We recently connected with Melissa Williams and have shared our conversation below.

Melissa, appreciate you joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

I started my website, Persnickety Plates, in 2009, long before “content creation” was a job. It was truly started as a hobby that I gave minimal attention to. I’d create a recipe, snap a quick pic (with my 3 MP camera phone lol), and write a couple random sentences about my day. It really was my journal.

As the years went on, I realized websites could be monetized. People were visiting my site from all over the world thanks to Pinterest and social media and I started taking it more seriously. I thought “how cool would it be if this hobby could make my monthly car payment…” I bought a real camera and took photography courses, moved from Blogger to WordPress, wrote with purpose and SEO in mind, and really began serving my readers and treating my site as the business it was instead of just documenting my meals and ramblings.

Right around the same time that I monetized, in 2014, I had my first daughter so managing motherhood, a full time marketing job, and the website became tricky, to say the least, but I kept going, recipe testing on the weekends and working on the site after she went to bed.

In 2017, I had my second daughter, time got even more scarce, but I kept going and eventually the site was paying for my car payment and our mortgage. I was working on it before going into the office, during my lunch hours, on the weekends, and from the hours of 9pm-midnight.

After many discussions with my husband, we decided I would bet on myself, quit my stable 9-5 job, and dive into my site full time when my oldest started kindergarten in 2019. You know what they say about well laid plans, right? I had no idea the world would shut down with the pandemic and my husband would have serious health issues. But, that time at home showed me that I could really scale the business and finally, in July 2021, I was able to leave my full time job and become fully self employed.

Looking back at my schedule during those days (years), I have no idea how I kept up and wish I would have gone all-in sooner, but I am proud of the journey.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

When people ask what I do I never quite know what to say. “Food blogger” often has people assuming I review restaurants. In actuality, being a digital creator has me wearing many hats – creating content (developing recipes, photography, videography, editing, writing), marketing (SEO, email, social media, branding), tech, finance, managing my team, etc. As someone who has been in this space for 15 years, I’ve watched content creation and “influencing” evolve greatly. It is hard for people to grasp what goes on behind the scenes but it is far more than taking a picture of my food these days.

Persnickety Plates reaches millions every year and I am honored that my recipes play a part in dinners, holidays, and celebrations across the world. My goal is to inspire my readers with ideas to help feed their families with everyday ingredients and easy to follow recipes. In the age of AI, it is especially important to personally connect with my audience so they know they can trust the recipes I provide. I’ve tested and perfected them so my readers can have success in their kitchens, instead of wasting time and money on a computer generated recipe that will often fail. Getting comments from my readers when my recipes go into their regular rotation or recipe box is an honor.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I have nearly 700,000 followers across the various social media channels and then another 2.5M in Facebook groups. My best advice when trying to grow your following is to be consistent. You can’t post once every couple days and expect your audience to grow. I post nearly hourly on my Facebook page – both sharing my content and other relevant content – so my audience knows what to expect. In October I did a “Crocktober” series on TikTok where I shared a slow cooker recipe every day for the month and I gained over 70,000 followers. Pick a focus, be consistent, and I think your audience will find you.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I feel like as an entrepreneur you need to pivot daily. In my world, when Google or Meta switches their algorithms, my website traffic is affected. I largely rely on display advertising to earn my income so when my traffic fluctuates, so does my income (those ads everyone complains about on websites? Yeah, those are what allow me to provide free recipes). I used to get 1-2M pageviews per month from Facebook alone but when an algorithm shifted, that dropped to around 100,000 per month. In that time, I really leaned into my email marketing and Pinterest and have been able to maintain my income. Never get too comfortable, you can’t grow without change.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.persnicketyplates.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/melissa_pplates
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PersnicketyPlates
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MelissaWilliamsPPlates

Image Credits

Photos of me – Melissa Douglas
Food photos – Melissa Williams