Episode 318: Make a Success Out of Your Blog No Matter Your Age or Niche with Laura Sirkovsky

318_Laura Sirkovsky

Laura Sirkovsky: This is Laura Sirkovsky from Sift, and you are listening to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. 

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Megan Porta: Hey, food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, the podcast for food bloggers, looking for the value and confidence that will move the needle forward in their businesses. This episode is sponsored by RankIQ. I am your host, Megan Porta, and you are listening to episode number 318. Today I have Laura here with me. She is going to talk to us about starting a food blogging career at 30 plus, and also just more generally starting a food blog when life is going on around us. She’s also gonna dig into the gluten free diet and why this might be a good avenue for food bloggers, considering the fact that it is not a fad. Hi, Laura, thank you so much for joining me today. 

Laura Sirkovsky: Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, I’m excited for this chat. Before we dig in though, we wanna know what your fun fact is. I have five rescue cats. I am that person. I’m a crazy cat lady, but I’m married and we have a baby on the way. 

Megan Porta: Oh, so do you think you’ll keep all of your cats when the baby is born?

Laura Sirkovsky: Oh, 100%. They are our primary children, our initial children. 

Megan Porta: They’re your family. 

Laura Sirkovsky: Yes. 

Megan Porta: Oh, I never thought I would be a cat person, but we got a cat because our youngest son really wanted one and both my husband and I were a little bit resistant. Just because we didn’t grow up with cats, like it wasn’t in our families, but we love our cat so much. I never anticipated it, but he is like the coolest cat ever. I cannot imagine our family without him. Cats are, they’re cool. 

Laura Sirkovsky: They really are. 

Megan Porta: I love that and congrats on the upcoming baby. When is your due date? 

Laura Sirkovsky: June 7th. So we are four weeks out. 

Megan Porta: Oh my gosh. You’re getting so close. Amazing. 

Laura Sirkovsky: Definitely feeling ready. 

Megan Porta: Good. It’s an exciting time. Here’s one little piece of advice. I wish someone would’ve said to me, and this is totally unsolicited. So take it or leave it. Even though you’re super tired to begin with when the baby’s born, do whatever you can to just treasure those moments because it goes so freaking fast. Before it you’re like, wait. Come back. 

Laura Sirkovsky: Where’d my baby go?

Megan Porta: There’s nothing you can do, obviously. Yeah. Where’d my baby go? Yeah. So try to treasure through the tiredness. 

Laura Sirkovsky: I will do my very best in taking that advice. 

Megan Porta: Yes. Super exciting. Okay. We have a lot to talk about today. We’re gonna cover a few little subtopics under just starting a food blog career at 30 plus and when life gets crazy. So why don’t you just share your story about how and why you started your food blog? 

Laura Sirkovsky: Sure. So I am Canadian by birth. I moved to the US in January of 2017, I wanna say. Yeah, 2017 . While I was waiting for my green card, I couldn’t work, which was a new experience for me. I was a go, go person. I had just finished grad school. Getting my master’s in Roman history and religion. So I decided at that point I was gonna take however long it took to really learn how to bake and cook all of the things I missed from back home. Because while you’re waiting for your green card, you’re not allowed to leave the country. So I started a really average food blog at that time and was like, this is fun. It’s giving me something to do. I just found, I had all this pent up energy from the previous three years of grad school that I needed to filter into something. That’s what it manifested into. When my green card did arrive though, I transitioned back into the teaching world and did that for a few years and really was just living in that space. I was still learning how to make certain recipes, gluten free on the side, and I would bake and bring things in for my fellow teachers and my students occasionally. But I wasn’t really blogging at all anymore. Then in January of 2019, I sustained a really terrible concussion that went undiagnosed for nine months. My health was just deteriorating at a really rapid rate and I saw about 30 doctors. I wish that was an exaggeration, but it’s not. Until I was finally given a proper diagnosis of a vestibular disorder that was the direct result of a concussion. Was advised by all the doctors and therapists that I was seeing at the time to go on leave from my job. While I did that, I was going to multiple therapies a week, part of which was like relearning how to speak because my brain and my mouth just weren’t connecting very well. I had severed that connection and would think of a word and know the right word in my brain and then a completely different word would come outta my mouth. I was going to physical therapy multiple times a week to try to get the balance and vestibular disorder under control and just really get my life back on track. When it turned out that I had run through all of my FMLA and would not be able to get back to being a hundred percent, by the time my employer was expecting me to, they asked me to quit. So I was like, didn’t really love this job all that much anyway, so this seems like a good time to leave. At that point I was like, okay, you know what I actually really did like doing was I liked teaching people about gluten-free recipes, how to convert recipes to gluten-free. I love photography and I just love food in general. So I’m gonna restart a food blog and I’m gonna start a baking business on the side, just for some supplemental income. Not thinking that it would necessarily become a full-time thing. But that began in December of 2019 and then really took off in January of 2020, which is a great year for things to take off. That’s what I’ve been doing since then.

