’re just a new Yes. So same with some ebooks and that you’re like, Yeah, look, it’s just not worth my effort to redo it, or it was such a good seller. And your, you know, your list mightn’t have grown in the way of buying customers that much that you think it’d be worth it, yeah, for an older title. But yeah, they’re like, I say really, for me, the whole publishing thing has been such a massive boost to our income streams. Absolutely.

Megan Porta  21:46

What is your revenue divide approximately? So you have ads on your site, and you do a membership as well, and then with your books, is it pretty heavy on the book side?

Megan Ellam  21:57

It’s definitely much heavier on the book side. So our ad revenue is only it used to be less than 5% but now it’s between five and 10% because our website’s actually been growing, we didn’t get hit with the updates, which is amazing, because we’re a gluten free, keto, low carb, special diet. You know, all the things that they really hit, but I think it’s really because we’re also a eCommerce site that’s been around for so long, and we’ve got all those products on them. We’ve got real reviews, like probably 1000s of them. I don’t know. I’ve never counted all our reviews, so that might have helped us, even though everyone that ever looked at my website told me to get it off there. But the books is the main one our our membership is still a six figure income every year, and it has been since the beginning. Again, even membership sites are amazing revenue stream when we launched in March, 2018 so pretty much a year after we’d originally launched the website. And it was always in my plans to do it. We did the first 200 people that joined got every ebook from then on, as long as they kept a renewing membership for free, except for ones that were associated with a book. So if it was like where I did the book, a new hard copy book, and they got an eBook for free, like with the purchase of hard copy those members didn’t get that one was only if it was just an ebook solely, and we still have over 50 of them, still, all these years later, six years later, still paying their renewing fee. So that’s that. But, yeah, we, we have, you know, a six figure income from that every year. But also, they’re your biggest customers. They’re your biggest support team. They’re your biggest cheerleaders, you know, because they will buy everything that you bring out. We put discounts and stuff like that on our products for all our members and things like that. So if you’re a monthly member, they get 10% off books and ebooks. If they’re an annual member, they get 20% off all books and ebooks. And like I said, it was only those founding members that got every free eBook. Anyone that joins now, they don’t get it for free. They have to pay, but they get an ad free website and exclusive content and stuff like that. So I don’t know what the split is between the books and and the membership, but the book side of things is our, definitely our main income stream. Okay, yeah, I’d say it’s at least 60 to 70% both my main income.

Megan Porta  24:25

So your niche is really focused on low carb keto, which I feel like is so diet specific, and a lot of people are looking for that. Do you feel like that is part of your success? Like, okay, I have a friend, Monica from The Hidden Veggies. She’s amazing. She’s a vegan blogger, and I feel like every cookbook she makes is so successful because she’s just really good at, like, putting marketing thought into things like you are. But also it’s a really specific, niche problem that people are having when they’re vegan. In and they want to eat cheese, or they want to eat, you know, something that they can’t eat anymore. So I don’t know, I’m I always think, like, how much of it is, because it’s so, so, so, so niche, like, could I create a cookbook Wonderland like you have? Probably not, because I don’t have anything super niche that’s solving a really unique, strong pain point for people. And

