Jason Norris is the founder of RecipeTeacher.com, a cooking website to help people make delicious, homemade recipes.
For more than 20 years, Jason Norris worked full-time as a graphic designer in healthcare, but always found spare time for his passion: cooking. In 2011, after a medical issue required him to seek out a healthier lifestyle, Jason purchased an indoor grill to kickstart his healthy eating. “I started looking for easy recipes online but had a really difficult time finding anything with clear, straightforward instructions,” he recalls “So I decided to begin developing my own recipes and posting them on a website.” This led to the creation of RecipeTeacher.com, where Jason creates clear and concise recipes for staple dishes like pulled pork, chicken, pork chops, and more.
The Recipe Teacher website.
Recipe Teacher hit its stride in 2018, when pressure cookers gained popularity in kitchens across the world. Jason learned the machine’s ins and outs and churned out quick, simple recipes to help people create delicious meals with their new gadget. As his website started gaining attention, he was able to capitalize on the growth by earning ad revenue with Google AdSense. “I was seeing numbers every day that I couldn’t believe,” he says “With the few hundred dollars coming in each month, I could pay for my car and a couple of bills. This was astonishing to me.”
Next, the air fryer became a household hit. Jason purchased a few air fryers and repeated his recipe for success: learn how to use the tool and develop new recipes. Suddenly, his traffic skyrocketed and his earnings kept increasing. “I clearly remember the first month I made $1,000 from the website,” he says. “That was the cost of my rent at the time. It blew my mind that I could use my side project to channel my creativity and my love of cooking and pay my rent with it!”
Shortly thereafter, Jason discovered AdThrive, a Google Certified Publishing Partner that could help him amp up his site monetization. After being accepted into AdThrive’s network, he immediately saw exponential growth. “AdThrive took all the complexity of advertising out of the equation,” he says, “but allowed me to keep control over my site and user experience. My earnings quadrupled from $1,000 per month to $4,000, then kept going up to even $8,000 a month.”
With his earnings increasing, Jason started to contemplate leaving his full-time job. “I was spending all of my spare time researching and developing recipes and was seeing massive success. Finally, the day after Christmas in 2019, there was a moment while fishing on a kayak in the middle of a local river when it hit me and I decided to quit my job and pursue Recipe Teacher full time.”
Since then, Jason has continued to develop recipes, and even hired a local professional chef and a few freelancers to collaborate on recipe development and growth strategies for his website. Though navigating the pandemic has been a challenge, Jason says, “the last year and a half has been professionally and personally the most rewarding time of my life. I’m excited to continue building up my team, growing Recipe Teacher, and making cooking approachable for everyone.”