2014 Top Blogger Award

Wow!  Am I ever excited!  Both The Best Dessert Recipes and All Free Casserole Recipes websites have named me one of their Top 100 bloggers for 2014!

Can you believe it?  I can’t.  Although Danielle and Emily sent me an email in late December (so I’ve known for a couple of weeks), I’m still giddy with excitement!

Both The Best Dessert Recipes and All Free Casserole Recipes sites are owned by the same powerhouse parent media network called Prime Publishing.  If you’ve read and followed any of my Monthly Income Reports (see links below at the bottom of this post), you will know about them.  If you haven’t, here’s a brief snapshot:

Prime Publishing owns and operates multiple recipe and crafting sites.  A “content aggregator”, they reach out to bloggers and ask to feature the blogger’s recipes or craft projects on their sites.  They don’t feature the entire blogger’s recipe, but a brief synopsis, a photo and then a link back to the blogger’s recipe.  This is a “win-win-win” for the blogger because:

• You gain exposure to an audience you didn’t have before.
• It drives traffic to your site.
• It gives your blog a credible link, thus boosting SEO and your blog’s ranking in search engines.

They found me.  What I mean is that about a year and a half ago, I received an email from one of their editor’s asking if they could feature one of my recipes.  After taking a moment to check them out, I said yes.

After I reached a certain minimum number of recipes on their different sites, they told me I could be a “Featured Foodie” on each site!  I was then and am now, honored to be a part of this elite club!  Here are links to my Featured Foodie sections on each Prime Publishing site I currently work with:

• Featured Foodie on All Free Casserole Recipes
• Featured Foodie on The Best Dessert Recipes
• Featured Foodie on Recipe Lion
• Featured Foodie on Fave Healthy Recipes

In addition to sharing my recipes on their sites, they’ve given me the opportunity to post as a guest blogger on both Recipe Chatter and Creative Income Blog.

Because of my burgeoning relationship with Prime Publishing this past year and a half, my blog’s traffic growth has increased by almost 400%!  I credit that growth solely to them because as a blogger with a full-time job outside of the blogging world, I don’t have much time to promote my blog on social media.  And, to grow your blog, bloggers need to actively promote it.  Left to search engines, your blog will grow, but growth will be slow (as has mine).

If you are a food blogger or a craft blogger, looking for ways to increase your exposure, Prime Publishing is a great resource to have in your back pocket.  With over 65,000,000 pageviews a month on all of their sites (yes, that’s 65 million!) and over 5,700,000 newsletter email subscribers, they have the ability to drive traffic to your site by just including a link to your recipe or craft in one of their newsletters!

Just yesterday, I had a huge surge in traffic to my site – all because All Free Casserole Recipes featured one of my casseroles in a newsletter.  Want to know which one? Charlie’s Layered Mexican Casserole.  Created by my husband, Charlie, it is easy to prepare and, of course, yummy!

My Peach Pineapple Dump Cake (featured in the photo above) was the reason I made the Top 100 on both sites.  Yes, that one recipe, featured on both sites, drove enough traffic to get me in the Top 100 of both sites!  Thinking about the 65 million pageviews that Prime Publishing’s sites get monthly, to be included in the Top 100 recipes on both of these sites is mind-boggling to me!  My brain is exploding just thinking about it!

FYI – the Peach Pineapple Dump Cake recipe on my site was written and posted by my niece and former blogging partner, Tiffany.  While she made the recipe, took the photos (sweet little Princess Sweetie Pie is featured making this recipe) and wrote the post, I created this recipe years and years ago when dump cakes first became popular (sometime in the late 1980’s, early 1990’s) and I taught her and others how to make it (and now readers!).

Here’s a snippet of the back-story:  we had a family friend who lived to 101.  She was a fabulous cook, but not inclined to share her recipes.  She made a delicious yellow sheet cake with a pineapple streusel-type topping, similar to a pineapple upside down cake but different than any pineapple upside down cake I’d ever tasted.  Try as I may, I could not convince her to share the recipe.

One day I had an epiphany:  instead of a sheet cake, why not try a dump cake?  I was already making the classic apple/cherry dump cake combo and thought why not try peach and pineapple?  When I developed this dump cake recipe, manufacturers did not have pineapple pie filling (you can buy it now).  So, I substituted a can of crushed pineapple instead.

It was a resounding success because it’s not quite as sweet as classic dump cake recipes. Classic dump cake recipes use two cans of pie filling (either two cans of the same flavor or one can of one flavor and one can of another flavor).  By substituting crushed pineapple for one of the pie fillings, the cake is still decadently delicious but not overpoweringly sweet (it’s still pretty sweet).

And, an internet sensation was born!

My Peach Pineapple Dump Cake, in addition to being a sought after recipe on these two Prime Publishing sites, drives much traffic to my site via organic search engine key word searches, too.

So, thank you, editors past and present of Prime Publishing:  Elliana, Emily, Danielle, Emily (there are two!), Julia, Natalie, Kaitlin (I hope I didn’t forget anyone!).  Without your continued support and guidance, I’d still be struggling to get my recipes out there!  I’m humbled and grateful to receive these two awards!

Tootles,

 

Related Posts:

(monthly income reports)

• Monthly Income Report – September 2014
• Monthly Income Report – August 2014
• Monthly Income Report – July 2014
• Monthly Income Report – June 2014
• Monthly Income Report – May 2014
• Monthly Income Report – April 2014
• Monthly Income Report – March 2014
• Monthly Income Report – February 2014
• Monthly Income Report – January 2014
• Monthly Income Report – December 2013