Freelance Dietitian Podcast

047: 5 Ways To Monetize A Nutrition Blog Ft. Chrissy Carroll, MS, RDN, LDN

• Julia Zakrzewski • Season 3 • Episode 47

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I am absolutely delighted to introduce you all to Chrissy Carroll, an inspiring and upbeat RD that has been successfully navigating the blogging since for 10+ years. Chrissy shares: 

  • 5 ways to monetize a blog 
  • Why keyword research is a bloggers best friend 
  • How to set your blog up for success in a competitive niche 
  • Her favourite blogs to follow 

You can get in touch with Chrissy here:
Website - Build A Wellness Blog (For RDs who want to learn how to blog) Recommended post: How to do keyword research with KeySearch
Instagram - @ChrissytheRD
Chrissy's Free Facebook Group - Build Your Blog Today

**Something New For You To Checkout***
I (Julia) created a Facebook Group for RDs who want to geek out about podcasting! It is a safe space to ask podcasting questions and learn from other podcasters! You can join the group by clicking here. 


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Hey, and welcome to the freelance dietitian podcast. A show that teaches you how freelancing can help you meet your financial goals while giving you space to unplug and enjoy your life. I'm your host Julia Zakrzewski a published freelance writer and the nutrition and wellness space. And today I interview one of my absolute role models and icons in the entrepreneurial space. Her name is Chrissy Carroll. She's an inspiring R D who has 10 plus years of blogging experience and supports herself full-time through her websites. Let's get into Before diving into this episode. I just want to preface it by saying, I know that blogging isn't necessarily a specific freelance skill. That's more of a small business that you nurture and develop over time. But I do think the skills that you develop are absolutely something that you can later on freelance. And that's exactly what Chrissy does. She's very big into keyword research and she offers that service for other businesses. I think it's inevitable. If you are currently freelance writing, uh, to not consider making your own blog at some point. You've just developed all these skills you have so much knowledge if you have time it certainly becomes very appealing to start your own blog and i'll talk about some of the key differences between just freelance writing Versus starting a blog at the very end of the interview so make sure you stick around after we hear from Chrissy. Okay. Speaking of Chrissy, allow me to formally introduce our guest today. Chrissy Carroll is a vibrant RD blogger and social media enthusiast on her primary website, snacking and sneakers. She shares content centered around food and fitness tips for active women, especially runners and triathletes. After growing her main site to a hundred thousand page views a month, Chrissy has gone on to launch several other successful websites. She specializes in organic growth via SEO or search engine optimization and is passionate about teaching other dietitians also how to grow profitable websites. Let's bring her on the show.

Julia:

Welcome to the show, Chrissy. It's so great to have you here. Did you wanna say hi to listeners?

Chrissy:

Hello! I'm so excited to be here.

Julia:

Yay! And I am super excited because Chrisy to me, you are one of the rds in business who is such a powerful knowledge resource and you share so much and you just, Have you ever watched how I Met your mother?

Chrissy:

No

Julia:

No. Okay. So that's okay if they have this one episode where they talk about how some friends or some people they know, like when they just say something is good, like you just always know it's gonna be good. And that is exactly how I feel about your tips for blogging and business in general and online space. So I'm super excited to have you here.

Chrissy:

Thank you.

Julia:

Anytime you post anything, I'm like no brainer. I know it's gonna be awesome. Like I just, you are a sure thing basically. So thank you for everything you do.

Chrissy:

Yeah. I appreciate the kind words.

Julia:

Yeah. And, let's dive into it cuz maybe listeners aren't as familiar with your work yet, but they will be. What is your favorite part about blogging?

