Why I Started A Blog Website For Sharing My Canning Recipes

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If you’re reading this, you’re nosy as heck.

I kid.

But first.  When I see blog posts or Pinterest pins about “How to Start a Blog in 10 Minutes” I LAUGH and I laugh and I laugh.  That is SO unrealistic and sets you up for failure straight out of the gate.

I wanted to talk about why I decided to move my main content platform to a website as opposed to using entirely social media, mainly because other creators and small businesses ask me about it all the time. “What are you doing?” “Why did you make a website?” That kind of thing.  Or they want to know what platforms I recommend for them to move their content off social media and have a more permanent space.  It’s always the same thing… shadow bans, trolls, algorithm woes… people aren’t getting shown your content even though they FOLLOW YOU because the algorithms either don’t like the wording you used, the content you shared, or you’re shadow banned for using a bad buzzword or going viral recently.  I can go from getting 2-4 million views and several hundred thousand and then have a really good reel flop at 800 views.  THAT IS FRUSTRATING.  Especially when you just want to teach people what you know and overshare your life.. okayyy?!

Above is a live video my friend Jen (Jen Kibler Online) and I did on Facebook and Instagram chatting about the Content Seeds Collective and her Business Roots Challenge starting Feb. 1st! We talk about everything touched upon in this blog post along with her hand in my success :)

How I Started

I first started by going viral on Facebook a few times and gaining a following pretty quickly once I started sharing my homesteading and canning content… it’s just me capturing my life as I live it and sharing how I do it and why.  It was really fun and eye opening how mean people can be about things they know nothing about.  To share what you do is to have thick skin and to be firm and confident in your choices and lifestyle.  I quickly monetized my Facebook page with ads on reels and was approved for subscribers shortly after than on both Facebook and Instagram.

Subscribers

With subscribers, I only charged $0.99 a month per person because I really didn’t feel worthy of people’s money for my recipes.  That’s imposter syndrome, but looking back, I wouldn’t have felt right asking for more.  I simply want to share and help others be more self-sufficient and prepared.  The world is a scary place and food insecurity doesn’t help that.

The subscribers thing worked out pretty well… I shared my recipes in a printable format along with subscriber exclusive recipes and the people that gave me their hard earned dollhair every month were pleased and constantly told me I wasn’t charging enough.  It was a ton of work making each printable document, sharing the content, and uploading the link for my subscribers to download.  Facebook would let you directly post in a post for the link but Instagram wasn’t as kind and I had to post the link to stories and then save them to a highlight that would only hold so many before they started deleting the older ones.  That wasn’t cool and I wasn’t over thrilled with that and felt like it wasn’t worth $0.99 to have to dig through my stories for an exclusive recipe, reel, or content. Big dumb; don’t recommend. PLUS… I don’t really subscribe to anyone on social media, so why am I expecting people to subscribe to me?!

Recipes In Captions and Screenshots

I used to always share a recipe reel and put the recipe in the caption.  It was tedious to type those out because I have fat fingers and CONSTANTLY spell things weird and get autocorrected and my proof reading is nonexistent.  Plus, all that just to get the comments “WhErE iS ThE rEcIpE” and “yOuRe GaTeKeEpInG” constantly.  Like… they’re right there in the caption. Short of driving to these folks’ house and pressing their eyeballs directly on their screen to see the recipe for them, there wasn’t much I could do to help them find it easier.  The thing is… when people online do that, I might screenshot their caption but that screenshot gets buried in the graveyard of screenshots in my camera roll because I almost instantaneously forget about it.  I also have goats, so I’m constantly taking pictures of the cute things… hence buried screenshotted recipe.  And then you have the recipes that are cute and handwritten that flash at the end of reels.  I think that’s a sweet touch but I’m almost never fast enough to screenshot it, my phone doesn’t pause the video, and then I have to keep scrolling back through to get the video again and the slider keeps snapping back to the beginning.  Tell me I’m not the only one.  I DON’T LIKE THAT and I end up giving up. I just wanted that recipe you were sharing that looked sooooo gooooooodddd and the book of faces is sassing me and making me feel like a boomer! :D

