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Episode 079: Prepear – A Revenue Opportunity For Food Bloggers With Natalie Monson

In episode 079 we talk with Natalie Monson of Prepear about the digital cook book platform she and her husband Russ have built that offers food bloggers at way to productize their recipes.

We cover information about how this can be an additional revenue stream, how Prepear doesn’t index your recipes so it’s not competition with your blog and the many benefits to users.

Listen on the player below or on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.

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Guest Details

Connect with Prepear
Website | Instagram | Facebook

Bio
Prepear is a connected recipe platform for food bloggers to diversify their revenue streams while giving their readers the best digital recipe experience.

Takeaways

  • Prepear is set up to be a program that benefits both the user and food bloggers. Prepear offers a subscription service where a user can purchase an annual subscription that includes all the recipes and cookbooks that are on Prepear for an annual fee.

  • Prepear is unique in that it allows bloggers to productize recipes. They compensate food bloggers in a fair 80/20 split for the recipes to be on their site.

  • Prepear provides analytics specific to recipes. Prepear built a back end that helps food bloggers view recipe metadata for SEO purposes.

  • Prepear uses email marketing. It’s more effective and helps make money. They created a targeted and specific plan combined with their marketplace and a product at the end to sell.  

  • You can create digital cookbooks on Prepear with a drag and drop system, built to make this an easy program for bloggers to use. 

  • Metadata is a huge benefit. You are able to see errors on a recipe and how people are using your recipes. 

  • In Prepear, users can save a recipe and create a cookbook right in their program. From the saving of a recipe to a cookbook, you can also start the shopping experience. Create a meal plan, create a grocery list, etc. The blogger is being compensated because the user isn’t being sent off Prepear. 

  • Prepear mode cooking experience guiding the user is popular. 

  • Users can create custom meal plans or purchase meal plans from bloggers that sell them. Users can also customize their meal plans within a plan too. They can use any recipe from any source. There is a lot less turn because of this customizable option. 

  • Prepear wants to boost the business of the solopreneur.  

  • Prepear is different in that they don’t index recipes. They index meal plans and cookbooks because they are purchase-only items. It won’t outrank your own content on Google. 

Resources Mentioned

Natalie can be reached via email at: [email protected]

Want to learn more about Prepear?

Russ joins Natalie in episode 125 to expand on partnering with Prepear and how to create digital cookbooks on their platform.


Transcript

Click for full text.

Intro (00:01):

Welcome to Eat Blog Talk,` where food bloggers come to get their fill of the latest tips, tricks, and insights into the world of food blogging. If you feel that hunger for information we’ll provide you with the tools you need to add value to your blog. And we’ll also ensure you’re taking care of yourself because food blogging is a demanding job. Now, please welcome your host, Megan Porta.

Megan Porta (00:25):

Food bloggers. Don’t forget to check out the food blogging forum style community that we started over at forum.eatblogtalk.com. Finally, there is one place that we can all convene and talk and that isn’t scattered all over Facebook. Here are the things that I am loving about it. It is free. It also allows for categorized discussions on all food blogging topics, and there’s a category for sharing successes, AKA self promotion. So no more holding back about discussing your big wins and things that you’re promoting. Also, everything is in one single spot. So no hopping around from group to group, and there’s an amazing opportunity to network and really get to know your fellow food bloggers in a single place. So come join the discussions that are going on over at forum.eatblogtalk.com. And I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. Don’t forget. Forum.eatblogtalk.com.

(01:31):

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 (02:20):

What’s up food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, the podcast made for you. Food bloggers seeking value for your businesses and your lives. Today, I will be talking to Natalie Monson from prepear.com and we will talk about the platform Prepear and how food bloggers can best utilize it. Natalie is the founder of Prepear, which is a connected recipe platform so food bloggers can diversify their revenue streams with their content while giving their readers the best digital recipe experience online. Natalie, I’m super excited to dive in to Prepear and learn all about it. But first give us a quick fun fact about yourself.

Natalie Monson (02:59):

Hi Megan. Thanks so much for having me. I’m super excited to talk to you today. So one fun fact, my background’s in nutrition, but before I decided to go into nutrition, I actually wanted to go into botany because I love plants so much. And so now I’ve kind of combined both of those worlds and one of my hobbies is gardening and I love it. Combines plants and food.

