457: How to Acquire and Grow a Food Blog with Parker Thornburg

The Food Blogger Pro Podcast

Acquiring an existing food blog, navigating traffic drops, and reimagining a site to make it your own with Parker Thornburg from Foodness Gracious.

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Welcome to episode 457 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Parker Thornburg from Foodness Gracious.

How to Acquire and Grow a Food Blog

Starting a food blog or business is hard work. It can take months (years!) of determination, practice, and consistency before you start to see results. So what if you just… skipped ahead?!

That’s exactly what Parker Thornburg and his business partner did when they acquired the existing food blog, Foodness Gracious. But just because the site was up and running (with thousands of recipes!) doesn’t mean the transition has been an easy or seamless one.

In this interview, Parker shares more about the process of acquiring a site, what the transition has been like, how they’ve navigated hiring and traffic drops, and have started to come out the other side. Whether or not you’re thinking about acquiring a site (or selling your own), there are lots of great lessons to be learned for anyone!

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• More about Parker’s professional background (including time at Yahoo and a start-up).
• Why Parker decided to acquire an existing food blog.
• About the process of acquiring a site and using a brokerage site.
• What factors to consider when acquiring a site (including calculating potential profits).
• How they hired their team and what the early days of the site looked like after acquisition (including lots of lessons learned).
• How Parker and his business partner have navigated traffic drops since acquiring their site.
• The importance of consistency and habits when trying something new.
• How he balances his full-time job, family life, and growing Foodness Gracious.
• What he wants the legacy of this site to be.

Resources:

• Foodness Gracious
• Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game
• QuietLight
• Empire Flippers
• 032: Buying & Selling Websites with Mark Daoust from Quiet Light
• 159: Different Ways to Create an Income Online with Mark Daoust
• Mediavine
• beehiiv
• Maray
• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
• Snackdive
• Follow Foodness Gracious on Instagram and Facebook
• Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group

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This episode is sponsored by CultivateWP and Memberful. Learn more about our sponsors at foodbloggerpro.com/sponsors.

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