Navigating burnout, creating unique content, and running a blog with 30 million monthly pageviews with Jeanine Donofrio from Love & Lemons.

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Welcome to episode 536 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Jeanine Donofrio from Love & Lemons.

The Journey to Reaching 30 Million Views a Month

In this episode, Bjork chats with Jeanine Donofrio, the creator of the massively popular vegetarian food blog Love & Lemons, which now receives over 30 million monthly pageviews (!!!). Jeanine shares the story behind her blog's evolution — from a personal creative outlet that she started in 2011 to a thriving business with multiple employees.

Bjork and Jeanine also talk about how Jeanine balances creativity with content strategy, manages the pressure of staying consistent, and how she navigates seasons of burnout.

Three episode takeaways:

• How and why Jeanine started focusing on SEO — Love & Lemons was monetized solely with sponsored posts for the first 8 years, before fellow food blogggers and friends convinced Jeanine to focus on SEO and monetize with ads in 2019. Jeanine explains more about why she resisted ads and SEO for so many years, and how she navigated the transition to creating content with SEO in mind.
• How to anticipate and navigate burnout — Jeanine has experienced four intense periods of burnout in her time as a food creator, often related to the creation and promotion of her cookbooks. She shares how she plans for these seasons, why she views burnout as a necessary step to making creative space, and how she avoids rushing herself through burnout.
• How Jeanine has grown her team and batches content — Jeanine explains how she has hired teammates over the years and why she decided to prioritize outsourcing certain tasks, like photography, to free up her time for recipe development, writing, and spending time with her family. She also shares a peak behind-the-scenes into her content batching process (and why she batches 30 recipes at a time).

Resources:

• Love & Lemons
• Love & Lemons Cookbooks
• Smitten Kitchen
• 101 Cookbooks
• A Couple Cooks
• Semrush
• Lemon Water on Substack
• Register for our webinar with Grocers List
• Follow Jeanine on Instagram and Facebook
• Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group

Thank you to our sponsors!

This episode is sponsored by Member Kitchens and Raptive.

Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here.

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to [email protected].

Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.