Whether you’re cooking for the fun or planning to start a food blog to promote your recipes, food blogging is an evergreen gold mine that could get you in front of an audience of over 5 billion web users, whose daily survival depends on what they eat.
Regardless of your goals or its mouth watering prospects, growing a successful food blog is never a walk in the park. There’s a number of hurdles to cross and round squares to fix in round holes.
There’s quite a number of guides on how to navigate your way to find success with food blogging but, navigating your way through the loads of irrelevant content to find pieces that works for you is quite another hurdle.
So, in this guide, I’ll be sharing with you a set of proven strategies that will get you from starting to promoting and monetizing your blog, right from scratch.
Steps to start a Food Blog!
Define your Goal
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Defining your blogging goal is very important. At this point you want to really answer the question, why am I planning to start a food blog?
Are you planning to do this as a hobby or you’re a great cook and you want to use your blog as the launch pad to start your food business and get clients…
Or are you just trying out the food blogging thing to create a niche for yourself as an expert in the industry?
There are so many reasons why any one would want to start a food blog but, to be able to achieve your purpose, you must find out your goal as doing so will set the tone for your blogging.
For example, if your goal is to make lots of money as a food blogger then the strategies you’ll use will be quite different, compared to someone whose goal is to blog as a hobby.
Choose a Food Niche
As a potential food blogger, one of the primary things to put in place before you start a food blog is to choose the food you want to blog about.
You don’t only want to blog for a well defined audience, you want to blog about the kind of food you’re really familiar with or the one that’s most likely in line with your goal.
As you’ll notice, there are many different kind of foods so you can’t literally get to blog about any of them.
You can decide to write a food blog about the Chinese cuisine, African cuisine, American cuisine, Veggies etc.
The following are some of the most popular foods people search about a lot.
- Continental dishes,
- Oriental foods,
- Fast food,
- Local Dishes,
- Etc.
There are also some other special kind of food that can only be prepared by a few specialised people.
Before you settle for any particular food niche, you want to write down a list of at least 10 possible food niches you’d like to blog about.
As soon as that’s done, here’s a a quick question to ask yourself;
- Which of these kind of food am I really knowledgeable about?
- Which of them is popular enough to attract a wide interest online?
- Which of these are actually earning money for other bloggers? (If you’re interested in making money).
After doing some research to get a better understanding of this, decide on the one you are very good at where you can also produce a good number of food recipes, blog posts, videos and other content.
Be sure you settle for a food niche you’re not just comfortable with but one that also has a decent number of other people interested in it.
Plan your Blogging
After choosing a food niche to blog about, the next thing you want to do is to plan your blogging.
So, at this point, map out strategies on how you’re going to build and grow your food blog.
Your strategy should include things like your brand name and branding strategy for your blog.
It should also cover your content creation strategy, including the number of times you’ll have to create content for your blog, the kind of content you’ll want to create, whether video or a mix of written content with pictures, the length of your content etc.
To get your planning done better, check up other popular food blogs to find out what’s working for them. And what’s not. You will find some useful lessons to include in your plans from there.
As part of your planning, find out about your target audience. Identify who they are, their geographic location, preferred social media platforms and the kind of food recipes that matter to them.
Doing this gets you prepared to hit the ground running with your blog.
Get a Domain Name & Web Host
Now that you already know why you’re blogging and the niche you’d want to blog about, the next step to take in your journey to start a food blog is to get a domain name and hosting for your blog.
A domain name is the address that will be used to access your website. Like a business name, it is what your users will use to log on to your website.
While shopping for a domain name, be sure you settle for a good domain name. Unless you have a strong reason, you don’t have to register and use your personal name as domain name because it’s your blog.
It’s preferred you use a name that’ll be easily identified with you, your brand or the kind of food you’re blogging about. This helps in many ways including in a future situation where you have plans to sell off the blog.
Read more about how to choose a domain name here.
Alongside a domain name, you’ll need to buy a web hosting account from a reliable hosting company.
