From Food Blog to Business

The Story of How I Turned My Passion into a Brand

Words by Ella Titus |Photographer: Jackson Zerrer

My name is Ella. I am the recipe developer, food stylist, photographer, and blogger behind Splurge with Ella. If you told me a year ago that I would have built my own website that receives 11,000 views per month, been featured in magazines and on YouTube channels, obtained paid partnerships, and would receive positive feedback from readers around the world interested in my personal recipes, I would not have believed you. Before creating Splurge with Ella, I had no prior experience with what it takes to start a brand from the ground up. But here we are, one year later, and I have accomplished goals that previously felt inconceivable. As an advertising student at Temple University, I often consider where my degree will take me. Am I truly passionate about marketing? In some ways yes, but what makes me truly happy? The answer to that question has always been food. Baking and cooking are my favorite hobbies, along with eating, of course! I began to wonder how I could transform my love for food into something tangible and profitable. After a lot of research, the answer I found was blogging. Starting a blog would give me a creative outlet, a means to share my passion with the world, and if I worked hard enough, the opportunity to turn something I love into an actual career. What I did not know at the time was that I was also building something that would provide me with amazing opportunities within the field that I am studying. Being the owner and content creator behind a blog has landed me competitive internship positions by setting me apart from other applicants, has allowed me to showcase a plethora of skills to recruiters, and has given me impressive talking points in interviews. I believe that I was able to achieve this by following my passion and dedicating my free time towards something productive. Building a new business or brand may seem daunting at first; however, I can assure you that it is entirely possible. Constant small steps in the right direction all add up. I started with a simple Instagram account, posting recipes that I had developed along with highquality photographs (I usually take around 200-300 photographs per recipe with a Canon EOS Rebel T5i). After receiving a great deal of positive feedback and gaining hundreds of followers within months, I knew that I wanted to build a website that I would eventually be able to monetize. My personal research on how to do this led me to read other blogger’s success stories and ask for advice from business role models in my life. I dedicated hundreds of hours to building a website on the self-hosted version of WordPress. This required a lot of late-night troubleshooting and months of trial and error, but my dedication paid off because launching my website was one of the smartest decisions I have ever made. In order to help Splurge with Ella reach its fullest potential, I additionally created a Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, and email subscription list over the course of a few more months. I quickly found that the more time and effort I put into publishing posts, creating content for all of my platforms, and being active on social media, the more I saw my brand grow.

Read more in issue 21!