Megan Ellam  25:25

I’m hearing the pain point because that’s what I say to people to zone in on. But pain point can be anything from not being able to cook properly, you know, it can be like well worded recipes for anyone keto. Low Carb has actually been a decline in a massive, massive, spiraling decline. If you look at a lot of low car keto bloggers, most of them aren’t blogging low carb or keto anymore. I do because I, not only is this successful for me, but the main reason is for health reasons. I was insulin resistant. I was very overweight, and now I’m, you know, nearly 50 kilos lighter than I was when I first started this website. So I have to do it for my own health. Yeah. And I can’t lie, you know, I can’t say I hear all of a sudden, going to start cooking with sugar and flour when I don’t eat it, because what am I going to do with all the food? You know? So and my partner, he eats the same, even though he has no problem with weight or anything like that, but he eats the same as me anyway, and has for the seven years. I don’t think it’s specifically because of that. I think it can be harder because of this low carb and what you’ll find, if you even look on my website, it’s called Mad creations. It’s not called Mad creations, low carb, keto or anything like that. The recipes, most of them, don’t even have keto or low carb in the titles anymore. I actually create recipes that are local naturally. So like, let’s just say, if you had a caprese salad, there’s no bread or anything like that in it, right? So you know, if you eat a steak, it’s a steak. So I tend to pick recipes that are going to cross bridges everywhere, but where you’re saying people are looking for niche like even vegan, right? So we’ll all eat something that’s vegan as well. We don’t have to be vegan to buy a Vegan Cookbook. Yes, vegan is big, and it’s not in a downturn, because there’ll always be somebody you know, like there is with low carb, in some respects, people that need to eat that way, or choose to eat that way for religious reasons, health reasons, you know, social reasons, whatever. But I think everybody has the power to do be as successful. I mean, like, there’s obviously cookbook authors that are published and ones that are self publishing and that as well too, who are hugely successful, you know. And we know, like even in, say, websites and stuff like that, we know that, you know, let’s just pick one, Sally’s bakeware recipe nights. Neither of them are diet specific. Both very successful at what they do, probably very successful, very successful with their book sales and stuff like that, as well, too, published books.

Sponsor  28:00

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Megan Ellam  29:13

So I think everybody has the power to do it. It’s just listening to what your followers want from you and producing something that’s over and above what they’ll find in a bookstore. For me, I put in a lot of work, put in cooks notes, I put in substitutes variations, because I actually write for vegans and that as well too, even though keto is not really vegan, but there’s keto vegans, and there’s people that are looking for that vegan or that dairy free, because everyone can eat a Keto meal because I’m not making fake french fries, I’ll leave that for somebody else. I’ll make real food that just happens to be low carb. So if you’re making recipes that cross over those borders too, it gives you more to be able to niche down anyway, and even in a title like in. My notes myself. I’ve even got like, where people might do a book on dinners. Well, if you’re going to do ebooks, do it one on chicken dinners, because then that gives you an option later to do barbecue or meaty mains or pescetarian, you know, all these different things where you can actually niche into being general food blogger, but you’re making specific recipes for people that are actually got a dot that follow a specific diet. I said I was pescetarian for 10 years myself, and it’s I actually did a pescetarian book as well, too. Not a huge seller for me, but it’s probably one of the worst ones. But it was a throw together, I have to say. But you know, it still satisfies that need for those people that actually want that kind of title book. And then you’ll always get the people that just go, I’ve got to have everything you’d written, yeah, and I’ll buy it as well. But I think everybody’s got the potential. I don’t think it’s that I’m in a specific niche. Because, like I said, if you talk to any other bloggers that are in the low carb keto you’ll find, yeah, they haven’t been having this much success, yeah, with that niche specifically, and there’s been a big change. I mean, it’s certainly fallen down. The best diets and stuff like that used to be like number one, and I think it’s now that bottom, because I say it’s so restrictive, but I don’t see this restrictive.

Megan Porta  31:22

no, that’s that’s inspiring and helpful. And I know, like, I’m not trying to take credit away from what you do, or what people who find success with ebooks or cookbooks do at all. I think you guys are amazing in the way you think through marketing and put your books together and sell so much. It’s like, oh my gosh, this is so inspiring. So I know it’s more than just the niche. It’s just my niche is so bland. I just don’t know. I’ve given this so much thought, like, what could I what angle could I possibly propose that would be a best seller? I just, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not giving myself enough credit, but it’s like, oh, goulash and meatloaf. 

Megan Ellam  32:05

You get traffic to your site, don’t you? 

Megan Porta  32:07

Yes, yes. 