Chrissy:

Yeah, I have a couple. So it's hard to narrow it down to one. I would say the first is just growing something from scratch. There's something really gratifying about starting a website from nothing and being able to grow it and get followers and readers and continue to grow it over time with seo, uh, and to be able to turn it into something that is its own business. So I think. Something I really love. I also love just being able to control what I do every day. And you know, there's like a joke in the entrepreneurship community that you leave a full-time, 40 hour a week job to become an entrepreneur and work 80 hours a week. I do not work 80 hours a week, but it is a lot of work. But I love it. I love being able to decide what I'm doing every day. I love being able to decide if I'm gonna take, you know, a half an hour to go, like, see something at my kid's school or you know, just go for a walk. Being able to incorporate those into my day. And then the third favorite part is just all the cool opportunities that I think you can get as part of blog. So just neat press trips that I've been able to go on, or, you know, a couple years back I was able to go to Bermuda and do the world triathlon there. And that's just something that would've never happened without the blog. So I think that's just something really. Fun. A really cool benefit of it.

Julia:

Yeah. That is so great. And when did you first start blogging?

Chrissy:

So I started back in 2011, I believe, with my first business that I had, and then I rebranded back in 2014. So I've had my current main website since 2014.

Julia:

Nice. And how many do you have now? How many blogs?

Chrissy:

I have five right now.

Julia:

Yes. You know what you saying that makes me feel better cuz I have an idea for two and I'm just like, how I feel like I'm collecting them. You know, once you learn the skills, you just kind of wanna rinse and repeat right. With different topics, obviously.

Chrissy:

Sure. And I think that there's like a market for that too, right? If you're somebody that likes starting a project, but maybe you don't wanna continue on with it afterwards. There's been several sites that I've built to a point and then sold. So that's kind of another avenue for making money through blogging, is being able to build something, get some good content on there, and then handing it off to somebody else.

Julia:

Wow, that is really cool. Cuz I do think from talking to audience members, sometimes they feel like, Oh, if I commit to a blog, like I'm in it for.

Chrissy:

Yeah, no, you can definitely sell it at some point. I mean, the, the valuation for it depends a little bit on, you know, what the niche is, if it's making any revenue, that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's, there's definitely a market for it. There's blog brokers, blog brokering websites, all kinds of things out there that can help you with that.

Julia:

That's so nice. Very encouraging, and I'm sure you know that there's been a huge boom in rds who are interested in blogging over the pandemic, which is great. Do you have any tips for someone who's just starting out, maybe a top three or top five?

Chrissy:

Yeah, I would say the first tip, I think one of the pitfalls that I made when I was starting and that I see a lot of people make is like"me" focus blogging. So you know, here's what I ate today and here's what I'm doing and here's a workout I like. Those kinds of things. And I think it's definitely fine and encouraged to incorporate some of your own personality into your post, but I would say on the whole, you want your blog post to be focused on solving a problem or providing some type of resource for your reader. So instead of, you know, here's what I ate, it might be something like your maybe sharing a meal plan example for somebody with a certain dietary need, or perhaps you're sharing. A particular type of workout that is highly searched for something along those lines where you're really focused on the reader themselves. So that would be the first tip, I would say second tip would be learning SEO. Anybody that knows me knows I'm big into keyword research. I think it is something that is really underutilized by nutrition bloggers. And is really important. I wish that I had learned about seo. I'm, I'm currently auditing my website and I have, you know, 600 posts that I've written since 2014, and so many of them are just terrible because I wrote seo. So I would say that learning about how to choose the right keywords, how to properly construct a blog post so that it is more likely to be picked up by Google. That is something that I think is really valuable. And then the third tip would be don't get stuck in analysis Paralysis. So when people get stuck, it's like, Do I have the perfect logo? What theme should I pick? All this stuff, I create my websites in one day. Literally, it is getting a quick logo, throwing up a very simple theme. I use Astra or Cadence, uh, for free themes. You can always upgrade those things later if you want, but just get the barebone site up there and start writing. And, and then you'll make progress so much quicker because you're learning SEO as you go. You're learning the content as you go, rather than getting caught up in the weeds with the design, you know, for two or three months and then you're two or three months behind where you been.

Julia:

Yeah. That's so helpful. And how many hours do you think it takes you to set up your first website in a day? Like obviously you're taking breaks and.

Chrissy:

Yeah, I think it's a day long process. Like a full day. Yeah. Yeah. So you're gonna need to, you know, you get the, the domain, you get the hosting set up, you choose your theme, you make the homepage look okay. Um, you know, you set up Google Analytics, set up Google Search Console. There's, there's a bunch of steps that goes along with it. But I would say you can do it in one solid day and then you.

