We cover information about creating, marketing, and selling digital products that resonate with your audience and provide a stable income stream.
Listen on the player in this post or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.
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Tammy Overhoff is a seasoned food blogger and digital product expert who began her journey in 2011 with the Organize Yourself Skinny blog. She empowers busy women to lead healthier lives through eBooks, digital guides, and courses. In 2023, Tammy expanded her business with Reset & Flourish, offering digital products and a meal prep membership site. Despite numerous Google algorithm updates, her focus on digital products has kept her blog successful. Tammy also launched Tasty Digital Eats to support food bloggers transform their recipes into digital products and build stable businesses. |
Takeaways
- Diversify your income: Create digital products to reduce reliance on volatile traffic and ad revenue that’s subject to Google updates.
- Solve problems for your audience: Focus on creating products that address specific needs or help achieve goals – ask your audience, don’t guess!
- Repurpose your content: Transform existing blog posts and recipes into valuable digital products.
- Nurture your email list: Build a strong community to effectively market and sell your digital products.
- Start with small wins: Begin with simple products like meal plans or ebooks to gain confidence and momentum.
- Learn from your audience: Use email statistics and social media feedback to identify popular topics for products.
- Create a system: Develop a consistent process for creating, launching, and selling digital products.
- Bundle your offerings: Combine related products to increase value and boost sales.
Resources Mentioned
Tasty Digital Eats – Learn more about creating digital products
Transcript
Click for full script.
EBT599 – Tammy Overhoff
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 00:15
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.Â
Megan Porta 00:53
I think, whether or not you’ve been hit by the helpful content update or maybe another algorithm or change in our volatile 2024 here in the food blogging industry, you are going to be super interested and inspired by this episode with Tammy Overhoff from Reset and Flourish. She’s an OG food blogger. She’s been around for a really long time. Tammy experienced devastating traffic loss in 2019 after a really big Google update. After that, she just felt like she couldn’t go on. She didn’t have the passion for what she was doing anymore. All of her work was just kind of thrown down the drain. But she found this avenue of creating digital products for her business that not only was she passionate about, but that was really landing with her audience, that they really craved and needed. And she made a lot of money doing it, and that has taken off since, and she’s continued to flourish with these digital products. She talks us through her whole strategy in this episode, how she chooses what she makes, how she bundles her things together and sells them, everything in between. Everything you will need to know about bridging that gap between digital product creators and food bloggers is in this episode, which, by the way, is episode number 599 sponsored by Rankiq.
Sponsor 02:12
Hey, food bloggers. We are currently looking for the perfect bloggers to join the 2025 mastermind groups. And I know as we get applications in and we start talking to people about joining the groups, one of the main reservations is investment, both time investment and money investment, which is why I have this audio clip from dawn. She’s the blogger at Savor the Best she is in this year’s group, and she’s going to talk about how this was a reservation for her as well, and how she took the leap anyway. For more information and to apply for the 2025, groups, go to eatblogtalk.com/mastermind. Here is Dahn,
“Yeah, probably the monetary and time commitment was maybe the biggest reservation. It really by the time I wanted to join, there wasn’t an awful lot of reservation, because I just felt that I needed, you know, I really needed to invest in in the business. I needed to put a little more skin in the game. And I had been to a retreat that Megan had put on in the past, and I just felt a good connection with Megan, and I felt like, you know, like I wanted to continue with something else that she provided. Now back to the episode.
Megan Porta 03:23
Tammy Overhoff is a seasoned food blogger and digital product expert who began her journey in 2011 with the Organize Yourself Skinny blog. She empowers busy women to lead healthier lives through eBooks, digital guides, and courses. In 2023, Tammy expanded her business with Reset & Flourish, offering digital products and a meal prep membership site. Despite numerous Google algorithm updates, her focus on digital products has kept her blog successful. Tammy also launched Tasty Digital Eats to support food bloggers transform their recipes into digital products and build stable businesses. Tammy, it is so great to have you on Eat Blog Talk. How are you doing today?
Tammy Overhoff 04:02
I’m doing great. Thank you so much, Megan for having me. I’m super excited. I’m a long time listener, so I am very, very happy to be here talking your audience today.