Megan Ellam  32:08

So then a marketing angle for an ebook, because if you haven’t published it all, even though I went straight into a book and ebooks together go into an ebook first. But a marketing angle for an ebook is simple. It’s actually having access to great recipes by their favorite blogger and things that you know, that they’ll love, because you know what’s hot on your website anyway. So you can take your top 10, if it’s all, let’s just say, in casseroles or whatever, and you make it 3040, 50 recipes all along those same sort of veins, but different, and put them all together in an ebook. Then they’ve actually got that ebook without ads. They’ve got it in their iBooks or whatever, where they can access it when they’re out at the supermarket, easily, because they know the name of the book. They can open it up. They can see all the ingredients in there. They’re not getting ads flashing up at them. It’s in a format that’s beautiful. And the same sort of thing with the books go, you know, it’s, it is so easy to see that. And even an example recipe teams, as we know that when Nagi bought out her dinner’s book last year, I think it was, or maybe the year before, made New York bestseller. Of course, everybody can get her recipes off her website, and it contains some in there, and it’s an open niche as well. So So is yours. So you can still do the same thing, but you’re selling it in like, people, there’s people that love books. They want the book. You know, you could publish your website, probably on a book, and people wouldn’t even know half the recipes were on your website. I mean, I put out one that’s like, you know, I update a recipe that’s six years old. And people, Oh, my God, this is amazing website six years but anyway, you know, and they think they know everything, or they’re like, trying to look in a Facebook group for the recipes, like, hello, look in the website. They don’t know. They don’t know how to Google.

Megan Porta  33:54

Yeah, that is a refreshing perspective as well. 

Megan Ellam  33:58

So just do it, because people will pay for that, you know, ease and and just also when, even if you’re using recipes off your own site as part of the books and stuff like that, reshoot them. Make it look, you know, like the whole theme of the book, and just make it something really special with added value in, like I said, all the extra cooks notes and, you know, you can have your QR codes to your videos and stuff like that if it’s a difficult recipe. But, you know, the more you add in in that sort of way, rather than just different ways to cook and, you know, beautiful ways to serve using variations of all the recipes that are in the book and stuff like that as well, too, those sort of things, you know, become, you know, it adds value to the book, because you’ve now got a book that’s, you know, let’s say it’s 100 recipes, but there’s 1000 variations with what you’ve written, and so many combinations of meals to make it into a meal plan and that. 

Megan Porta  34:51

So I liked your suggestion of using what you have on your blog, but then just reshooting so it looks like it looks different. You’ve given it a. Refresh for photography, and then you add extra cooks, notes, tips, etc, and it’s kind of like a whole new situation, right? Like, the recipe could be basically the same, but it just has a refresh. That’s a great thought. 

Megan Ellam  35:15

Well, I say, like, a lot of things to get through, through times and stuff like that. It’s like, let’s just say it was a cake. If you’re doing a vanilla cake for your website and you’ve got one on there, we’ll do five batches at once. Make five different cakes, shoot them all at the same time. One goes on your website, four into four different books, you know, or one book, you know, because one could be reserved for a Christmas book and all these sort of things. So that’s how I work. I do a lot of things in batches. But like you just said, if you’re going to reshoot, you might choose to reshoot your choc chip muffins for your website. But while you’re at it, you might make, you know, an orange poppy seed one for a new book, right? And you’re using the same batter, you’re just changing what goes into it and it comes out. 

Megan Porta  36:00

Exactly. Do you have time to just talk through, I don’t know, just some logistics, like, if somebody is really intrigued by this process of getting into writing books, ebooks, hard copy books, as a part of their business and adding to a new revenue stream in their business. Like, what main things would they need to think through first?