Then there’s the fact that you see these screenshots of captions and reels and recipes with NO CREDIT to the author or creator pop up in people’s stories and on Pinterest.  What the heck!?  I’m not a fan of thievery… be creative and come up with your own crap.  And for these reasons, I kinda started getting a bit sick of sharing my content this way.  I wanted to make it easier for people to see and find my stuff. Read MY STUFF.  Not tell them to scroll back through my reels or a highlight to find a recipe.  Just… search this title and boom you got it.  And then print it!  I love that for me!

Start A Dang Website!

I started talking to my friend Jen about the subscribers and she also lectured me (with love) about not charging enough and talked through my workflow and the time I was dedicating to this.  She encouraged me to look into blogging… JUST START A DANG WEBSITE she told me.  She also said that my captions were basically blog posts anyway (cause I’m wordy).  I’m just ever so slightly bull-headed (but don’t ask her her opinion on that) so I bucked what she told me for a minute. The thought of entering blogging was overwhelming. It seemed so unattainable and just way too much work to just walk into and start. Boy, was I wrong.

Time To Make A Change

Shortly after that conversation, I got super over the subscriber thing.  People were subscribing that didn’t understand how to print the stuff, couldn’t find them, and I had a dedicated group that people couldn’t find. I was gaining quite a few subscribers which was amazing and exciting! But it was a headache and a half trying to help boomers use my Facebook page and try not to let people paying for my content down.  For NINETY NINE CENTS.  People also were messaging me wondering if I had a recipe for such and such, and if I did, I’d either send them looking through my reels to which they’d inevitably not be able to find it even though I spent a considerable amount of time making nice reel covers for visibility or I’d scroll through them myself to send it to them.  It was frustrating, and if I’m being honest, annoying. I wanted to help everyone but I found my hours in the day were staring at my screen fielding questions and finding things for my subscribers… I don’t have time for that. Not to mention, too much screentime makes you super weird. 

Jen told me that I could very likely easily replace the revenue I was getting from my subscribers by starting a blog.  She also said that without an email list, if my platforms would get erased, I would have ZERO way to reach my audience.  I’d be SOL and there’d not be a thing I could do about it.  That was a bit eye opening because I’d never even considered that.  Can you imagine?!  Some of these peeps with millions of followers don’t have an email list….  She quickly went through the process of making the website, showed me the theme she used for hers, and talked about ad revenue, much like ads on reels on Facebook.  The main drawback for me was that I didn’t want to be a recipe blogger with SO MANY ADS you seize when you open the page.  You know what I’m talking about.  BUT, my content would be completely free to everyone and once I got approved for ads, I would make a little kickback that way.  I would just have to be okay losing that income for a little while until my pageviews and sessions picked up enough to get me noticed by the advertisement company. 

Sooooooo I decided to give it a shot. 

I bought the theme.

Built the website.

Got my URL.

The email marketing.

All the things.

And away we went.  One fun thing for me is I absolutely love to write.  I’m really good at just writing like I’m talking to you and can make things interesting.  I’ve always been able to just flyyyyyy through writing things, even at a young age.  So oddly, Jen was right, a blog was the way to go.

I did have to put in the hours and the leg work.  I decided to make my website all on my own with some questions and guidance from Jen along the way, but I mainly did it myself which I’m very proud of.  After some poking around on WordPress, editing my site and writing blogs became pretty dang easy.

I did try to share recipe reels and use ManyChat to send the link of my blog post straight to folks which worked nicely, but it was a monthly cost and one I really didn’t enjoy.  I didn’t like that my comments sections were one or two words of robots wanting my recipe.  YES I was excited so many wanted my recipe, but I missed the personal touches of comments and conversations, and the trolls (I won’t lie to you) so I quit using it.  It’s been a curve training my audience to go to my website, but once people find it they’re thrilled.  I’ve had multiple followers message me about how wonderful it is to find my recipes easily with a search bar or my recipe index, and that’s eeeeexxaccttuuhhhlllleeeeee what I wanted. 

I Love Writing!

Now here’s where I’m weird.  I can bang out 5 or more blog posts in one day.  That’s how much I enjoy writing.  When I started at the end of December, I had I think 7 blog posts with recipe cards already along with Pinterest pins.  I was learning so I need to go back and revise many of them, but nowadays, it’s like a well oiled machine.  I know the basics that I need to hit and then I have the recipe flow I do with all of them.  It’s super easy now!  If you don’t like to write like me… you may struggle a bit but keep on keepin’ on. 

Monetizing The Website

By January (just a few weeks into my blogging adventure) I talked website stats with Jen and she told me to go ahead and apply for Journey by Mediavine.  It was an entry level to the legit Mediavine to get ads on my website.  I was approved 2 weeks later… which is INSANE.  I do believe having the online presence I have helped with that tremendously.  That, and learning Pinterest, which Jen also forced me to do against my will…. I’m not kidding.  She’s scary AF when she’s telling me I’m being stupid :D

Gaining Traction

I continued on, learning different plug-ins and getting the hang of designing my own pins for Pinterest along with hitting good keywords to get visibility and using Rank IQ to find all those SEO words I need to get seen.  I also shared a random screen shot of an Instagram story to Pinterest and it went VIRALLLLLL (we’re talking like 15 million views LOL) and learned a hard lesson of watermarking everything I share because that was stolen like a million times.  I still see it show up randomly with people claiming it’s their idea.  I was, and still am, on an upward trajectory with views and sessions.  It was very exciting and rewarding.  My payments from Journey replaced my income from my subscribers on both platforms by late spring!  Currently, my biggest views driver is Pinterest.  And I certainly wouldn’t have understood that platform at all if I didn’t have Jen teaching me the ropes and also optimizing my Pinterest for Q4 which she did later in the year.

Online Business That Works Behind The Scenes

On social media, you are rewarded for showing up daily with content that holds people on the app.  But, sometimes, you don’t wannnaaaa.  I know I don’t anyway.  And what I have found is that with a website, that keeps chugging along behind the scenes working for me with everything I have set in place for it… the SEO, Pinterest pins, images, and more!  That I like because some seasons are so unbelievably busy for me while others are calmer, so I use the slower times to really bang out blog posts so I can walk away when I need to.  Plus, the more attention your posts get, the further they move up in Google and you get seen sooner and more often.  You make reels on Instagram or Facebook, they get attention for a day or two and then they die, never to be seen again.  That’s frustrating!

THE EMAIL

In December of 2025, I got THE email.  Mediavine said CONGRATS YOU’RE GRADUATING.  I DID IT!!  I got enough traffic to my website with alllll my hard work to be moved up to Mediavine from Journey.  In less than a year!!!!  I was so excited.  All that hard work paid off.

You Need A Coach

This is why I wholeheartedly recommend Jen and her Online Business Management services to everyone.  When I get messages about what the heck should I be doing…. I send them straight to Jen.  Yeah, I did a whole heck of a lot of work behind the scenes to be so quickly successful, but Jen was there to steer me in the right directions, answer and help me with web design and what plug-ins and such would help me out.   I couldn’t have done it without her, her online business coaching group Content Seeds Collective, along with The Root Cellar Resource Library…. So much info in there to get you started and figuring out the online game!  If you’re feeling kinda lost, whether it be as a content creator, online business, brick and mortar business, or something else, talk to Jen.  She’ll get you on the right track to success!  Join me on the live Q&A calls every week in Content Seeds Collective to DIY with Jen’s expert guidance, or hire Jen for 1:1 services to get your online presence up to speed fast!