024: Beth Moncel | Budget Bytes

For the past eight years, Beth Moncel has been dishing out healthy, inexpensive recipes and teaching kitchen basics through her popular blog, Budget Bytes and the corresponding cookbook, Budget Bytes – Over 100 Easy Delicious Recipes to Slash Your Grocery Bill in Half. She loves getting creative in the kitchen and hopes to show others just how fun and rewarding cooking can be.

There are two things Beth Moncel will readily admit: “I am broke and I love to eat.”

• She’s not a professional chef… although she’s worked in several commercial kitchens.
• She’s not a super-mommy homemaker… but gives mad props to all of them out there. (It’s hard enough just taking care of herself!)
• She’s not a financial expert… she just happens to be obsessed with numbers.

Beth like to cook because it’s the perfect combination of her two favorite subjects: art and science. She’s a former microbiologist with degrees in both Clinical Laboratory Science and Nutritional Science from Louisiana State University.

Beth is not “cheap” because she does appreciate quality; she just likes to be able to have her cake, eat it, AND pay her bills on time.

In short, Beth doesn’t believe that eating for pennies a day has to mean eating Ramen Noodles 100 different ways. She created her blog, Budget Bytes, in 2009 in response to her own financial crisis and to document her attempts to cook delicious and (mostly) nutritious food on a small budget.

Beth’s mission is twofold: to give confidence to new cooks and to inspire people to learn how to cook and thereby reduce their dependence on the prepared food industry.

Beth Moncel Show Notes

Contact:
Budget Bytes
Facebook
Instagram
Pinterest
Twitter

Books:
This post contains affiliate links, which means I get a small commission if you click the link and buy something. You can read my disclosure here.

Better Home and Gardens

Mentions:
Emily White Designs
Buffer

Questions:
What did you do before you became a food blogger?
How so?
So, what you saw was good things and not bad things?
What soured you on the nutritional science?
Is that when you started your blog or did you start it before you quit?
Do you see a huge change from 2009 when you started your blog to now?
Is there something that is irritating now that you wish would go away and back to how it was in 2009?
Do you think it has to do with budget, and also bites is interesting because it’s bytes?
Do you think at some point you would rebrand, or do you love the name and just go forward?
When you first started blogging, how many times a week did you publish a post?
How long are your posts usually, word-wise?
How long did it take you to start making money on your blog?
I’m assuming you moved to a different platform?
That must have been such a shock to the system when you saw that?
Do you have people that help you with your company?
How did you find these people?
How many iterations of the website have you had?
Did you change the website’s look each time you changed themes or designers?
Did you decide this with the designer, or did you already have it in your mind when you went into it?
Do you do your own SEO?
What do you think is the hardest thing about food blogging?
What is your biggest food failure?
Does it take you more than 2 times to fix whatever the problem was?
What is your favorite marketing tool?
Do you have any advice for a new blogger or someone that has been blogging for a few years on how to move their business forward?
You talked about making money through ad networks at first, how do you make your money now?
What is one of the things you can’t live without in your kitchen?
Do you have a stand alone freezer or just your freezer on your refrigerator?
What is your favorite cuisine?
Did you have a viral moment?
You said they picked you up, what do you mean by that?
And you saw a huge spike in your traffic?
Once you realized this was going to be a business for you, did you have a plan mapped out?
Favorite cookbook?