Megan (03:26):

Oh, that’s so cool. I love botany too. It’s something that it’s just so intriguing, right? I mean like the whole act of gardening and producing food, it’s such a cool, but it does require time and planning and foresight.

Natalie (03:42):

It’s definitely time consuming.

Megan (03:42):

Yeah. Well, that’s really cool. Thank you for sharing that. So let’s dive into Prepear. So my team and I have just started using and digging into it as you know, and right away I just saw so much opportunity inside of it for both users and food bloggers. And I love it when I can see that there’s opportunity and benefit for both sides, because sometimes it’s not like that it’s like really heavy on one end and not the other. So I’m really excited to learn more about it. So, can we kick off our conversation with you just telling us what prompted the creation of Prepear?

Natalie (04:18):

Yeah, absolutely. So, my husband, Russ and I are co-founders of Prepear and we both have just always kind of been in the entrepreneur space and started a lot of different businesses. So I started my food blog, Super Healthy Kids a little over 10 years ago. And over the years, as I’m sure many food bloggers have experienced, we grew super fast on Facebook. And we were just in that phase where Facebook really loved our content and was showing it, and there was a one to two year period where every single time we would post on Facebook, there was so much traffic coming to our site that it would literally crash our site every single time. And so it was insane. And so we rode that Facebook gravy train for a couple of years, and then as quickly as they started giving us traffic, they basically turned it off and changed the algorithm.

(05:23):

And it was kind of when they first started doing some major algorithm shifts and our traffic that year was cut in half. The interesting thing though is that same year that our traffic cut in half, we were able to double our revenue. And so this is kind of where Prepear was born from because I realized that food bloggers really needed a way to monetize their content that wasn’t based on either social influences giving them traffic or most food bloggers, I think a large majority of their revenue comes from display advertising, which is largely out of our control. So I wanted to build a platform for other bloggers to implement the same strategies that I did with my own food blog and have a way to have some control over a revenue stream in their business. So that when algorithms change or when privacy regulations change with Google and when the internet changes, because it will, and it does all the time, that bloggers have control over their business and it doesn’t die or it doesn’t feel like it’s going to die because I believe if you own it, you control it.

Megan (06:45):

It is a scary world out there, right? I mean, there’s so many different platforms that give us that juice once in a while. And we ride the wave, like you said, with Facebook. And for me, it was Pinterest right off the bat. I rode the Pinterest wave for years and I was kind of naive, like this is going to go on forever. And this is great. And then literally overnight, when I will never forget the night when I looked at my traffic and figured out that something had changed, I was devastated. And my traffic was in a second, it was gone. So I think that we can all relate to this because, you know, especially if we’ve been in the game for a longer than a couple of years, that’s something that we can all relate to. So I think it was really smart that you just saw that need for food bloggers to have a little bit of control because even ad revenue, like you mentioned Natalie is not really within our control. And it’s just kind of a really scary world. What’s going to happen next, which algorithm is going to change? What major shift is going to tank my traffic? So I love that you guys saw the need for that and that you launched a platform that could give food bloggers back control. So I am really excited to hear more about it. So what would you say your main focus is at Prepear? What is your direction?

Natalie (08:07):

There’s a couple of different systems, I guess, or avenues that we’re trying to focus on to help bloggers. I would say there’s three different ones that I’ll talk about. So the first one is being able to productize your recipes. And right now, as it stands, there’s a lot of marketplaces for creators to sell their assets or their products or whatever they’ve created, right? So there’s Etsy for creatives or DIY people or artsy people and they sell all of these things they make. Amazon started out as a bookseller and now it’s like every product in the world. There hasn’t really been anything created for food and recipe creators. And part of that is because food bloggers, most of the things we produce are digital. And because it’s digital and because the internet is seen as a place where things should be free, we are trying at Prepear to create value for recipes.

