• The Pen Pivot
  • Posts
  • This Former 4th Grade Teacher Runs A 7-Figure Food Content Empire

This Former 4th Grade Teacher Runs A 7-Figure Food Content Empire

November 15, 2023

Pinch Of Yum went from a fourth-grade teacher’s weekend side hustle to a $100K+/month food content empire.

Today you’ll learn:

  • Their 3-step content strategy.

  • 6 psychology-backed content insights you can use yourself for more clicks, engagement, and revenue.

Let’s get to it.

-

🔧 tool of the day

☀️ Sunsama

99% of daily planner and to-do list apps are too complicated and cause more stress.

Sunsama is different.

It’s a digital daily planner that helps creators, professionals, and freelancers organize their work and meet their goals (while doing less/reflecting more).

  • Guided daily planning

  • Unified task management

  • Timeboxing

  • Integrations with popular tools (eg. Trello, Asana, Gmail)

(Not sponsored).

🥑 pinch of yum

⚙️ Strategy

The Pinch Of Yum content strategy in 3 steps:

  1. Generate traffic from Google SEO, Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram.

  2. Build trust through community-building and a relatable content style.

  3. Turn traffic into revenue through ads, affiliate revenue, sponsorships, and a membership site.

I spent 8 hours digging into how they make it all work 😅 .

Here are 6 actionable insights I picked out that any content creator can use in their own business:

💡6 content insights

🚀 Traffic (Get More Clicks)

1. Promise Simplicity

Here are 3 of their most popular blog posts (according to Ubersuggest):

Notice a pattern?

Pinch Of Yum promises ease and quickness with a lot of their headlines and titles.

They know what people want.

Takeaway:

Attention spans are short and the average person doesn’t have time for a 3-hour masterclass.

Promising simplicity and speed in headlines and titles is often a winner and increases click-through rate.

2. Drop Them In The Action

You’ll notice that a lot of their Instagram Reels start with the “peak” and then transition to the beginning of the recipe.

Here’s an example:

Remember, you’ve got a few seconds to hook the audience before they swipe away or turn off.

If you start with the empty pan, you’re unlikely to grab their attention.

But start with a quick shot of a beautiful, steaming, creamy bowl of pasta - they’re sticking around to see how to make it.

Takeaway: 

When it comes to "how-to” content, consider using the payoff (i.e. what they’re going to make/build/learn) as the hook.

This way, the audience immediately knows whether it’s worth their time to stick around.

💖 Building Trust (Make Them Stick)

3. Show Your Appreciation

Lindsay often shows her appreciation for her audience.

Every Friday, she spotlights her community’s dishes with the “Reader Awards” on Instagram stories.

She celebrates her followers and their success.

It drives a sense of belonging and community.

It turns her audience from passive consumers of her content into active contributors.

She also often mentions how much she appreciates her audience allowing her to do what she does for a living.

from pinchofyum.com

💡 Content Psychology Tip: Lindsay showing appreciation is an act of giving → followers are more likely to return the favor through engagement and loyalty.

4. Talk Like A Human

It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to impress our audience with fancy words.

But Lindsay (and her success) shows us why this is unnecessary (and off-putting).

Check out her recipe for lentil soup as an example:

It’s almost as if she’s joking around with us through the screen.

It puts us at ease and lets us know this isn’t going to be a dry lecture.

It also lets us know there’s a human being behind the content and not an AI chatbot.

💡 Content Psychology Tip: We are more likely to engage with people who we like and can relate to. While this seems obvious in real life, creators often ignore it in their content.

💰 Monetization (Make More Money)

5. Make It Easy For Partners

Sponsors and partners don’t really care about your backstory.

They care whether your audience is aligned with theirs and whether you can drive results.

On the Pinch Of Yum “Sponsored Content” contact page you have:

  • A very brief backstory

  • Different types of sponsored content they can produce

  • Brands they’ve worked with before

  • Previous case studies (including the number of clicks/views they’ve driven to brands before)

  • A contact form to find out more

Precise numbers, evidence of past results, and a call to action.

💡 Content Psychology Tip: We see things as more credible when they’re expressed in precise figures. When you want your audience/partners to trust you, be precise and not wishy-washy in your content.

Quantification Bias

6. Teach The Craft Behind The Craft

Pinch Of Yum has a thriving membership program.

But it isn’t a cooking program.

“Food Blogger Pro” teaches people how to become food creators themselves.

They link people to this program through their regular food blog.

They know that a proportion of their food-loving audience will want to do what they do.

Those people may have come for the recipes - but they get hooked by the business opportunity.

It taps into the demand for learning the “craft behind the craft”.

Takeaway:

If you’re a creator (and have achieved some success already), consider teaching your audience how to build a presence and business in the way that you have.

🧰 Toolbox

Some tools we found Pinch Of Yum using:

(P.S. They aren’t affiliate links).

Did you find today's newsletter content valuable?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

And that’s all for today!

Dilshan, The Pen Pivot