Megan Ellam  36:21

So I guess what I do first is think about what the niche is going to be. Niche down, create a theme or a vision board for the whole feel of the book, and then I start coming up with recipe ideas. So I actually create an index list. Doesn’t always end up that way at the end, but at least gives you a guide of what you might want to have in this book. And that was that would be the first thing I would want to do. So just, you know what it’s going to be about, what’s going to be in it, how many recipes, the feel of it, so that when you go to start shooting it, it’s all going to be something that’s going to have that same feel from beginning to end. Because, you know, some people might shoot over different seasons and stuff like that, and you’ve got different shadows and different colors. And then when you look for it all together, it might be all mismatched. So think about what you want. It’s the end result to look like. Then then go backwards. Once I’ve done all of that and got my index down of, you know, the recipes that I’d like to have in the book, I then start to write the recipes. So some people might actually do testing and in the kitchen work first and then put all their recipes together after that. But obviously, I’m from a background of cooking. I can write recipes in my sleep. 

Megan Ellam  37:32

I write first, get it out, then you put together a team of testers. Testers are really important. When you put a team of testers together, don’t pick all your friends that are really good cooks, pick ones that are really bad cooks too. They get a recipe from the way we do it. We’ve got about 35 testers. I break out groups in small for smaller books, for our big books, we do a lot of testers, but it’s easier to manage a team and say, 10 to 12. They get the recipe. So I don’t like so I don’t see pictures, nothing me some of them. They might, I might never even tested it, but as we just talked about, it could be a cake that I already know is going to turn out fine. It just be a variation of a cake that I’ve already made. And they test the recipes, they’ve got to give you feedback with a photo that shows up saying, you know, things on, whether it’s, you know, something they’d make again, whether the family loved it, what they change about it, ratings and stuff like that. That really helps with the feedback. But then you also can advertise your book, your recipes are all tried and true. That really helps we make sure that every tester in our groups tested at least like not they have tested each three times, but at least three testers have tested each recipe in every book. If I do another test and I change it, then they retest. Other things that I like is, with your recipes, try and think outside the box. And if you’re going to do a book on cakes, don’t make it look like every cake recipe that’s on Google. Anyway. You want to add some stuff that’s a little bit out there and crazy and give them really fancy names or funny names and stuff like that too. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve sold for really original recipes. We’ve actually even successfully chased people with IP lawyers trying to give my recipes away that were 100% unique, that you won’t find anywhere else that are in books. Yeah, that’s that’s something to add into your books as well, to try and you know, you don’t actually have to think about SEO with this too. This is the good bit about membership sites and books. There’s no SEO. There is, but there isn’t. You know, what I mean, like is, if you’re writing a book, people are going to look for the book. But if you know you can’t rank for roast chicken dinner, you can certainly make the best roast chicken dinner that you know you got the recipe for in your book that people will love, and you can photograph it better than anyone, and you’ll sell books because people will want your roast chicken dinner because they can see it looks better than anyone they’ve ever seen. I basically say that you know, you’re creating recipes that you current followers will love and lust for so you you give them some saucy pictures, some sexy names, and then they’ll want to buy it. Yeah, it’s another little thing of like niching down. But it’s like it is. It just creates more excitement about your books, because it’s not all these things that they’ve seen in every cookbook that they’ve already got on their shelves at home, you’ve got to give them more reasons why they want to have your books. And that’s why I said about adding the extra value pack to your books. Of tested easy steps, variations of cooking. It could be, you know, air fryer and oven substitutions, macros, gorgeous pictures, chef’s tips, two measurements. 

Megan Ellam  40:38

Everybody’s not on US customary, okay, the rest of the world’s on Imperial is on metric. So write your books for the world. Put in both measures, because there’s no again, it’s not like ad revenue, where you’re only trying to appeal to where you’re gonna get the most amount of dollars from. We sell our books all over the world, ebooks and cookbooks, and some people will pay hundreds of dollars for our books to get shipped to them, which is crazy, but they do because, again, we’re providing books that they can’t get anywhere else, they can’t get anything like what we’re doing. We’re trying to put together original content, and you can do that too, and it’s just that power of creating a need for people. It’s not just the pain points, but it’s also just everything that you do, you put in the quality and the love into it, and the passion I say it’s like, you know, basically being releasing me in a Willy Wonka and going that little bit out there, whether it’s in your style, because, like, I’m a little bit crazy with, like, the way I cook, I’ll do some stuff that’s really way out there. But, you know, it can be just like, over the top in a really nice way that still suits your market, but you really like trying to make everyone fall in love with you, and it’s an extension of you, and you’re never going to make a lot of money if you get somebody else to write the book for you. 