(09:26):

You can think of it kind of like what Apple had to do in the music industry with digital music. So, they started out by saying, okay, if you’d like to purchase a song it’s 99 cents. And if you’d like to purchase a collection of songs, that’s going to be $24 or whatever. And now a lot of companies have gone to a subscription model where you can get all of these songs and they’re ad-free on demand whenever you want to and put them in your collections, organize them and it’s just a subscription fee. And so we’ve thought a lot about this because the reason recipes are free for consumers is because of display advertising. And I don’t know about you, but we get complaints all the time from people how they don’t like the ads and they’re annoying. And it’s frustrating. And I think most of us as food bloggers agree with that.

 (10:21):

It’s not an ideal experience to cook from a blog because of display ads, but as creators, we’re not going to continue to do this unless we can somehow monetize on the work we’re doing. And so one of the things we’re doing at Prepear is trying to create value for recipes. And so we’ve done that through a couple different ways. The first is we’ve created this marketplace, like I mentioned, so you can create what we call a connected cookbook or a digital meal plan. And when consumers purchase these products from you, they get to use those recipes ad-free. And they’re in an organized collection and we call it connected because they have this connected cookbook. They can use your recipe, they can put it in a meal plan if they want, they can grocery shop right from it. And the consumer experience using bloggers recipes in that way is really, really incredible.

(11:21):

We have what we call Prepear mode. It’s basically a guided cooking experience. And so they’re able to view the recipe in a way that they can check off the steps and ingredients and they can kind of move the screen so they can see more of the ingredients or more of the directions, however they want to view it. And it’s a really incredible experience as far as cooking those from a digital recipe. And so we also provide a subscription so that if they would like access to all the recipes and cookbooks and meal plans on Prepear, they can pay an annual subscription fee and then experience that same thing. And so, because we built this for food bloggers, we basically compensate food bloggers for every single purchase that happens on Prepear. And so we kind of have a revenue structure that we’ve set up that we feel is very advantageous. It’s an 80/20 split and most online and digital affiliate programs are the opposite. So they’ll pay like a 20%, to the creator, but because we want this to be a way that food bloggers can monetize from their content, we share 80% of the revenue and Prepear takes 20%. And so this idea of a marketplace is how we’re trying to really create value for digital recipes.

Megan (12:56):

It really does represent recipes in a new way. It gives the user a different way to use it. And I like how you described that. You’re kind of able to manipulate the recipe so that you can view it in the way that you want to. And I think that’s really valuable for users. So I love that you guys have really thought through this and given this some thought and that you are rewarding the food blogger heavily too. And instead of doing like the 20/80, you’re doing 80/20 in their favor. So you talked us through point one and you mentioned that there were two other points. What would those be?

Natalie (13:29):

The second point is providing analytics that are specific to recipes. And the reason this is important is because as it stands right now, we have Google analytics and we still have some of these other analytic tools like SEM Rush or AHS, and those are all great, but none of them were built for food. And so we’ve actually built a data analytics backend that really is helping with recipe metadata, for SEO purposes. We’ve done a lot of testing with this, and we’re right now testing this with several bloggers on the Prepear platform and we’re seeing really, really great results. And so this is just something that we know we’ve tested this on our own food blog for a long time, and we’ve really done a deep dive so we understand recipe metadata analytics, very, very well. So this is something we haven’t rolled out to everyone on the Prepear platform. We really want to test and get it solid before we roll it out, but we’re seeing really good results and we’re excited to provide this for food bloggers.

Megan (14:46):

That’s really exciting and such a new thing that nobody else really offers. So that’s really cool. So what about number three?

Natalie (14:54):

So the third thing is our marketing system. And like I mentioned with why we started this, a lot of food bloggers use social media to market their recipes and we do it, we’ve done it for years. Most people do it. The problem with using social media as a marketing system is number one, you don’t own it. So, like you mentioned, with Pinterest or us with Facebook, they can give you traffic or they can take it away. And the other problem with social media is there’s an inherent conflict with content creators because the only way those platforms actually make money is when the user stays on their platform. And so their goal specifically like Facebook and Instagram is to keep the user on their platform. But for us as content creators, the only way we make money is when the user leaves that platform.

