Why I Joined Food Blogger Pro
Disclaimer: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links at no extra cost to you. I am a member, I have paid for them out of my own pocket, and recommend them because this is a product that I have found trustworthy and worth the investment. Please let me know if you have any questions about anything listed below! All opinions are my own.
If you are on this page, you are seeing several years worth of work and learning. But that learning did not happen spontaneously. When I first got started I looked like every other beginning and scrappy looking blog. I had a wordpress.com. I had a free theme. And it looked it. You hear stories of people making a living blogging. But they seem to be filed in the same category as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, or Sleeping Beauty. Fantasy. Disney stories. Well, people out there do it. I was curious if I could make my blog into something other than a scrappy website. I can now say that my blog is growing and evolving. I no longer consider those people just Disney stories.
I thought food blogging was easy: I took pictures on my phone, I typed posts into a computer, and hit publish. What else is there to this? Oh so much more. I vastly underestimated the skills that would be needed to run a successful and higher traffic blog. I thought when I hit 1,000 page views a month that I was hot stuff. After joining Food Blogger Pro, I can say my traffic is between 60-70 times that amount. Some of it was me working behind the scenes. But honestly, I needed a whole lot of tools for my tool box before those magical numbers started happening.
If you are wondering how to make your blog better, then consider this to be one of the most important investments you can make in your blog. I'm still a member and it is one of the most essential investments I've made to date. My only regret was not finding out about it sooner. It is not a huge investment in terms of money in the grand scheme of things.
Best of all, you are learning from some of the top people in the food blogging industry, Pinch of Yum. They have an entire team of people working on both Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro. They've even gotten into plug ins for WordPress, but I'll save that for another review. If I could give any aspiring food blogger one piece of advice it would be to Sign up for Food Blogger Pro.
My Traffic
For the sake of honesty and transparency, you need to see numbers. Here is what my dashboard was telling me: I started in August of 2016. By October of that year, I thought I was hot stuff. Four thousand page views. I knew that I needed help growing. I joined in February of 2017 and there is no looking back.
Now, if you are wondering about that drop in April. I had been on Food Blogger Pro learning everything that I should have done. In other words, I set up lots of things wrong. So, April was my month of fixing and getting things started with WordPress.org. From there, it's been onward and upward.
Why You Should Join Too
How many skill sets do you think you need to be a successful food blogger? If you had asked me that in 2016 my answer would be this: you should be able to cook and write. How wrong I was. There are so many skills involved that I did not even know I needed!
The membership dashboard will give you a window into how many skills you will need to acquire to really get good at this:
I can honestly tell you that behind this screen is over 300 videos. Most of them are broken into smaller digestible chunks. Some I've had to watch a multitude of times. Plus, they are constantly adding new content all the time. They put up live monthly videos where you can submit and get your questions answered.
But What If I Have Questions?
Well, there is another part of the screen that we need to talk about. Don't think that this is just some YouTube course that you have to pay for. Nope, you can get answers from members and experts. The forums are broken into categories. The insight that can be found on these forums isn't the result of some Google search, but rather people who can help you and who are going through the same things you are.
How Much Can You Really Learn on Food Blogger Pro?
Well, I vastly underestimated how important photography was. I started my blog using my kitchen lighting with a Samsung Galaxy S7. Everyone likes to tell you that smart phones take pictures that are as good as DSLRs, right? Let me disprove this theory. Here is one of my earliest blog photos from a post called Blueberry Scones:
After learning more about photography through the videos and finally taking the plunge into buying a DSLR camera and a decent lens; here is what I am capable of today:
The two photos are not in the same league as one another. I have learned about lighting, manual settings to my camera, how to use them, and how to edit them properly. This is not a skill that I could have begun to understand without help. I figured pictures were just pictures. Bu until you can smell what someone is cooking through the internet, there is no other way to express how good the food is on your blog. They'll give you the skills, but it is up to you to practice and apply what you have learned. Photography is one of the best ways to convey how good you are. You are seeing about a years worth of practice with a DSLR reflected in that photo too.
But Where is the Value In This Membership?
Ok, let's face it. Food Blogging isn't as expensive as my husband's hobby: cars. But don't kid yourself, if you are developing recipes and photographing your work, it isn't hard to run through $100 in groceries with a bit of kitchen experimentation. Whether this is a hobby or your goal is to become your own blogger boss, then yes, they do have a whole video section on how to make money doing what you love: blogging.
Now, if that does not strike you, then perhaps getting a discount on the things you might end up spending money on anyways is an added incentive. And yes, I can honestly say that I've saved enough money from these products and services that it offsets the cost of Food Blogger Pro.
Still not convinced? Perhaps the next time you are on your way into work, at the gym, or where ever you have your headphones you can begin to get a sense of the valuable information that they are discussing through the free to everyone podcast on iTunes or Google Play. If what I mentioned previously wasn't enough value already then use my link for a Food Blogger Pro Membership Coupon to make this even more valuable.
What is your time really worth?
If time is the most precious non-renewable resource we have, then this site will above all save you a ton of time digging through outdated YouTube or Google searches that might not even yield the right answer (or an answer that was right five years ago). Blogging is ever changing and the content posted on Food Blogger Pro represents the evolving field that it is. Currently, mostly subscribers pay $29 a month, yearly is $279. But if you feel your time is worth say, $15 an hour, then which would you rather do, spend time searching or spend time learning? If you spend any more than two hours searching for the answers and maybe not coming up with one, then this is a worthy investment.
Where do I sign up?
Enrollment happens about twice a year. If they are not enrolling new FBP members when you click on the link, they will send you a great set of emails ensure that you will see some value out of this site. If you are convinced that this is what you need then Sign up for Food Blogger Pro here.:
