A Blog Review: Foodcraft by Steffles

Posted on December 11, 2007 - Filed Under Blog Reviews, Interviews

Today, I am writing a blog review on a food blog started by a friend who calls herself Steffles. She writes and owns a blog Foodcraft, which was birthed out of her love for cooking. It contains posts of themed dinner parties complete with gorgeous photos, recipes and cooking instructions as well as descriptions of dishes from fine dining at restaurants. The dishes featured in the blog are varied - from Spanish food to local Singaporean seafood - and unique as Steffles is always up to modifying dishes and pastries to zest them up and make them interesting. The reward she gets is the satisfaction in knowing that people who read her blog are trying out her recipes and enjoying them.

Steffles’ life has changed since she started blogging. Firstly, it requires time in writing, and Steffles has since invested in a macro lens to capture quality pictures for her blog. Also, friends have had to learn to wait until Steffles has taken photos of all the dishes on the table before the feasting can begin. Those who used to cringe while waiting for her to take photos are now asking her for recipes and to recommend them places to eat once they got used to the idea that Steffles runs a blog, and a good one at that. I will be using her blog as an example of how someone like Steffles can make changes to her blog to market it and eventually earn enough money from it to quit her day job.
About Foodcraft
Steffles is someone who loves fine wining & dining, and the only thing that she enjoys more than that is cooking. She started Foodcraft in March 2005 and updates it weekly. She does not do much marketing for her blog except via word of mouth and a digital signature with the URL of her blog in her personal emails. The little monetization she has is a couple of Google Ads at the top of the blog.

Upon doing a little research, I discovered that despite the weekly and sometimes infrequent posting, Foodcraft still enjoys a ranking of PR3 though my guess is that the number of unique visitors per day is not as high as it should be, based on some Alexa stats. Articles in Foodcraft have been bookmarked 64 times on del.icio.us, and has 10 technorati links. As no RSS feeds are being offered on the site and corresponding number of subscribers, it is difficult to tell what kind of traffic Foodcraft is getting on a daily basis.

I sent Steffles a list of interview questions, to which she graciously provided the answers to.

Steffles got into blogging when a girlfriend, author of Sweetoven introduced her to

“…this amazing webworld where you can share recipes and your passion with others.”

Ironically, her girlfriend stopped blogging when she went back to work, but Steffles continued to update her blog.

Steffles’ key target audience is anybody and everybody who loves to cook or bake. The purpose of her blog is to share her special recipes with like minded “cooks” and as a place where she can store her recipes for future reference. A secondary purpose is to keep her friends informed of her latest culinary adventures and where they can exchange personal anecdotes. Last but not least, it would also be an online heirloom for her daughter, as a way of passing down her recipes if she grew up to become interested in cooking and baking as well.

After defining her target audience, Steffles focused on keeping her regular readers happy and coming back for more cooking recipes at foodcraft. Recently, due to the birth of her daughter, Steffles has had her hands tied and only recently started posting regularly again.

Steffle’s response when I posed her the question on what would she say if I told her she has a real potential in earning good money from her blog was:

“Wow - being paid for your passion is fabulous!”

So I have decided to dedicate this post to advising Steffles exactly how she can do that. And she doesn’t really need to put in a lot of effort as she already has a great blog going with unique content. The only thing that she needs to work on is getting the marketing and monetization systems set up.

Steps to Marketing Foodcraft

Steffles is already doing something right in marketing her blog - she has been actively interacting with fellow bloggers in the same niche, exchanging pointers and dining places, as well as exchanging links. She has tried recipes posted from other bloggers and given comments on their blogs. She has also established relationships with a few of them such that they co-own a couple of blogs together. In doing this, Steffles is making herself visible to visitors of the other blogs who are also her key target audience. She is “stealing” traffic from related blogs to an already targeted audience. All she needs to do is to be more active at commenting at other cooking blogs which are receiving good traffic and giving valuable pointers to steer some of the traffic in her direction. She should also do a guest blogging exchange with another similarly popular if not more popular blog. This will help to introduce readers of both blogs to the other site, essentially sharing their traffic and boosting readership.

