
When Faith VanderMolen chose to make a major life modification and go vegan, she couldn’t have actually envisioned where this new experience would take her. In her mission to live healthier
, she started a blog site in 2015 called The Conscientious Eater to keep all of her vegan and plant-based recipes in one place. She had no video game plan. As time went on, she
learnt more about money making and SEO, and in 2018 she and her husband had the ability to increase their food blog income by 5 times in simply 3 months. Today, she’s making $3,500 from her blog site. She also composed a cookbook called Plant Biased and has a popular YouTube channel to teach individuals how to prepare vegan recipes
- . Some of the topics talked about by Faith
- include: Why she went vegan Why she ended up being a digital
- wanderer Her Pinterest method Her keyword research study technique
- How and why she composed a cookbook
- How she updates old posts
- How she produces her material briefs
- How her creative email sequence presents individuals to her brand name
- And a lot more!
I’m a digital wanderer, homeschooling mom of two young kiddos living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
My hubby, Brett, and I moved to Asia back in 2015. We have since lived in China, Thailand, and now Malaysia. We enjoy to take a trip as a household and explore various cultures and cuisines.
Why Faith VanderMolen Created Her Site
I went vegan right after Brett and I got wed (surprise!!!). We understood we wished to move overseas soon, so I started The Conscientious Eater to track all of the vegan dishes I was producing and as a kind of online journal.
I went vegan over night after seeing the documentary Forks Over Knives.
I’ve constantly had an interest in health and nutrition; the concept of consuming plants in their whole type simply made good sense to me. A plant-based diet plan looked like the very best way to consume for my long-lasting health. It also looked like a method to prevent a lot of the chronic diseases lots of Americans eventually face.
I continued to look into more about the advantages of a plant-based diet plan and slowly started to get more information
about how it benefits my health, the environment, and animals. These principles are what keep
me consuming a mostly plant-based diet to this day. Why Faith VanderMolen Went Vegan Transitioning to a vegan diet plan over night was hard. I remember awakening the next early morning after I decided to go vegan and standing in front of my open refrigerator thinking, “What in the world do I eat for breakfast?”
I was freshly wed, wasn’t terrific at cooking, and was utilized to consuming greek yogurt, eggs, and chicken on a regular basis. Plus, no one around me ate a plant-based diet plan or actually comprehended why I was eliminating all meat, dairy, and eggs from my diet.
Luckily, my husband was supportive. Despite the fact that he has never changed to a completely plant-based diet, he mores than happy to eat whatever I cook for him. It’s likewise useful that he can’t cook, so he is forced to consume whatever I make!
Why She and Her Husband Became Digital Nomads
My other half and I were both passionate travelers before we met. We quickly chose that we wanted to live overseas after getting wed. Asia is fun, inexpensive, and diverse so we started out in China. We have actually because lived in Thailand for a short time and are now based in Malaysia.
We want to raise our kids overseas and plan to homeschool so that we can have the freedom and versatility to travel at any time of year.
How Much The Conscientious Eater is Earning
Our website is making $3,500 each month.
Here’s our AdThrive data for 2021:
And this is from our YouTube channel over the last 28 days:
Our earnings is broken down as follows:
- AdThrive– $2,200– $3,200
- Plant– based cookbook– $400
- YouTube– $100– $500
- Amazon Affiliates– $50
- Other affiliates and sponsored material– $100
Faith VanderMoler’s Growth Strategies
Our primary method by far is SEO, which represents around 80% of our earnings.
In the starting stages of my blog, I didn’t understand anything about SEO and I would just write about my life in China or Thailand. I would share an unrelated recipe at the end of the post.
Given that discovering more, I’ve gradually been modifying old posts to make them more SEO-friendly, which has started to increase the number of pageviews we get per day/month.
To discover the ins and outs, we began on Food Blogger Pro, where our theme business Feast has some excellent material on developing E-A-T. Mediavine and AdThrive have actually put out some great content. Our organization partner, Josh, also has great background understanding in SEO.