Megan Porta 04:11
I love having listeners as guests. It makes me so happy. I’m smelling smiling from ear to ear. So grateful to have you here, Tammy, before we get into talking about digital products, which is such a great topic for food bloggers right now, I feel like, what fun fact do you have to share with us.
Tammy Overhoff 04:30
Well, I have to say, sitting and thinking about a fun fact definitely reminded me that I am kind of boring. Pretty much been a mom for 20 years and a business owner and everything like that. But this morning, I was up early, and my stepdaughter Gabby was up early, and I asked her, I said, so what should I say for a fun fact? And she’s like, I don’t know, maybe that you like to go to Panera and be alone? And I said, that’s definitely not what she’s thinking for a fun fact. Yes. And so she says, Well, you know what? I think you should say that you have a big blended family with five teenage girls, basically all the same age, and that we all get along. And I was like, Yeah, that’s a really good fun fact. So that’s my fun fact. I have two daughters of my own. My husband has three daughters. Move them are twins, and they are pretty much all the same age, within a year of each other. So it is a full house. But just like my daughter or stepdaughter, Gabby says, We all get along great, and so she thought that should be our fun fact.
Megan Porta 05:39
Oh my gosh. And so many girls, all the girls. I have a full boy house. I don’t even know what it’s like to live with girls anymore. I have my two sons, my husband and our pets are all boys too. So I’m, like, super outnumbered, but it works for us. But I I had sisters growing up, so I love girl houses too. So fun.
Tammy Overhoff 06:01
Yep, I had two sisters and a brother, so I guess best of all worlds.
Megan Porta 06:06
I love that your stepdaughter helped you to come up with your fun fact. But I also like your Panera. Being at Panera alone, that was good I do as well. So I think a lot of us introvert food bloggers can say that probably right.
Tammy Overhoff 06:21
Oh for sure.
Megan Porta 06:22
Yes. Okay, so you have a couple of businesses, Tammy, which I would love, if you kind of filled us in about Go ahead. So well,
Tammy Overhoff 06:29
just like you, Megan, I am an OG food blogger. I started my food blog Organize Yourself Skinny back in 2011 and I’ve been running, and I, well, I’ve been running that full time since the summer of 2014 and so and ever since. And I could talk a little bit, you know more about digital products and where those fit in, but I basically have done Organize Yourself Skinny. And then in 2023 I rebranded, or pretty much, I guess, added another branch of my business to Organize Yourself Skinny so Reset and Flourish. So that’s my brand, and everything kind of falls under that now. And with Reset and Flourish, I have my Reset and Flourish shop. All my socials are Reset and Flourish, and I also have a membership that I run as well. And so it’s all pretty much the same topics, using different organizational methods like meal prep, freezer prep, healthy, clean eating to just live a healthier lifestyle lose weight. So I’ve been doing that, like I said, since 2011 and then just this past year, I added another branch to my business called Tasty Digital Eats, where I support food bloggers and helping them create digital products using the content that they already have on their blog and in their business, and repurposing that into digital products for their audience. So that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing since 2012 to be honest. And food blogging has just, or digital products had, have just completely saved my food blog. But I can definitely talk more about that as well, and it’s made me love food blogging again, to be quite honest. Yeah.
Tammy Overhoff 08:10
So back in 2012 is when I put together my first digital product. So it’s interesting, because at the end, I think it’s kind of I don’t know if newer bloggers may understand this concept, but back then, advertising was not what it is today. So there wasn’t Ad Thrive, or Raptive, there wasn’t MediaVine. So making the money that we make now with advertising dollars really just was not an option at that time, maybe for people like Pioneer Woman and maybe bigger name bloggers like that, but for someone like me just starting out, it really wasn’t a thing, and affiliate marketing during that time, it just that really wasn’t paying the bills either. So I followed, and I’m sure you’ve heard of him, Pat Flynn, and at that time, he… well, and he still does to this day. He was very big on digital products, and was always talking about creating a digital product. You know, this is something you need to do to make money, and basically all of that. So in 2012 I just created my first digital product. I put together a meal plan, so a make ahead meal plan, I had meal prep tips, freezer prep tips. I added habit challenges onto that, and some other things. And so that was a year after I started my blog. I sold that on my blog to my small email list at the time, I also promoted it on Facebook, and that made over $1,000 in the first month. And that really blew my mind, and really showed me that this digital product thing was a real thing, that this was definitely a way where I can make money with my food blog, because at that time. I should also say, when I first started my food blog, I was working full time outside the home at a, you know, at a full time job. And my girls were little. I had a five year old and a three year old, and I wanted to stay home. I wanted to work for myself, and so I really wanted to find a way to make money a full time income from my blog. So I created those digital products. I created a new version every month of a meal plan and exercise challenges and all that for four months straight, and then it kind of ended. They made 1000 to $1,500 each month. But the problem was I didn’t have a system in place at that time to really help me to keep going with creating that digital product and kind of just having that system in place of creation and selling and building the list and all of that. So it kind of dwindled out.