Megan Ellam  41:53

It’s not something to farm out to your VAs. If I’m going to put my name on the front of the cover, I’m the driver of my business, and I’m not the passenger, so everything in there’s going to be me. I do all the photos and stuff like that. And I said from the beginning I was not very great. I’ve just learned how to use my camera, you know, and just kept going. So it is just putting as much passion of you in there. Because if people are following you and going to your website, they love you. We all love different singers and stuff like that. That might not necessarily be the best singer in the world, you know, like, I’m not going to name any pop stars, but we all know that there’s some that have so true, sold billion, billions of dollars, and they can’t sing. You know, we know that we watch American Idol, and half of them can sing the doors off. People that are making billions of dollars or millions of dollars, not billions, millions millions of dollars, with their albums, and because they look right, you know, and they they can sound right with auto tune or whatever. So we can do the same we because so it is just really catering towards the people that you’ve got now, because they, like I said earlier, they’ll become your biggest cheerleaders. They’ll be telling their friends, oh my god, like, you know Megan, she does these cookbooks, and she makes the best casseroles. You know, the kids love them, you know, because, and that’s something we always get the testers to do, too, if they’ve got families, the kids try it and that as well, too, and we get the feedback from that. 

Megan Ellam  43:14

So we’re trying to, you know, you’re always trying to tick all the boxes that you can, and it’s not something to be afraid of, because if you’re already getting traffic to your site, you’ve already got something people want, then all you’re doing is you’re putting it in a different package, and you’re making more money out of it. Because when somebody goes to your website and you’re advertising on your facebook group every day or Facebook page every day, you know, go and see my chicken fried steak, you’re making how many cents when they go there? Well, if it’s, here’s my chicken fried steak from my cookbook, that’s $30 well, you know, then they’re going to buy that $30 cookbook. You know, you’ve just made $25 less tax and Gateway fees. Then, you know, that’s a lot more money than what you would have got for from a recipe. So, yeah, I would just be putting that all together in a book, or your passion, or your love, or your inspiration, of what you’re currently doing, and dialing it up nine or 10, because honestly, writing a book is quicker than writing a blog post. I swear. We don’t have to do all that SEO research and keywords and stuff like that. You’re doing the recipe. You shoot it, you know, you don’t have to do all the process shots. There’s a lot less work in many respects. And then once you’ve got it all, like I said, it’s just people. I get a lot of bloggers saying to me, I don’t find time to advertise. I hate marketing all that sort of stuff. It’s like, well, you’re marketing yourself every time you’re posting a recipe link, right? So you’re just swapping out, I do three, say, three posts a day on my Facebook page that to a product or my membership. So it’s just subbing out some of those recipe ones and sending it to a product instead. 

