How Vinny DelGiudice Grew His Italian-American Food Blog to +100k Page Views a Month
When you buy something through one of the links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Vinny DelGiudice first dove into blogging to pass the time when he moved to Nevada by himself just out of grad school.
Although that blog never really took off, he did learn a lot from the process.
A few years later, he and his wife decided to start an Italo-American food blog called Always From Scratch. Both of them had very fond memories of eating their families’ homemade cooking as children, and they decided to share it with the world.
It was a good decision: today their blog brings in a solid extra revenue stream and they’ve built up their page views to +100k per month and a following of 136k on Instagram.
Keep reading to find out:
- What he did before blogging
- What his first blog was about
- Why he decided to try food blogging
- How his traffic has grown
- Where his income comes from
- His main marketing strategy
- His thoughts on SEO
- His keyword research process
- His content creation process
- The resources that have helped him
- His go-to tools
- His biggest challenge
- His main accomplishment
- His major mistake
- His advice for other entrepreneurs
Contents
- Meet Vinny DelGiudice
- Why He Created His Website
- Where His Income Comes From
- Vinny’s Marketing Strategy
- Vinny’s Thoughts on SEO
- His Content Creation Process
- His Email List
- Vinny’s Main Resources
- His Go-To Tools
- His Main Challenge
- His Greatest Accomplishment
- What He Wishes He Knew When He Started
- His Biggest Mistake
- His Advice for Other Entrepreneurs
Meet Vinny DelGiudice
My name is Vinny. I’m originally from New York, but we live in North Carolina now. I’ve worked in restaurants and delis from when I was 13 until I finished grad school.
I grew up in an Italian household where the idea of going out to dinner was specifically saved for special occasions so we always ate my mom’s home cooking.
She’d send us to school with chicken cutlet sandwiches, make us pasta and meatballs every Sunday, and always made whatever the meal was, from scratch.
I went to school to be a speech pathologist. I worked in a specific niche of voice and swallowing. I started blogging and working in digital media because when I took my first job after grad school, I moved to Nevada by myself and I was so bored when I wasn’t at work. Blogging became a way for me to distract myself at the beginning of living in a new place.
I was a speech pathologist for 7 years but now I’m full-time digital media and photography.
In the beginning, I would guest blog about craft beer and sports mainly. My blog was a story-based blog.
It was just me venting about things that would happen to me throughout the day. I didn’t have any financial success but it got me used to putting myself out there on the internet.
Why He Created His Website
I had been blogging and posting on social media for years before we came up with the idea for Always From Scratch.
After we had our first kid, I stopped blogging and posting altogether. It was a hobby at the time and something I didn’t care to spend time on when I could spend that time with my family. I was also using a “character” to post as and would act as a more stereotypical Italian when I posted.
I came up with the idea for Always from Scratch on a walk with my wife in 2020. I wanted to create a blog that represented our family’s culture as we went from being Italian to American. My wife is a second-generation American, and I’m fourth-generation American.
We had a really unique experience with her family having so many different Italian recipes than mine and I wanted to share all of them.
I started out with just one post at a time, with the goal of getting to 100.
Basically how I work every recipe is a few simple steps:
- Recipe test
- Shoot photography and videography for recipe
- Edit photos and videos for blog and Instagram
- Write the recipe blog
- Post the recipe video
Sometimes I start by hunting for keywords. Especially when I feel like my creative juices aren’t flowing, keyword research gets me thinking. It's a good way to get your brain going.
For a lot of my family recipes, I start with a thought and look to find a keyword that works for that idea.
The main revenue is from ads on the website. Once you start getting enough traffic to your website you can apply for an ad platform.
Over the past 2 years, we’ve grown from about 1000 pageviews a month to over 100k pageviews a month.
Right before I owned this business, my wife and I owned a charcuterie business. We would cater large charcuterie boards. The business didn’t necessarily fail, but we discontinued it because, as new parents, only one of us could be with the business, so we were never able to spend time together.
We ended up closing in early 2020.
I work on the blog for about 30 hours per week.
Where His Income Comes From
The income streams are brand sponsorships, photography shoots, and ad revenue. Ad revenue is my favorite income stream because although it's not actually passive, it's the least stressful.
We can’t live on the Always From Scratch income right now but it is trending in the right direction of providing our family with extra income.
Vinny’s Marketing Strategy
My #1 marketing strategy is SEO. It is my number one concern and thought process. Everything I create begins through the lens of SEO. I rarely will just create something for Instagram.
Instagram, as great as it is for some things, does not convert to traffic for my blog, which is where I want people to go. The bulk of my traffic is from Google.
So when I post videos on Instagram, it’s for 2 reasons:
- To connect with my audience. I want to be able to talk to my audience and understand what they want and how they want to see it.
- To attract brands to want to work with me. My Instagram account is @vindelgiudice.
Vinny’s Thoughts on SEO
SEO is very important. I’m not an expert. I’m nowhere near an expert. But I read as much as I can about it and try to learn about it as much as I can.
Casey Markee has been a big part of my success in SEO, as well as the entire team at Top Hat Rank. All of their videos and help over the years have driven my success.