Tammy Overhoff 10:58
And one of my biggest challenges as a food blogger and as a business owner is, I’ve always been like, the shiny object syndrome, yeah. Like, I’ve always been like, oh, wait, I need to try that, or I need to do that, or that looks no, that looks good. And then what I was working on would just kind of fall off the ledge, or I would just kind of put it aside. But the beautiful thing about those meal plans and those challenges exercise challenges, is even though I put them back in my Google Drive and I kind of forgot about them, they actually resurrected in 2020 when I repurposed them into a bundle that still sells to this day. So that’s where I’ve that’s where I really started to discover the whole repurposing my content. So, and I’ll get I’ll talk about that in a second. But then in 2015 is when I launched my first ebook, and that ebook was called or, well, it still is to this day. I still sell it to this day, Organize Yourself Skinny: The Five Strategies to Help You Eat Healthier with a Hectic Schedule. So in there I’m just talking about like meal prep, freezer prep, and I give recipes and all of that. But what’s interesting in talking about repurposing content with that ebook, Organize Yourself Skinny, I actually that ebook, the content that ebook, started as a blog series. And I don’t know if you remember that back in the day, everyone did like five or six blog series. I like talking about their life and why they started their blog, and all these other things. So I did a six part blog series talking about my whole weight loss journey at that time. And then that series ended up turning into an email series that I used as an opt in to bring people onto my email list. Well, that was so popular, I guess you can say and people were giving me just great feedback all the time.
Tammy Overhoff 13:04
I then took that content and expanded it into my first ebook. And so I started writing that I would say, the middle of 2014 and I launched that in January of 2015 and in that first launch, it made just about $5,000 and I sold that, yeah, so, and I was just blown away, because, again, you know, digital products, and that’s what I was, you know, thinking that would help me, you know, to build my Income and make money. Well, when I sold that, I just was I sold that to my email list, and I would just linked out to it in certain blog posts. So every week, I would have a weekly meal plan, and I would just link out to that. But I didn’t have this big sales strategy. I literally just had a small email list that I was just nurturing, talking to just like a friend. There wasn’t these big strategies at the time, and when I launched that ebook, people bought it, and they were I got great testimonials and feedback, but again, I didn’t really have a strategy. So I would sell it during flash sales, holiday promotions, and it would make a couple $1,000 every time I would launch it, or I would do a flash sale or promotion. But it didn’t have that system in place to continuously be bringing in leads and selling to them, so, but it was selling, and I was fine with that, because I think 2015 is when I got into Ad Thrive. So I was now making money with advertising. And since 2015 my Ad Thrive income has always been around, I would say six figures, maybe a little bit more, and which was good, but the problem was now my shiny object was going towards, okay. Well. At my I need to focus on this ad revenue and getting that pumped up and all you know, and all of that. And I was kind of losing focus with my digital products, but in 2017 I took the ebook, The organize yourself ebook, and I turned that into my first online course. And that launch, that first launch, brought in $18,000.
Megan Porta 15:24
What?
Tammy Overhoff 15:25
I swear. And within a three year period, it made just under $200,000
Megan Porta 15:31
Oh my gosh, that’s awesome. Tammy, congratulations.