Julia:

Yeah, perfect. Yeah, I was just wondering if it was like a two hour thing or like a full day thing, cuz I'm sure listeners will wanna plan

Chrissy:

I think it's probably more like a full day thing, especially if you're not used to it, you know, from doing it in the past, I've had enough experience at this point where I, I might be able to get it done a little bit more quickly, but I would say allocate one full day.

Julia:

Yeah. Perfect. And do you think the blogging space is saturated? What's your perspective on everything moving online?

Chrissy:

Yeah, I would say yes and no. I feel like in blogging the answer is like it depends to everything. So I think certain niches are more saturated than others, and I would say that's actually not specifically blogger related. I would say that is based on big authority sites. In certain niches, we're more likely to see sites healthline, WebMD, Cleveland Clinic, like really big name sites that are ranking for some of the top queries. And the problem with that is as a blogger, even if you're an established blogger, it's pretty difficult to outrank sites like that. So for example, um, like the diabetes niche tends to be a little bit more competitive some of those broader topics. Doesn't mean you can't blog about things related to diabetes, but you have to get really creative with the type of keywords you're choosing. You're probably not going to write something like, uh, you know, what is a good diet for diabetes? Because that's going to be dominated by all these really big sites. You might still write it for your readers, but from an SEO perspective, it's probably not gonna rank. But if you get a lot more granular into something, maybe like, Um, monk fruit versus erythritol, which is a better sweetener? That might be something somebody who has diabetes is looking for that information because they're looking into sugar alternatives, but it's not necessarily something that might be dominated by those bigger sites. And don't take my word for that. I didn't do keyword research on this ahead of time, so I don't know for sure if that's a good option. But just to give some perspective about broader keywords versus getting more granular. So I would say just because a niche might be more saturated with some of these big authority. Doesn't mean you still can't find good keywords within that space. I would say though, if you are starting from scratch and you're interested in a variety of areas, maybe look into some of the keyword research before you choose which area you wanna start with. Because you may find one is far less competitive than another, and if your goal is add revenue or affiliate revenue, or those kinds of strategies, it's gonna be easier to choose the niche. Less competitive keywords. Uh, if your goal is one-on-one clients, your strategy might be a little bit different based on what type of one-on-one counseling you like to do.

Julia:

Thank you for adding in that little piece, cuz that was gonna be my next question. So definitely our conversations so far have mostly been from a standpoint, I'm assuming as someone who wants to monetize the blog through ad traffic not a service that's really unique that you just want to bring in really specific clientele for.

Chrissy:

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that the conversation applies to it all, but certain your keyword choices. Your strategy there will vary a little bit depending on your monetization strategy. So if you are a dietitian that wants to do one-on-one services or wants to sell a digital product to a really specific niche audience, you can go for lower volume keywords, as long as it's bringing in that exact right audience because you're either going to be selling them into your service. You know, digital course or ebook or whatever. Um, so you can get a lot lower in the keyword volume because you're gonna be bringing in that really particular audience. If your goal on the flip side is you wanna build a blog and bring in ad revenue, you're gonna need to find some higher volume keywords. They don't have to be super high, but just higher so that you're getting enough traffic that the ad money that you're making is going to be worth it.

Julia:

Awesome. And any tips to make your blog stand?

Chrissy:

Ooh, that is a good question. I would say having a defined niche. Mm-hmm. I think sometimes people start and they wanna do everything, and I did the same thing. My site is multi niche and had I started. Had I known everything when I started, I probably wouldn't have chosen to do so many things on one site. All my secondary sites are very focused now. But I would say choosing a specific niche. So even though I talk about food and fitness on my one site, it's all centered around active women, specifically runners and triathletes. Recipe messaging, the training plans, all of that is kind of focused on one target. I think that choosing that is helpful because when somebody arrives on the site, when they're Googling something or they come across you on social media they know, Oh, this is meant for me. Like I, I'm a runner. Oh, great. This information is targeted towards me. So I would say a niche is good, both from the reader's eyes as well as, Google in terms of relevancy and making sure that you're focused. If you are recipe blogging, food photography is big. We eat with our eyes. So when you Google a recipe and you see those first couple results in the carousel, you're probably glancing at the picture to see what it looks like and you're going to choose something most of the time that is appealing to the. So I think learning how to do food, food photography is very valuable. And then I think the third thing to stand out would be just whatever your unique point of view is within the nutrition field. So whether that is body positivity or whether that is helping this specific avatar with this specific problem, it kind of goes back to niche, but also just your own methodology, your own viewpoints, kind of weaving in. That personal touch to help people to connect with.

Julia:

I can see it exactly in my brain, even as you're describing it, all the steps to take there.

Chrissy:

Awesome.

Julia:

Yeah, and your websites are great examples of that. I do Check them out sometimes whenever you post something that you've shared there. And yeah, if any listeners want just concrete examples of exactly what Chrissy's talking about, check them out and I will link them in the show notes so you can find them.

Chrissy:

Awesome. That would be great.

Julia:

Yeah. And I'm very curious, who are your favorite blog?

Chrissy:

Ooh. Good question. I think on the food side of things, I, I like Pinch of Yum only because I've been following them for years. I, and they're associated with Food Blogger Pro. I listen to the podcast, I check out their stuff. They've got great food photography, great recipes. I really like Minimalist Baker. That was one that I got into years ago, back when my son was born. He had some food intolerances and so I was always looking for like dairy-free recipes and they had a ton of vegan recipes on the site and their food photography's great. recipe Tin Eats, she's amazing. Her recipes are always outstanding. I just made her slow cooker brisket the other day and it was so good. So it, I feel like they're always solid. I think that's a good thing with food blogging. You wanna make sure that your recipes are solid, I would recommend testing them multiple times. Uh, and if you get feedback from a reader, a lot of times the immediate thought is like, Oh, I got negative feedback. They didn't make it right. You know, they're being rude. And believe me, that happens a lot. But sometimes, It really is a good reminder to be like, You know what, maybe I should go back and test this again and double check like, did everything work the way that it was supposed to work? Was there something maybe I forgot to add to the instructions? And making sure that the recipes are really solid because that will bring people back to the site. And that's a perfect example with Recipe and Eats. Every single recipe I've made from. Them has been amazing. Budget Bytes is another one that I love in the food space. And then I just recently got kind of into the financial space, so I have a site in that space now. So some of my favorites in that space would be things like Choose Fi and Side Hustle Nation. I really like both of those sites.

Julia:

Cool. And I was actually gonna ask you if you do have any sites that are not nutrition related.

Chrissy:

Yeah.

Julia:

Cause I, I feel so called to exp to use my skills that I've learned and apply them to other hobbies cuz I just feel a little bit over nutrition sometimes.

Chrissy:

For sure. So I, of the five sites, the main one is food and fitness. Then I have one in the dairy free space. I have one about blogging. I have one that's a hyperlocal site about Central Massachusetts. And then I have one that's in the financial space about like budget hacks, saving money, frugal living, those kinds of topics. So I think that there's skills you can apply anywhere within the blogging space, and sometimes it's fun to have other things to write about besides just nutri.

Julia:

Yeah, totally. We have so many other interests, we gotta let it out somehow. Right,

Chrissy:

Exactly. And if you, if you love writing and you love the space, like I love keyword research, I could dive in for an hour and just be in my element. So looking for other things to write about and finding these kind of diamond in the rough keywords, that's just, that's, that's my idea of fun. I, I feel like people listening to this are gonna be like, What? But I really do enjoy that. So it's, it's a lot of fun for me to be able to find those and then be able to write content around.

Julia:

And you know, I was actually thinking this morning, I wanted to ask you like, do you have maybe, um, again, this is just totally random so maybe you'll indulge me like three personality traits of people who are blogging who tend to do better.

Chrissy:

Oh, I would say somebody that's resilient.

Julia:

Yes.

Chrissy:

Blogging is really tough at the beginning. You're doing all this work and you're usually not making money up front. So I think you have to be resilient. I think you have to be motivated, like a, a perpetual learner. Somebody that is willing to jump in, continue learning, because as we know, this space changes, right? So we've seen this with social media people. Have relied heavily on Pinterest. I was one of them. And now Pinterest has really kind of changed the way their platform works and that traffic is declining a bit. So we need to figure out new ways of using these, these platforms for traffic or for sponsored content or things along those lines. Being a perpetual learner, that's always willing to see what's going on with the algorithms, see what best practices are, see how those evolve over time. Uh, and then third, I guess would be. I think, hmm. Enthusiastic. I don't know. I'm pretty enthusiastic. So I think that you, if you wanna, you know, be an entrepreneur, you have to be enthusiastic about something, right? Like, you don't have to be super passionate about every single topic you're working on or every activity you work you're working on. But I think being enthusiastic about being in your own business in general is a good trait to.

Julia:

Yeah. And I was wondering if you would say something about research oriented or detail oriented, because I do see those people, um, just being more steadfast because they just like it. Unfortunately I am not one of those people, so I admire them.

Chrissy:

Yeah. Yeah, I think being detail oriented can be great. I also think though, that it can get in your way sometimes. Dietitians tend to be type A personalities, right? Really want perfection and everything. And I am all about imperfect action over not getting things done. So I think sometimes that. That detail oriented trait can cause us to write something, overanalyze it, go back, tweak it, and it ends up taking way longer than if you had just thrown it up on your website and see how it does. So a lot of times, you know, I'm about getting to like 80 to 90% there, and then boom, let's put it up. I can always edit it later and we'll see how things go.

Julia:

And not getting stuck in that analysis paralysis, like you mentioned.

Chrissy:

Exactly.

Julia:

And I'm curious, because I know you've been at this for a solid chunk of time, you know what's been the biggest shift that you've seen? You've mentioned definitely other tools that can support bringing traffic to your website and the algorithms change. But have you noticed anything else? I'm just curious.

Chrissy:

Yeah, I would say when I started, you know, back in 2011, I think that blogging was more focused on telling stories and more of, you know, you follow a blogger because you like their personality and you wanna read about what's going on in their life. And it was kind of, you know, it was the original like web diary. Yeah. Cause I think a lot of that, more personal content has kind of shifted to things like Instagram or TikTok where maybe there's more of that personality and you might follow people because you enjoy watching them as a person. You enjoy seeing what's happening in their life. I think blogs have really shifted to being more of a resource, more SEO driven content where. You're sharing things that are going to be solutions to somebody's problem that they, they are Googling for something, they find your blog, they get their answer, and that's that. I think a lot of times people worry on their blog, Oh, I have a high bounce rate, like, people are leaving. That's okay. If they got the answer to what they needed, that's okay. I mean, we wanna keep people on our site as long as possible. We wanna give them other resources. But I do think it's really shifted to being more. Providing solutions and people finding those solutions through search.

Julia:

Do you have any predictions of what will happen in the future? I think we all know that video is here to stay and incorporating more of that maybe? Or what do you think?

Chrissy:

Yeah, I think video is here to stay. I personally am not a huge video fan, so I, I don't necessarily love that trend, but I do think it's here. I think there, there was some research recently that came out actually, and I believe it looked at Gen Z and where they go to search for information. And that a larger percentage is now going to TikTok to look for information than Google. And I thought that was a really interesting statistic because I personally, I like TikTok. It's fun, but I would never go there to find something. I would always go to Google, or if I'm looking for a recipe, I might go to Pinterest. So I thought that was interesting to kind of hear how that's shifting. I definitely think you're right in that regard. I would say the other trend that I think is coming up is artificial intelligence. Mm-hmm. I really don't know what that's gonna look like 10 years down the road. I see it a lot now. I use artificial intelligence as part of my business. I love it. I think it's amazing. But you know, in 10 years is Google just gonna know everything and be able to automatically provide those answers from ai and blogs won't be a thing. I don't know. I hope not. But I do think it'll be interesting to see how that evolves over time.

