Dishing Podcast

Dishing Podcast: This once a month podcast from host Elaine Benoit features successful food bloggers who share their stories of success and failure and their advice to others on how best grow their food blog into a thriving business. Elaine also interviews experts in this competitive field to help bloggers fine-tune their websites, grow their audiences and uncover ways to take their food blogs to the next level. Elaine is dedicated to inspire, educate and help bloggers realize their dreams of owning a successful online business.

Vanessa Mota | My Dominican Kitchen 03/16/2022

Eric and Shanna Jones | Dude that Cookz 02/16/2022

JinJoo Lee | Kimchimari 01/12/2022

Maria Doss | Kitchen at Hoskins 12/15/2021

Amy Estes | Pinch me Good 11/10/2021

Pina Bresciani 10/13/2021

Jeff Hawley | Hashtag Jeff 09/15/2021

Jeff Hawley | Hashtag Jeff Jeff Hawley is founder of HashtagJeff, where he and his team share a passion for developing tools to make SEO, digital content creation, and digital content management more successful for online publishers. Jeff has always been a free spirit. He realized early in life that he didn’t like to be told what to do without understanding why. That didn’t always go over well with a father in the military. As a kid, Jeff’s self-determination translated to an entrepreneurial mindset. He liked working for himself, and he was always looking for different ways to make money. By the time he went to college, he still didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he knew he wanted to own his own business. During his final year, he decided to learn as much as he could about digital marketing because he felt it would serve him no matter what business he pursued. Little did he know his future business would be digital marketing itself. Following college, Jeff worked for himself almost exclusively. He founded a small SEO agency that was acquired by a much larger agency, where he continued working for a few years to get experience with big businesses. In order to become as much of an expert in digital marketing as possible, he also joined a large auto dealership for a short time to gain experience with the paid side of search engine marketing. When Jeff started working with bloggers between 2016 and 2017, he quickly realized they were his tribe. Within a few months of auditing a number of lifestyle and food blogs, he began making plans to go out on his own again. Today, Jeff focuses 100% on digital publishers who primarily monetize from online traffic. They consist of food, DIY, travel, finance, and general lifestyle websites. Jeff performs site audits and teaches site owners and their teams how to incorporate SEO into their processes to increase site visibility and revenue. Jeff prides himself on making SEO more approachable for his clients. /episode/index/show/dishingwithdelishes/id/20397626

