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Today’s Deep Dive - How Liz Marek grew “Sugar Geek Show” from a simple side hustle into a multi-platform content juggernaut.

Our research time - 9.5hrs 😅 

Your reading time ~ 6 mins 🎁 

SUGAR GEEK SHOW 🍰 

Since its launch in 2015, Liz Marek’s Sugar Geek Show has grown into an online community of 4.35 million people and a multi-six-figure business with several revenue streams.

Here’s a deep dive into how her content empire works.

What You’ll Get Today: 

• ⚙️ Strategy - The big-picture mechanics of the business

• 🚀 Traffic - How she generates attention (clicks, reads, views)

• 💖 Trust - How she nurtures and builds loyalty with their audience  

• 💰 Monetization - How she turns that traffic and loyalty into revenue

• 🧰 Toolbox - Content tools Sugar Geek Show is using right now

Let’s dive in.

📖 The Backstory 

Liz Marek discovered her passion for baking in 2007.

Spotting a lack of reliable information online, she started sharing her hyperrealistic cake techniques through simple YouTube videos. 

People loved them.

The “Sugar Geek Show” website was launched in 2015 and it was off to the races. 

What started as a side hustle turned into a huge community, a successful membership program, and a well-oiled content machine. 

Let’s go through the content funnel she uses to convert online traffic into heaps of money. 

⚙️ The Strategy

Here’s their business model distilled into 3 steps:

1. Generate traffic from Google, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok

2. Build trust with the audience through great content and consistency

3. Turn traffic into revenue through ads and their online cake membership school (Sugar Geek University) 

There are additional sources of revenue within the business (eg. affiliate partnerships and sponsorships) but they aren’t as prominent.

It’s clear that Sugar Geek Show has a main end-point for their content funnel; a $5/month membership program - Sugar Geek University. 

The program is a large library of premium cake tutorials and features a variety of guest instructors. 

To clarify:

“Sugar Geek Show” - All the free content available on their blog and across social media channels.

 “Sugar Geek University” - Their paid membership program hosted on its own website (sugargeekuniversity.com).

Let’s dig into the content funnel, step by step.

Traffic → Trust → Monetization

🚀 Traffic Breakdown

Here’s where it is as of October 2023: 

• Blog - 900K-1m organic views/month (estimate from SimilarWeb)

• YouTube - 520K subs and 4.1m views/month (estimate from Social Blade)

• TikTok - 2.6m followers

• Instagram - 531K followers

• Pinterest - 141K followers/7.6 million monthly impressions

• Facebook - 559K followers

Sugar Geek Show seems to focus their efforts on the blog, TikTok, and Pinterest channels these days.

Let’s go through the traffic sources individually:

Blog: 

(link)

Main Roles:

• To generate ad revenue from blog posts

• To funnel traffic from blog posts to the Sugar Geek University landing page. 

How The Blog Gets Traffic (from SimilarWeb):

1. Organic Search: 68%

   • Predominantly from Google

2. Direct Traffic: 22% (people searching for their URL directly)

3. Social Traffic: 8%

   • Breakdown: 62% Pinterest, 24% YouTube, 7% Instagram, 7% others.

SEO Strategy:

• Mainly informational, how-to recipe blog posts.

• Targeting moderate search volume, low-difficulty keywords.

• Addressing popular questions.

• Capitalizing on seasonal search trends.

• Interested in understanding more about their SEO strategies? This SEMRush Article offers an in-depth look.  

Pinterest:

(link)

Main Role: To drive traffic to the blog. 

Pin Design:

• Vibrant, colorful, attention-grabbing.

• Each pin has a direct link to a specific blog post.

• Pins are designed to rank on Pinterest's search engine.

• Targeted keywords are included in the pin title and description.

Example User Journey:

• A search for “carrot cake bar recipe” on Pinterest results in Sugar Geek Show’s pin among the top results.

• The reader clicks the link in the pin and is directed to the Carrot Cake Bar Recipe blog post on their website.

• This results in:

  • Ad revenue from the blog post.

  • Potential navigation to the Sugar Geek University landing page via the blog.

TikTok: 

(link)

Main Role:

• To direct people to the Sugar Geek University landing page through a link in the TikTok profile bio. 

Content Strategy:

• Quick, bite-sized videos showing cake-decorating tips and tricks.

• Videos are engaging, concise, and hop on trends.

• Unlike the blog and Pinterest, TikTok content doesn’t seem to target specific keywords.

• The focus is on videos with a potential to go viral, generating likes, shares, and comments.

• Example: A video showing Liz cutting through a “gelatin cake” received a mind-blowing 40 million views.

YouTube: 

(link)

They haven’t posted new content in 6 months but their videos continue to get a lot of views according to SocialBlade.

Main Role:

• Generate ad revenue from the YouTube Partner Program.

• Funnel viewers to the Sugar Geek University landing page through links in video descriptions.

Content Strategy:

• Early videos seemed to target specific keywords.

• Over time, the YouTube strategy shifted to showcasing course snippets from their paid membership program.

Call to Action:

• Most videos contain a link in the description directing viewers to the Sugar Geek University landing page.