Megan Porta: Wow. So you have overcome a lot. Physically, I feel like when you have a brain injury, there’s not much more that’s harder than that, because like you said, you were trying to say a word and something else would come out. So that had to be super frustrating as well, right? 

Laura Sirkovsky: Oh yeah. It felt like I always use this visual with people; I’m like, it feels like you are in one of those like sitcoms where you see someone’s in a straight jacket, in a padded room and that’s what your brain feels and you just you’re not crazy, but to everyone else, you’re sounding really insane. Because in your brain, it makes perfect sense. It’s cohesive. It’s clear. But when you’re trying to say, Hey, let’s go for a walk and you’re saying, Hey, let’s go bread. it’s just to everyone else around you, it’s really not that clear. So yeah, it’s definitely challenging. I have complete empathy and sympathy in my heart goes out to anyone who’s ever dealt with a brain injury, is still dealing with a brain injury and all that terrible stuff. It’s just really not an enjoyable experience. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. 

Megan Porta: Not only did you go through the pandemic, just like the rest of us did and all of the challenges relating to that, but you had this issue, this hurdle to overcome and yet you persevered and you were successful. So give us some encouragement because I think without having an injury, the rest of us feel like, oh, my gosh, we just went through a pandemic and how am I getting through this? So that alone is challenging. So give us some encouragement to keep going and to just continue on with our businesses, despite it.

Laura Sirkovsky: I think you can be like any job in the sense that you can get burnout pretty quickly. Especially when you’re using social media platforms that you don’t personally own. Instagram has been the big one of conversation, I feel as of late where. The algorithm has not been friendly to a lot of people, myself included. It fluctuates, it goes up and down and you really need to find what works for you. If that’s finding a niche of a particular genre of cooking, if that’s a style of teaching, how to do recipes, be it via photographs, video, finding a platform that works for you, finding a new theme for your blog. It can really be a number of different things. But there’s ways to reinvent as you go that I feel can reignite that spark, if you’re feeling like, okay I’m getting a little tired of doing the same thing every day. 

Megan Porta: So really creating a bit of tunnel vision. It’s so simple to me, but it took me so long to figure this out, but really exactly what you said is the key, in my opinion. It’s just like finding out what works for you and it’s going to be different for everyone. It’s so simple, but why is it so hard to do that? It’s so hard to really understand that principle. 

Laura Sirkovsky: Exactly. I think we try to do too much. When we start, I think that the general curse of the food blogger in the beginning is that you feel okay, I don’t wanna alienate anybody. You try to encompass as many followers as you can. So for me, the big thing I was doing for a really long time was despite the fact that I have celiac disease, I was like I want to not alienate people that aren’t gluten free. So I’ll make my recipes one to one. I did that for probably the first year or so and sat back and thought like, why am I doing this? None of the food I eat has gluten in it. So why am I not just speaking directly to a gluten-free audience? At that point I was like, okay, I’m going in and I’m gonna re-tailor my recipes, I’m gonna do strictly gluten-free. If someone wants to then convert my recipe into a one-to-one recipe, that’s fine. Because the majority of my recipes work is a one-to. Or if they know someone that’s gluten free, they can make this for them and or spread the word. I feel like that has worked. Better for me personally. But yeah, it’s creating that direct connection I feel like to who you’re trying to speak to, as opposed to just trying to lambash everyone with, Hey, this is what I do. Please follow. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. So really honing in on any, and also maybe evaluating the platforms that you’re on and seeing what works. Like for me, Instagram, just for some reason, whatever reason Instagram has never been effective for me, even though I’ve put tons of effort into trying. I’ve tried to figure it out. So just recognizing that and saying, okay, this platform or this tool or whatever, this social media account doesn’t work. But finding those areas that do work within your niche and focusing there.

