Advanced Strategy To Start Food Blogging To Make Money with Digital Products

In my newest episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast, I sat down with Tammy Overhoff food blogger at Organize Yourself Skinny and digital product shop owner at Reset and Flourish.

Yes, it’s easy to learn how to start a food blog for free, but then it all becomes about strategy.

Tammy shares her experiences and strategies for transitioning from traditional food blogging to selling digital products, offering valuable insights for anyone looking to diversify their online business. In this episode you’ll hear her actionable advice and expert tips to help you succeed in the digital product space.

Transform Your Food Blog: Effective Ways to Sell Digital Products | MiloTreeCart

Table of Contents

Show Notes:

The Journey from Food Blogging to Digital Products

Tammy Overhoff’s journey began with her food blog, Organize Yourself Skinny, where she shared meal prep tips and healthy eating advice. Over time, as part of her food blogging strategy, she realized the potential of digital products to provide additional value to her audience and generate revenue. Here are the main steps she took to make this transition:

Identifying the Right Digital Products

Tammy started by identifying the types of digital products that would resonate with her audience. She focused on creating products that aligned with her blog’s theme and addressed her readers’ needs. Some of the digital products she developed include:

Meal Prep Lessons: Using her expertise in meal prep, Tammy created a series of lessons to help her audience plan and prepare meals efficiently.
Ebook Bundles: She compiled her best recipes and meal prep tips into ebooks, offering them as bundles for added value.
Healthy Eating Challenges: Tammy designed a ten-day healthy eating challenge kit, providing her audience with a structured plan to kickstart their healthy eating journey.

Leveraging Existing Content

One of Tammy’s key strategies has been repurposing existing content to create digital products. This approach not only saves time but also ensures that the products are relevant and valuable to her audience. For example:

Repurposing Blog Posts: Tammy turned her most popular blog posts into comprehensive ebooks, adding additional content and resources to enhance their value.
Creating Mini Products: She used the Meal Pro app to offer mini products, such as meal prep lessons, which were derived from her existing content.

Building and Nurturing an Email List

Tammy emphasizes the importance of having a robust email list to sustain long-term success in selling digital products. She shares her strategies for building and nurturing her email list:

Lead Magnets: Tammy offeres free resources, such as meal planning templates and healthy eating guides, to attract new subscribers.
Regular Communication: She maintains regular communication with her email list, providing valuable content and updates about new products and offers.
Segmenting the Audience: Tammy segments her email list based on subscribers’ interests and behaviors, allowing her to send targeted and relevant content.

Creating a Strong Sales Funnel

A well-designed sales funnel is crucial for converting leads into customers. Tammy shares her approach to creating an effective sales funnel:

Front-End Offers: She uses her ten-day healthy eating challenge kit as a front-end offer to attract new customers and introduce them to her products.
Upselling and Cross-Selling: Tammy offers additional products and services, such as yearly memberships and workshops, to existing customers.
Retargeting with Facebook Ads: She successfully uses Facebook ads to retarget website visitors and email subscribers, driving them back to her sales funnel.

Adapting to Changes and Challenges

Tammy’s journey has not been without challenges. She shares her experience of being hit by a Google algorithm update in November 2019, which significantly impacted her traffic and revenue. Despite this setback, she pivoted her business and found new ways to engage her audience:

Hosting Challenges in Facebook Groups: Tammy hosts challenges in her Facebook group, which helps her maintain engagement and drive sales.
Diversifying Traffic Sources: She diversifies her traffic sources by leveraging social media, email marketing, and paid advertising.

Expert Tips for Selling Digital Products

Based on Tammy’s experiences and insights, here are some expert tips for successfully selling digital products:

Understand Your Audience

To create products that resonate with your audience, it’s essential to understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. Conduct surveys, engage with your audience on social media, and analyze your website analytics to gather insights.

Start Small and Scale Up

Begin with small, manageable products, such as ebooks or mini-courses, and gradually scale up to more comprehensive offerings. This approach allows you to test the market and refine your products based on feedback.

Focus on Quality and Value

Ensure that your digital products are high-quality and provide real value to your audience. Invest time in creating well-designed, informative, and actionable content that addresses your audience’s needs.

Build a Strong Brand

A strong brand can help you stand out in a crowded market. Develop a consistent brand identity, including your logo, color scheme, and messaging, and ensure that it reflects your values and resonates with your audience.

Utilize Multiple Marketing Channels

Diversify your marketing efforts by utilizing multiple channels, such as social media, email marketing, and paid advertising. This approach can help you reach a broader audience and drive more traffic to your sales funnel.

Continuously Optimize Your Sales Funnel

Regularly review and optimize your sales funnel to improve conversion rates. Test different offers, landing pages, and email sequences to identify what works best for your audience.

Stay Adaptable and Resilient

The online business landscape is constantly evolving, and it’s essential to stay adaptable and resilient. Be prepared to pivot your strategies and explore new opportunities to stay ahead of the competition.

Tammy Overhoff’s journey from food blogging to selling digital products offers valuable lessons for anyone looking to diversify their online business. By leveraging her expertise, repurposing existing content, and nurturing her audience, Tammy successfully transitioned into the digital product space. Her experiences highlight the importance of understanding your audience, building a strong sales funnel, and staying adaptable in the face of challenges.

Whether you’re a seasoned blogger or just starting, these insights and tips can help you create and sell digital products that resonate with your audience and drive long-term financial success.