I didn’t know a thing about SEO when I launched my first blog. Thankfully, when I launched Always From Scratch, I had been researching as much as I could about it.
But there really is no teacher like real experience. Until you can see your posts start ranking, you don’t know if you’re doing it right.
Keyword Research
I won’t go into the nitty-gritty of how I do keyword research but I started by taking a keyword research class, Cooking with Keywords by Aleka. She is an amazing teacher and taught me so much about keyword research.
I basically start with an idea and then start Googling it. I see what other people’s titles are. Then I put it into a keyword tool like Semrush or KeySearch and start parsing out what the best keywords to try to rank for are and how much volume they have.
If there is no volume, then I may not even share the recipe because it might be that no one will ever see it.
Link Building
Link building is not that important to me at the moment. I write high-quality articles in the hopes that someone will link to them.
Is it a great strategy? No. But right now that’s about all I have time for.
I’ve done interviews in the past and worked with companies who have been gracious enough to link back to my page.
His Content Creation Process
I basically come up with ideas by going out to dinner, eating with friends, reading recipe books, and talking to my parents and my wife.
Once I have an idea, the keyword research starts to see if it is even worth writing about. After that, I’ll start recipe testing. Sometimes I hit it on the first try, especially if it’s an old family recipe. Otherwise, I’ll have to try a few times. Then once that’s done, I do the photo/video shoot, write the blog, edit the video, and post.
We have about 150 blogs live. We post at minimum once per week in blog form and 2 times per week on Instagram.
His Email List
I have an email list. It’s pretty small with about 700 people. I grow it by using pop-ups on my website and sharing it on my Instagram.
Vinny’s Main Resources
Join Food Blogger Pro. They’re great. They have a forum where you can talk with like-minded people and they have tons of classes for just getting started. They have been a huge part of my success. Their podcast is great too!
Read anything that Casey Markee writes or is in whether it be a podcast or a video. He has so much knowledge and is giving this information for free. He also does site audits that obviously have a cost, but in the beginning, start with free resources.
Top Hat Rank has so many videos on their YouTube all about SEO.
Cooking with Keywords is a course I took that I still go back to and learn more. She is an amazing teacher and will teach you everything about keyword research.
His Go-To Tools
The three most useful tools for me are Adobe products, keyword research software, and my accountant. All three of these things save me astronomical amounts of time.
I edit everything with Adobe. They have a great workflow. And it’s what I learned on, so It’s what I continue to use.
Keyword software like KeySearch, Ahrefs, and Semrush are so important for keyword research. They provide you with a lot of information so you can decide whether or not you should even write about your idea.
My accountant is by far my most important tool. He helps me make sure everything I’m doing will make me money. He helps me organize all my costs and keep everything straight. I’m forever grateful and lucky to have someone like my accountant.
His Main Challenge
My biggest challenge is time. I’m a dad and a husband. I work a full-time job for an amazing company. I refuse to sacrifice any time that would come before those three things.
I consider myself so lucky to be in a position where I get to enjoy fatherhood, have an amazing wife, and get to go to work every day.
I was laid off for 4 months about a year ago. My priorities are my family and my job. Then my business. So every hour I spend working on the business is usually early mornings and late nights.
His Greatest Accomplishment
My most important accomplishment is not giving up.
I’ve started so many things before this blog where I just gave up. Never stopping despite how little money I was making.
Looking back on it, my biggest accomplishment wasn’t getting on an ad network, getting a viral video, or hitting a certain number of followers.
It’s that when things were not going that great, when I was only getting 10 blog views a month, when I only had friends and family following me on Instagram, I just kept going.
What He Wishes He Knew When He Started
I wish I had known that you can’t learn without doing.
SEO is important to learn. I couldn’t see that I was doing the right thing until I actually saw my first post rank. Once I had my first post rank, I was able to compare it to my other posts and start adapting. I used it as the model for everything moving forward.
His Biggest Mistake
My main mistake was thinking my business was full-time ready when it was not. When I got laid off last summer, I thought I could take my blog from making about 10k a year to 100k in four months with hard work and fortitude.
Well, I forgot about time. It takes time to build anything. Could this eventually be a full-time job? Maybe.
I forgot the reason I started the blog and lost sight of why I was doing it. If you’re doing it for the money, go do something else. Because it is hard work, and if you just want money, just go get a job.
Remembering to enjoy what I was making and doing was something I regained while I was laid off and allowed me to refocus my priorities and get into a job that is focused on digital media.
His Advice for Other Entrepreneurs
Bjork Ostrom at Food Blogger Pro has a rule that I’m a devout follower of.
So when you feel overwhelmed with everything building a business requires, just do 1%. One small piece will grow exponentially every day.
Want to learn step-by-step how I built my Niche Site Empire up to a full-time income?
Yes! I Love to Learn
Learn How I Built My Niche Site Empire to a Full-time Income
- How to Pick the Right Keywords at the START, and avoid the losers
- How to Scale and Outsource 90% of the Work, Allowing Your Empire to GROW Without You
- How to Build a Site That Gets REAL TRAFFIC FROM GOOGLE (every. single. day.)
- Subscribe to the Niche Pursuits Newsletter delivered with value 3X per week
My top recommendations