• Example: A YouTube video features Liz decorating a hyperrealistic chocolate ant. The video description prompts viewers to explore the full paid course on the Sugar Geek University website.

💖 Building Trust 

In order to turn that traffic into revenue, Sugar Geek Show needs to nurture and build trust with the audience. 

Here are some ways Liz builds trust with her audience and increases the likelihood that they become paying members of Sugar Geek University.

Unique Visuals

…No stock images here.

Just extremely impressive cake photography.

It gives her tutorials a professional-looking edge and increases the perceived value of each post.

(Example).

Multimedia Strategy

Written, short-form, and long-form video.

Sugar Geek Show interlinks between all of them.

Blog posts contain embedded videos and YouTube video descriptions contain links to related blog posts.

It makes each piece of content feel more valuable and educational. 

Authority Signals

You’ll find a "Featured On" widget on the blog sidebar showing prominent media features.

But you don’t need huge names like these.

If you’ve been mentioned on another media outlet - let it be known.

Strong Personal Branding

Liz is everywhere and displays her face across every content platform.

• Having a recognizable face behind a brand deepens audience connections.

• Having a personal and relatable "About Me" page adds a genuine human touch.

Nurturing Community

"Sugar Geeks" is an active associated Facebook Group.

A “place to share, get support, and geek out”.

“Sugar Geeks” is just a great, brandable name for a community. It feels more like a movement and less like a business.

💰 Monetization

OK. So she’s generated the traffic and built trust with that traffic. 

Now it’s time to convert that traffic + trust into revenue. 

Rough revenue estimates for the whole business: 

• Blog Ads - Partnered with the Mediavine ad network. 

  • Using a conservative estimate of $30 RPM (revenue per 1000 impressions). 1m pageviews/month = $30,000/month ($360,000/yr).

• YouTube Ads - Partner Program. 

  • 4 million views/month at a conservative estimate of $4 CPM = $16,000/month ($192,000/yr).

• Membership Program - Sugar Geek University.

  • Difficult to estimate, but membership revenue was revealed as approximately $350,000 in 2021. It’s very likely to have increased since then.

Estimated total = at least $902,000/yr

Yep - not bad. 

Remember - this isn’t counting the high-end clients, consulting, and speaking gigs Liz Marek is likely to be getting given her online fame. 

Let’s go through the main revenue sources individually: 

Blog And YouTube Ad Revenue

Want more ad revenue? Get people to stick around for longer. 

Liz does this in a few ways: 

• Making great content! The better the content, the harder it is to stop scrolling down the page or viewing the video 

• Using large images in her blog posts

• Using large text and short paragraphs (more space for ads to squeeze in)

• Lots of interlinking between blog posts and videos - sending readers down a rabbit hole of related content

Sugar Geek University - Paid Membership Program

Converting people into paying members is much harder than passively generating ad revenue. 

You need trust. 

Here’s a recap of the different ways they funnel (i.e link) people to their paid membership program’s website (sugargeekuniversity.com): 

• From blog posts (links from the content itself)

• From the blog’s navigation bar

• From a link in the TikTok bio

• From links in YouTube video descriptions

• From a link to a tutorial (Cake Decorating 101) in her Instagram bio. The last slide of this presentation invites people to sign up for her membership program. 

Here’s an overview of what I like about the Sugar Geek University website: 

Good Copywriting:

Here’s what it says on the hero image of the homepage: 

“BECOME A SUGAR GEEK”

“Gain the confidence to become the best cake decorator you can be”

Again, referring to community members as “Sugar Geeks” makes people feel as though they’re joining a movement and not just a membership program. 

Social Proof And Authority:

Showcasing good reviews on the homepage and the checkout page will increase conversions. 

The homepage also has an “As Seen On” section where several huge media outlet mentions are named.

Expertise, authority, trust. 

Simplicity:  

It’s made clear that all of these courses are available for a single fee: $5/month. 

No paying for individual courses - just a simple, single monthly fee. 

Reduce decision fatigue whenever possible.

People appreciate the simplicity and having to make fewer decisions. 

🧰 Toolbox

Some tools we found Sugar Geek Show using right now:

• WordPress Theme - Cook’d Pro by Feast

• Blog Ad Network - Mediavine

• Site Speed - WP Rocket 

• Email Marketing - Active Campaign

• SEO Optimization - Yoast

• Keyword Research - SEMRush

• Membership Program - Kajabi

📝 Key Takeaways:

🌐 Diversify Traffic: Spread content across various platforms to reduce risk and increase familiarity with the audience.

📅 Be Consistent: Maintain a regular and predictable content schedule to win trust from both audiences and algorithms.

👤 Add A Personal Touch: Highlight the face behind your brand for a more personable and memorable experience.

🚀 Foster A Community: Aim to build a loyal movement, not just an audience, for deeper engagement.

💸 Diversify Revenue: Consider a recurring income stream like a membership program.

📣 Add Credibility: Leverage your achievements and media mentions as trust signals to your audience.

And that’s all for today!

Dilshan And Misya, The Pen Pivot