Other Related Blogger Genius Podcast episodes You’ll Enjoy:

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#338 Transcript: Transform Your Food Blog: Effective Ways to Sell Digital Products

Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze

Jillian Leslie (00:00:06) – Hello and welcome back to the Blogger Genius podcast. I’m your host, Gillian Leslie, founder of MiloTree. If you haven’t heard, MiloTree is your all in one suite for growing your online business. It includes MiloTreeCart, the easiest way to sell digital products in under five minutes. MiloTreeLeads, which allows you to collect email subscribers by offering unlimited freebies and the military pop up app for boosting your social media followers. I’m excited to announce that we’ve just launched MiloTreeLeads exclusively to our MiloTreeCart lifetime deal VIP at an incredibly low monthly price. If you’re a VIP, you should have already received an email from me with details on how to sign up. But hurry before we roll out MiloTreeCart and MiloTreeLeads as a subscription service, you can still grab my lottery card for our lifetime deal of $349 and get MiloTreeLeads for an unbelievably low price if you purchase now. This offer won’t last, so head to milotree.com. Sign up today. You even get a bonus one hour coaching call.

Jillian Leslie (00:01:23) – Plus, we offer a 30 day, no questions asked money back guarantee to there’s absolutely no risk. Again, head to milotree.com and sign up now. On to today’s episode. I am thrilled to be joined by Tammy Overholt from Reset and Flourish. Tammy is a seasoned food blogger. She started her journey in 2011 with her food blog called Organize Yourself Skinny, focusing on meal prep and freezer prep for healthier living. Today, she shares how she ventured into selling digital products. We’re talking years ago and she found success through testing, repurposing her existing content and taking risks. Tammy also believes she hasn’t been affected by Google’s recent algorithm updates because in addition to being a blogger, creating content and monetizing via ads, she also sells a whole host of products. Tammy shares all about her funnels, how she successfully uses tripwires, where she gives away a freebie and then sells on the thank you page and runs Facebook ads. To this, she talks about how she thinks about creating new products and why this is the best time for every food blogger to start selling digital products if they want to stay in it for the long term.

Jillian Leslie (00:02:52) – So without further delay, here is my interview with Tammy over Hof. Tammy. Welcome to the Blogger Genius podcast.

Tammy Overhoff (00:03:04) – Hey Jillian, thank you so much for having me. I am, I’ve been looking forward to talking with you all week, so I can’t wait to dive into digital products.

Jillian Leslie (00:03:12) – Awesome. Okay, so you reach out to me and you said, hey, I just want you to know, digital products saved my business. And can you explain, like, why you reached out to me and how this has been the case for you?

Tammy Overhoff (00:03:27) – Okay, so it’s a pretty long story, so I’m definitely going to keep it short, concise, to the point. Feel free to ask me to clarify on anything, but I’ve been listening to your podcast for a long time, and over the last I would say couple. Well, you’ve always talked about digital products, but I think given the landscape of how the internet is going right now and blogging and all of that, digital products are just something that people like you and I are just talking more about, because it’s just so important, as you’re moving forward with monetizing your business to really take digital products seriously.

Tammy Overhoff (00:04:02) – So as I listen to your podcast, I And I know that you also work with food bloggers and I am a food blogger, my blog is organized yourself skinny, and I also run the Reset and Flourish brand, which includes the Reset and Flourish Shop. And I have a membership and I sell a digital products and all of that. And so as I listen to you talk on your podcast, I just thought to myself, I really want to talk to Jillian about my story because I am a food blogger. Digital products honestly have saved my business. I’ve been blogging since 2011. I have seen all there is to see as a food blogger with over a decade of experience, and I also now work with food bloggers, helping them repurpose their content into digital products. So I just. I was like, I’m just going to send her an email. I think me and her could probably be new besties because we are definitely on the same page. And I think it’s a really, really important message specifically for food bloggers because that’s my expertise.

Tammy Overhoff (00:05:10) – But I just think content creators in general really need to take seriously pivoting their business to focus on digital products, because I truly believe that if they don’t do this, they are just going to continue to struggle and just it’s just going to be really hard. I think the business owners, the online business owners that are going to truly survive moving forward are going to be the ones that take digital products very seriously in their business, not just an afterthought or something they’re going to get to someday, or waiting for that algorithm hit to happen, or the cookies to go away to. To take it seriously, I think the time is, is definitely to take it seriously right now. Get your product developed, start working on that digital product strategy so you can have that new income stream coming in. So when something does happen, because it will happen, you’re ready. And now you’re not functioning in desperation mode, trying to work to get something created while you’re super stressed out about your business declining rapidly because of an algorithm update.

Tammy Overhoff (00:06:24) – And the reason why I can say that, and I guess, I guess going back to my story and how I have gotten to this place in my business. So like I said, I started my business in 2011 and I just started that just like pretty much any other food blogger back then, or blogger in general, you had experiences, a passion. I lost a bunch of weight. I did it through organizing my weight loss through meal prep freezer prep, started talking about it with friends Family. Decided to start a blog. People absolutely loved talking about meal prep and freezer prep, which is, you know, always blows my mind because even over a decade later, I’m still talking about that. And people just they love having conversations around that. So now back at that time, advertising was not what it is right now. So back in 2011, Raptive wasn’t even a thing. Pinterest wasn’t even a thing. Instagram wasn’t even a thing. Mediavine definitely wasn’t a thing. So to make money at that point as a blogger, digital products, that was an option.

Tammy Overhoff (00:07:34) – You know, building your community, having digital products. I listened a lot back then to Pat Flynn, and he was very big on digital products at that point, And that’s really how you if you wanted to build a business, that’s what you did. Right. And so in 2012, I created it was like 2012 or 2013, I created my first digital product, and that was a monthly meal plan slash habit challenge slash exercise challenge. And I worked with one of my friends who was a physical trainer in my area, and she helped me put all that together. So wait, wait, wait.

Jillian Leslie (00:08:11) – I want to stop you for a second. Yeah. Go ahead. So was this something like a PDF that you delivered monthly?

Tammy Overhoff (00:08:17) – Well, this is this was like, kind of my first challenge. well, first success slash challenge. So when I created that, I literally just typed it into a word document and saved it as a PDF, and I sold it through a PayPal link in my blog post.

Tammy Overhoff (00:08:35) – I used to do a weekly meal plan blog post on my blog, and then I would just share it on Facebook. And when I first put that out to my audience and I sold it in my email list. So my email list at that time, I mean, it probably had like maybe 3000, 4000 people that made $1,000 in a month, which that to me, of course. I mean, I’m thinking to myself, wow, I mean, that validated it for me. Where I was, I was like, okay, obviously this is something my audience wants. I got great feedback on it, and I was like, okay, well, I can make more of these. So every month for four months, I created a that same type of package and I sold it, and it made $1,000 each month, or maybe $1,500. And I split it with the my friend who who was helping me with it. So. But the problem was and what I learned later on. So this was definitely a challenge for me at that point.

Tammy Overhoff (00:09:34) – The problem was, is I didn’t have a system in place to keep that like momentum going, to keep the creation process of that digital product going or the sales funnel, or bringing in those like consistent email leads. So I kind of didn’t know what to do with it. And what I should have done at that point is just sold the same meal plans all the time and just had them on my blog selling them. But that was in 2012, 2013. In 2020, those actually resurrected I took I found them in my Google Drive, took them out, spruce them up and made them part of a bundle with my Organize Yourself Skinny book that I ended up creating in 2015 so I could talk. As I go through the process, I can talk more about just the, you know, my start of really well, not really my start, but one of the ways I repurposed my, you know, a product that I already created. And now I still continue to sell that to this day. So I kind of stopped selling that just because I didn’t have a system in place.

Tammy Overhoff (00:10:46) – And then in 2014, I decided to start writing my first e-book, and that was called one still called Organize Yourself Skinny. And in that e-book, I just went through all of my strategies that I’ve used to just lose weight, you know, accountability, meal prep, all this stuff. And I launched that in 2015, the January of 2015, and that made like $5,000, and I was selling it for like $10. So I definitely was like, okay, this is awesome. And I started to really see the benefit of one packaging your knowledge and selling it to your to your audience and just, you know, really meeting their needs in that way.

Jillian Leslie (00:11:38) – So when to stop you there for a second, one thing that you’re sharing with me, I as as I share all the time, I get on tons of calls with bloggers. And you definitely follow this pattern of people that I see, especially people who kind of stumbled into this. Which is it? Because it’s like a scattershot strategy, like, whoa, I did this.

Jillian Leslie (00:12:01) – It worked. Okay, I’ll sell it for a while. I’ll get kind of bored. I’ll forget about it in my Google Drive. Hey, I’ll go write an e-book. Oh, look, I sell that, and that’s the shiny new thing. And that kind of works. Hey, maybe I could package these together. What you said is, like, you didn’t have this overall strategy because it was a little bit like, oh, my God, I found this, like, pile of money right here. I’m going to milk that and then okay, when that goes and then because we’re food bloggers and therefore it’s like there’s so much to do. Oh yeah, maybe I’m going to grow my page views so I can get into to rap div or media. Like we get distracted and so like you, it’s like, oh, this little pile of money over here. Okay, great. Now I’ll chase this other little pile of money, whether that be ads, sponsorships, whatever. And so what it sounds like is you just kind of discovered stuff that worked, but yet over time, now you’ve thought about it as an overall strategy.

Jillian Leslie (00:12:57) – But when you were getting into it, it was just kind of, I don’t know, good luck.

Tammy Overhoff (00:13:03) – Yeah, definitely 100%. And what’s interesting with that book I created, I should also mention before I put that e-book together that was also repurposed content. So I had a blog series because back in the day that was kind of the thing. You put together a blog series. So I put a blog series on together on my weight loss. I created an email opt in series on my weight about my weight loss, and I and people just really responded to that positively. And I got a lot of great feedback. So I took that and repurpose that into an e-book, and I expanded on it, added, you know, checklists and all this stuff that you would put in it. And then, yeah, I sold that, I sold. So that was 2015. And you’re so right, because 2015 is when I got into Add thrive. And from there, because of my page views, I mean, my page I was making, I’ve always made since the since I got into Add thrive.

Tammy Overhoff (00:14:04) – My business has always made at least six figures off of advertising, which is a pretty substantial amount, obviously. So while I continued with the digital products, I have this other pot of money that was pretty lucrative that I needed to worry about. And also, like you said, there’s just so much for food bloggers to do. So I’m creating recipes and photographing and doing everything. But I was one of the things I did differently than I think. Maybe a lot of food bloggers, especially nowadays, is I was following a lot of digital marketers. So not only was I learning about food blogging, but I was now I was interested in the digital product world, and I was learning about more about e-book creation and even course creation and membership creation. So in 2017 I created my I took my Organize Yourself Skinny e-book and I expanded that into a course basically Organise Yourself Skinny e-course. That course brought in $200,000 and I sold it for for $63. So but the problem now that was over like 18 months.

Tammy Overhoff (00:15:17) – So that wasn’t like a launch that but still $200,000 in 18 months like that was. And not only that, and this is what I realized at that time and what I realized now, and I guess my second challenge that I that I had to deal with, I realized the importance of having a nurtured email list because up until yes, up until that point, I was not I was only selling my book, but I was just emailing my audience on a regular basis. There was no real strategy. I was just talking to him like a friend. I was just always just sending out emails. And when I was ready to sell it, they bought it. And that first launch brought in like $18,000 in ten days. And I was like, okay. And then I just kept building my community and but that my, my, my challenge was the reason I didn’t see the consistent $18,000 launches is because I wasn’t bringing in the consistent leads into. Yeah. There are two.

Jillian Leslie (00:16:26) – Things that I think people don’t realize.

Jillian Leslie (00:16:29) – One, like you ultimately like, let’s say you even have a list of 20,000 people. At some point, if you keep going to them with the same offer, by my course, by my course, you burn out your list.

Tammy Overhoff (00:16:43) – 100%.

Jillian Leslie (00:16:44) – Enough to me like I bought it or I’m not into this or whatever. So the thinking, I think that this is where people hit a wall, where they say, I went to my list, it sold. This is where I think people get in trouble with courses because they spend so much time building the course. And let’s say again, they got 20,000 people to sell it to. You better believe they’re going to have a great launch or they’re going to have a great 18 months. But at a certain point, you’ve captured the majority of people who are going to buy your course. So now you’re like, oh my God, that course took so much work. What else, what other course can I make? And it becomes this kind of law of diminishing returns.

Jillian Leslie (00:17:30) – Therefore what you said is so right. There are two strategies that I recommend. One, you continue to go out and replenish your list. You’re always growing your list. So you always have those fresh people. And to you, think about what else can I sell to the people who are already buying from me? If they bought one thing from you and you delivered, they will buy your next thing. Which is why again, I talk about having a digital product strategy where you are taking them on a journey and ultimately this is why I share the money ultimately is in the membership. Because I sell to you once, but I’m making money from you month after month after month because I’m providing you with new resources, more support, a community. And so if you think about it that way, that’s how digital products, ultimately, that’s where I see people have the most success.

Tammy Overhoff (00:18:34) – Yes, I have. I also have a membership, so I have experience with that as well. And my experience has been that and how I do it now.

Tammy Overhoff (00:18:45) – And I totally agree with you. So you bring them in through that freebie and then you get them to purchase a smaller offer. And this is how. Because back in the day when I made all that money off the course, I already had this hot lead. You know, a hot email list. So hot leads in my email list, they were ready to buy that. Like you said, a diminishing return. I, the people who are going to buy, they bought. I wasn’t bringing in the emails fast enough to continue with that type of success. So how I work, how I do it now, is I get people in through that freebie.

Jillian Leslie (00:19:20) – What is the freebie? What is the freebie that you’re offering? Is it because you also then teach people how to sell digital products? So is which like what part of your business?

Tammy Overhoff (00:19:29) – Okay, so I’m talking about my recent flourish side of my business. So so the food blogging side of my business, I have a few different freebies.

Tammy Overhoff (00:19:39) – I have a meal prep guide, I have, a free class. And then I also will just put together, different like recipe. So I’m right now one of my goals is to create a new digital product on meal starters. So I’ve been having a free freebie on meal starters that I just put together with recipes on my site and some, you know, instructions and stuff like that. So I bring them in and then they are immediately given the opportunity through a tripwire to purchase my ten day Healthy Eating Challenges kit.

Jillian Leslie (00:20:13) – How does your tripwire perform? Again, this is what we’re doing with MiloTreeLeads, where we are enabling you guys to offer tripwires.

Tammy Overhoff (00:20:23) – Well, my tripwire performs really well. So I get I would say I should have pulled those numbers, but I would say out of every 100 people, 15 to 20 of them will purchase the tripwire. And how much is the tripwire?

Jillian Leslie (00:20:40) – How much is it?

Tammy Overhoff (00:20:40) – The tripwire is $19 and you can buy it also in my shop for $30. So they’re getting an instant discount.

Tammy Overhoff (00:20:48) – I have a timer on my tripwire because you need to have that urgency and then I so if they decide to buy and I, I also have tons of testimonials. So I’ve been selling this product since 2022, which this is technically the product that saved my business, which I can talk more about. And so I’ve been getting I get testimonials all the time. So my audience loves this. Then they get, the option for an order bump, which is my Reset and Flourish 30 day bundle. And that includes my Organise Yourself Skinny book and then also my 30 day workbook, which includes those meal plans that I created back in 2012 that I spruced up and made into, a 30 day workbook and that sells pretty much every single day. And then. But what I found is so as far as the membership goes, I have, so I used to try to sell my membership as a front end offer, and the membership is my reset and flourish planner, and that includes all of so people who join this get access to all of my recipe recipes advertising free.

Tammy Overhoff (00:21:59) – It’s on a platform. I use the Meal Pro app. It’s a it’s its own app and you can set it up. And then they also get access to all my meal prep lessons, which I pulled out of my overall course that I put together. So I was able to, you know, create a mini product with that. And then I have a Facebook group and I do like monthly workshops. And as a front end offer, it definitely was a major struggle to get people into that. However, when people purchase the ten day Healthy Eating Challenges kit, I have an entire onboarding sequence for that to walk them through it, show that, you know, just give them that support, and then at the end of that onboarding sequence that that gets or they get offered. Now the Reset and Flourish Planner membership. And it’s funny because I didn’t actually start doing that until maybe 4 or 5 months ago. And I just did it. I was like, you know, I’m going to see how this what this does.

Tammy Overhoff (00:23:01) – I was blown away. I made like, like what, $2,000 and three days from people joining my membership. And that was because. But they were already warmed up. They already knew what I had to offer. So how I work things is small product, maybe a bigger product. So I still have my cause and then the membership. But I find for me and how I advise other food bloggers like my students, that membership should be a back end offer. Because if you want. Yeah, because that reoccurring reoccurring revenue is also a little bit difficult with the B2C space. Like with the B2B space, like we want that support, we are already used to paying that type of stuff. at least for me in my audience. It definitely was a little bit more of a struggle for that monthly reoccurring cost. So I do things like yearly costs, like I give them bigger chunks to choose from, like, every three months or every year, like an annual membership. And that seems to work better for my audience.

Tammy Overhoff (00:24:10) – So I think what it comes down to with digital digital products is there are a lot of different options, and you do truly have to test things to see how they are going to work for your audience.

Jillian Leslie (00:24:27) – You want to start selling digital products. You’re thinking about an e-book, but it feels overwhelming. Not anymore. Get my 13 AI e-book prompts to help you write your e-book. Start to finish in under three hours. To grab this, go to milotree.com/ebookprompts. That’s e b o o k prompts milotree.com/ebookprompts, and I can’t wait to see what you create. And now back to the show. For a membership, what are they getting right? So you’re giving them a variety of tools, materials and you, but they don’t know you. So you have to warm up people to say, I want to be closer to Tammy and her stuff. I want access to her stuff and I want access to her, but they don’t know you. So I, I agree with you so much about memberships.

Jillian Leslie (00:25:35) – The memberships that I see work the best are people who say have a big Facebook following and they go live all the time. So people go, I know you, or they have a podcast or they’ve sold, this is what I love. You start with that small product. You earned their trust. They get to know you via email, which I’m going to say is kind of the connective tissue, like, oh, I’m showing up every week and you get a little piece of me and you understand the value I provide ultimately to get into your membership. Like when people say, well, I want to create a course, I’m like, great, but put a membership on the back end of that. Yeah, get them into a membership from the course, because ultimately the course will kind of age. You’ll burn your people out, as we’ve talked about. But if I can get you into my membership at the end, that’s where I can really kind of lean in and continue to grow that part and get that recurring revenue.

Jillian Leslie (00:26:32) – So I agree with you. I think getting like, you don’t know me, you’re going to join my membership. No way. You have to know me. You have to trust me. You have to think that I am providing you serious value, that this is worth your time and energy, and that you’re going to get money out of it to make to make it make sense. Absolutely. So I think that your strategy is perfect and I agree with you. Even, you know, people start a membership, I’ll run Facebook ads to it. And I’m like, good luck, No, sell them something. Where they go, oh, this is cool. This is cooler than I thought it would be. This is actually solving my problem. Now I want now I have a bigger problem. Hey, can this person solve my bigger problem?

Tammy Overhoff (00:27:14) – No, I agree with you 100%. I mean I also I, I know I use Facebook ads all the time and that was you know just to kind of back up a little bit because I don’t want to, like, get people all confused with my story because I have been doing this so long.

Tammy Overhoff (00:27:28) – But just to kind of, I guess, go to when I got hit by that Google algorithm update and then, oh, wait, so when did you.

Jillian Leslie (00:27:35) – Share what happened to you?

Tammy Overhoff (00:27:37) – Oh my gosh. So in November 2019, and just to kind of say, I’ve never had this huge amount of SEO traffic, I’ve mostly just, like, grew my my business through community, essentially like through Facebook and Facebook, my Facebook group and, you know, Pinterest actually was a huge, it’s still my top refer to Pinterest, Google Direct. So but I had affiliates that I recommended my affiliate reviews that were at the top of many Google searches, and we’re bringing in a pretty large amount of money at that time. And and so like at that time, I was making a lot of money with affiliates. I was making a lot of money with advertising revenue. So my digital products were still there. I was running flash sales, but I wasn’t giving it the strategy and nurturing that I should have been doing at that time.

Tammy Overhoff (00:28:35) – So anyway, in November 2019, I woke up one day and my traffic was literally pretty much gone and I was knocked knocked out of the, top spots for those affiliates that I was making a lot of money for. So pretty much overnight I went from making I don’t, I mean, definitely 60 to 70 grand a year, just in affiliate revenue to pretty much zero. Wow. And yeah, and so it was very stressful as you can imagine. And but instead of at that time diving into, you know, building my leads, building my email list, getting back into digital marketing, you know, leaning in on the community that I’ve built over the last nine years or eight years. I dove into SEO and I spent probably two years on the SEO hamster wheel of I hired consultants, I changed my theme. I did A, B, C, D, and E. Everything that you hear about that food bloggers talk about as far as SEO goes. And I just kept at it. I kept at the grind, I kept going, and the needle just was not moving forward like it would go up a little bit.

Tammy Overhoff (00:29:49) – And I’m sure there are many experts that would look at my blog and be like, well, you need to fix this, you need to fix this. And but here’s the thing when you lose money, you lose income. Or when you lose money, you don’t have the income to hire the people that you need to hire to help you with these things. So it was all me. So I was doing all of this on my own. So anyway, so to that. So November 2019, let’s fast forward like 18 months to two years later. So at this point it was March of 2021 2022 maybe. And and of course, we went through the pandemic at that time and all that other stuff. I got hit with another Google algorithm update. And so that was. Yeah. So that was definitely like March 2022. And I thought to myself, okay, I need to pivot. I need to do something different because if I don’t, I’m over. It’s done. My business is done because at that time, there’s also all this talk about the cookie algorithm or the cookie, apocalypse happening and cookies going away with advertising and RPMs dropping.

Tammy Overhoff (00:30:58) – And I’m just thinking to myself, there is no way that my business is going to survive. Another Google algorithm hit and RPMs dropping because of cookies going away. So at that time, I remember I pivoted and I thought to myself, I have been doing this a long time. I have an amazing audience of people I already know. Digital products are a great way to make money. Like, what am I doing? I need to go back to the basics and I start. And I decided at that time that I was going to host a challenge in my Facebook group. So I went into my Facebook group. I hosted a smoothie challenge. I pulled all these smoothie recipes off my blog. I put together this shopping list and everything else. And because I’ve seen other people do challenges and I’m like, well, I can do a challenge. Challenge. Let’s let’s try this. That challenge completely changed the direction of my business. And it my eye, it completely reinvigorated me. It reinvigorated my audience.