Megan Ellam  44:45

And they can be three different looks like I said, they could be a marketing tile that is a picture of your book jacket or your ebook jacket. If you’re going to do an ebook to use ebook pictures, don’t use book pictures. Don’t call it a book. It’s an ebook because that gets confusing, and people might want their money back if they think they’re going to give them. Yeah. Hard copy book because you’ve put a hard copy. I’ve seen it before we even did it when we first started. It’s better. There’s so many good mock ups now that you can use but, yeah, just getting it out there and marketing in your emails, definitely start putting your products in there. If you’ve got old ebooks now that you know, ugly covers that don’t have indexes, don’t have any internal pictures or anything like that in the marketing, fix all that up and start putting them in your emails, and that as well, too. Our email list has grown. We do have nearly 80,000 members on our email list now. So it is something that you’ve just got to constantly, you know, work on to get, you know, people to do it. But like, I always think, I’m a business. I’m not giving stuff away for free, because that’s what people go, Oh, your website, the recipes are free. Well, you make money, right So, and they are free for them to use, but you’re a business, and that’s when you start to do if somebody says, Why would I pay when I hit something, look, you just say, Look, I’m not telling you, you have to. It’s just that we are a business, and this is just another thing that we do. So after a little while. I mean, people knew from my obviously, the way I told you I started as a business anyway, I told everyone I was writing books, so everyone expected it. But even if you’re just starting now, it’s like, well, you are a business and you know, it’s just how you just veer away a bit to do that. And it’s on the site, you can put trip wires and that in your posts and that to take them to your books, not always just, you know, internal link to another recipe. 

Megan Ellam  46:28

So there’s more internal linking there, and a great way to boost revenue on that as well too. You can have specific tiles on your web posts and that as well too on your recipe posts. Yeah, we don’t, we don’t do paid ads. I used to do Facebook paid ads, but we were paying about 100 grand a year for a service, and the fee, it’s not cheap. So what a lot of people think it’s like boosting a post, it isn’t going to get you any reach. Really, I don’t think anyone gets any reach. We boost in these days. And if you work out how much you’re going to pay for a lead for, you know, a hard copy book we sell out for $50 and ebooks roughly between 30 and $40 you’re not going to make the return on investment for that. So these days, you’ve got the power of reels. You a lot of people are doing reels for somebody else’s product. So do reels for your own, you know, you’re making your own recipe, you know, and even when you’re doing that, like we’ve had, we’ve had products. We’ve actually done our own product range, with pantry ranges and stuff like that as well, too, with another company. So we actually had another company approach us to do a collaboration of Mad creations pantry ranges. They manufactured the products and they sold them all. They just had our trademarking on it, and we royalties and commissions from them as well. So, you know, all these sort of things can happen from your own advertising and that as well, too, of your own books. And that’s what we did, you know. So basically, I created recipes for other things that were not in my books, and put them in a packet. And they’re good things to make a lot of money, you know. And they’re and put you in good stead with a lot of brands too. And I guess it makes you appear more successful than you are. As I always say, like to people, don’t, don’t be jealous of what somebody’s achieved, and that as well too, or any followers they’ve got, because you can have all the followers in the world, but you might still be only earning anything, right? But, yeah, I think it’s just putting things in practice and making things happen for yourself. And if you set goals that you’re going to launch, you know, I’m going to launch my next book by the 30th of September, you know. So it’ll be out before Black Friday and Christmas and stuff like that. And you just do it, you know.

Megan Porta  48:39

I am so inspired by everything you’ve done. Megan, this is so cool, and congratulations on all of your success. I am just kind of in awe of everything, but I can see this being really inspiring for people, because, as you know, food bloggers are looking for additional streams of revenue, something that’s actually going to bring in money. And it seems like with a little bit of intention and just a clear path and some goals that you could actually make this happen with book ebook publishing and also self publishing your own cookbooks. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for all of this. This was super awesome.

