Einfach Malene

When Malene Schröder started her blog in 2015, it was just a fun side project — and, frankly, she had no intention of earning money from it.

“Back then I had a full time job,” says Malene. “So I was looking to do something creative apart from my job. I always loved taking pictures of my dinner. At some point I met some food bloggers, which back then was quite a new thing, and learned about the world of food blogging.”

They inspired her to start Einfach Malene. “Our site’s mission is to help people cook delicious and easy meals, even if they have little time,” says Malene. “95% of my recipes are quite easy, not requiring a lot of ingredients.”

Surprisingly, Malene actually hated cooking up until about the age of 25 years old. But when she met her husband, she finally had someone to cook for — and began to enjoy thinking up simple, delicious meals for the two of them.

“Einfach means simply/simple,” says Malene. “And I chose this name because the site features really simple recipes to cook or bake. I want everyone to be able to come onto the site and find something that they can take on easily.”

Malene’s first significant win came when she decided to rebrand, leaving behind the name that she picked when she first launched the site.

“At first my site had a silly name,” says Malene. “Previously, I wanted to be a bit anonymous, and ‘Malene’s Recipes’ sounded very arrogant or something. But I went for it, decided on a new URL with my name, which was a risk, but it started growing after this change.”

With growth on the rise, Malene needed a way to keep her site sustainable — so she started to think of ways she could support her site with an effective ad strategy.

With a consistent, sustainable monetization strategy, Malene was able to quit her original job and focus on her site full-time — something she never could have predicted.

“I totally didn’t expect this to become a full-time job,” says Malene. “But the more content I create, the more visitors and traffic I receive, which has led to more revenue.”

These days, Malene’s average monthly audience is 1-2 million users. However, in December, because of the Christmas period, she has closer to 4-6 million readers.

“My readers are German-speaking people, all ages, mostly women, but I do also have a lot of male readers,” says Malene. “Overall, my audience is everyone who wants to learn how to cook, or just find inspiration for what to cook for the day.”

Not a day goes by where Malene isn’t thankful for the life this blog has offered her. She especially likes that she gets to work on it with her husband — and together they’ve built a family business that can support them.

“I love everything about content creation: cooking, taking pictures, writing for the website,” says Malene. “Also, it makes me happy to see the results. Like for instance, if my recipe gets featured on Google Discover, I consider this a big success — in fact, it’s one of my favorite parts.”

Another highlight of her blogging experience involves diving into the comment section and speaking directly with her loyal readers.

“I interact with my audience via the comments on the blog, and I am also sending newsletters every week,” says Malene. “I’ve even had a few instances when people come up to me in Hamburg in Starbucks and tell me they recently cooked one of my meals. Those moments — or when I see online that somebody specifically mentions my site or raves about one of my recipes — make it all worth it.”