We utilize Ahrefs to do keyword research study and discover low-hanging fruit and content to update by taking a look at the keyword problem and search volume. To upgrade posts, we create content briefs using Topic, we use Ahrefs keyword explorer, and also Google.
Something we started doing just recently is using Topic to see what subjects our posts need to cover. Then, if there’s a dish that has a lots of remarks, we look for that topic in the content to see what people are in fact inquiring about or commenting on.
Her Unique Marketing Strategy
We have actually a funnel set up that takes individuals from YouTube to email to the website and then to a book sales pitch.
I do meal prep videos on YouTube, and for those videos I share a totally free recipe or meal prep guide. This lead magnet method isn’t anything brand-new, however it’s worked well for us.
We have an excellent welcome sequence through ConvertKit that assists introduce people to our brand name, segment them based upon what sort of material would be most helpful for them, and eventually presents them to my cookbook, Plant Biased.
Our email list currently has about 10,000 people on it. We acquire about 500 per month. Our conversion rate for book sales is around 3-5%. It assists that it’s highly rated on Amazon!
Using Pinterest
I really concentrated on growing my Pinterest account back in 2018 and saw it grow significantly in a brief amount of time. Then having 2 little kids, lots of moving, and life got in the way and I stopped pinning consistently.
Just at the start of 2022 we decided to focus on our Pinterest account again. We worked with a Pinterest specialist and she helped us establish a method. We now pin daily and are intending to see great deals of development and pageviews to our site soon!
Keyword Research
Our keyword research technique is to find keywords that are at our punching level. We’re not a huge site like Minimalist Baker or Pinch of Yum, but we’re not just starting out either.
This indicates that we pursue medium difficulty recipe keywords that are between a keyword problem of 10-40 on Ahrefs.
As for volume, we try to target
anything from 300 to 7,500. Connect Building We
honestly have a great deal of room to grow in when it pertains to link structure. Our primary focus has been on constructing a stronger site structure and internal linking profile.
We’re not scared to request for links from other associated sites, but we don’t have a devoted outreach person to do this.
Right now we’re utilizing all our social networks channels (YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram) as a method to get in touch with other vegan blog writers and develop a relationship that can then lead to mutual cooperation (frequently involving links).
Having actually a released cookbook– even one that’s self-published– has been an excellent benefit for us in this area. It allows us to offer a valuable resource to people (a book that is sold on Amazon) so that they can see the kind of quality content we produce.
Our pitch in the past has been something like “Can I show you a copy of my brand-new cookbook? If you like it, I ‘d enjoy to use ‘x’ variety of copies for you to distribute to your audience!” It’s not a direct link demand, but the outcome, when positive, can lead to a link to our website.
Achieving Current Revenue Levels
I produced The Conscientious Eater in 2013 as a pastime, but didn’t understand its potential till 2018 when my partner, Brett, started finding out about how to monetize websites. Ever since, it’s been a side job.
In 2020, we caused a partner that has actually ended up being a fantastic buddy of ours. And just this year we employed our very first virtual assistant. All of us work part-time on the site for about 10 hours per week typically.
I found out how to put Google AdWords on the site in 2015 and it made around $100/month from 2015 to 2018.
Then Brett composed an article about our decision to focus on money making in the summertime of 2018: How I 5X ‘d My Food Blog Income in 3 Months.
Here’s our month-to-month income before and after:
It’s a little difficult to see, however it
begins in 2015, jumps in August 2018 and I’ve updated it through Nov 2021. It’s color-coded based on the
income source. Current Traffic The Conscientious Eater receives 102,000 page views monthly. Faith VanderMoler’s Favorite Tools We swear by: Ahrefs for keyword research Hosting on Flywheel andutilizing the Feast Plugin & Theme, and Clariti is something that has a ton of potential that we’re simply getting started with. Clariti is another production of the Pinch of Yum/ Food Blogger Pro/ WP Tasty/ Nutrifox empire run by Bjork and Lindsey Ostrum. The factor they’ve grown a lot is because they develop really beneficial tools!
