Balancing passion, building a sustainable business, and predicting the future of food blogging with Alex and Sonja Overhiser from A Couple Cooks.

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Welcome to episode 484 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Alex and Sonja Overhiser from A Couple Cooks.

The Importance of Building Community with A Couple Cooks

Alex and Sonja first started blogging at A Couple Cooks over 14 years ago and have navigated countless changes in the food blogging landscape over the years. In this interview, they share the things that kept them going before they achieved success with their business and the importance of having an accountability partner in the early days.

They also discuss more about key decisions they’ve made in their business: why they’ve chosen not to build a team, why they don’t prioritize Instagram, and how they pivoted their cookbook strategy after initial rejections. Bjork, Alex, and Sonja have been friends for over a decade, and it’s a pleasure to hear them catching up as people who have been around the block in this industry.

Episode takeaways:

• Balancing passion and business: Alex and Sonja have learned a lot in the 14 years that they’ve been running A Couple Cooks, including the delicate balance between their passion for sharing recipes with their community and the reality that their site is also their livelihood. In this interview, they share more about how they run a successful business while still making space for creativity and joy.
• Developing a giftable cookbook: Alex and Sonja are publishing their second cookbook, A Couple Cooks: 100 Recipes to Cook Together, this fall, but it wasn’t a linear path to getting this cookbook published. After their first cookbook proposal was rejected by publishers, they went back to the drawing board and developed a new proposal for a “giftable cookbook” that was accepted by the first editor they approached!
• Having the ability to pivot: With the growth of AI and the uncertainty of Google algorithm updates, it is more important than ever to build an experience and community as a creator. Alex and Sonja discuss this shift, including why they’re focusing more on email marketing, as well as their predictions for the content creation landscape over the next year.

Resources:

• A Couple Cooks
• 178: Life, Podcasting, Blogging, and Cookbook Writing with Sonja and Alex Overhiser
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• Ten Thousand Hours by Macklemore
• 365: How to Find Your Zone of Genius and Hire the Right People with Emily Perron
• Independence by Design
• A Couple Cooks | Pretty Simple Cooking: 100 Delicious Vegetarian Recipes to Make You Fall in Love with Real Food
• A Couple Cooks: 100 Recipes to Cook Together
• The Art of Cookbook Publishing with Danielle Walker
• Vegetarian Ventures
• Chronicle Books
• Bard Press
• Raptive
• Dotdash meredith
• ConvertKit
• Pinch of Yum
• This Week in Startups
• Golden Hour Books for a signed copy of their new cookbook
• Follow A Couple Cooks on Instagram and YouTube
• Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group

Thank you to our sponsors!

This episode is sponsored by Member Kitchens and Raptive. Learn more about our sponsors at foodbloggerpro.com/sponsors.

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If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to [email protected].

Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.