In addition to that, plan to get a decent hosting space that will fit in with your needs and look out for a hosting company with a decent pedigree.
Set up your Blog
There are a handful of blogging platforms available for bloggers to start a food blog. Before setting up your blog, you have to check out these platforms and identify the one that works for you.
While choosing a platform to set up your blog, you want to consider the reliability, ease of use and availability of that platform etc.
Based on the foregoing, one of the top blogging platforms that comes highly recommended is WordPress.
Based on my experience with blogging platforms over the years, in most cases, I’ll always advise clients to go with WordPress. Especially where you’re completely new to blogging.
Because WordPress is not only Free and very popular, it’s one platform you can get started as a beginner as it doesn’t have a steep learning curve.
Also, according to statistics, more than 30 percent of the world’s internet is powered by a WordPress platform. And it doesn’t just end there, every single day, over 500 web platforms and blogs are being built on WordPress.
Based on the foregoing, unless you already have a preferred blogging platform you’re very conversant with, WordPress is a great option to set up your blog.
Customize WordPress
Now that you’ve decided to start a food blog with WordPress, it’s time to go ahead, build, customize and get your blog live online.
To achieve this, you can download the WordPress software from WordPress.org and set up a blog using your laptop. After that you can upload it to your web hosting account.
Alternatively, you can go ahead, and install WordPress on your Web Hosting account through your cPanel.
As soon as you’re done with WordPress installation, you can begin to set up the blog with the the design you want, get the basic plugins installed and you’ll be ready to go live with your first blog post.
Where you don’t have the necessary web development skills to build your blog, or you don’t want to go through the stress of setting up your blog, you can hire experts to build your new blog for you.
We’ll get you a responsive blog in a few days, get it optimized for search engines and train you on how to start up, even if you don’t have a single blogging experience.
If you really want to set up your blog by yourself, be sure to get the security up tight. Also back up your blog in case of eventualities.
It’s something we do for our clients. I also emphasize this for my readers because It’s very important.
Write your first Blog Post
You can’t start a food blog without creating blog posts. So, now that your blog is all set up, here’s some tips on your first few blog posts…
Depending on your niche; as a food blogger, even the food you eat for the week could serve as a good starting point for a blogging topic.
So for your first blog post you can start with telling us why you started the blog. Narrate your story and share it with your audience.
When you’ve successfully done this, you might have successfully gotten your mind through the first hurdle of blogging.
As a matter of fact, one of my favorite blogging approach for new food bloggers is to go on a journey… Especially after your very first post on the blog.
The said journey could be your own meal for the week. I mean if you’re on a particular regimen for example, you can take your readers through your meals during the week also.
So, your blogging could start with a focus on issues like why you’re taking the particular meal to how you cook it, the recipes and benefits of the meal to the body etc.
These could serve as some head ups.
The journey can also focus on a particular eating recipe for people aiming to attend certain health goals.
If you’re focusing on some more advanced food niche, then you can take up a particular food in the niche and blog about it for the week (or even month) in details…
Writing about everything from health benefits to the recipes, how it’s prepared, why it’s prepared that way, how it’s cooked, and even how it should be served.
By the time you divide this posts into these sub headings, you would have gotten enough content to write about for days or even weeks.
Content Tips for Food Bloggers
Aim for at least a goal of 750-1500 words per blog post. It will help in your Search engine optimization purposes.
Don’t focus on text content alone. Include lots of images, and video content in your posts. This grabs more attention as well as gives your content more context.
Optimize your content for the search engine with all your important keywords.
Be sure to create Infographics for your posts where possible. It will be of immense help to your readers.
How to Promote a Food Blog
When you start a food blog, you want to attract as much readers as possible. But, to attract a continuous stream of readers, you won’t only write blog posts, you’ll also have to promote your posts.
The following are some steps you can use to promote a food blog:
Use Social Media
One of the best places to promote a food blog is via the social media.
You can start with getting your blog a Facebook Page, Pinterest board, Instagram handle and possibly, a Twitter account.
