The Importance of Building Community with A Couple Cooks

Oct 8, 2024

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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:

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