The next step that Steffles can do to is to participate in cooking & baking forums. I did a search, and came up with a list of forums that Steffles could actively participate in to exchange cooking pointers and tips. Not all of the members of the forums will own a blog as many of them are simply looking for a community where they can exchange recipes and pointers. But all of them will be people who love cooking - Steffles’ key target audience. So she should go through the list below, choose a few forums which she is interested in, and just start getting involved in the discussion on a daily basis if possible to establish relationships and build contacts. She should make sure that her signature in the forums include the URL of her blog though she should be careful in reading the terms and conditions of these forums as some of them do not take to this well and will ban her as a spammer. The key is to establish relationships, and try to refer them to her blog for recipes or cooking tips to increase her loyal readership base.

List of cooking / baking forums, to name a few:

Chef 2 Chef Culinary Portal which is part of Chef2Chef dot net
ChefTalk
eG Forums
Group Recipes
Bake Space

If Steffles has a little more time and cash to invest, I would suggest that she starts to actively participate in social networks systems like StumbleUpon, MyBlogLog, etc. and buy a little advertising with Google Adwords. She could also start writing reviews at hungrygowhere.com, a popular local network site that Singaporeans use when they want to locate a good eating place for their culinary requirements, and the associated credit card discount at these places. With a ranking of PR4 and a cult following of its own, being a regular and recognised contributor to this site would bring quality traffic to Steffles’ blog.

Monetizing Foodcraft

Most blogs start making good money off private ad sales and affiliate marketing once they manage to work up their Page Ranking to a 4. Foodcraft is already a PR3 blog and with some simple installations on the site, a little effort put into marketing and regular weekly posts, Steffles should be able to get Foodcraft up to a PR4 in no time. However, before she can do that, there are a couple of things she can do to her blog so that advertisers can sit up and take notice of her blog.

1. Firstly, she would need to install Google Analytics or some sort of traffic tracking software to give advertisers some stats on her traffic.
2. In addition, she should provide an RSS feed and try to get her regular readers to subscribe to her blog. The number of subscribers are also what advertisers look at when they are considering approaching a blog for ad space.
3. Next, Steffles should add the “favourite me” technorati button on her site. Currently she has links from Technorati on what other blogs are linking to her and her profile somewhere near the middle of the page. This doesn’t really do anything for her blog, and she already has a profile on the top right hand of the page. What Steffles should do is remove the Technorati widgets from her blog, and then add the “Fave this Blog” Technorati button and ranking if desired right on top of the right column, under a RSS subscription button, above the “About Me” blurb.
4. Finally, Steffles should seriously think about writing an eBook that contains her best cooking tips or recipes and offer it as a free download for everyone who subscribes to her blog. Later on when she is more established as an authority in her niche, she can then start writing and selling eBooks for a fee.
5. An added step for Steffles will be to sign up for Sponsored Reviews as a publisher. This makes her available to advertisers who are looking for a related blog where they can buy an advertorial or review of their restaurant or site. Steffles will get paid to review a product or service, and the advertiser gets exposure on Steffles’ blog. Or if Steffles is uncomfortable in working with ad networks, what she can do is to regularly write reviews on restaurants, recipes in books, quality of ingredients purchased at departmental stores, etc. In her posts, she should also try to get comments from her readers. This adds to her influencer index if people start responding to her reviews. This is also an index of what advertisers look for, and will enable Steffles to approached by individual business owners who will pay a fee for a review or for an advertising spot. This will give Steffles more control and selectivity over the kinds of advertisers she has on her site.

In conclusion, an alternative that Steffles can take is to sell out her blog if she was looking for a quick way to make some decent money. I posed the question to her if she would ever intend to sell out her blog, and her reply is that a blog is only special and bias free if what is written is from the heart. She prefers to earn money by converting Foodcraft into a metablog, but will be very careful about who advertises on her blog as she wants her blog to be genuine.

That said, my rating for Steffles blog is as follows:

Potential for Growth Rating:
Content Rating:
Monetizing Potential Rating: