Are you passionate about food?
Or like exploring new food places and sharing with others?
If yes, then considering food blogging might be your choice.
However, food blogging isn’t as easy as it may sound. You don’t just need to have food or share it with others but also follow some standard rules.
All you need is guidance to nudge you in the right direction. Want to know- “How to start food blogging step by step?” Here is a simple guide to help you grow your food blogging business.
Table of Contents
TIPS TO KICK-START YOUR FOOD BLOGGING
Too many tips can be overwhelming for a budding blogger. Hence, we have curated a few easy but significant tips for you to consider as a noob.
1. CHOOSE YOUR NICHE
Just like starting any other kind of blogging. You need to choose a niche that you resonate with.
There are millions of food blogs all over the internet. If you don’t choose a particular stream, it will be very tough to make an impact (high competition).
Choose a niche that triggers your inner foodie. If you don’t choose a niche you aren’t passionate about, chances are you will soon lose interest, and writing blogs will be challenging for you.
There are so many types of food blogs that you can choose from::
- Recipe Blogs ( Quick, easy recipes for fitness freaks, working professionals, etc.)
- Food and Drink Tasting Blogs
- Food Review Blogs
- Diet Specific Blog ( Low carb diet or Keto Diet Blog)
- Blogs promoting Traditional Cooking Styles ( Cooking in earthen pots and many more)
- Miniature Food Blogs ( Bloggers sharing recipes cooked in miniature utensils)\
- Food Platting Blogs ( Guiding plating style of different food items)
- Food and Travel Blogs
- Location Specific Food Blogs ( Exploring different food places in a particular city/country) and many more
Choose a domain that drives you. Sit with yourself. Introspect. Explore different options and find what works best for you. Figure out your niche and go for it!
2. CHOOSE A BLOGGING PLATFORM
Before commencing your food blogging journey, there are certain technical aspects that you must address, one of which involves selecting a suitable blogging platform to host your blogs.
A blogging platform is where you will create, manage, update, modify, and analyze your content. The Content Management System will help you kick-start your blogging career.
There are various blogging platforms available online. Our recommendation to you, either as a noob or a pro, is Wordpress.org. 43% of the web is built on WordPress. Also, WordPress holds anywhere from 40% to 65%of the CMS market share.
With so many choices available, are you confused about what platform to choose?
Here’s a list of the top 5 blogging platforms that you would like to consider:
- WordPress
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Medium
Regardless of whatever blogging platform you choose, you will need to choose hosting from:
- Free hosting
- Open-source self-hosted blog
If you don’t choose a great hosting, your blogs will take ages to load, and your visitors will bounce off. So, make sure you choose your hosting wisely.
3. CHOOSE A DOMAIN NAME
Like any other kind of blogging, food blogging also demands you choose a good domain name. Your brand’s face is represented by the domain name.
People will judge you by your domain name and then by your blogs. Therefore, you must be careful when choosing your brand’s domain name.
Make sure your domain name is:
- Available online and not taken by other brands
- Reflects on your blogging niche
- Pronounceable with ease
- Short
- Memorable
You need to register your domain name before you launch your website.
There are a lot of websites that will help you understand the availability of domain names.
4. SELECT YOUR BLOG THEME
A great blogging website also has a great look and feel to it. For different blogs, the flavor and design are different.
For your blog to stand apart, you would want it to look more appealing, unique, and memorable.
How do you do that?
This is done by choosing a theme that fits your blogging category. You can check out your competitors’ blogs to draw some inspiration.
Be careful to pay attention to the features of your chosen theme, preview it, and check its ratings.
If you are using WordPress, then there is a pool of over 3000 themes to pick from. You can preview the themes by selecting Dashboard > Appearance > Themes.
Click to learn the 10 Best Food Blogging Themes in WordPress.
5. CREATE CONTENT
Once you have sorted out all the technicalities of your blog, it’s time to work on your creativity.
Plan your content scheduler.
Improve your content quality to increase traffic. The following are six tips to consider when crafting your content:
1: Explore various methods to improve the quality of your posts. For example, one can put high-quality pictures in your blog that drool your audience! Food Blogging depends greatly on visual representation, so investing in professional equipment to create visually engaging content is a great choice!
2: Optimize your content according to SEO tactics. Use various on-page and off-page SEO practices to make your content SEO savvy. This helps Google rank your posts.
3: Use a conversational tone to make your post more relatable and interesting.
4: Use attention-grabbing headlines to entice readers and encourage them to read your entire post.
5: Provide valuable information or insights to your readers that they may not find elsewhere.
6: Use calls-to-action to encourage readers to engage with your content, such as commenting, sharing, or subscribing to your blog.
Follow these tips and see the changes in the quality of your content. Bet you will be surprised to see the results!
6. PROMOTE YOUR CONTENT
To become successful, it is important people know about your work. Here is where promotion comes into play. Nobody will know about your work if you won’t promote your blogs.
Sad, isn’t it?
Don’t worry; we won’t let that happen to you!
Here are some tips for you to promote your blogs:
1. SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
According to reports, 95.9% of bloggers promote their blog posts via social media.
Instagram’s focus on visual content makes it an ideal platform for food bloggers to promote their blogs. Maintaining a consistent social media presence is important to promote your content effectively.
Almost everyone (98%) uses social media, so you already have a pre-existing community to tap into. So, why wait? Get started now!
2. ENABLE SHARING BUTTONS
Sometimes when you want something, you need to ask for it. You need to add social media sharing icons with your post.
Like various bloggers, you can also use the “your blogs’ck to tweet” functionality to increase engagement.
Consider testing various positions and styles of sharing panels, such as top, sidebar, bottom, or even scrollable. You may even experiment with different icon sizes to determine what yields the best results for your blog.