Tammy Overhoff (00:32:03) – I could not believe how excited everybody was there. Almost like Tammy, like, where have you been? We’ve missed you because I’ve been doing all this, like, had my head down behind the computer, stressed out doing SEO and all this stuff for, like, pretty much two years or maybe even longer. So after I did the smoothie challenge, I decided, well, I’m going to do a mason jar salad challenge because that’s one of the recipes I guess I’m kind of known for with my food blog. Well, that was even amazing. Oh wait, so.

Jillian Leslie (00:32:37) – These challenges were for the people in your Facebook group? How many people in your Facebook group?

Tammy Overhoff (00:32:42) – 14,000.

Jillian Leslie (00:32:43) – 14,000. Just to say, let’s get healthy. Let’s like lose some weight, that kind of thing. And people do it. Okay. Now though, how are you then making money off of this?

Tammy Overhoff (00:32:54) – Okay. So I will tell you, let me just back up really quickly how I knew to do that challenge. One of the things that sparked that for me was I would always get emails from my audience saying to me like, I need help eating healthy, I need help losing weight.

Tammy Overhoff (00:33:10) – And I would always just point them right away to my book. I would point them to my course, but they’re like, well, no, I just want like one thing I don’t I’m not ready for a program yet. So I was like, okay, well, let’s start with one habit for ten days, and then we that’s what we did. And so I ran these challenges and then and so and now to do the challenge. And this is something that I always recommend because I see a lot of food bloggers running these cooking challenges, mostly to just get at least it seems to me to just get like comments on the recipe and whatever. But they’re not collecting emails, so I would I ran this, I would I ran this challenge in my group. I got their email. Some of them are already signed up, but I you know, I put them into my email. How did you get how.

Jillian Leslie (00:33:59) – Did you get their email.

Tammy Overhoff (00:34:00) – What would you I just well I use lead pages.

Tammy Overhoff (00:34:03) – So I’ve used lead pages for a long time. and so I just set up a lead form in lead pages and just, you know, I said.

Jillian Leslie (00:34:11) – Okay, come to my challenge. You’re advertising it in your Facebook group. You’re like, sign up here.

Tammy Overhoff (00:34:16) – Yes. Okay.

Jillian Leslie (00:34:17) – And by the way, you’re going to be able to use MiloTreeLeads to do the exact same thing. Okay. So go ahead.

Tammy Overhoff (00:34:23) – So I thought that I thought that actually when I listened to your podcast the other day, I was like, this is perfect. So people who want to do challenges or collect leads, they just use that. So yeah. So I created that. I put it in my Facebook group. I said, if you guys want to be a part of this challenge, I’m hosting it live in this group. But to get all the materials you need to sign up for my email.

Jillian Leslie (00:34:44) – Good. So so it’s not like it was in a separate private Facebook group. It’s in your regular Facebook group.

Jillian Leslie (00:34:50) – But get the get the special stuff by signing up here.

Tammy Overhoff (00:34:54) – Signing up. Absolutely. So I ran the challenge and then after the challenge I had, I did a mini launch of my e-book bundle. So. So after they finished the the launch or I’m sorry, after they finished the challenge, they had the opportunity to buy my Reset and Flourish 30 day e-book bundle at a discount. And that made like $5,000. So, so right there I was like, all right, this is this is what I’m doing. Like I am going all in on digital products. And so at that point, I took the smoothie challenge Mason Jar salad challenge. I went through my blog. I saw that like I thought to myself, well, what other challenge? Like what helped me? Like, what other challenges can I put together? I did an overnight oats challenge, and then I did a ten day healthy eating challenge, and that’s when I created my ten day healthy Eating Challenges kit, and I launched that in October.

Tammy Overhoff (00:35:53) – And I keep saying $5,000, but I feel like every time I launch something is like $5,000. That made $5,000 in the weekend. And I launched that in October of 2022, and it’s made close to $100,000, and I sell that on sale for $19. And, and that’s not that’s after Facebook ad costs because I do run ads to, my tripwire or I run ads to collect leads, and then that’s my tripwire, because that’s what I pretty much use to pay for Facebook ads so I can continuously, like, build my email.

Jillian Leslie (00:36:27) – And by the way, I talk about this strategy that so many people use, which is run the Facebook ad to something free. People are then like, yeah, I’ll get this thing that’s free. And then on the thank you page on the page that once they add their name and email, a page shows up that usually says, hey, thanks for signing up. And you sell something right there for a discount, which by the way, you can do with MiloTreeCart and MiloTreeLeads.

Jillian Leslie (00:36:56) – And then what people tend to do is take the money that they make from that and put it back into Facebook ads. So literally they are growing their list for free.

Tammy Overhoff (00:37:08) – Yep. And so in in June of 2022, I also took a Facebook ads course by, Beth Ann Berger, who I’ve been following since 2015, and that also completely changed my business. So I that’s where I learned how to do that strategy. And not only do I, it covers my ad cost, but there’s many times I’m making money like my Roas. My return on ad spend is 1.5 to 2 every time. Like I don’t, I don’t run ads. If I lose money on them, I’ll just say that. So if I start losing money, I turn them off. I change the yeah, I change the creative change strategy.

Jillian Leslie (00:37:47) – What product are you running Facebook ads to where you’ve had the most success? What kind of freebie?

Tammy Overhoff (00:37:55) – Honestly, it’s been a couple things I do. my right now has been doing really well for me is I have a real that I put together on my Instagram that got a ton of, engagement.

Tammy Overhoff (00:38:11) – And so I put that as a Facebook ad and it’s only real. And that does awesome. I mean, I get so many signups just from this very simple reel of me making shredded chicken and then.

