From Zero to $1 Million on YouTube Cooking Budget Dinners | Now Cookbook Author Jen Chapin Is Starting Over on Substack

▶️ Prefer to listen? Hit Listen. This conversation is worth your ears. Here’s the thing about doubters: sometimes they live in your own family. When today’s podcast guest Jen Chapin started posting videos about what she packed her kids for lunch and what she bought at the grocery store, someone in her family told her nobody would ever watch videos about groceries. Nobody. Then Jen set up her camera, filmed what she was already doing anyway, recorded a voiceover… and that video crossed one million views. “And they were obviously very wrong about that.” I love this sentence so much because every single one of us has heard some version of “nobody is going to read that.” Nobody is going to buy that. Nobody cares. Jen is the living proof that somebody always cares. You just have to keep showing up long enough for them to find you. Want to make money with your Substack? 4 days left to grab your seat for $47 Long-term Online Writing Club member Yana G.Y. . just earned her orange badge. That means 1,000 (!) paid subscribers, and counting. We’re hosting a masterclass together on Friday, October 9. Come learn how she did it, my tips and insights, and how you can get paid to be you. https://monetization.yana-g-y.com/ It’s a no-brainer. For only $47 you can join our exclusive circle! Who’s Jen Chapin? Why should I care, Kristina?, you ask. Jen is a nurse. For 20 years. She lives in a small town in the Midwest, she’s married, and she has two teenagers, 14 and 17. And she has always worked full-time. Around 2017/2018 she saw a gap on YouTube: there were barely any full-time working moms making home and cooking content. So she thought: well, I’ll just create it myself. Since then: * 140,000 subscribers on YouTube * 1,000 videos, all pre-recorded and edited * A cookbook, The Essential Pantry Cookbook * A physical meal planner she makes herself in her office (with her printer and binder plus laminating machine, “because I am crazy. And I say I'm good crazy”) * And… $1 million made on YouTube That’s how this whole conversation started. A few weeks back, on Notes, Jen casually mentioned the million. ONE MILLION. And her reaction? “It’s funny because it sounds impressive. But then when you divide it by like seven or eight years, it’s actually not that impressive.” And now she’s here on Substack with the Dinner Done Club. Why, if YouTube works so well? Because YouTube never felt like a community. Even YouTube memberships felt like a one-way conversation: people watching extra videos. Jen wanted a place to talk back and forth, and she always had this dream of a membership with budget meal plans. Want to earn money on Substack with paid subscriptions and beyond? Yana and I invite you to join our Monetizazion Masterclass on Friday, October 9. Join the fun! It’s a no-brainer. For only $47 you can join! “Nobody will see your first 20 videos anyway” Jen said something that might take so much pressure off you: “I don’t know that there’s one successful YouTuber that I’ve met that wasn’t afraid to start filming themselves.” Her golf comparison: you don’t go golfing once, play badly, get mad and never touch a club again. But that’s exactly what we do with YouTube and social media. Jen’s reality check: nobody will probably see your first 15 to 20 videos anyway. The algorithm needs time to learn what you’re about and who to send you to. 💡 TIP: Nervous on camera? Jen started by filming her cooking and adding a voiceover afterwards. And if you teach classes or give presentations at work… “you already know how to talk on video. You just don’t know it yet.” What a 20-minute video really costs “YouTube is very misleading. You see a 20-minute video on YouTube, right? And it probably took six to seven hours of total work to create that content.” Here’s Jen’s workflow: * Pick a theme. Cooking for two for X dollars. Five family dinners for less than $100. * Plan the grocery list around prices so she stays on budget. * Shop. In-store or delivery. People love the in-store videos, but Jen films discreetly, never other people, no spectacle. * Film over five to seven days, often dinners she’s cooking for her family anyway. * Edit for two to three hours, faster now with AI tools. Let’s talk money: where the $1 million came from I asked Jen straight out how the million splits. Her answer: roughly 50/50, maybe 60% sponsorships, 40% ad revenue. Why are her AdSense rates so high? Her audience is 92% women over 45. Advertisers love that audience: women make a lot of the financial decisions at home, and people over 45 tend to have more money to spend. 💡 TIP: Your niche matters for ad revenue. But so does who is watching. Know your demographics. “I don’t work for free” A few weeks ago, someone left an angry comment because Jen had Amazon affiliate links in her video description for a salad spinner. Her reply: “I don’t work for free, and I don’t think any woman should work for free. And I think women especially, people feel entitled to our free labor, and I reject that.” 140k subscribers doesn’t mean easy mode on Substack If you’re thinking “oh, Jen has a huge audience, Substack must be a walk in the park for her”… nope. “It’s not a guarantee that all of my subscribers are going to come with me.” Translating a video-first audience into readers is hard. Platform intent matters: people on YouTube want to watch, people on Pinterest want to scroll. She still has to show the value and invite people over. Yes, she has an unfair advantage but she earned it with years of sweat. At the time of our live, Jen was at 54 paid subscribers, aiming for the Bestseller badge (100 paid). The gap she’s walking into The category Food & Drink on Substack is full of beautiful, gourmet, Hamptons-summer energy. Jen is very much not that, and proud of it. “I live in a small town and I have limited access to, you know, fancier ingredients. And I think there is a lot of us like that in America.” Normal family home cooking, on a budget. She’s also collaborating already on Substack and on YouTube. And lives? Not really her thing. Live cooking has too much natural downtime, and her AdSense rates make YouTube the smarter home for her videos. Her Substack is for the community and the paywall. Want to film your first video today? Start here I asked Jen: smartphone in hand, some daylight, a few notes (she doesn’t use scripts, they make her sound robotic, just bullet points). Where do I start? * Research what already works. Which videos in your niche get views? Which titles and thumbnails? * Check AnswerThePublic by Neil Patel to see what people actually search for in your niche. (We used it back at Edelman, too. Highly recommend.) * Film one practice video. Edit it. Tell yourself you don’t even have to post it. Hearing your own voice and seeing your face is uncomfortable at first. You get desensitized. * Package it as a solution. YouTube is search-based. Title and thumbnail should tell people exactly which problem you solve. * Be consistent and authentic. Upload on a steady cadence. Be yourself. Solve your viewers’ problems. “Everybody that starts on YouTube starts with zero subscribers. So we all start from the same place.” On Friday in our Live Meetup we talked about going live on Substack and the Substack Recordgin Studio for on-demand videos. If you missed the lives, you find the recordings in the Trainings section in the video vault for paid members, Now I want to hear from you * Have you ever been told “nobody will watch/read that”? What happened next? * Video, writing, both? How are you building your flywheel? Oh, and if you’re feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on Spotify or Apple. Indies, share this with a mom, a nurse, or anyone who’s been told their idea is “boring.” Every like and restack ♻️ helps our ideas travel farther and keeps the light on in this lovely little corner of culture on the internet streets. Grab your ticket for $47 only to join this week’s masterclass with orange badge bestseller Yana! We’re both doing Substack part-time. We’re both earning a good amount of money $ with Substack per month and year. We want to show you how you can do it too as we were also in your shoes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.onlinewritingclub.com/subscribe