Julia:

Yeah, definitely some sci-fi thoughts going through my brain. You can't help it with ai. Right. Can I ask what are the tools that you've used that you really.

Chrissy:

Yeah, so I use Jasper. Mm-hmm. It is a wonderful tool. It is just that though, a tool. Mm-hmm. so people get very, uh, polarized about artificial intelligence. Like either it's the most amazing thing ever, or they hate it and they think it just produces crap content, for lack of a better term. It's a tool like you have to guide it, you have to feed it the points that you want it to write about. But where I think it's really valuable is for those of us that do a lot of writing. You know, with five sites, I have a ton of content that I need to keep up on. It just accelerates that writing process and it reduces some of the mental fatigue that comes with staring in a screen and maybe having creative block where you don't know, how am I gonna start this next paragraph or what. What else should I add in here? I think it really accelerates that. So yeah, I use Jasper. They have the writing tool. They also just release an art tool, and so that's been really fun to play around with. So you'll give it a prompt, right? I just used it in a TikTok that I had done recently. It was a sponsored TikTok and it was like a dating show about bread. Sounds really random, but it was fun to me. But anyway, the background of that was a brick wall. And so I had typed in, you know, brick wall. Bread in the shape of a heart, graffiti in the style of Banksy and like generate, and it gave me this brick wall with like bread that's in a heart in the style of graffiti. And I used it as the background there. And it was just such a fun use case for how you could potentially utilize that art. I think there's tons of different ways it could be utilized. I just worked with my son over the summer. We published a children's book, um, and it was his, he wrote it. He did the prompts for the artificial intelligence art, but the entire thing was illustrated with AI art, and we were able to get it done in a couple of days, get it out on Amazon. It was just such a fun project and I think for dietitians, you know, could you make a children's book about whatever topic you're in? Is that something that might be relevant? I have an idea for one that I'm gonna start working on, and you could use this AI art to quickly illustrate it and put it together and boom. You've gotten this done in like a very inexpensive way that you can get out to market. So yeah, I think there's a lot of fun, fun use cases for both the writing tool and the art.

Julia:

That's super cool and I think you nailed it on the head. Cause I heard another person saying too, Love it or hate it. You won't ever have writer's block again if you're using the writing tool or like a creative visual block. I have never explored it, but I would love to one day.

Chrissy:

Oh it's super fun. You, you know, I always tell people there's, there's free trials of all these. Like I said, I use Jasper, but there's a ton of different tools out there and you can play around with them and most of them will offer some type of free trial where you can go in. It's, it's just great. There's a template on Jasper for ridiculous marketing ideas and it just gives you these insane ideas. But sometimes when I need something for a TikTok, that's just ridiculous. Boom. I'll go in there and I get an idea and then, great. Now I can do this and execute it. So it's really fun.

Julia:

Yeah. And I wanted to maybe leave on an inspirational note for listeners here to get their gears turning. You've mentioned a couple ways that you can monetize the blog, but maybe we could just do like a quick little list, just so rds have something to chew on.

Chrissy:

Yes, definitely. So I think there's five primary ways. The first is what most people think of ad revenue, right? So you have ads on your sidebar, there's the ad on the bottom. All of those types of things that are integrated into your. Ad revenue is amazing. I love it. It is a passive income source. Once you've built the traffic, the money comes in, it's great, but you do need a lot of traffic to get on a good ad network. So a good ad network would be something like Media Vine or Ad Drive Media. Vine is at, at the time of this recording, 50,000 sessions a month is their baseline ad drive, I believe is a hundred thousand page views a month. So they have slightly different metrics for measuring, but both of them require a good chunk of traffic. There are ad networks that you can get on a little bit lower. They're kind of like mid-tier ad networks. They have pros and cons to them. A lot of them might slow down the site a little bit, and so it's, it's really a personal choice whether you wanna wait it out to one of the really good ad networks or whether you wanna put one in a little bit earlier. I would say it's not worth even considering putting ads in until around 10,000 page views a month though. So that would be the first one is ads. Second would be affiliate market. Affiliate marketing is where you promote a certain product or service, and if somebody purchases it, you earn a commission on that. So maybe it's a product that sells for a hundred dollars and you earn a 40% commission, so you earn$40 on that sale. And that can be through big affiliate networks. So like Amazon is a really big affiliate network. Amazon pays very small commissions on a very short cookie. But there are a lot of people that shop on Amazon, and so for me it is worth it to use Amazon because if I can get that traffic to those posts, people buy other things on Amazon. If they're still in that 24 hour cookie window, I'm still earning a commission on it. Uh, there are other affiliate programs, though maybe for your fellow dietitians. Maybe you're just launching your blog and you don't have a course or anything related to your niche, but maybe somebody else does, and so you promote their course and you earn that commission. On it. Um, so that would be the second one. Third would be sponsored content. That's when a brand is paying you up front to promote a product or service. So a little bit different. Affiliate being where you have to make the sale. Sponsored content being where you're just paid a flat fee up front. You might work with food brands or fitness brands. So maybe you're working with the strawberry people and you're going to do a strawberry recipe on your blog post, and you're gonna share it out on social, and you're getting pla, excuse me, you're getting paid a flat fee for. That content that you create, uh, sponsored content typically lives on your blog, your social channels, but I do like to put it out there. If you have really great skills, perhaps in writing or recipe development or food photography, maybe your blog following is small, you just started it, but that could also be something you pitch that the brand can use on their own platforms. So just because you have a small follow. Don't think that those skills are invaluable. That could still be used to develop recipes or do food photography for a brand that they use on their own website, and it doesn't necessarily have to live on yours. Fourth avenue would be digital products. That could be things like eBooks or courses. There's lots of avenues for creating those these days. And then the fifth Avenue would be physical projects. Maybe you're really great at the recipe development side of things, and you've produced this like awesome cookie recipe and you start selling that as a physical product in your town. You know, you get a cottage kitchen license or maybe you develop merch related to your blog. Like if you end up growing a big following, you might create. Sweatshirts or t-shirts or things along those lines that you could sell some type of physical product. So those would be the primary five avenues. And then of course, one-on-one work being an additional one. So that's, you know, your typical one-on-one nutrition counseling.

Julia:

Huge, huge list of options. Thank you for, I feel bad that I asked you to squeeze in in at the end but it's worth knowing because it is inspiring and you can't help but get those gears turning when you hear all the options, which is exciting.

Chrissy:

It is, yeah. And you don't have to just pick one either, right. You can explore a lot of the different monetization options and each of my websites has a kind of strategy. And so one might be more affiliate focused and my other site might be more ad focused and you can kind of play around with how that looks.

Julia:

Cool. And I'm sorry, I realize I have one more question. Do you have time for one more?

Chrissy:

Of course.

Julia:

Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to know for listeners, cause that someone did ask me, what is a budget they should plan for for investing into a new blog?

Chrissy:

Yeah, I think blogging is one of the most affordable businesses you can start because it, it really does not require a ton of money up front. So you're gonna be looking at your domain cost. That's typically 10 to$15. You're going to be looking at hosting for a year. I have a preferred hosting platform that's a little bit more expensive, Big scoots. They go 35 a month for their plan. If you're just getting started, it is okay to choose one of the cheaper hosting platforms for a year while you're getting started. Those will run you maybe 50 bucks for a year, so you've got your domain at 10 to 15, hosting at 50. If you wanna choose the cheaper platform just to get started, and then I would recommend some type of keyword research tool. The tool I use is called Key Search. There's a coupon code for it. It'll run you about 15 bucks a month. Maybe a dollar more than that. I forget what it comes out to, but it's very reasonable. So you're looking between those three things, really.$250 for the year to get started. Now, there's other things you can add in little bells and whistle things. So if you wanna get, uh, you know, a paid caching tool or an image optimization thing, you can look into all those as you move on. Hosting domain and keyword research tool. Those are really the only three things that I would say you definitively need upfront. You can get a free theme, you can create a, you know, silly little logo. It doesn't need to be perfect, just something to get started and just start getting the content out there. And as things grow, then you can finesse it all later.