Jillian Leslie (00:38:24) – The call to action, what do people do when they watch the real and then, okay.

Tammy Overhoff (00:38:29) – The call to action is I put together so my, my reset and Flourish planner, my membership, I have the opportunity to to create meal plans very quickly. And so I did a quick meal plan with five of my favorite meal starter recipes, and that also includes prep ahead tips and a shopping list. I mean, that was it. And then I just give that. So that is yeah. So that’s the freebie for my that reel that’s going out. And then when they click on it they download it. They get the tripwire. But I will also say if you’re going to I know we don’t want to really talk too much about Facebook ads, but if you’re going to run Facebook ads or honestly, any type of lead generation, you have to have a a good funnel on the back end, because not everybody is going to buy your tripwire because they’re just like, well, I just met you.

Tammy Overhoff (00:39:24) – I just want this freebie, you know? But you will have people who that do buy it. But your email funnel now you need to go into nurture mode. And one of the strategies that I, that I use and I also teach is my nurture to sales method. And so you want to nurture, but you also want to show them that you have these paid solutions that can really, truly make a difference in their life. It can help them, you know, all those things that that you talk about, the different, you know, make them money, make them healthier. You know, I can’t think of all of them, the top of my head. But I listen to everything you say. but yeah, so all of those different things. But you also want to prove in your email funnel that you are the expert, you are trustworthy. You are the author. You know the authority. So all these all these things that we try to do with our food blog for Google, you can do those same things for email, but you’re doing it in a way that you’re really you’re not doing it for Google.

Tammy Overhoff (00:40:26) – You’re you’re doing it to to nurture your audience. You know, you’re saying, like, thank you for joining my email list. Like, here’s how I can help you. And now you’re going to sell to them again.

Jillian Leslie (00:40:37) – One thing that, okay, a couple things that jump out at me listening to your story. One, you are a creative thinker, so you’re constantly going, what else can I test? What can I try? I’m going to do this challenge or I’m going to write this e-book. And so I have to give you props for that. And it’s and you seem to be very good at repurposing stuff you’ve already created. You take the old e-book that you put together in 2000 and what? And you kind of give it a facelift and go, hey, the content in here is good. I’ll just do something in Canva, make it look prettier. And so I love that you are continually slicing and dicing what you’ve already created and being creative and how you repackage it. So I just want to say props to you and that it is the creative thinker who I think really succeeds because you’re asking yourself, what else can I offer my people? And the second thing that I have now seen as I talk to people like you is this shift from I create content for Google.

Jillian Leslie (00:41:45) – For Pinterest, it’s almost like it’s pageviews, it’s numbers. It’s not people. And I was on a call this last week with a woman who, again, old school blogger like you and me, and she and we start talking and she’s a homeschooler, and she starts talking about wanting to sell digital products. It starts there. And then we start talking about the problem she’s solving, which is, hey, would homeschooling be right for me? Especially if I hadn’t even thought about it? But somehow my kid is not thriving and I need to find another alternative or solution. Would this be something I could do? And as we start talking about the solutions that she can offer, I saw her start to get excited and she says to me, this is the most excited I have been in my business in so long because I had been spending my time doing exactly what you were talking about SEO, keyword research, creating stuff that Google’s telling me I need to create, and all of a sudden the idea that there’s a mom there going, oh no, my kid just got a diagnosis, or somehow school is not working for my kid, but I could be there for this other mom and help her through this journey to figure out what the best path is for her family, for her kid.

Jillian Leslie (00:43:15) – We’re talking about things like self-care for people who are running, you know, homeschooling, like, how do you take care of yourself? Or what are the positives or what are the challenges? And she lit up in a way that was so interesting to see. And you’re speaking about that same thing all of a sudden it went from pageviews to these are people in my challenge that I am helping get healthy. They are thanking me. They are saying, Tammy, I appreciate this. I feel better. You’re getting all these testimonials and I feel like it. It lit her up. And when you’re talking about this shift, it feels like it did the same thing to you.

Tammy Overhoff (00:43:58) – 100% I was actually writing. I’m like feverishly writing stuff down as you’re talking, because you’re unlocking all this stuff in my head. First, let me say I digital products made me love food blogging again, and it lit me up 100% because again, being on that grind of SEO. But once I started to see the the real people that I was working with and helping and it just it completely changed my whole perspective on my business and it truly made me just love food blogging again.

Tammy Overhoff (00:44:35) – And also, I just want to mention to because and thank you for saying that, you know, being creative and testing new things. I’ll also say I have never, not one time worked in my business without being in the chaos of children, family and everything. I started my business when my kids were little and all through I mean now ones in college. So they were three and five and ones in college. I’ve gone through life trying to manage this business, and my business supports my entire family. So if my business loses money, my family loses money. So I have to constantly be making sure that my business is doing the best it possibly can be. But the whole running my business when my kids were younger, I’ve learned how to work in the margins of my day. I’ve learned how to time block. I’ve learned how to be very focused, even though I’m not naturally a focused person. So I just wanted to to mention that. And I also with, talking about writing for Google and SEO.

Tammy Overhoff (00:45:46) – One of the things that I believe in, and that I talk about with other food bloggers is I never feel like we should just throw away SEO practices. Obviously SEO is important. You you believe that too? I my thing is that so? What I say is, if you’re going to put content on your blog, you of course want to use best SEO practices, but you have to get off of that grind. I mean, if you’re not seeing the needle move forward or you’re doing all these, like, little nuanced things, instead of taking a block of time and really focusing on pivoting to a digital product strategy and you your time is limited. I just don’t think that’s the best use of your time. So I think, do SEO keep it where you’re doing, you know, the best practices, but I think we just need to get out of those rabbit holes, you know what I mean? Of SEO and that grind. That’s exhausting. You’re not connecting with your audience like you should be connecting with them.

