Hi Reader,

The other day I received an email from a long time follower telling me she would no longer be supporting my work. She said she was disappointed in the direction my brand had taken and felt it had become too commercial because I had started including advertisements in my newsletters.

And to be fair to this follower, I did just start posting ads without giving you any warning or explanation. So let me give you my why.

For the past year, I have been incredibly anxious about the future of my business. The majority of my income comes from my website, where I share every single recipe completely free. The website is supported by advertising, so every time someone visits a recipe or occasionally clicks an ad, that's what allows me to keep creating free content.

But the internet is changing. With the rise of AI, people aren’t Googling recipes like they used to. They now ask Chat GPT or Claude to give them the best lemon olive oil cake recipe and it will write it out for you in under 10 seconds. It’s quick, it’s easy and you don’t have to scroll through ads or paragraphs about why my lemon olive oil cake recipe is the best one out there.

As a result, my website traffic has fallen, and so has the income that supports everything I create.

For the last twelve months, I have been trying to figure out how I can keep my recipes free without asking you to pay for them. One of those ideas has been including advertisements in my newsletters. To be completely transparent, they don't make very much money. I earn around $1.14 each time someone clicks one. But every little bit helps me keep my recipes free and available to everyone. I know advertisements aren't exciting but I'd much rather include the occasional sponsored placement than move all of my recipes behind a subscription. For now anyway…

Many food creators have already made that decision, and I completely understand why. Creating recipes is expensive. Testing them takes days, sometimes weeks. Running a website isn't cheap... it actually costs me thousands of dollars a year to keep it running. But my blog has been my life's work for the past eight years, and I want it to remain a place where anyone can come and cook, regardless of whether they can afford another monthly subscription.

As long as I can make that work, that's exactly what I'll keep doing. But I do feel like that clock is ticking…

I don't know what the future of food blogging looks like. I do worry that more and more creators will have to move behind paywalls simply because the economics of the internet are changing.

If one day I did create an ad free membership, it would never replace my free recipes. It would simply be another way for those who wanted to support my work to do so, for less than the cost of a cup of coffee each month.

I'd genuinely love to know if that's something you'd be interested in because it is something I think about every day at the moment.

And if you'd like to continue supporting my work today, the biggest things you can do are visit my website, watch my YouTube videos (it's the only platform in Australia that really pays creators), share my recipes with friends, or, if you ever feel inclined, leave a small donation using the link below.

Every recipe you cook, every email you open and every bit of support means more than you probably realise.

Thank you for allowing me to keep doing what I love.

Daen xoxo

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