Tammy Overhoff 15:35
And it was so amazing, because, again, that was completely built on the back of me having an email list, nurturing that email list, building that community that had nothing to do with SEO or any of that. It was strictly me, building my community, talking to my people. But the biggest thing that I learned from that is, in order to continue to make sales, like an $18,000 launch, and consistently bringing that money is you need to be consistently bringing in those fresh leads at a pretty rapid rate, I guess I’ll say, like, they can’t just like, trickle in and you’re gonna make $18,000 like you need to be really aggressively, consistently bringing in emails and focusing on that and so, so that’s when I really started to discover just the power of a nurtured email list, and what that email list can do for you as you’re selling, You know, for selling digital products. So I sold that for a couple years. I had Pinterest going pretty much whatever all other bloggers at that time were doing. My ad revenue was going up. I was bringing in money with my digital products. At that time, SEO was working in my favor as far as different review posts go. So I started making really good money with a few review posts that were ranking high in SEO. But then in 2019 in November, 2019 is when my site got hit by that Google algorithm update. I don’t know. Are you familiar? You know… Okay. I’m sure all of us on some level, have been traumatized
Megan Porta 17:19
By some some algorithm, some change over the years for sure, yes.
17:24
So that completely rocked my business. So at that time, I never really had these huge SEO numbers. So I was never making a million page views or anything like that. But like I said, I did have a few review posts doing really well on SEO well, and they were bringing in probably close to 70, $80,000 a year just from being number one and two. You know, on Google Well, I was completely knocked out of the top spots. Lost all my income with that, and I was losing a bunch of traffic. So my advertising revenue was going down, and because I wasn’t bringing in those consistent email leads, my digital product sales were going down. So I was just like, oh my gosh, what do I do? I mean, at that point I’m working full time, my income was supporting my whole family. I mean, when I lose money, my family loses money. And so I always think that’s important. I mean, our money is not just Starbucks money or Panera money. I mean it helps it’s my family’s money. It helps my daughter with college. It helps everything. So that was a that was a really big deal. And if I could go back in time, I wish I would have dove in, back into my community, and really figured out the whole digital product game, I guess, at that time. But instead, I dove into the SEO game, and I did the grind for probably close to three years. I did the theme changes, I got the consultants. I did all the things that food bloggers do, and I know even to this day, there are every single consultant would look at my blog and be like, you need to change this. But, and that’s fine, because here’s the thing, when you lose income, you lose the money to pay for help. So I was pretty much doing everything on my own, and the needle was just not moving forward.
Tammy Overhoff 19:24
The SEO was not changing no matter what I was doing. And in fact, I was getting hit by more algorithm updates. So I think it was June or May of 2022 I got hit with another algorithm update, and this was after like, two and a half, three years of just updating posts and spending the money and doing all that. And I said, you know what? I can’t do this any like, I gotta take a break. And I remember thinking to myself, if I don’t pivot my business right now, I’m done. Like, I’m done, put a fork in me. Business is. Yeah, that’s literally how I felt. Just put a fork in me. I need to go back to a quote, unquote regular job. So I at that point, I said, Well, you know what? I have this whole community. At that point, I had my Facebook group. They had 14,000 14,000 people were in that Facebook group. I had this big email list that I just continued to grow over the years, even though I wasn’t, quote, unquote, aggressively growing it, it was growing. And I really, at that point, didn’t talk to my community in probably two and a half years because I was so head down, focused on SEO. So I was like, Okay, I heard of people doing these type of challenges, like smoothie challenges, or whatever type of challenges, with their community. And I thought to myself, well, I can do that. I have all these smoothie recipes on my blog. I’m going to take 10 of them. We’re going to do a smoothie challenge. So I went into my Facebook group and I said, okay, hey guys, I’m here. I am. How you doing? And I was just kind of like, All right, let’s do, who wants to do a smoothie challenge? And I set up where they had to sign up with their email, and then they received the all the materials, so the recipes, the grocery list, and all, you know, the and all that stuff. So I had, like, close to 2000 people sign up for this challenge.
Megan Porta 19:26
That’s so many.
Tammy Overhoff 19:45
Oh my gosh, it was amazing, and I just hosted it live in this group, and I’m posting pictures of myself with these smoothies, me and my kids, and then everyone else starts posting pictures of themselves with their smoothies. And it completely reinvigorated me, my audience and my entire business. And I remember, and I’ll tell you in a second how I made money off of that. But I just remember at that time, people were saying to me, Tammy, where have you been? Like, where have you been? And I’m like, oh my like, I missed you too. And I just remember thinking to myself, I have so and I’m sure you have the same thing in your community since you’ve been doing this so long, but I have people in my audience that have been with me for 10 years. Yeah, more than that, like they have been with me through my kids being little. I’ve been, you know, I’ve seen them, you know, pregnant. Like we’ve all like, you know, have been together for this whole like, life, you know, all our life changes and everything. And it was like, What am I doing? Like, I already have this whole community of people that depend on me, that come to me for this information. So after I did the smoothie challenge, I went into a mason jar salad challenge. So mason jar salads are kind of like the recipe I’m known for in my community.
Sponsor 22:51
Food bloggers. Let’s take a quick break to chat about rankiq. Rankiq is a powerful keyword research tool made just for you. For bloggers, you’ve heard me talk about this keyword research tool so much before, and I am going to keep talking about it, because it works. Yes, it still works. The March edition of the HCU definitely had an impact on my organic traffic for my food blog, but it wasn’t devastating, and things are starting to climb back up. I so strongly believe that all of the high quality niche centroid content I’ve spent the last three years publishing, so much of it from keywords that I found in RankIQ, is the reason I’m still afloat here is why rankiq has helped. I’ve only ever searched for and written about keywords that are 100% relevant to my niche and brand. All of the keywords in rankiq are low competition and High search volume, helping my content to head right to the top of searches. Yes, still, the rankiq optimizer is the best and creates the most well rounded posts. Check it out for yourself by going to rankiq.com now back to the episode.
Tammy Overhoff 24:03
I did the same thing. I got the recipes off my blog, put it all together. They had to sign up again, all of that. But after this challenge, I launched my Reset and Flourish ebook bundle. So I guess backing up very quickly in 2020 I took the Organize Yourself Skinny ebook that I created in 2015 and then I wanted to make it bigger into a bundle. So I went into my Google Drive, started, you know, clicking around, look and see what I had. And I came across those meal plans that I created in 2012 with the exercise challenges, and then I also had habit challenges in there. I took those out, spruce them up, and made them part of the Reset and Flourish bundle, and I created it into a 30 day workbook. And I took that created like a sales page and whatever for it. Yeah, so after the mason jar salad challenge, I sold that bundle, and that again, made about four to $5,000 in that launch. And I was like, Okay, I’m back in this so great. I don’t have to shut down my blog.
Megan Porta 25:17
So can I ask you a question about that quick? So you did. You ran the challenges for free through your community, and then afterward, you kind of went back, took all the information included in the challenges and created a bundle that you sold?
Tammy Overhoff 25:31
Yes, okay, well, the bundle that I actually sold in the mini launch after the challenge I already had, I had the Organize Yourself Skinny ebook created, and then I put the workbook. I created the workbook based on the meal plans that I created in 2012. However, after the mason jar salad challenge, I went to my blog, I started to think, what other channel eating challenges can I put together? So I created an overnight oats challenge and a healthy dinner challenge. And those I put with my smoothie challenge and my mason jar salad challenge. And then I created a challenge Starter Guide, and I put that into a brand new product, into a bundle, and I sold that. I launched that in October of 2022 and to date, that has made over $100,000. So it can that that is the product that saved my business, and that definitely that’s when I decided, Okay, I’m going all in on digital products. I of course, when I’m updating content on my blog. I use best SEO practices, but my mental stability mirrored the SEM Rush graphs.
Tammy Overhoff 26:52
I mean, 100% it’s just, you know, you would log in every day and you see traffic’s down, traffic’s up. I mean, it would. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to create an income stream in my business that I controlled, and that’s when I realized digital products was an income stream that I can control, because not only did I have the audience and I knew how to sell it, but then during that time, I learned how to use Facebook ads, and that was a whole new ball game that really gave me the leverage to be able to control not just building my email list, but also selling my products. So that’s kind of like where my strategy lands now, where I’m always building my email list, 100% because your email list is your biggest asset when it comes to selling digital products, if you have an email list, you 100% should be thinking about putting a digital product income stream in, because you already have a way to sell that product to the audience who has already told you they want to hear from you, and then I also you like I said, I use Facebook ads as well. So, so that’s kind of where I’m at now, as far as my whole business.