You don’t have to be on all these platforms at the same time. Choose the ones that’s most popularly used by other food bloggers in your niche like Instagram or Pinterest for example. You know what works for your niche.
After that, start creating and sharing your content right on these platforms. Be sure you also share a link to the content on your blog, from time to time.
When done right, this will get you to attract more views from the social media, over to your blog.
Outside sharing posts, build relationships. Engage, comment on and share your opinion and posts on other sub platforms like social media groups, web forums etc.
Host Events
Be it virtual or physical, set up and host events where you speak and teach others for free about food and food recipes in your niche.
Also, try to attend other such events in your niche, with your blog branded materials and encourage participants to visit your blogs if you’re given a platform to engage.
Guest Post on Popular Blogs
Guest posting gets you an opportunity to gain brand exposure, build credibility and even attract new fans over to your blog.
Identify the top blogs in your niche. Find a way to create content that will suit their audience while also projecting your brand and then go ahead and share these content on these blogs.
PS: You can also pitch your content ideas to other leading blogs and publications outside your niche.
Write Books
To cement your place as a thought leader in your blogging niche and even get more famous, consider writing books. Write about your niche and publish them on Amazon and other places.
When you are well versed in your niche, you don’t need to have a PhD before you write a book.
You can start with developing a book out of your blog posts. It’s that easy.
In any case, writing and publishing a good book in your niche is a good way to build your reputation and gain recognition for your expertise.
Set up an Email List
You can also promote a food blog by setting up an email list, directly on your blog.
With an email list, you can get to send newsletters, personalized emails or products details to your subscribers at intervals. This keeps you getting in touch with them while they can as well get over to your blog.
How to Make Money with a Food Blog
Making money with a food blog is a great way to keep your blog running. There are a number of strategies you can use to make money on a food blog. I’ll be sharing some of these strategies in the following paragraphs.
Sell Ads Space & Paid Sponsored Posts
Create some space on your blog where people can pay to advertise on the blog.
It can be a page, a post pinned on your home page or a banner made visible on the blog.
To get this to stand out, write a catchy content that will get people to want to advertise on your food blog.
With this also, you can accept relevant sponsored posts where you publish on your blog and get paid.
Use 3rd Party Ads
From Google AdSense to Amazon and propeller ads, there are a number of advertising options you can use to display third party ads on your website, in exchange for a commission.
If you’re comfortable with third party ads on your website, you can use this as one of your best alternatives to make money with a food blog.
Join affiliate Programs
You can also join niche related affiliate programs and start making money with your food blog.
For example, you can opt for popular options like Commission Junction or the popular Amazon affiliate program.
You can also try out smaller affiliate products like those in your niche or others with niches closely related to yours.
Write Cook Books
As an expert in your niche, you must have specialized knowledge on how to cook some special kind of meal.
You can put this knowledge together to write a cook book. For example, you can write a book that illustrate the steps on how to make certain kind of meals etc. and sell on Amazon or on your blog.
Create Members only Subscriptions
When you grow your blog to a good number of readers, depending on the depth of your content, you can create a membership area where people will have to pay a subscription to get some extra value content.
To make it even juicy, use a subscription based option only for specialized delicacies with popular request.
These are smart and proven strategies to make money with a food blog. And in addition to all of this, you can also create your own pay to attend trainings, seminars and food event where people pay for your skills.
Final Words
As we wrap up, keep in mind you that it doesn’t matter your location, you can start a food blog in Nigeria, USA, Germany, India or wherever you are.
It is not enough to plan to start a food blog. One of the other things you need to get started is the right mindset and a consistency in using a combination of the strategic steps as mentioned above.
With these you can continue to analyze, rinse and repeat your strategies until you get to evolve a successful food blog.
To get even better results, sign up for our Blogging Masterclass where you’ll learn everything from how to start to growing and monetizing your blog successfully.
So now it’s over to you! What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to starting a food blog? Leave a comment below.
One response
Great post and great tips! People always ask me how it all started. It’s been such a journey and sometimes tough to explain everything without missing a beat, so I’ll just pass any future inquiries off to his pos