Have you ever wanted to start a food blog and make money sharing your recipes with people around the world?
Or perhaps like me, you love cooking just for the fun of it. Or every now and then. And you just want to share the food you make with other people.
Whatever it is, or for whatever reason you have in mind, you can start a food blog right now and grow it into a profitable platform that will serve your goals.
But wait, how’s that possible you ask?
The reason behind this is because food blogging is one of the most evergreen blogging niche out there. And people will hardly ever run out of interest in this niche, not even in the nearest future.
So, when compared to other blogging niches, starting a food blog is a very smart Idea because people eat food everyday.
And as globalization continues to bring people from different cultures together, people’s taste for different foods will continue to change with time…
From time to time, people will learn about new food as they get exposed to different cultures and there will be need to learn how to prepare these meals.
So, as a foodie, this is good news! Because you can actually start a food blog, grow your audience and make money online.
This is exactly what you’re about to learn in this tutorial.
Even if you want to start out with food blogging as a hobby, in this post, you’re going to learn everything about how to start and grow your food blog.
Alright, let’s dig in!
Steps to start a Food Blog!
The following are the important steps and strategies you need to build a successful food blog..
Define your Goal
Defining your 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 doing the food blogging thing to create a niche for yourself as an expert in the industry?
There are so many reasons why you want to define a goal and one of them is the fact that choosing your goal correctly will set the tone for your blogging.
For instance, if your goal is to make lots of money as a food blogger then the strategies you’ll use will be quite different from someone who’s goal is to blog as a hobby.
So, you need to get your goals right!
Choose your food
As a potential food blogger, one of the primary things you need to do before starting 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 choose your food, you need to write down a list of at least 10 possible food niche you’d like to blog about.
As soon as that’s done, here’s a a quick question you need 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 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, you need to 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, you’ll want to make some research about food blogging or check up other popular food blogs to find out what’s working for them.
Your research should extend to your target audience, the kind of content they want, the content format, their best posting days, as well as favorite social media platforms, among other things.
Get a Domain Name and Web Host
Now that you already know why you’re blogging and the niche you’d want to blog about, the next thing you’ll need here is to get a domain name for your blog.
A domain name is like your business name. It is associated with your blog and it’s brand. And it’s the name that people will come to identify you and the blog.
Be sure you settle for a good domain name. You don’t necessarily have to use your name because it’s your blog.
You can always use a name that’ll be easily identified with you and what you’re blogging about. This helps in many ways including a situation where you intend to sell off the blog much later.
Read more about how to choose a domain name here.
You can purchase a domain name online from a reliable web hosting company.
After purchasing a domain name, go ahead and get a web hosting account before heading over to set up your blog.
Set up your Blog
Now as you embark on setting up your food blog, one thing you’ll need to consider is the platform.
You’ll want to ask yourself, what platform will I be blogging on?
Thing is there are a lot of different blogging platforms out there that are easy and simple to use for beginners. And you’ll have to choose one out of all these.
Personally I’ll always advice you 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 without much stress.
And according to statistics, 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.
So, with all these stats you’ll definitely want to start your food blog with a WordPress blog.
Customize WordPress for your Food Blog
After settling to build your food blog with wordpress, there are two ways to build your blog on WordPress.
You can download the WordPress software from WordPress.org and set up your blog on your laptop. After that you can upload it to your web hosting account.
The second alternative is to go ahead and install the 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.
In case you have any issues 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
Now that your food blog on WordPress has been set up, it’s time to write your first blog post.
So, 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 blogging topic to start with.
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 tips 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 instance, 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 why the food is eaten, to the condiments, how it’s prepared, why it’s prepared that way, how it’s cooked, served and even how it should be served.
By the time you divide this posts into these sub headings, you would have gotten enough stuff to write about for days or even weeks.
Content tips for Food Bloggers
Aim for at least a goal of 500-1000words per blog post. It will help in your Search engine optimization purposes.
Do not focus on text content alone. Include lots of photographs and video content in your posts. This grabs more attention.
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.
Promoting your Food Blog
To get a continuous stream of readers, you won’t only write blog posts, you’ll need to promote your blog to attract more views.
This is where content marketing comes in.
Use Social Media
One of the best places to promote your blog is the social media.
You can start with getting your blog a Facebook Page, Pinterest board, Instagram handle and maybe 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 like Instagram for instance.
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 help your brand and attract more views for your posts.
Comment on and share your opinion and posts on other sub platforms like social media groups, web forums etc.
Host events (either virtual or offline) and volunteer to speak and teach others for free at food events in your niche.
Be sure you attend such events with your blog branded materials and encourage participants to visit your blogs for more.
Write guest blog posts on other top blogs within and outside your niche.
Write books 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 gain loads of endorsement for your expertise and free publicity too.
Set up an email list. With an email list, you can always get back to your visitors and get them to visit your blog again.
How to Make Money with a Food Blog
There are many ways and several strategies you can use to make money with your food blog. I’ll discuss some of them below…
Sell ads space and accept 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 home page or a banner made visible on the blog.
Write 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. Although I don’t personally subscribe to this a lot….
If you’re comfortable with third party ads you can make money with your food blog by applying for third party advertising like Adsense etc.
Join affiliate programs. You can also join niche related affiliate programs and start making money with your food blog.
This is another popular way anyone can make money with a food blog.
Write cook books. Make paid cooking videos. These too can help you make money online as a food blogger.
Create members only subscriptions. When you grow your blog to a good number of readers, depending on the depth of your stuff, you can create a membership area where people will have to subscribe before reading.
It’s a very good way to make money with your food blog although it’s not very popular.
By the way you can also write for some food blogs and get paid for it if you’re interested.
Finally, 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 this training, I want to remind you that you can start your food blog in Nigeria, USA, Germany, India or wherever you are.
Like we’ve already discussed here, all you need to get started is the right mindset and a combination of the strategic steps mentioned above.
With these you can continue to analyze, rinse and repeat your strategies until you get to evolve a successful food blog.
You can also join our Blogging Masterclass where you’ll learn everything on how to build a successful blog or you can get us to build your blog for you.
So now it’s over to you! What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to starting a food blog? I want to hear you!
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