As your team grows, it becomes harder and harder to keep track of the projects and see what people are working on.
ClickUp is the project management program we use to help make good collaboration possible. It makes it easy to set up templates and publishing flows to make sure you don't forget any of the small steps needed in publishing. It's easy to assign tasks, comment on various projects, and track where different projects are currently at.
When trying to create recipes, there are two types of conversions I often run into. The first is weight to volume measurements and the second is "whole ingredient" to "recipe ingredient" conversions. It can be a struggle to figure out how the conversions work without making the recipe again from scratch.
Here are the tools that I use to help with both.
I do a ton of recipe writing, and one of the issues I often run into is trying to discover interesting flavor combinations, and finding inspiration for partially completed dishes.
Sometimes I will have the base flavors of a dish figured out but need to know how to best compliment them, and other times I'll know I need to write a recipe for a certain ingredient (say "duck" or "asparagus") and I'm looking for inspiration on how to pair it.
When I am in this bind, there are two books I reach for.
When people sit down to create a cookbook they often make a single mistake that hurts them throughout the entire cookbook process. It's an easy mistake to make and almost everyone makes it. But once you know how to avoid it your chances of success are going to skyrocket.
I'm going to share with you what it is and show you how to avoid it when you put out your next cookbook.
There's lots of different goals you can have and often times we don't realize the variety that we could have. In our heads we picture these bestsellers like Harry Potter or The DaVinci Code, cookbooks by major chefs like Thomas Keller or the Alinea cookbook. And we have these unrealistic expectations of putting out a cookbook that's going to sell thousands or tens of thousands of copies.
Teaching cooking classes is a great way for food bloggers to get involved with their fans.
One of the things that works really well with food bloggers is teaching cooking classes. We already know how to teach, we write recipes so people can learn how to cook the types of food that we're cooking. And using our expertise hands on, to share it with people is a great way to make some extra money, to grow your brand and to meet some interesting people in your community.
A lot of people don't know how to get started doing that though. And they get nervous about what types of things they should be doing.
One of the hardest parts about blogging is overcoming the physical and mental aspects of it and making sure you take enough time for yourself.
As a blogger we focus a lot on the tactics of becoming a successful blogger. How do you do keyword research? How do you write recipes and blog posts? How to use WordPress? We rarely focus on the mental and physical aspects of blogging, but this can be some of the most important things to becoming a successful blogger.
If you're not feeling good, if you don't take time out for yourself, if you don't focus on your own concerns and needs, you can really get behind. You can let doubts build up, you can let sickness get in the way, and you can't accomplish the things that you want to accomplish.
Are you charging the right amount when you're working with clients?
One of the most difficult things you run into when you start working with clients, whether you're doing photography, social media consulting, or any sort of consulting work is figuring out what should you charge. A lot of things go into the pricing decision and it can be stressful not knowing if you're charging too much or not charging enough.
Most people are just looking for a rate that's going to fairly compensate them for the work that they're putting in.
The worst thing that could happen to you is that what you're doing could work. What type of blog are you building? What type of job are you creating for yourself? I'm going to show you where you might be going wrong. And if so, how you can correct it and start building the type of blog that you want to work on.
We all know there's a thousand places that we could spend our time. Do we focus on Facebook, Pinterest, SEO, talking to Brands, creating recipes, putting content out, doing YouTube videos? There are a thousand different places competing for our time.
Recently I've heard a lot of people saying, "I've been spending all this time on keyword research and I really hate it, but I know it's super important". Or "I've been trying to put out YouTube videos because I know it's so important, but I really hate doing it".
It's interesting to me that people are trying to spend so much time on things they hate.
No one gets paid to be a blogger unless you're working for a company. No one's going to pay you to put out that blog post but there are a lot of ways you can make money from your blog. I'm going to show you several of the ones that are most effective so you can start moving forward and making additional money from your blog.
Possibly the most important question you need to ask yourself is "how do you make money?"
You don't get paid to be a food blogger or create content, unless you're getting paid by a company. So I think it's important to ask yourself, where is this money going to come from? How am I actually going to make money and get paid? It has to come from somewhere.
Lately I've been having conversations with lots of food bloggers who are curious what it takes to "be a successful food blogger". The problem with that question is that it is impossible to answer without knowing what your end goal is, and many food bloggers haven't given it a lot of thought.
Asking what makes a "successful food blogger" is like asking "Do I need to pack a sweater?" when you don't know whether you are going skiing in Utah or to the beach in Cancun.
In this article I wanted to talk about a few of the goals you might have as a food professional, and what is important for each one. This is because determining your goals is probably the most critical thing you can do. If you don't know where you are trying to go, it is impossible to figure out the best way to get there.
