Case studies

"Recurring revenue is life changing"

Migrating a food blogging business from Kajabi

Before VJ Cooks

Before VJ Cooks, Vanya Insull was a magazine designer and art director but after moving to a smaller town in New Zealand, she found a dearth of magazines to join. She decided to start filming herself prepping recipes, which led to a Facebook page, and things took off from there. Instagram followed, as well as a website, and eventually Vanya was inspiring thousands by sharing "family food" videos across Australia and New Zealand. She didn't plan for this to be a thriving business, but ultimately, that's what happened one step at a time.

She ventured into memberships in 2020 by standing up a Kajabi site. Members received an e-book of recipes, which people fell in love with. In fact, some of those early people are still loving those e-books today! As time went on, finding those recipes in Vanya's huge library became difficult for users so Vanya and her team tried various methods of making her content searchable, like spreadsheet catalogs of the pdf e-books, but nothing really fit the bill.

"This is the one for me"

The search continued for something that would improve the user experience of finding and digesting all of Vanya's recipe content. There were plenty of options but all had drawbacks, until Vanya found Member Kitchens via Food Blogger Pro. Vanya felt "this is the one for me," but kept searching before realizing she had already found a new home for her content and membership platform. Especially of interest was that Member Kitchens provides both desktop and mobile applications as users often switch between the two and is a white label service specifically made for food content creators.

Between keeping the existing business running, the team began migrating hundreds of recipes into their new Member Kitchens app over the next few months and decided to launch with about 1,000 existing subscribers from Kajabi. "The churn has really slowed down" once the members were onboarded in Member Kitchens, so the results looked very promising. They used the Zapier integration which made things quite easy..."That's why we are loving the app, because it's so easy and everything's in the palm of the users hands".

Members say things like "We love the app, it's changed the way we meal plan" and it is "So much more user friendly".

Building a business

Members now receive exclusive access to the latest recipes Vanya and her team have to offer, with 7-10 new recipes each month. On the heels of migrating the existing membership base, new prospects are all funneled to the white-labeled VJ Cooks app, resulting in an additional 2,000 signups within a few months of launch. The tote-board goal kept in the office of VJ Cooks goes up by 1,000 very quickly! Social channels and the email list are being marketed to receive a free-trial to the app along with some urgency marketing by creating deadlines. Vanya also is a published author, which is good for branding and exposure, but for consistent revenue she is focusing on the Member Kitchens app.

An app without the app stores

Vanya was originally looking to launch an app in the traditional app stores, however that desire quickly faded after seeing that Apple and Google would take 15-30% of her revenue. Launching with Member Kitchens allows Vanya to only pay for revenue generating users, at a fraction of the cost of app stores. Marketing channels promote the purchase of a subscription, and users are then guided into the app experience with banner promotion within the web app, along with email guidance for subscribers. They have a good drip campaign that guides and educates people through the installation process.