Mirlene & AJ Andou | Savory Thoughts 08/18/2021

Christina Shoemaker | The Whole Cook 07/14/2021

Monica Lensink | Nourish and Fete 06/16/2021

Candice Walker | Proportional Plate 05/12/2021

Jenna Passaro | Sip Bite Go 04/14/2021

Lauren Vavala | Delicious Little Bites 03/17/2021

Silk Road Recipes | Kevin O'Leary 02/17/2021

Growth with Tanya Harris 01/13/2021

What I Learned on Hiatus 12/17/2020

What I Learned on Hiatus This episode is to relay what I learned while I was on hiatus. It is my introductory episode that kicks off the new season which will begin on January 13th, 2021, so stay tuned. Hello everyone, it's Elaine and I am back at the mic. When I first announced that I was going on hiatus, I was feeling like all I did was toil away and didn't have a good work/life balance. So, when I announced my decision to 'go on hiatus', I actually didn't think I'd get back into podcasting. I thought that was it for me. Well, I was wrong. My last episode was published on December 20th in 2019 so, it has almost been a full year since I hung up my microphone and headphones. During that time, I learned many things. Let me start with what I learned regarding the podcast, which I found very interesting. After I pressed publish on that last episode, I danced around the house, feeling free and happy that I didn't have to reach out, schedule or sit down and perform those interviews. But even more exciting to me was I didn't have to edit the episodes. Because as I've mentioned before, it was extremely hard for me to let those "umms", false starts, sometimes-hard-to-follow sentences, and deep pauses just 'be'. My training as an actress, performer, and recovering perfectionist reared its ugly head and made me spend hours editing each episode. I tried to make both myself and my guest sound as good as I possibly could. But in the process, I sucked the fun out of podcasting. I loved chatting with my guests, but I was starting to dread the interviews. Not because I didn't want to talk to them, I just didn't want to edit the episodes. And I wasn't ready to hire someone to edit them for me since the show didn’t make me any money. So, after that last episode and my freedom dance party, I enjoyed the holidays and even enjoyed the first few months of the new year. We all know that the pandemic has been a big part of our lives, but I don't think it had anything to do with why I started to get the feeling that I should get back into interviewing other bloggers and experts. Those niggling thoughts By the time May rolled around. I was thinking daily about getting back into podcasting. But then I'd talk myself out of it by reminding myself how I felt the last few months of 2019. Then it occurred to me, "What if I don't publish episodes every week?" "What if I published twice a month or even better, ONCE a month?" I struggled with those questions because I've heard from many of my awesome listeners that though they understood why I stopped; they did miss the show. So, if I only published one episode a month, would people still want to hear the content? I asked a few bloggers their opinion and it ended up being a resounding yes. That made me happy. So here I am. I have rebranded the podcast from Dishing with Delishes to the Dishing podcast because, let's face it, I was trying to connect it to my food blog Dishes Delish and play on the word dishing as in chatting or better yet, gossiping (because I am nosy) and delishes to represent other food bloggers. But try saying that over and over and over. It's a mouthful. Those that helped me So, the podcast is now the Dishing Podcast. You can still get to the website through the old dishingwithdelishes url. Charles Smith from WPOpt.net has happily and efficiently redirected the site to the new url which is dishing.co. I also had Vladi of the husband and wife team from LIL Creative Digital Agency design both the artwork for apple podcasts and the logo for the website. The format for the show will stay the same - interviews with food bloggers and an expert or two, but I need your help. I’ll still ask the questions I’ve been asking my guests all along, but I’d also love to know what YOU want me to ask them. Please share your questions for food bloggers and food blogging experts with me at elaine @ Dishes Delish dot com. I can’t wait to hear from you. Blogging thoughts and ideas Now, to talk about what I've learned about blogging. When you first start out, everyone will tell you that you need lots of content. But I’ve learned that’s not always smartest move. What you need is quality, not quantity. And even though that’s what I was learning as a member of Food Blogger Pro, I still decided to pump out as much content as I could because I was excited; I knew one of the recipes was bound to go viral and I’d start making money. I do wish I hadn’t gone that route and had been more selective with what I published. But I was on learning and on a mission. When I first started, I published 2 food posts a week. A month or two later I made one of the smartest moves for the blog by adding a cocktail post to the weeks publishing schedule. Once I did that, I started to see growth on the blog. So, I published 3 posts a week for three plus years. Then in year 2, I started a podcast called Maturepreneurial to help individuals over 40 to either start or succeed in their businesses. During that time, I made my mistakes and learned what I needed to learn in order to feel comfortable enough to launch the Dishing with Delishes podcast in year 3, which was the podcast I really wanted to do. As you can see, I love piling more things on my plate. After I started the Dishing with Delishes podcast, I decided to stop the first podcast, which I eventually sold to a lovely woman who has integrated it with her own podcast. But even with one less podcast, it was still a lot of work – three recipes a week on the blog and one episode on the podcast. For at least a year, but probably more, I kept saying I was going to go down to two recipes a week – one food and one cocktail. But I was afraid that my growth would stagnate. I was also nervous about taking time off and in a day or two here and there or a two week vacation where I didn’t do anything for the blog. I felt if I did, my traffic would plummet. I finally asked friends, guests on the show and members of Food Bloggers Central whether any of them who cut back on publishing new content saw an adverse result on their blog. Surprisingly, the majority said no. If anything, they saw an increase in their traffic when they stopped posting as often. Or took time off. Everyone needs time off And sure enough, that’s what happened to me. You need the time and space to rejuvenate, reflect, to have ideas germinate without the constant thought, “I’ve got to publish a post.” And even if your traffic went down a smidge - though I did not see that on my site - it will bounce back when you either start publishing again or your audience settles in with your new schedule. And isn’t doing some self-care worth the risk of a small impact, if any? So, after 3 ½ years, I went down to two posts a week. Before I reduced my schedule, I had my audit with Casey Markee and Casey’s advice was to work on either shooting and re-writing the recipes or culling them by no-indexing or downright deleting them. I had created close to 425 recipes in those 3 ½ years. That’s a lot. Too many, in my opinion. Now, I understand why people tell you to pump out the content, but just know that it might not be the best thing for you. You have to work within the limits of the time you have in a day, in a week and in a month and so on. You also have to consider all the things you have to do around the post, like social sharing, while maintaining quality content and having the time to enjoy living your life. The appeal of touching a unicorn One other thing I’d like to relay, and this might be a little controversial - although experts are experts and know more than we do, we still have to trust our own intuition. I remember reaching out to someone about a post that was a unicorn because I wanted to insert some process shots. I already knew what this expert would say, which was “do not touch a unicorn.” But I wanted to touch that unicorn, horn and all because sometimes you have to buck the system and see if your intuition is right. So, I decided to do some testing, even though I realized it could impact that post. So, when I republished this post with new photos including process shots and updated the copy, I watched it very carefully on Google. I actually tested this with two posts. Both posts had been in the search results carousel and week by week, they remained in the carousel, even after I touched them. I’m not saying experts are wrong and we shouldn’t listen to them. What I’m saying is, my instinct was telling me to update these posts with process shots because it would be better user experience. And thankfully, I was right. They are still in the carousel and haven’t budged. In fact, the original unicorn moved from #3 in the carousel to #1. I have since found out about the Limit Modify Date plugin which allows you to update a post without a change in the modified date. Now whether this stops the powers that be from knowing you made updates, I don’t know. I’m thinking their crawling bots can see the changes anyway. But for whatever reason, my test posts weren’t affected. Back to my publishing schedule After seeing that reducing the schedule didn’t affect my growth, I decided to reduce it even further. Now I’m publishing one post per week and that has given me the time and mental space to do other projects. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for you to go down to one post a week: I’m advocating figuring out (and doing) what’s right for you. I’m excited for the coming year and can’t wait to see how it plays out. It feels like it’s going to be an expansive year. Here’s to a fabulous new year with incredible growth for everyone. What's next Thank you for listening and stay tuned for my next episode on January 13th when I re-interview Tanya Harris from My Forking Life. I decided to interview Tanya again because she has had explosive growth in the two years between my first interview and the new one. She went from 100k pageviews a month to over 1 million. How’s that for growth? Tune in on January 13th to hear how she did it. Until the next time, this is Elaine Benoit signing off. /episode/index/show/dishingwithdelishes/id/17220458