Megan Porta 26:52
I understand.
Tammy Overhoff 28:11
So well, I should also say, after I created the healthy eating challenges kit, then I realized I need, I wanted to create more digital products. So I created my freezer to flourish guides. So I created a bundle again. Every single one of my digital products uses repurposed content and recipes from my blog. If I ever put anything new, like a new recipe, it’s only to round out what is already in in that digital product. And then after I created a couple, about two or three more guides, well, I created them as bundles. Then I opened up my Shopify store, the reset or not, the Reset, Reset and Flourish, shop.com and that’s where you can find my bundles. I sell them as bundles, and then I also break them up and will sell them as individual products. So when you have a bundle, you could kind of do different things with it. So now I sell digital products every single day. So I get people on my email list, I take them through my funnels, I nurture them, and then I always sell to them, and I’m always either leading them directly to a sales page or I direct them to my Shopify store where they can kind of just buy what they need. But that’s definitely where it is. That’s where I’ve landed as far as digital products and how I sell them to date.
Megan Porta 29:36
I love that you had just this kind of renewed passion for your business, after finding something that worked with digital products and seeing, Oh my gosh, this is something I enjoy, and it’s also something that people need and want. So that’s really inspiring, because that kind of volatile, tumultuous mental state that you alluded to is. Something that a lot of us can relate to, especially this year in 2024 when things just seem so uncertain and they’re all over the place and up and down and oh my gosh, back and forth everywhere. So something that is reliable sounds very intriguing. So if somebody is like, yeah, like, really interested in what you’re saying, wants everything that you’re talking about. Where do you recommend they start if they’ve never created a digital product before?
Tammy Overhoff 30:26
Well, I definitely think when it comes to digital products, you have to really be committed to shifting your mindset when it comes to your income streams and your food blog, because I’m not sure where it became the only path for food bloggers to just SEO ad revenue, but digital products opens up a whole new income stream, and like I said, one that you have so much more control over. And so when it comes to like, where to start, I definitely think, well, first and foremost, when you’re creating a digital product, it’s not about just throwing your top 20 best recipes that Google says are your best recipes into a PDF. You could possibly sell that to your warm audience, meaning the people who already know you. But the key to being successful with digital products and scaling it is you need to create something that you can sell to a cold audience, meaning people who are just finding you. So you want to think about how can you curate your recipes and content into a package that either solves a problem or helps them achieve a goal. And that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be a life changing goal. It can be anything from planning a party, putting together a cookie exchange, what you know, using certain baking methods, of course, weight loss, low carb eating. I’m working with a food blogger right now who’s putting together a whole ebook on mocktails, dinner shortcuts. I mean, there are, there’s so much that you can take from your blog and curate it in a way that’s going to help your reader. And that’s where I think that food bloggers need to really think about it, because up until now, I think a lot of us, we really look at our content through the lens of Google, like, what can we write to get you know for Google, even though it is for our readers, of course, but we’re thinking about ranking and what all you know, keyword research and all of that. Now, I think it’s important to really look at your content differently. How? So you have all these recipes on your site, most people, probably all people who find you, they don’t really know how to like what they’re looking for, how to search for things, how to kind of put it all together. So your job as the food blogger is to take all of that and almost guide them through the content and the recipes so they can actually utilize your content and recipes in a way that is truly going to help them with whatever that problem is or whatever that goal is. So that’s, you know, that’s pretty much like where I would first start, and then I would really start thinking about, like, if you’re unsure, well, I’m not really sure what a good idea would be, or I don’t know what my audience wants. I always recommend that you, the first thing you look at are your email statistics. And don’t go into Google. You don’t need to go into Pinterest. Go into your email statistics and see what are the topics that you have sent your readers that they are most interested in. So what are they clicking on? What are they opening? That’s how I figured out when I started writing my digital products on freezer meals. I was go. I just started reading through all of my I just opened up ConvertKit. Started looking at all these past emails that I had, and I just started seeing all these different freezer topics that my audience was clicking on. The open rates were so much higher, and so I was like, oh, okay, well, obviously this is something my audience wants. So I just created a few more emails. I sent them out just to kind of validate that is what they they want, and that they’re interested in it. And then