Laura Sirkovsky: Exactly. I’m in the same boat in which Instagram has been really rude to me, I feel like it’s never, welcomed me with open arms and been like, we love what you do. But Facebook has all these groups, which are so wonderful. Especially if you are in a niche, like gluten free, dairy free, egg free, anything like that, there’s just tons of groups. It doesn’t even have to be a niche like that. One of my fellow friends, who’s a food blogger. She is in a bunch of slow cooker groups or Instant Pot groups and that’s probably 60% of her traffic each month, comes from Facebook and she’s on Mediavine. A bunch of my friends are doing really successfully on TikTok and that’s been where they are reaching their success. So it’s really a game of trial and error, I feel. It can be time exhaustive because you do have to put in that time to see what works and what doesn’t work, but it is important to see what does work for you. Also If it’s not working and you absolutely hate that platform, stop. There are different options for you to get your name out there. I believe so wholeheartedly that the best thing you can do is invest your time into your actual blog because you own that. As opposed to being reliant on these social media platforms. While they are incredibly beneficial for certain people, even top bloggers will say and comment on the fact that they really don’t get much traffic from Instagram, for example. So I think it’s learning how to invest your time properly and where to invest that time that brings you joy and doesn’t make your job feel like a tedious task every single day. 

Megan Porta: You just hit the nail on the head with, if it’s not working and you don’t like it, in fact, if you hate it, then that is the formula for equals stop. So Laura just gave you permission to stop those tasks that have both of those elements in it. I think we need permission sometimes, because as you mentioned earlier, we try to do too much. We do everything. We dig into everything thinking it’s all gonna work, but it doesn’t work that way. I love that you’re giving people permission to just evaluate and stop. 

Laura Sirkovsky: I think we have to every once in a while, anyway. If you’re running it as a business, which most food bloggers are, unless you’re a casual food blogger in which case that’s fine. But if it is being run as a business, I think you do need to step back every few months or so and go, okay, what’s working, what’s not working. What can I improve for myself? What can I improve for my business? If you look at the numbers and generally your feelings towards those numbers, it’s gonna become clear pretty quickly. 

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Megan Porta: Wow. So you have such an inspiring story. The fact that you’ve over overcome so much and you’ve just persevered. What platforms do work for you, I’m curious?

Laura Sirkovsky: Facebook right now is my biggest one because of the fact that there are plenty of gluten free groups on Facebook. I really have not gotten into TikTok yet. That was gonna be something I was gonna devote a lot more time to this year, but pregnancy got in the way of that and just not feeling well while being pregnant slows everything down really, but I’ve been trying to invest most of my time into my blog, if it’s not directly into Facebook. But just from witnessing what my friends have been expanding into that are food bloggers this year, TikTok has definitely been the number one social media platform that they have been having better success with.

Megan Porta: There’s a resurgence of Facebook. I’ve heard this from really high level entrepreneurs that there is power in this new Facebook wave, I guess you could call it. So that’s really interesting and intriguing to me. 

Laura Sirkovsky: Yeah. It’s definitely one of those things that there’s how many people on Facebook. Generally there’s so many specific groups, just for the holidays alone, there’s tons of holiday cookies groups. So if you’re a baking blogger and you’ve got a million cookie recipes, that’s a great way to boost your traffic in Q4. Some people are still looking in Q1 because they still have kids at home and all that fun stuff. So typically we see that rise in traffic in Q3 and Q4, and then a steady decrease in Q1. I found that actually this year, my Q1 was better than my Q4. It’s really taking the time to look, scour a little bit and see, okay. Does what I do fit the description of this blog? Do I feel like this is gonna be answering questions? Is this gonna fill the void or the gap for anybody and kind of get continuous follows. Or are they gonna sign up for my newsletter to keep up to date and that’s working well for me, it’s still not like a hundred percent, but I know it’s definitely been on the rise for people in the last year. 

Megan Porta: So interesting. I loved hearing all of that. Can you speak to this concern that I’ve heard food bloggers say to me, and just in our space, that they feel like they’re too old to either start food blogging or too old to continue and be successful? 

Laura Sirkovsky: Yeah, I definitely feel and let’s be real all of us at one point or another look at the new thing that comes in and we’re like, I’m way too old for that. I don’t have time for it. 

Megan Porta: Yep. TikTok for me. 