(15:53):

So you can see there’s this inherent conflict there. And so we have developed a marketing system that is not social, and we use email and it’s something that’s relatively new on the Prepear platform. And we have been testing it the last few months and we are starting to roll it out with several of our Prepear bloggers. We’re super excited. Email marketing, if you look at the data, it’s incredible, how much more effective email marketing is than social media marketing and social is important. And we’ll all always have to do it as long as it’s around, but if you really want to make money from your marketing efforts, emails where it’s at. So we’ve created a very targeted and specific marketing system for food bloggers, and it’s kind of combined with our marketplace so that there is a product at the end to sell. So we’re super excited to also begin rolling this out to food bloggers.

Megan (16:55):

Oh, that’s so exciting. We hear that all the time, email is where it’s all at, right? Because that’s the one thing you have control over. So I love that you guys are doing that. Is there anything you wanted to touch on with those three points before we move on?

Natalie (17:10):

I don’t think so. I think the last thing I’ll say is I think the things we are doing are very different and relatively new in the food blogging space. And so we’re a small startup company and a lot of times you just have to test things to see if they’ll succeed in the world. And we’re kind of getting through that testing point and seeing some really exciting results with things we’re doing. And so we’ll just continue to roll this out and hopefully grow it in the future so that all food bloggers will have access to the technology we’re building the services we’re providing.

Megan (17:50):

Oh, that’s awesome. Well, I’m excited for you guys and I can just tell that you have a passion for it, which I think always helps, right. If you have a passion for what you’re doing, that just can breed success. So, can you talk us through the benefits Prepear offers to both users as well as food bloggers?

Natalie (18:09):

Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve kind of talked about some of the things, but as far as revenue streams for food, I’ll start on the food bloggers side. So the benefits to food bloggers. Prepear is set up as a freemium model, meaning that it’s free to consumers and so they can download and use all the basic features of Prepear for free. Which means that if a food blogger has their recipes on Prepear. Any free user who uses their recipes, will see display ads. We’ve been very careful and selective of how we have used ads in our app. And in app ads are very, very different than browser ads. And so the way we’ve done it is very non-invasive, we’ve literally not even had one complaint from a consumer having to see a display ad as a free user, but we actually share a hundred percent of the ad revenue on the recipes that a free user sees.

(19:16):

And so a lot of advertising companies do like 30% rev share on display ads. And that’s great. And I think as far as browser ads that, you know, they have costs and there’s reasons they do that. We’ve just chosen to share a hundred percent of the ad revenue because in app ads are very new. And so the initial revenue is a lot lower than you would see in a browser. Then some of the other benefits, if you were to try to create the products that we were able to create on Prepear platform on your own, there’s a lot of different software solutions you would need to use. So you’d have to find some way to have it designed or use software to help design it. And then you’d have to implement some kind of transactional, like a Gumroad or some other or Shopify, some other ways to try and sell it and then also market it yourself.

 (20:18):

And so we have created the technology that does all of that for you. So that you create a connected cookbook or a digital mail plan on Prepear, takes minutes. It’s like a drag and drop system, it’s automatically designed and beautiful and it’s just like templated so there’s spots to write kind of a marketing description and there’s sales pages that are automatically created with those, with your links. And it’s just a really slick system. So even if you just wanted to create products and market them yourself, it’s a really, really slick system for food bloggers. And then like I mentioned, our metadata recipe analytics, that’s another huge benefit. You’re able to see errors you might have on your recipes and also how people are actually using your recipes in a way you can’t see with Google analytics or SEM Rush or any of those. So those are some really core benefits to food bloggers we feel like on Prepear.

Megan (21:19):

Yeah, those are great. So what would you say are the benefits to the user?

Natalie (21:24):

Yeah, for sure. So one of the favorite features that our consumers tell us all the time is how they’re able to save and organize their recipes. So a lot of people have been using Pinterest for that, which is great. They’re able to find a recipe, save it to their board, and then they have it there. The difference with Prepear, like I mentioned earlier, is this connectedness. If you save a recipe on Pinterest, you open the recipe and then you’re taken to the blog and then you still really are just having that browser experience. In Prepear, you save a recipe to one of your cookbooks, you open it, like I mentioned you can, the recipe is shoppable so you can automatically create a grocery list of that. You can put it in your meal plan and use it that way.