I also in my Facebook group I had, so I had all these different ideas for freezer guides. I put together, like a poll in my Facebook group, and I kind of just gave them different ideas of what I can write about, and they just voted on, you know, which one they thought, and the one that they really wanted was my freezer to flourish, individual freezer meals guide, which was interesting, because I actually thought. They’re going to choose more of like the protein ones. So I was going to do a freezer meal guide on just ground turkey and then chicken, and I thought for sure that’s what they would want. No they picked the other one. That’s now my third best selling product because I listened to my audience. And again, every single one of those recipes are on my blog. And not only are they on my blog, but I link to them from my digital product. Because in the digital product, I have the recipe and the instructions, and then I, you know, and I always say in there, if you want the step by step photos, if you want all the different information that we work so hard to put into these blog posts for SEO purposes, for the most part. Now they can click on them for my digital guide and go see that extra information on my blog. Should they want to so I don’t ever hide the fact that it’s repurposed. I put this together for them. I like I said, I curate it into this package. It’s beautifully designed. It’s all laid out, it makes sense. It shows them how to use this information and recipes so they can solve a problem or achieve a goal. And my 10 day healthy eating challenges kit, I get amazing testimonials from people on pretty much a daily basis for that product. So yeah, it’s, you know, digital products for me and I, and what I ask, or what I advise for other food bloggers, is just to get started, just to really go through your content, put it together, figure out what your audience wants, but also just to do it.
Tammy Overhoff 36:41
Because here’s the thing, with digital products, all that work is front loaded. So it’s not like our other food blogging tasks, where we’re always, you know, we get it done and then we go on to the you know, then we go on to the next thing again. So we’re finishing a recipe. Now, we got a keyword research again, it’s not this like never ending grind. You figure out what that digital product should be on, you put it together, and now it’s an asset in your business that you can sell for the next 10 or 15 years. I mean, my Organize Yourself Skinny ebook, which is a part of my Reset and Flourish, Reset and Flourish. Bundle, I created that in 2015 the workbook, I put together those meal plans in 2012 and they are still selling on a daily basis. So block the time, get it done, and then you have that asset in your business that you can make money through flash sales. You can make money through launching it, you can get it set up in an evergreen email funnel, so it’s just continuously selling. When you, as you bring new people in, you’re offering them this paid solution and so, and that’s another thing that I would really encourage or food bloggers, is, Do not be afraid to sell you. Nobody knows your recipes and your content better than you. Nobody can help your audience better than you. Use your recipes and content to achieve their goal, solve their problem. When you take the time and you start creating these paid solutions for them, tell them, sell it to them. You can do. I use a method in my emails called the nurture to sales method. So I’m always nurturing. I’m always just talking to my audience like I did 10 years ago, because that’s what I realized, that’s how people that’s one, how I want to talk to them, and that’s how they want to receive the information. So I’m always nurturing them, and I’m always telling them, this is what I’ve created for you. This has everything that you need for this, that and the other. And, I mean, I never have people complain about it.
Tammy Overhoff 38:53
So, I mean, of course, you always get your one person you know, who will complain, but just like on your blog, and you just, you just keep doing what you’re doing. I mean, this is a business. You’re taking the time to put together the content, and you should be compensated for that, for sure. And your audience will line up to buy this stuff because they’re following you for a reason. They joined your email list for a reason. And I do believe that, because a lot of times people will say experts or whatever, that you shouldn’t sell right away, that you should wait. And I don’t agree with that at all. I think that when somebody joined your email list, they are the most excited at that moment to learn about you and to learn about what you offer them, and so why not use that time to showcase what you’ve put together for them, I have what’s called a tripwire. So when people sign up for my email, they’re automatically given an opportunity to purchase one of my products at a discount, and that sells every single day. People, not everyone buys it, but some do, and so and then they go into my email, C. Once and again I’m just nurturing and nurturing and nurturing, and then I just let them know what I have available. Should they want to buy it? And I don’t think food bloggers should be afraid to do that at all. Yeah,
Megan Porta 40:11
I appreciate that little pep talk that is a fear that runs rampant in our space. It seems like this is super inspiring. I mean, we, yeah, like I said, we all need a little bit, most of us need a little bit of a refresh. And this sounds like a really good opportunity to take some of the content we already have created and just repurpose it into a new package to serve our people right and add value to their lives.