Tammy Overhoff (00:46:48) – And I think it just really takes your time away from the things in your business that I think, like digital products that are going to be essential for your success and growth moving forward. So I definitely just wanted to say those things, as it pertains to what we were just talking about,

Jillian Leslie (00:47:09) – Here, here’s what I want to say, which is we’re let’s wrap this up and then I want you to come back with actual strategies to go, okay, person food blogger. Here’s where I would start knowing what you know, where like to give them the shortcuts to get to say where you are, which took you years and years and years to learn so that we can have a plan to go. All right, follow this. This. You know, here are all the shortcuts. Here’s how to think about your business. Here’s when to bring in Facebook ads, when to bring in the membership, all of that. So would so what I want to do is for people who want to learn more from you, reach out, see what you’re doing, where should they go? And then I want to ask if you’ll come back on to get into the nitty gritty strategies that have worked for you.

Tammy Overhoff (00:48:05) – Oh, 100%. Anytime you know, you know, I wouldn’t be where I am today if other business owners did not share their knowledge, you know, and I mean, pull back the curtain and really mentor me and coach me. And I want to do that for other food bloggers. I’ve been in this since 2011. I’m on the back end of my career, and I’m looking, moving forward to really send the elevator down and help people just kind of, you know, get if they want to be a food blogger specifically, because that’s my expertise. This is how I want to help them build out their business and their specifically their digital product strategy. Because I really think focusing on the constant grind of traffic and advertising revenue, that is going to be a thing of the past. And I think, yeah, well.

Jillian Leslie (00:48:55) – I was going to say, go ahead, remember. Look at the world right now. I yeah I content makes content less valuable. What becomes more valuable is you is Tammy is Jillian.

Jillian Leslie (00:49:10) – It’s hey, like I, I’m sure people are going to listen to this and be like, oh, I can’t wait for part two to hear what Tammy has to say. You could probably go to YouTube, go to Google, go to go to ChatGPT and get all of that information. But it’s because it’s coming from you or what. You know, I’m sharing the knowledge of what I am seeing. Work for other people that then people go, hey, I like her. I want to learn from her. And that becomes your special sauce. I want, say, dieting tips and tricks from Tammy because she seems like she knows what you want, what she’s doing, and I want that support and I want that connection. So that is what. So okay, so Tammy, how can people reach out to you in the interim before we do our part two?

Tammy Overhoff (00:49:58) – Well, they can definitely reach me at Tasty Digital eats.com, especially if they’re looking to if they’re a food blogger and they’re looking for help with their digital product strategy on that level.

Tammy Overhoff (00:50:09) – and of course reset and flourish. They can find me there on Instagram, but tasty digital eats. You can find me on my website. I’m tasty digital eat on Instagram. and I run ads. So if you’re a food blogger, you might see some tasty digital eat ads going through. but yeah, that’s the best way to contact me. for just help, as a food blogger with digital products.

Jillian Leslie (00:50:34) – So I have to say this is I love because again, you are an open book and you’re there to share what’s worked, what hasn’t worked. And so I’m super excited to have you back on the show where we can go get go deep on the different strategies that you recommend for food bloggers to shift their businesses so that they can find that joy again.

Tammy Overhoff (00:50:57) – Yeah. Would you mind if I mention just one more thing about I just want to say really quickly, as far as algorithms, you know, with the helpful content update and all of that. I was bracing myself when that update came, came down the pipeline, and my blog was not touched at all through the helpful content update and through the March update.

Tammy Overhoff (00:51:18) – And like I said, I don’t get huge amounts of SEO traffic, but I did not get slammed. And as I listen to other SEOs, specifically the one you did with Lilly Rae and on that podcast, it is very clear to me that having a digital product branch of your business shows Google that you are serving your audience on a different level than just doing, SEO to bump up your pageviews for ad revenue. I truly believe I didn’t start my digital product for any type of SEO benefit, but how I’m seeing this as my blog now has not been slammed by those algorithms. I can only think that it’s because I have now this larger digital product strategy that I’ve been building out for two years, and Google sees that. So I just wanted to add that I’m sorry, I didn’t mean no, no no no no.

Jillian Leslie (00:52:09) – I think that is super insightful. Really. So Tammy, I’ve so enjoyed this. And I literally as soon as we get off, I’m going to send you my calendar to book your next time to come on so we can talk strategy.

Jillian Leslie (00:52:20) – But I just want to say, I feel like you are this breath of fresh air. So for those of you who are food bloggers or other kinds of bloggers and you’re struggling, there are new, different, interesting ways that can re-energize you to grow your business 100%. I agree Tammy, thank you so much for coming on the show and for doing part one.

Tammy Overhoff (00:52:43) – Thank you. I am so honored that you had me. I love your podcast and I look forward. I’m an open book. Anything you want me to talk about, I am willing to talk about.

Jillian Leslie (00:52:51) – I hope you guys like this episode. I love Tammy’s spirit, and I especially loved when she said that when she started selling digital products to her audience, she felt that deeper connection and it really reinvigorated her. I cannot tell you how often I hear that, especially from the bloggers who are feeling really disillusioned right now. Starting to sell your own expertise can shift everything, and I’m very excited for Tammy to come back on the show to share her exact strategies if you want to get on a free 20 minute zoom, call with me to talk about your digital product strategy.

Jillian Leslie (00:53:37) – This is going away, by the way. I am going to be phasing out these calls. So if you’re interested in getting fresh eyes on your business, go to milotree.com. You’ll see a link to my calendar book, a time I’d love to help reinvigorate you. And if you think this episode is useful, please share it with a friend. If you are liking the podcast, please give it five stars on iTunes. I would be so appreciative and I will see you here again next week.