How She Sold Her 6 Figure Blog

GUEST-STARRING JENNY MELROSE

From family food blog to entrepreneurial empire, Jenny Melrose took a leap of faith and it paid off.

Today, I brought in an expert within the social media industry. Jenny Melrose (@jenny_melrose), entrepreneur and business strategist extraordinaire, has joined me today to discuss all things online business. She is most certainly a qualified expert and has been present on the internet since 2009 which is the year she started her food blog, the Melrose Family.

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Over the next 10 years, Jenny had managed to exponentially grow her blog. So much so, that along the way, she was able to replace her New York teaching salary just from sponsorships alone. This gave her the opportunity to commit to blogging full-time. A few years down the line, she ended up selling the rights to her food blog for a whopping 6 figures! Now, she hosts her own podcast (Influencer Entrepreneurs) and created a course that shows fellow bloggers how they can achieve the very same.

I wanted to pick Jenny’s brain on her career so she can impart some of her wisdom onto fellow bloggers and aspiring content creators. Dive into her best advice and tips for success below.

1. Set yourself up for success from the beginning.

Jenny believes that the key to her career was having something outside of social media to rely on. After all, Instagram and TikTok are essentially just rented real estate and oftentimes, we are at the mercy of the app.

To circumvent this, it pays to have your own space on the internet. A blog, website, or email newsletter acts as a direct contact to your loyal followers and a space where you can reach out to them without having to rely on the constraints of a social media platform.

2. Establish your area of expertise.

The other way Jenny had set up her blog for success was by being specific within her niche. She constantly delivered value-adding content that fell within her area of expertise. This consistency helped condition her readers so they knew they could continually rely on Jenny’s blog for this type of information. Additionally, she was always aware of the potential problems she could solve for her community.

3. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is your best friend.

I asked Jenny if she thought that pinterest was more than SEO knowledge. She said the latter is infinitely more beneficial. When Pinterest just started to take off, the website was very much built around your followers. However, over the years, it has developed and Pinterest now prioritizes SEO as a way to deliver targeted content to their users. Having a solid understanding of what SEO entails and how you can use it to boost your own blog or Pinterest account will help you to achieve greater success and reach.

4. Present in package deals.

Pitching to brands works the same way for bloggers as it does social media influencers. Jenny recommends reaching out to the brand’s PR rep to start a relationship. When it comes to actually pitching, it is crucial to know your worth and have a solid understanding of your engagement rate across all different platforms.

She also recommends pitching to brands in the form of package deals. This means one encompassing rate for multiple deliverables. If the brand comes back and tells you they only have a certain amount of budget, you are able to take out certain deliverables to reach their target budget rate. This is also where repurposing content comes in handy. You can increase the campaign’s impressions with little to no effort on your part.

5. Know how much work you can handle.

After retiring from teaching in 2017 at the age of 35, Jenny had found that she was traveling more often to speak at blogging events. Audience members would reach out to her, seeking her advice for their own blog endeavors. This demand for her expertise inspired her to start a course and thus, the first foray into her self-titled entrepreneur business.

At the time, the food blog was still going strong and she had a full team in place but she soon realized it was near impossible to divide her attention between The Melrose Family and Jenny Melrose, so she ultimately made the decision to sell the blog and all of its social media channels and branding for 6 figures. This allowed her to focus on her course, podcast, and so forth.

6. Expand your empire.

Now, Jenny’s entrepreneurial focus is on her course, Pitch Perfect Pro, as well as her podcast, Influencer Entrepreneurs. The course walks you through the entire process of reaching out to brands and landing long-term projects, rather than quick one-and-done collaborations. She teaches her students on how to provide ROI (return on investment) to brands, without needing a huge amount of page views or followers.

On the other hand, Jenny fell into the podcast space because she realized there were many female influencers and bloggers who did not see themselves as business owners. Using this as inspiration, she wanted the podcast to teach others that this is a real career as long as you look and treat it as such.

7. Set future goals.

When Jenny was still teaching but was thinking that her blog had a potential to be full-time, she sat down with her husband to look to the future. Together, they calculated the amount of income she could potentially generate from her long-term brand collaborations to see if she could use this to replace her teaching salary. Once she finally took the leap of faith and retired from teaching, she was able to hit her financial goals in the first 3 months! The lesson? Planning ahead and setting future goals is a great way to motivate yourself.

8. Prioritize your mindset.

In the beginning of Jenny’s career, she did not set strong boundaries for herself. Quickly, she found out that it was extremely hard to juggle both work and her personal life. When she ultimately made the decision to leave her secure teaching position, her family expressed that they thought she was crazy. However, this was extremely advantageous for her new career as it allowed her to adjust her mindset to push the boundaries of her business. This effect helped the others around her change their own mindset too.

This was the first time I was able to sit down with a fellow content creator who initially launched her online career with a blog. Although not as stressed as they were a few years ago, Jenny is proof that having your own website is nothing but an amazing asset to add to your online profile.

FIND JENNY’S SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS HERE

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