Tammy Overhoff 40:39
Yeah, absolutely. And I think now is the best time to start working on a digital product strategy. You don’t want to wait until you’ve been hit with an algorithm update or RPMs drop, because then you’re like, working in desperation mode. And that’s almost like where I found myself working in 2019 and that’s a really hard place to be to try to start creating something new. So I always encourage food bloggers, it’s even if you haven’t been hit by anything yet. Take this time get this income stream going. So you have an income stream, you have more control. Should and most likely, when something like this happens to your business, you don’t want to build your business on the back of things. You have zero control over and you have zero control over Google. You have zero control over advertising and zero control over affiliates. The only thing you have control over is your own content and turning them into digital products and selling them 100%
Megan Porta 41:46
Amen. Thank you, Tammy. This is this is amazing, and I think this is going to land really well for a lot of food bloggers listening. So we really appreciate your time today.
Tammy Overhoff 41:56
Thank you. Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate you having me,
Megan Porta 41:59
Yeah, and I know I want to ask you quick, because I know you do, is it coaching for other food bloggers looking to just learn a little bit more about this?
Tammy Overhoff 42:08
Yes. So I have two options. I do coaching, so I do offer one on one coaching, and so I’m just ending a group coaching program. Now I’m not sure when I’m going to do another one, but I do have that option at times, but I do have an entire course. I just put together the Tasty Digital Framework, and that takes my entire process from the idea phase to the launch phase. And I have all of my templates, all of my email, swipe copy. I put together a whole Trello board that walks you through the process. I do an entire Chat GPT training, showing you exactly how to use Chat GPT in the best way that you can to create these digital products from start to finish. You get all my prompts. So I literally have taken my whole digital product side of my business, and I am just put, I just put that into the framework, the Tasty Digital Framework for that first step. So for that first getting that digital product created and and I’m really planning on just taking the rest of my digital side of my business and just getting that broken down into those, I guess you could call it like the self led courses for people who just want to jump in, get everything and get moving. But my goal right now, I mean, I’m 49 I’ve been doing this for like, 12 years. I want to, like my I’m on the back end of my my blog, and I’m looking to send the elevator down. So I’m looking, at this point, to really mentor and coach food bloggers who want to create this part of their business, this, you know, this income stream as part of their business. So that’s really what I’m doing with Tasty Digital Eats. Is just, really just sharing what I’ve learned as a digital marketer. I mean, I like to say that I kind of blend the digital marketing and food blogging. I kind of want to bridge that gap between food bloggers and digital marketing. So, so yeah, if you want the coaching, if you want one on one coaching, you can do that. If you just want all of my templates, checklists, you know, step by step, videos, all of that you can go to the Tasty Digital Framework, and all that can be found on my website, tastydigitaleats.com so I hope that made sense.
Megan Porta 44:23
Amazing. I hope people go there and check that out. We’ll put together a show notes page for you. Tammy, if you head to eatblogtalk.com/resetandflourish, you can find all the information there and then. I didn’t ask you if you have a favorite quote or words of inspiration to share.
Tammy Overhoff 44:39
Yes. So I love the book atomic habits, by James Clear and I one of I always pull out like inspirational things he says throughout the whole book. And the one thing that I thought would be good for today is if you can’t find a way to consistently stay focused on the tasks that matter most, you’ll never achieve the level of success you’re capable of. And that’s how I feel. I feel like food bloggers, we need to start focusing more on what we can control, and that is digital products, for sure.
Megan Porta 45:11
I love that. What a great, perfect, just way that fits to end the show, too. So thank you for sharing that. Do you want to mention social media?
Tammy Overhoff 45:19
Sure, for social media, you can find me with both sides of my business, so resetandflourish. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook. I definitely am more on Instagram, and then you can also find me Tasty Digital Eats on Instagram, and that’s where I’m I always share a bunch of tips for digital products and food blogging and all of that so you find me in both places.
Megan Porta 45:42
Sounds good. Thanks again, Tammy and thank you for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time.
Outro 45:49
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