Laura Sirkovsky: Yeah. That’s exactly how I felt about TikTok when I first saw it, I was like, oh God, I’m in my thirties. I don’t have time for this. But it’s one of those things that it that’s just so not true. I am of the firm belief that if you are dedicated and you have an aptitude for it, you can make anything work at any age. That’s not to say that I think you should necessarily be going skydiving when you’re 90 years old, but Hey, if you want to then good for you. But with food blogging, there’s this belief that there is oversaturation in the market. Let’s be real, there’s an oversaturation of everything. That has never not been the case. That’s what competition has always been. In a country that relies on commercialism, that’s essentially how the economy works. So with food blogging, I feel like what we were talking about earlier, finding what speaks to you and then finding how you can amplify that voice to people who are in a similar position as you or a similar boat, it’s never gonna be too saturated. It doesn’t matter what age you are. You could be 20, you could be 40. You could say, you know what? I haven’t seen many blogs that are talking about X and I happen to know quite a bit about that because that’s the diet or lifestyle that I live. How can I answer these questions for people? That’s the basis of the creation of your blog. It doesn’t have to be anything mind boggling. It’s just really taking the time to sit down and go, what questions are there? How can I answer them? Do I feel comfortable answering those questions and you go, and that’s it.

Megan Porta: This ties into what you were talking about earlier, too, where you find what works for you. It doesn’t matter that it’s like the new emerging trend. It doesn’t have to be that. You can find a platform that you actually understand and that you love and resonate with. You don’t have to latch on to all of the new platforms and trends and tools that come out.

Laura Sirkovsky: Exactly. 

Megan Porta: So you can really at any age you can find something that works. 

Laura Sirkovsky: Yeah, absolutely. I definitely see in the groups I’m in on Facebook, there’s older food bloggers in there as opposed to TikTok, which I feel is generally a more younger based food blogger demographic. You could use YouTube, you could use Instagram, you could use Facebook, you could use TikTok, there’s a bunch of different options, or you can really just take that time and invest into SEO. Google will guide people to you and it’ll work that way. So I think there’s plenty of options and there really is something out there for everyone that they will understand. I am not the most tech savvy person. So if I can find things that work for me, others can definitely do the same thing. It really doesn’t have anything to do with how old you are. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, I totally agree with that. So you are a gluten free blogger and I know that anytime there’s like a diet restriction or allergy or anything like that involved, people wonder if it’s going to be like a passing trend. Or a fad that is gone in a few years, but why don’t you talk to us about that, because I know you believe that it is not a passing trend and that this is a good avenue to dig into. 

Laura Sirkovsky: Yeah, no, it’s definitely not a passing trend. Celiac disease, as it’s known in North America, it’s known as Coeliac disease overseas generally. That’s based on the fact that a doctor from Rome, Antiquity, like 2000 years ago actually noted in a journal that his patient got very ill whenever he consumed grain. He labeled it Coeliac. The name has stuck around for 2000 years because this illness has been around for 2000 years. So it’s really not a passing trend. It’s just that more and more people now are actually getting diagnosed and more funding is going into research to understand how and why people have celiac disease or gluten intolerances can be related to a number of different GI issues. It doesn’t just have to be celiac disease. It can be Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, IBS. It really, there’s a myriad of issues. Some people don’t even have abdominal issues. They have dermatology issues where they break out in hives or they get a foggy brain. There’s just a bunch of different reactions that people can have. It’s interesting because the celiac association actually just published last week, where previously it was believed that one in every 100 Americans was celiac, but hadn’t necessarily been diagnosed. It was actually one in 50. So more and more people are being affected. We’re not necessarily sure why, if it’s something to do with genetically modifying the food that’s amplifying the way people react to flour, because flour changed so drastically and significantly in the 1900’s. Is it based on the fact that celiac disease in particular is a familial disease? In which case if one of you has it in your family, probably multiple of you have it, and you might not know it until it starts manifesting at some point in your life. So yeah, definitely not a trend. It’s gonna be around pretty much as long as humanity is around. 

Megan Porta: I know a lot of gluten free food bloggers who do really well. But I also know some that get really frustrated because the space is becoming more, I don’t wanna use the word saturated now that you were like, it is not too saturated, but it is populated there. It’s populated. Thank you. That’s the perfect way to say it. Do you have ideas for them about maybe possible sub niches or different avenues to go within the gluten-free space? 