Clariti resembles Surfer SEO. It helps you prioritize content to upgrade or repair. It informs you the word count of each post, the number of images are missing out on alt text, variety of links and if there’s any broken links.
By integrating with Google Analytics, you can see the number of page views that post is getting and the typical time on page.
They have plans to incorporate with Google Search Console so that you can see keywords that you rank for and your position (I’m assuming). Incorporating with GSC is where the genuine power will be available in!
Her Biggest Challenge
Our most significant challenges have been social networks algorithms.
My Instagram exploded in 2017 to over 40,000 fans, then I took a break for a few weeks while Brett and I were on our babymoon in main Europe. After that break, our growth plateaued and has never recuperated.
YouTube has also been a difficult nut to fracture.
I didn’t get much traction for a while. Then, leading up to COVID lockdowns, everything took off. Whatever slowed down after that, but is now selecting back up again.
Sometimes I seem like I’m on a hamster wheel attempting to keep the algorithms pleased which truly has me question whether it’s worth it.
With the help of our VA, we’re attempting a brand-new strategy on Pinterest based upon the suggestions that we obtained from a Pinterest expert. With the VA’s aid, we’re likewise trying a couple of things on Facebook and Twitter since we’ve never ever actually made an effort on those platforms.
Producing and updating material on the site will continue to be our primary focus, meal prep content on YouTube will be # 2, and we’ll keep try out Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram.
Her Most Important Accomplishment
I’m really proud of my cookbook, Plant Biased. It’s wonderfully designed and I love every recipe in there! I put a great deal of time into the beginner’s guide to assist people begin their plant-based journey. And with an average ranking of 4.8, it appears like the people purchasing it on Amazon are loving it too!
I truthfully still can’t think I released a book which it’s being offered on Amazon! This is something I never ever would have done if it wasn’t for our organization partner. For several years it was simply me dealing with my blog site, and then in 2018, my partner started to assist me with the technical/financial side of the website.
My partner has a buddy who is an incredible business man and one day he discovered that I had a food blog. Soon after he used to invest in my blog site and join our group.
One of the very first things he advised was for us to revamp the ebook that I had actually produced back in 2018 and turn it into a printed cookbook. This horrified me, but with his motivation and amazing style group, we produced a stunning cookbook that I’m actually proud of!
We released it through our company partner’s publishing arm, Go West Media.
As for marketing, we created a launch group and provided advance access to the book and encouraged them to compose a review on Amazon. We released it by letting everyone understand on all of our platforms, especially email.
I would enjoy to compose another cookbook focused around enjoyable, tasty, plant-based food for kids!
What She Wishes She Knew Back Then
I want I had known how to receive advertisement management agencies like Mediavine and AdThrive in the start. We would have gotten approved for Mediavine back in 2014 or 2015, but didn’t understand about it until 2018, and it 5X ‘d our earnings from day 1.
Faith VanderMolen’s Biggest Mistake
I ‘d state our biggest mistake was refraining from doing keyword research study early on. It was a hobby at the start, so I just produced and posted what I wished to post and create, however I believe we might have been a lot larger if I had done keyword research study early on.
Her Advice for Other Entrepreneurs
Keep explore balancing your time between knowing and doing. If you’re simply learning the entire time and not doing, then you’re actually just “procrastilearning.”
If you’re simply sticking your head down and “doing” all the time, you will not adjust and you won’t find brand-new ways of doing things if you research what others are doing and communicate with them. Striking the ideal balance will keep you developing, however likewise versatile to adjust to modifications.
Sometimes I seem like I’m on a hamster wheel attempting to keep the algorithms pleased which truly has me question whether it’s worth it.
Keep explore balancing your time between knowing and doing. If you’re simply learning the entire time and not doing, then you’re actually just “procrastilearning.”