From Private Chef to Money-Making Blogger - Dinner Then Dessert

Sabrina Snyder was a chef; she is now a professional blogger. While she is still a chef to provide personal chef services for private events, her Dinner Then Dessert blog has become a much more profitable business. Her blog started in 2015, and quickly got a share of profits from the popular food and recipe blogging. Dinner Then Dessert blog reaches  three million monthly page views now, and the blog makes enough money for Sabrina to hire assistants for content development and social media marketing.

As chef, Sabrina knew little about blogging. She didn't believe a blog could generate income by placing advertise since she used ad blockers to get rid of all ads.  As she said, “It genuinely didn’t occur to me that bloggers could make money.” But when she built it, money came. She must have done something right.

https://dinnerthendessert.com/

Style and Impression

It looks like a typical recipe blog, coming with close-up photos of various foods. The layout is clean, the navigation is clear. The advertising is relatively more aggressive.

Blog Platform

This blog is on WordPress platform with custom design by Purr Design LLC. W3 Total Cache plugin is used for site performance optimization. 

Unique Selling Proposition (USP) 

The Copycat Recipes section make the most unique feature. A copycat recipe shows you how to have a homemade copy of a popular restaurant dish. With copycat recipes, you can make at home the P.F. Chang’s Chicken Lettuce Wraps, Cheesecake Factory's  Louisiana Chicken Pasta, Panda Express' Kung Pao Chicken, and a lot more.

Making Money

With significant web traffic, this blog generates steady income from advertisements. There are Google Adsense and other ad banners allover places on the page, - on the header, sidebar, bottom, and blended in the middle with blog contents.

The blog owner is savvy about ad placement and sponsorship. Currently they have partnerships with an herb company and a natural peanut butter brand. Snyder tries to limit deals to things she actually uses.

Social Media and Marketing 

The Dinner Then Dessert blog does well on social media. Its Facebook has 335k likes, Twitter has 7000 followers, Pinterest has 44k followers, and Instagram has 25k followers.