Julia:

Perfect. Thank you. And that brings us to the end of the episode. Thank you for answering those couple last minute questions. I got them from listeners, so I wanted to make sure they got answered. Um, did you wanna share any closing.

Chrissy:

I guess my only closing thought would be to just work smart from the beginning. Choose a good niche, learn about SEO early on, and then just stick with it. I see so many blogs that people just like left to die and it makes me so sad because I see the potential there. I think if you stick with anything for several years, you're likely to see success, and if you're not seeing success, it's time to kind of reevaluate. Okay. Why am I not seeing success? Am I choosing things that are too competitive? Am I choosing a niche that has no volume? You know, what's going on here? Um, but I think that really just going into it, working smart and sticking with it.

Julia:

Perfect. Thank you so much, Christy. It's been a blast sitting down with you today.

Chrissy:

Yes. Thank you for having me. This was wonderful.

Julia:

That The interview portion of today's episode. When I'm telling you how fast I went to start a blog after listening to Chrissy, I cannot exaggerate it enough. I am a, I'm a blog owner now guys. Chrissy convinced me. She reminded me it's possible to approach your blog with a lightheartedness and being curious about the process, which I think I really needed. Because I've been feeling a bit about blogging, like, Ugh, it's such a huge commitment. Every week I have to show up, I have to do this and you know, I don't really, you don't have to do that. You're not going to make a fortune off your blog right away anyway. You want to build something over time that is going to serve you in the long run. And I think time is really actually the magic ingredient when it comes to blogging or podcasting or building a YouTube channel, you'll always wish that you started sooner. Seriously, because that's the element that you can't control. So, yeah, I'm a blog owner now, and I hope that if it's something that's appealing to you, that you just take the plunge and just start it. If you do one blog post a month, who cares, like that's wonderful. You're hopefully going to be nurturing that for the rest of your working life and it's supposed to be fun and. Sharing knowledge and cool tips with others. So, yeah. I wanted to address a point I made at the very start of this episode, which is that, you know, what's the difference between freelance writing first blogging. Blogging is a small business that you're nurturing over time. You may not get money in your pocket right away. And then freelance writing is kind of the opposite. It's instant. You do the work you get paid right away. So you're able to write and get paid a lot faster. Which is appealing for some folks. I am excited to see how far it gets. I'm very aware how long it takes to get results. Uh, and I think it's minimum a year. So I've made this promise to myself that I'm going to be starting a blog in November. And then I'm also going to be starting a YouTube channel. That's not related to dietetics whatsoever, and I'm not going to share what it is on this podcast, but I'm going to be committed to posting over the next year. And I'm just going to track and be a total data nerd and see what the growth has like for both of those avenues. Uh, I'm very curious, what will happen. I am excited because they're very low startup costs. You don't have to spend a fortune to do this and I just, I want to go for it. So stay tuned. I will report back next November. Just kidding. Maybe I'll give an update halfway if you guys are interested. Alrighty. That's enough rambling for me next week. I am doing a solo episode and to be honest, I haven't quite decided on the topic yet. So stay tuned. It'll be a surprise. I want it to say thank you to everyone who's written in and submitted their haikus or fun poems for the freelance dietitian. That's coming out the very last week of November. And it's going to be an episode about fun. I want it to be really silly, really enjoyable, and a different pace than the usual business-y content. We go over. There's just a lot of grayness in the world and I think we all need a break and just something that's going to make us laugh in stitches and feel good about. So that's coming at the end of the month. And my last plug, I just want to remind everyone or let you know, in case you haven't heard, I did start a dietitian podcast group on Facebook. It's free it's for both dietitians who already have a podcast or for those who want to learn how to start. It's geeky spot to share best practices for podcasting, because if we all share our knowledge, we're all going to be able to produce higher quality content and make sure Whatever effort we're going to be putting out there is checking off all the boxes so our content succeeds. Um, so I'll put a link for that in the show notes, and you're very welcome to and that's enough for me now i hope you have a great week and i'll be back next tuesday

Bye.