3. BUILD AN EMAIL LIST
Building and utilizing an email list can be an effective way for food bloggers to engage with their audience and promote their content. Here are some steps to use an email list as a food blogger:
- Build your email list: Offer an opt-in form on your website or blog, inviting readers to subscribe to your email list in exchange for a free resource, such as an ebook, recipe, or discount code. You can also promote your email list on social media platforms.
- Segment your email list: Group your subscribers based on their interests or preferences, such as vegetarian or gluten-free, so you can send more targeted emails.
- Create a content calendar: Plan out your email content in advance, including new blog posts, seasonal recipes, and special offers. Make sure to add value to your subscribers in each email.
- Use a personalized tone: Address your subscribers by name, and write your emails in a conversational, relatable tone.
- Include visuals: Add eye-catching images or videos in your emails to make them more engaging.
- Optimize your subject line and preheader text: Make sure your subject line and preheader text are attention-grabbing and reflect the content of your email.
- Track and analyze your email metrics: Use email marketing tools to track open rates, click-through rates, and other key metrics to see what works well and needs improvement.
By utilizing these steps, you can build a strong email list to connect with your audience, promote your content, and grow your food blog.
7. EARN MONEY THROUGH FOOD BLOGGING
No matter what kind of blogger you are. Ultimately, your goal is to earn money and become successful.
However, earning through blogging is not a piece of cake. It takes years of hard work to earn money, sometimes even years. But, with certain tips in mind, we ensure you will not have a tough time.
Want to earn money through food blogging? Let’s get you started.
Here is a complete guide for you to earn money through food blogging:
1. SOCIAL MEDIA COLLABORATIONS (PAID)
Social media collaboration is a great revenue channel for food bloggers.
You can collaborate with various F&B brands like Coca-cola, Mother Dairy, and many more to earn a decent amount of money. Big brands have bigger paycheques!
If you have a recipe blog, then you can use your collaborator’s ingredients and advertise it on your page.
Moreover, these days, restaurants, cafes, and even food stalls collaborate with food bloggers to get noticed. The reason is that bloggers already have a loyal community of people (foodies) who they are looking for.
While collaborating with brands is a fruitful way for you to earn money. You need to disclose your collaborators while collaborating. In fact, in some countries, it’s illegal to not disclose your collaborators.
Let me hove you an example to put an ideal collaboration post.
For instance, if you are using Instagram for collaboration, there’s a paid partnership label that you can use to disclose it’s a collaboration. You can even tag or add your collaborator to the post.
Since your audience trusts you completely. Make sure you sure collaborate with genuine, trustworthy brands. Your reputation is at stake, so choose your collaborators wisely! Else after a point of time, your audience will stop following your suggestions.
2. PRODUCT OFFERINGS
Successful bloggers have more than one source of income. Only relying on your blog posts to earn money is never advisable.
For food bloggers interested in devising new recopies, selling their cookbooks online is a great source of additional income. You can sell these cookbooks online on your tes or e-commerce portals like Amazon. Selling ebooks or physical copies of your cookbooks is the safest way.
If cooking doesn’t interest you. Don’t worry; we got another plan for you!
- You can even launch your guides mentoring food bloggers on:
- How to take a perfect food photograph
- Different mouth-watering ways to platter your food
- How to monetize your food blog
- Food styling and many more options are endless!
If you are a successful blogger, you can even launch a book walking readers through your journey of success.
Figure out what works for you. Do not just depend on your blogs to fetch you money. Explore more options.
3. GOOGLE ADSENSE
You can earn money through your website, and that too without much effort.
Isn’t this amazing?
Thanks to Google AdSense!
You can earn money by just making space available for ads. The ads are generated by businesses that use the Google AdWords program. And you earn money when somebody clicks on them. However, you need to complete a target of $100 per month to earn money. If not, then your earnings roll over to the next month.
What’s even more interesting is you can run different ads on several websites with just one Adsense account, which is free to create.
4. LAUNCHING YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Regarding food, watching videos are far more enticing than black-and-white text. And, what better than YouTube when it comes to videos? YouTube is the largest video-sharing website in the world!
So, many successful bloggers earn money through YouTube.You can use a huge community already present on YouTube to earn money and get traffic to your blogging website.
You need to be consistent while putting up videos for YouTube to promote them. Once you complete a benchmark of 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time, you are eligible for monetization.
Click to learn some Food Bloggers who earn by cooking a storm on their YouTube channel.
CONCLUSION
Food blogging is no longer just a hobby; it has become a primary source of income. On reports from SEMrush, food, and personal finance bloggers earn sizeable income. On average, food bloggers earn a monthly median income of $9,169, while personal finance bloggers make $9,100.
Here is a classic guide to starting food blogging in brief:
1. Choose a niche and a blogging platform to kick-start food blogging professionally.
2. After your blogging platform is ready, you can pick a domain name that resonates with your style.
3. You can plump up for a website theme after your domain name. A great website theme is essential for a seamless user experience.
4. Craft your blogging content and launch your blogs.
5. Congratulations, you are ready to encourage others to land on your blogs. This is where promotion comes in! Start promoting your content to attract traffic.
You must also focus on monetizing your blogs to earn money from your content.
1. Google AdSense is a lucrative way of earning money. You just need to provide a space for advertisers and get paid each time somebody views the ad. Collaborating with brands is a great way to mint money. Remember, big brands have big paycheques!
2. Social media collaborations or product offerings like cookbooks or online guides are also amazing ways to earn a side income.
So, if you are a foodie, what are you waiting for? Ready. Get. Set. Go.
Did you find this post helpful? If yes, then share it forward. Spread the word. Let us know if you are a foodie and want to become a food blogger. Furthermore, please share your favorite tip in this post. Stay tuned for additional content. Goodbye!