 (22:19):

You don’t have to link out to the blog to use the recipe. And of course, at the same time, the bloggers being compensated for that usage of the recipe, and we have a tracking system so we know anytime someone opens or uses a recipe and that’s part of the 80/20 split that we compensate bloggers for. And then users love the Prepear mode cooking experience. From start to finish, the actual using of a digital recipe is so, so great. Another thing is they’re able to create their own custom meal plans or purchase meal plans from bloggers that have created them. And then within that, they can customize that meal plan. So with our own food blog, we’ve had a meal plan subscription service for years and years. And one thing we found is the biggest reason we have churn or people canceling their subscription is because most people don’t want to eat just one type of recipe forever.

(23:23):

So even though they might love your recipes, things happen in people’s lives where their taste preferences changed. Their eating habits change. They want to use some of their own recipes. They like other food bloggers recipes. And so we knew we had to create a platform where that was possible for consumers to use any recipe they wanted within a meal plan or just in their cooking life. And so that’s a real benefit to consumers. They can use any recipe from any source on any device.

Megan (23:31):

That’s huge.

Natalie (23:31):

Yeah, and so we’ve just found that there’s a lot less turn with a paid subscription because they’re able to customize it to their own preferences.

Megan (24:09):

I have to say from a user experience standpoint, I think this is kind of a dream come true for users. My question is, how are you getting the word out to users? Are you relying on bloggers for this? And also, are there ways that bloggers can help you to get the word out to users?

Natalie (24:28):

There there’s a lot of recipes out there and meal plan apps and software, as you probably know. The reason we designed our platform like we did is because we wanted this to be a great user experience, but also the majority of digital recipes actually come from food bloggers. So 60% of every recipes actually comes from a food blogger. And the other 40% is from what we’d like to call “big recipes”. So that would be like the All Recipes or the Epicurious or the Food Network. And so we wanted to create a place where we could strengthen the power of food bloggers because food bloggers, for the most part are solopreneurs. They don’t have a huge team of people behind them helping them with SEO or marketing or all of these things. And so that’s part of our marketing strategy for Prepear is using food bloggers to promote this to their own audiences.

(25:34):

Because one thing food bloggers are really, really good at is building an audience and then engaging them in their recipe usage. And so in order to do that, we have kind of this pendulum swing. So, we’re building for consumers, but we’re also building for food bloggers and so we’re continually trying to build features that consumers love while also making sure that it compensates food bloggers in a way that’s advantageous to their business. And so circling back to answer your question, yes, one of our primary ways to market Prepear is for food bloggers to market to their own audiences, which is why it’s like a platform of food bloggers growing their businesses in that way, because food bloggers are going to market to their own audiences. And then those people will get on and use that food blogger’s recipes, and have that experience with those recipes in a really great way.

Megan (26:33):

That’s awesome. I was in a forum just this morning and I saw somebody asking about Prepear and I was like, Oh, how ironic? Because I am talking to Natalie today, but I didn’t say that, but they were expressing worry. And I think the question was, is this taking away from my traffic? If I went onto their platform, would this detract from my traffic, from my own ad revenue? So how would you answer that?

Natalie (26:59):

Yeah, that’s a great question. And it’s actually probably the number one question we get from food bloggers. And it totally makes sense because ad revenue is a, if not the number one, a very significant source of revenue for food bloggers. And so we’ve been very intentional about making sure that it does not take away from your traffic or your ad revenue. One way we’ve made sure that that does not happen is we do not index any of your recipes with Google, as far as the recipes that are on Prepear. So if someone looked at chocolate chip cookies from your food blog, they would never find it on Google. They would never find it on Prepear. We just, we don’t index any of those recipes. We index meal plans and cookbooks, but those are purchase only items. And so it makes sense to index those because it’s just like a way of just like you’d want someone to find your product that they can buy. But as far as single recipes goes, they’ll never be able to find it in a search only on Prepear.

Megan (28:04):

It won’t outrank your own content.