Megan Ellam  49:19

That’s okay. I’ll just say one more thing on ebooks and books, because it’s one thing that I keep seeing a lot of people do wrong, and it is something that I’ve spoken with some other bloggers about, don’t undervalue yourself. Don’t underprice yourself. Don’t be cheap. Nothing disappoints me more than seeing an ebook that’s got 50 dinner recipes that take a long time to make for $6.99 so you know, like, if you wanted to make $200,000 from that book. $6.99 I did some maths, but let’s just say you’re gonna make $5.90 less gateway fees and tax. You have to sell 33,900 books if you wanted to make $200,000 and your book ebook was at $29.95 that’s 2534 less tax and Gateway fees. Just an approximation, you only have to sell 7893 so that’s about a five to one ratio. So price yourself up. If you give yourself a good price tag, then you’re actually saying you’re worth the money. And like I said, and if you’ve created an ebook that is like a book from front cover to back cover that’s got full page images, full page recipes, none of these tiny, little images above your recipe, or anything like that created as a book so that you know it’s two page open. Make sure that you know recipe is with the matching picture if they’re going to look at it two page or print it out. But yeah, it’s the value. Add value and make yourself worth more, because it’s like if we all bought new cars and we all start selling them for a quarter of the price, then it brings the price of those cars down, right? So same sort of thing with bloggers. Don’t sell yourself short. You’re creating something that people can’t get in the store anywhere else. So price it that way, and it works like I sell $40 ebooks every day. Wow, that’s amazing for an ebook. Yeah, yeah, this

Megan Porta  51:06

is something. This is an issue. I think just kind of generally with entrepreneurs, we tend to low, lower the price, undervalue ourselves and what we create. I hear people all the time say, What should I price my ebook? And then they do go to that price, like 4.99-5.90-6.99, and I love that you’re going way higher than that, and you’re just, you’re valuing the work that you do, and people are buying it. They see your value, and they are, well, investing in you. 

Megan Ellam  51:34

Well, if somebody’s going to get their nails done, it costs them, what? 30 to $50 yeah. $60 okay, so that’s for an hour. How long did it take you to write an ebook? Lot more than an hour.

Megan Porta  51:48

Oh, that’s so that’s such a good analogy. I love that. And people gladly spend that money on a pedicure or manicure or hair. Think of how much we spend on our hair, 

Megan Ellam  51:58

Eyelashes, all these things. 

Megan Porta  52:00

Eyelashes, yes, right. Okay, yes, I’m pumped up. Now.

Megan Ellam  52:04

I look at people today and I’m like, How much do you cost per month? And it’s like, you know, for me, like I said, they’re buying something they can’t get elsewhere for a star because it’s written by you. So that doesn’t I’m not saying that mine’s so different. I’m saying your book. So yeah, price yourself that way. I even see some Instagrammers and that are now, like, you know, they don’t have websites or whatever, and they’re selling books for like, $100 or whatever for their recipes that they’re all over the Instagram like, good on them. You know, I’m not jealous of whatever they might have, because they might have hundreds of 1000s of followers, and I could never get Instagram to go for me. But anyway. But yeah, it’s, it’s something that I just keep seeing, and I’m like, stop doing it. People stop doing it. Add value. Like, it took you time to do it, make money.

Megan Porta  52:50

I’m, yeah, I’m super pumped about that. Now. Okay, all right. Well, thank you. This was very just a really great conversation. So thanks Megan for getting up in the middle of the night for us to deliver all of this value. We appreciate you, and I hope you can go back to bed easily after this first you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to share with us?

Megan Ellam  53:10

I think it’s pretty pertinent after what we’ve just discussed, but I’ve written here, don’t dream about success or dwell and procrastinate on the lack of it. Just start doing instead of saying and complaining, and don’t listen to the naysayers, the more you hustle, the more success will come your way. I promise.

Megan Porta  53:27

I love that. Yeah, this perfect way to end, yeah, we’ll put together a show notes page for you. Megan, if you want to go look at those head to eatblogtalk.com/madcreations, tell everyone where they can find you. Megan?

Megan Ellam  53:41

Okay, so I’m at madcreations hub.com, so yeah, you can find me there. Mad creations Facebook page.

Megan Porta  53:49

Awesome. Your blog is beautiful, by the way. I was just peeking at it. Oh, thank you. Well, get back to sleep. Thanks for joining us. Megan,

Megan Ellam  53:58

Thank you so much for having me. 

Megan Porta  53:59

Yes, thank you for listening food bloggers, I will see you next time. 

Outro  54:06

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.