Hiatus Announcement | Elaine Benoit 12/20/2019

Hiatus Announcement | Elaine Benoit I wanted to publish this episode to let you all know that, after long and careful consideration, I have decided to take an extended hiatus from the podcast. Here are my reasons: This has been a passion project for me and, although I thought I might someday make money from it, I realize now that probably won’t happen. So, it’s time for me to focus my attention on my true money maker, which is my Dishes Delish food blog. Dishes Delish has grown leaps and bounds since I started this podcast. I attribute that growth to a few things. The first was my audit in June of 2018 with Casey Markee. That was the catalyst. I had interviewed Casey before that but at the time I decided to move forward with my audit, the blog had only five thousand sessions a month. Mind you, I had been blogging for almost 3 years. Casey helped focus me. He taught me to not pick keywords like “dark chocolate caramel marshmallow cashew butter cups” Yes, I actually used those keywords in a post. As you can imagine, it gets 0 monthly searches. But I’m the reigning champ of that keyword. I am in the carousal and #1 in Google search results. And that’s only one of my really long keywords. Casey also got me to write for my readers and help solve problems. That was a game changer for sure. Another game changer was the viral moment I had in September of 2018. The HBO show Camping mentioned a jelly donut shot in one of its episodes and at that time, the monthly viewfor those keywords was only 330. But here’s why I had that viral moment. My Jelly Donut shot was already #1 in search results, so everyone and their brother who watched that episode of Camping clicked through to my website. That shot is still #1 and now has a monthly search volume of 4400. That shows you how something can grow just by having exposure. And that exposure was also a growth catalyst because, as with all such exposure, having people look at my jelly donut shot brought them back to the site to see other content, which gave me even more sessions. By October of 2018 – and remember: in June of the same year, I had only 5k sessions a month – I qualified for Mediavine and in November their ads went live on my site. Fast forward 6 months, when I was lucky to have another viral moment. My pistachio cookie recipe became my top post, toppling my Cadillac Margarita from 1st place. The popularity of this cookie post allowed me to apply for (and join) AdThrive. Now remember, to join MediaVine, you need 25k monthly sessions. AdThrive requires 100k pageviews. Now, I tell you all this for two reasons, first to explain why I’m placing the podcast on hiatus. I need to focus on the blog to make it even more successful by adding various income streams. Secondly, I am hoping to inspire you by letting you know that you can do it too. Don’t get me wrong, it takes a lot of work and sometimes a little luck. But you don’t have to have a viral moment to succeed. Many of my guests didn’t have one, and yet they are successful; it just takes years and hard work. So, keep at it and don’t give up. Write for your readers, help them solve a problem and create quality content. I also want to say that it is not always necessary to pick keywords that have a high monthly search volume. Some of my more popular posts have under 1000 monthly searches on Google but they do really well on Pinterest. So I would have missed out on this if I’d listened to the experts and neglected to follow my gut. Experts are great and can be a big help but you also can rely on yourself by doing what you think is best. You can also help yourself by joining Facebook groups like Food Bloggers Central. Ask questions, learn from other bloggers mistakes and if you’re wanting some inspiration, visit Dishing with Delishes and re-listen to interviews with food bloggers who forged their way before us. You can also listen to experts like , , and just to name a few. Now you’re probably wondering if I’ll be returning to the podcast. My first instinct is to say no, because I need the break without having to think about the show, interview future guests or edit episodes. Last year, I started publishing the podcast in seasons thinking it would give me a break but, I never really felt like I had any time off and believe me, I need that time for blog growth endeavors. But you never know. I will miss chatting with other bloggers and learning more about their journeys. Don’t be a stranger! If you see me on social media, say ‘hi’ or drop me a line at Elaine @ Dishes Delish dot com. Because, as you know I love chatting with bloggers and would love to hear from you. Okay, it's time for me to sign off. This is Elaine Benoit from Dishing with Delishes and Dishes Delish. I enjoyed this fun ride and thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening in. Happy New Year, everyone! I wish you a prosperous 2020. /episode/index/show/dishingwithdelishes/id/12472646