Natalie (28:07):

Nope. That will never happen. The second way that we make sure that we are actually contributing to your traffic is our recipe metadata. So because your recipes are on Prepear and you have that information, we’ve actually seen huge increases in people’s Google search traffic using that because their recipes are on Prepear. So not only are we not taking away from your traffic, our intention is to actually boost and add to your traffic through Prepear. I guess the third reason we’re not trying to take away traffic or it won’t compete is we’re never going to replace Google. And our intention with Prepear for food bloggers is never to replace your display advertising revenue, it’s to provide a different revenue stream. So our goal is actually to be a third of food bloggers overall revenue. So we would hope that display advertising is always a part of your revenue strategy. We just want to provide another revenue strategy so that if you know something changes in your traffic decreases, then you still have Prepear to fall upon. So it’s kind of like thinking about don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Prepear’s just a different basket. We’re never intending to replace that. And we just want to add to your overall revenue strategy.

Megan (29:44):

I think all of us would be on board with additional revenue strategies because we’ve all been shaken around a bit after 2019 and all of the crazy changes. So, I think that would make people’s ears perk up. I love that you guys have the goal of being a third of food bloggers overall revenue. That is incredible. I mean, it sounds lofty, but it sounds like you guys are really confident that that can actually happen.

Natalie (30:09):

Oh yeah, for sure. And if you are building a startup business or a business like Prepear, it’s definitely a lofty goal, but we don’t take it lightly. We’ve pretty much dedicated all of our resources and kind of our business life to making this happen. It’s one of those things, like if you think about any platform that you’re familiar with, it takes time and it takes both getting consumers and the creators on, kind of like Pinterest. Pinterest had to have the content creators on and consumers using it in order for them to grow. So we definitely understand that. We know it’s not gonna happen overnight, but we definitely believe it can happen because we’ve just tried to really think about every angle of this and be very careful about how we implement it and thoughtful about the different needs of food bloggers. And so that is definitely our goal. And like you said, we do believe it can happen for sure.

Megan (31:14):

And you are, or were a food blogger. So you have that perspective. That’s so unique. And the other sites that I think come to mind, I’m not even going to say their name to give them any attention, but the ones that steal our content and put them in a quote “collection” for people to use. I think those are the sites that people think of. We talked before the interview that people are a little bit leery of anything new that comes out because we’re worried about something like that happening again. Where things get copied and stolen, but you guys have such a sincere perspective, where you genuinely seem to want to help food bloggers as well as the users. So I just love that perspective that you bring to the table.

Natalie (31:59):

Yeah, thanks so much. And we are still very actively running our own food blog. And one of the reasons for doing that is because we actually test everything first on our own food blog before we roll it out to anyone else.

Megan (32:13):

That’s so smart. So just to wrap up, I would love it. If you could talk us through the features that make Prepear to stand out, whether it’s for food bloggers or users.

Natalie (32:26):

Yeah. I think I’ve kind of talked a lot about the specific features. So the thing I’ll just add to kind of wrap that up and clarify is, I love this to the music industry, because it’s kind of what the music industry went through that we hope can happen to the recipe industry. In the past, you could use music in a lot of different forms, but if you really wanted as a consumer the best experience, the best experience is when you purchase the music. And now people just automatically recognize that and have no problem paying directly for songs and music. And we just strongly believe that the internet is changing and the free internet is changing. And so eventually the best way to use recipes, as far as digital recipes, cookbooks, physical cookbooks will always be around, but the best way that people are going to be able to use digital recipes is through a paid experience. And this will literally change everything for both food bloggers and consumers. And we’re just excited to be a part of that transition and hopefully help make it happen.

Megan (33:48):

So how do food bloggers get started with Prepear if they are interested in your platform?

Natalie (33:54):

Yeah, absolutely. So you can just go to Prepear.com and if you scroll down to the footer, it’s kind of where we have our section for food bloggers to get started. There in the footer there’s a link that says become a Prepear Pro. We have an application process and we do have some metrics in place that you have to meet that are kind of our minimum standards. And right now we actually have a waitlist going, just because we’re really trying to focus on the bloggers that we have on the platform, implementing some of these features like I’ve talked about with them and helping make them successful on the Prepear platform. And so, um, we’d love to have people apply and we’re trying to get bloggers on as fast as we can, but we do have a wait list just because we have a small team and we want to make sure we really take care of the people we have on the platform first and then add additional bloggers as we have resources for it.

