Ep #30: Optimizing Ads for Your Food Blog with Kyle Ivins

We’re continuing with the Monetizing Your Blog Theme by talking about Optimizing Ads for Your Food Blog with Kyle Ivins. If you’ve had the itch to turn your blog into a business, or maybe take your monetized blog up a notch, this interview will shed light on ways you can make changes to improve your revenue today! Listen on for more details.

We’ve got a mini-theme going on right now because last we talked about Food Blog Monetizing Strategies via creating an e-course and now, today, we’re talking about optimizing ads for your food blog. Both are effective strategies for monetizing your blog. In fact, recently I wrote a post describing what I saw as the Top Three Revenue Models for Food Bloggers. The podcast episodes from the last two weeks now covers two of those. And, in fact, Kyle and I discussed a little bit about working with sponsored posts, which means we’ve got the bases loaded. That seems like an appropriate metaphor for this time of year. (Go Royals!)

Kyle and I are talking about optimizing ads today because Kyle is the Chief Marketing Officer of The Blogger Network (see link below). He’s worked with hundreds, if not thousands of blogs to monetize their traffic via ads. As a result, he’s got a lot of great information to share. If you’ve ever struggled with trying to figure out how to optimize ads and found yourself running into a wall more often than not, Kyle has some words of advice for you.

It’s not your fault.

Setting up ads on a blog and then monitoring them so they bring in the most income possible is tricky business. And the system is set up in a way that does not make it easy for a blogger. It’s not intuitive. In fact, it’s kind of difficult.

Let’s all take a deep sigh of relief in unison.

Like what you’re seeing in this post? Come to Chopped Academy 15 to see Kyle Ivins and Camille Beckstrand speak on this topic. They’ll be taking a deeper dive into how you can monetize your blog through optimized ads.

Kyle provides some great tips for bloggers who want to continue pursuing ad management on their own, but for those who prefer to hand that over to someone else, there are resources like The Blogger Network that do that.

However, working with an outside company to optimize your ads doesn’t leave you off the hook. You still have to understand the terminology and metrics so you can speak the language and understand the regular reports you’ll be receiving. Kyle describes the top 3 terms you need to know to better understand ads on your site: CPM, eCPM, and RPM.

You don't blog because you're passionate about ads, you blog because you're passionate about food.— Kyle Ivins Share on X Grow your blog by giving up on the idea of being perfect. — Kyle Ivins #choppedcon Share on X Real knows real. Kyle Ivins #chopppedpodcast Share on X

Be the boss of your food blog and learn more about Optimizing Ads for Your Food Blog like a pro. You can do it!

Featured Content – Optimizing Ads for Your Food Blog with Kyle Ivins

Here are some of the highlights of my discussion with Kyle, where we discuss:

• Kyle talks about how he and his business partners began The Blogger Network (TBN)
• Kyle describes how TBN began after a collaboration with the Six Sisters Stuff
• Kyle describes how he and his partners spent months developing a program to help bloggers work with advertisers
• Have you ever wondered why having ads on a blog can be so confusing? Kyle explains that ads are not set up with bloggers/publishers in mind. No wonder it’s so hard!
• Whether or not you hire a company like TBN to manage your ads or not, you need to understand the lingo of ads and Kyle gives a great Blog Ad Management 101 so you can have the basics like CPM, eCPM, and RPM
• Speaking of the basics, TBN offers a Build Your Blog Academy which has 70 courses to help bloggers be their very best
• Kyle explains how The Blogger Network also helps bloggers with sponsored posts
• Kyle talks about the one thing that he thinks most bloggers could do better on their sites related to ads
• You may have the same ads on your site as another one, but they may perform differently because of traffic quality. Kyle explains what this means.
• Kyle talks about what he’s seen from his perspective regarding what brands what and what bloggers can do to foster relationships with brands
• Kyle suggests to focus on your passion for blogging
• Kyle also encourages you to recycle legacy content
• Do you feel a sense of perfectionism with your blogging? Kyle suggests that could be a barrier holding you back. Give up being perfect!
• Why being true to yourself is one of the most important ingredients for your first successful course!

Show Notes

This episode includes references to some resources you might find interesting. Here they are:

• Kyle is Chief Marketing Officer of The Blogger Network
• Give a shout-out to Kyle and connect with him on Twitter and Instagram!
• The Blogger Network began as a partnership with the Six Sisters Stuff
• The Blogger Network partnered with Mom It Forward to provide services to help bloggers with sponsored posts
• Kyle talks about the book The Linchpin by Seth Godin
• Marly talks about the interview with Davida Kugelmass talking about how to use Snapchat
• Kyle talks about one of his favorite phone apps Reddit
• Connect with Chopped Academy Online:  Instagram  | Twitter
• Connect with Marly: Namely Marly |  Instagram  | Twitter
• Production, music, graphic art & sound design by Shawn Beelman

Announcements

1. Learn about future Chopped Podcast episodes by subscribing to the ChoppedCon newsletter. Just add your email in the subscribe section at the bottom of this page. You’ll be glad you did!
2. Tickets for the 2015 Chopped Conference are available. You can also attend a Food Photography Workshop with Matt Armendariz or participate in the dynamic Food Blog Success Summit. Take your food blog to the next level…learn more and buy your tickets today!
3. Next week’s podcast episode will feature Christine Pittman with the site Cook the Story. Christine has an amazing Blog Post Production Process that you are going to want to hear about. Subscribe today so you won’t miss it!

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