Laura Sirkovsky: Yeah, absolutely. Just baking alone is the whole thing. Gluten-free cake gluten-free pies, gluten-free crust. There’s so many things that you could really dig your heels into. If it’s sweets, if it’s savory, if it’s telling people how to convert their favorite recipes that they had previously before they had to be gluten free into a gluten free recipe. Explaining the functionality of making your own flour mixes and what you can make with those mixes instead of going to the store and shelling out what seems like a million dollars for a small bag of flour. There’s plenty of options I feel like. And often people with a gluten problem will then subsequently develop another food allergy. I’m sorry if that’s me being the bearer of bad news for people. But there’s the option of incorporating other allergens into your baking. So if you want to do egg free and gluten free, dairy free, gluten free if you’re vegan and gluten free, that’s a really hard one, but I commend anyone that can do it. We are primarily pescatarian in my household. My husband doesn’t eat meat, but we’ll eat fish. So the majority of my recipes are either vegetarian and gluten free and or pescatarian gluten free. So there’s a bunch of different angles you can take on it. I feel like it’s really the same as any other food blogger. You just have the asterisks of gluten-free as a preexisting, not a condition, but a preexisting condition to your blog. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. That’s interesting. Just going the baking route, but then getting really specific with it is something I hadn’t thought of gluten free breads or there’s like a whole world to explore within each of those categories alone, right? 

Laura Sirkovsky: Oh yeah. Bread’s a big one. If someone wants to make a top quality blog about gluten-free bread, they’ll be rolling in it pretty soon, I’m sure. Oh, for sure. Because yeah, that’s a big one that people are still trying to figure out over here.

Megan Porta: Because that’s a pain point, right? Bread for gluten free folks is a huge pain point. 

Laura Sirkovsky: It’s hard. So I grew up in Montreal, which is French Canada. So I grew up around baguette and croissants and all this stuff. So for me that’s been what I have missed the most and it’s taken me 12 years to make a good gluten free baguette, which I literally just made last week. So yeah, it’s one of those things that it’s a learning curve and it’s a process. If you wanna take the time and commit to it, it will be fruitful in the end. It’s just patience that is definitely required going in from the get go. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Wow. Such great advice. You’ve said a few things today that have been serious aha. Moments for me. So I have just loved this chat. Is there anything that you would like to include that we haven’t talked about along the lines of just persevering, overcoming obstacles and continuing blogging, or maybe digging into the gluten free space? 

Laura Sirkovsky: In terms of persevering, I am a huge advocate of mental health and making that a priority. You feel you are really struggling, be it in your workspace, in your personal space, if they’re overlapping, find someone to talk to. It could be a professional, it could be someone else in the food blogging space. I have a wonderful community of girlfriends that I have met that are food bloggers and they have become my sounding board for so many things and I value them so much. Know that if you’re feeling a certain way about something, chances are other people are feeling that way too. There are conversations being had about it. It’s great to keep up on it and just reach out. People wanna talk. Food bloggers generally are pretty friendly people. That’s what I have found anyway. So there’s always gonna be someone in that space that’s willing to talk to you about something. Just keep going at it even if it feels really hard at times. It can be worth it. So yeah, I would definitely just say keep going at it.

Megan Porta: Such great encouragement, Laura. Thank you so much. This was extremely valuable and I know it’s going to resonate with a lot of food bloggers, so thank you so much for your time today. It’s been such a pleasure. 

Laura Sirkovsky: Thank you. 

Megan Porta: Do you have a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with today? 

Laura Sirkovsky: Because I’m a history nerd I will impart a historical quote, which is by Rome’s first emperor Augustus, which was, “I found Rome, a city of brick and left her city of marble.” I feel like that is applicable to us as food bloggers when we are talking about oversaturation. You can come into a preexisting space and you can make your space pristine within that space. So just know that it’s not too late to start and you can do it and it’s still good. 

Megan Porta: Oh, that was beautiful. Thank you so much for ending that way. We will put together a show notes page for you, Laura. So if anyone wants to go look at those, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/sift. Tell everyone where they can find you online and on social media. 

Laura Sirkovsky: So my Instagram handle is @siftRVA. So that was because I started my blog when I was living in Richmond, Virginia, and the RVA is like Richmond’s tagline. My website is www.siftrva.com. If you look up Sift Gluten Free on Facebook or YouTube, you can find me that way as well. 

Megan Porta: Awesome. Thank you again so much, Laura, for joining me and thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode. 

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