Megan (34:59):

Do you anticipate the waitlist taking a while? I mean, do you foresee it going fast once you guys dig in and start helping out your current bloggers that you’re working with now? I’m just trying to give people who are listening, who are really eager to get on your platform an idea about like, is it going to be a year before I can get in or, and also are there stipulations, are you looking for more advanced bloggers with a lot of recipes on their site or what are kind of the ways to frame that?

Natalie (35:28):

Yeah, for sure. So, no, the waitlist is definitely not a year. Right now we’re looking at one to two months, depending on some of your metrics. So for example, one thing we require is that you have a recipe plugin because in order to get your recipes on the platform, we need them to have a specific data structure. Otherwise it’s just way too much. And so a recipe plugin, and then a couple of the things we require is a minimum number of recipes on your site, just because in order for you to be successful, you have to have more than like 30 recipes. And also number of page views to your website as well. So those are the three metrics we look at the most.

Megan (36:21):

All right. Well, I feel like we’ve covered pretty much everything. Before we say goodbye is there anything that you feel like we’ve missed that you want to say quick?

Natalie (36:31):

So I think this has been great and hopefully I got enough information for people out there to be able to evaluate.

Megan (36:39):

And if they’re left wondering about more, they can always come to your website and you guys are really responsive with questions too, I’ve noticed. So, you know, if you have questions, Natalie, can they reach out to you?

Natalie (36:52):

Yeah, absolutely. You can feel free to email me personally. My email is [email protected] and I would love to answer any questions or concerns you have.

Megan (37:03):

Awesome. Well, thank you for being here, Natalie. I really appreciate you taking the time today and you and I are both sick. So thank you food bloggers for having patience with us as we get through this interview. But I think it was really great. And I think that food bloggers will find it really valuable to have light shed on Prepear because I know it’s been kind of like a topic of discussion lately, and I’ve seen a lot of people talking about it and wondering, and hopefully this helps out. So, before you go, Natalie, you share with us a favorite quote or words of inspiration for food bloggers.

Natalie (37:37):

So one of my favorite quotes is actually a little bit of a scientific principle as well. It’s an object in motion, stays in motion and an object at rest stays at rest. And the reason I love this and I feel like it’s been impactful in my life is because a lot of times, especially with food blogging, there’s so many different things we have to focus on and do, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. But at times when I’m feeling like, oh, I just want to sit down and not do anything. Well, an object at rest stays at rest, but once you get going, it’s so much easier to keep that momentum going as long as you just don’t stop. And so I tell myself that all the time, like an object in motion stays in motion, just keep going and little by little, you’ll get the things done you need to.

Megan (38:30):

I think that is the best message for food bloggers because we can get so overwhelmed with all of the things that we just don’t do anything. Like weekly I’ll get to that point where I’m like, you know what, too much, but yeah, that’s a great principle to live by. I love it. Thank you for sharing that. And I will prepare some show notes for you, Natalie, for Prepear and everything we’ve talked about today. So if anybody wants to reference those, you can find those at eatblogtalk.com/prepear. And I don’t think I mentioned this, but Prepear is spelled P R E P E A R. And you mentioned Natalie your email address, where else can people find you online?

Natalie (39:11):

Yeah, so, like I said, um, I’m still very actively running my food blog, which is Super Healthy Kids. So you can always follow me on Instagram there. I still do my own Instagram stories on that platform and feel free to come to Prepear.com to check out everything Prepear.

Megan (39:29):

Awesome. Well, thank you again, Natalie. And thanks for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you next time.

Intro (39:36):

We’re glad you could join us on this episode of Eat Blog Talk. For more resources based on today’s discussion, as well as show notes and an opportunity to be on a future episode of the show, be sure to head to eatblogtalk.com. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll be here to feed you on Eat Blog Talk.


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Megan
Megan

Megan started her food blog Pip and Ebby in 2010 and food blogging has been her full-time career since 2013. Her passion for blogging has grown into an intense desire to help fellow food bloggers find the information, insight, and community they need in order to find success.

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