Ever since they were first introduced back in the 1990s, blogs – or personal homepages as they were initially referred to – offered a medium through which their creators got the chance to share their love and passion for a certain thing with a wider audience.
While not much has changed, aspiring bloggers nowadays are eager to learn how to start a food blog and earn money from it, so they can turn their passion into a profitable endeavor.
But before we dive deep into the process of creating a monetizable blog and shine more light on all of the necessary steps that will need to be accounted for, let’s first define what a blog is.
What Is a Blog?
Simply put, a blog is your own personal website where you can write anything and everything related to your topic of interest – in this case, food.
Aside from allowing you to share your knowledge and opinions regarding a certain topic, a blog can also help you attract like-minded people and generate a loyal online following.
Generally speaking, every blogger should aim to keep their blog regularly updated – so that readers have a reason to come back. At the same time, they should aim to create posts that are conversational and entertaining yet informative and valuable to their readers.
Who Can Start a Food Blog?
The best part about starting a food blog and potentially making money doing it is the fact that virtually anyone can do it.
Although there are quite a few technical aspects of running a successful blog (and we’ll get more into them later), you really don’t need to know all of the ins and outs.
Instead, you can look for help and find the right experts who will help you out on your journey of becoming a successful food blogger.
But before you start researching more about how to start a food blog and make money, and reach out to various industry professionals to help you out, you need to make sure that you can hit the ground running.
So, to embark on this journey successfully, you’ll first need to take care of some basics.
Step 1: Define Your Brand Identity and Choose Your Niche
Frankly speaking, considering the sheer number of blogs currently in the blogosphere, nobody can guarantee that your food blog, in particular, will be the most visited and the most successful one.
But that certainly shouldn’t stop you from trying to make it the best it can possibly be.
Easily one of the best ways you can make your blog stand out from the crowd is by creating a unique brand identity.
How to Find Your Brand Identity?
When trying to come up with your brand identity, try to make things easier on yourself and first do your best to answer the following questions:
- What do you want your niche to be?
- What kind of audience do you want to attract?
- What type of experience do you wish to offer to your visitors?
- What type of message do you intend to share with your audience?
Once you take your time and answer all of these questions, you will end up with a rough overview of what your brand identity should look like.
However, it’s important to emphasize that although food blogging is your chosen niche, you should still try to define it even further to get the most accurate image of what you wish your blog to focus on.
Here are just some sub-categories you can choose:
- Food prep
- Sharing recipes
- Discussing nutritional value and creating food plans
- Exploring different cultures through food
- Food photography
- Luxurious vs affordable food options
Of course, even if you choose one of these topics as the main focus of your blog, that absolutely doesn’t mean you can’t steer away from them at any given moment.
Besides, if you’re interested in how to be a food blogger and get paid, you will need to get creative with your topics and the content you end up creating.
Tone of Voice
Another important aspect of brand identity is the tone of voice. Namely, if you decide on a more professional and educational approach to your topics, an informal tone of voice may make it come off as less than.
Similarly, if you decide to focus on sharing food recipes and coming up with affordable yet delicious dishes, an informal tone will be better suited.
The tone of voice won’t only help you get your message across more effectively, but it will also affect how your audience perceives you, as well as their overall experience while interacting with your blog.
Blog Name
Since the name of your blog will be the first thing your audience will see, you need to make sure you choose something catchy that’s, at the same time, perfectly representing who you are as a brand. Therefore, take your time with this step, as coming up with a proper blog name sounds easier than it actually is.
For instance, in order to keep your blog name short, unique and memorable, you can:
- Make it personal by including your name: e.g., Johneats.com
- Make it catchy: e.g., Recipestodiefor.com
- Combine two or more things you’ll be talking about on your blog: e.g., Foodsaroundtheworld.com
Step 2: Make Room for Your Blog Online
After securing the first step, it’s time to make room for your blog online. Here, you will need to look for a good hosting provider that can easily cater to your specific needs. But before you do that, there are still some other things to take care of.
Secure and Register Your Domain Name
Your domain name should reflect the name of your blog so as not to confuse your readers. However, this won’t always be entirely possible as there are probably many blogs similar to yours, and chances are that the domain name you wish to use has already been taken.
So, it’s best to rely on a good domain register that can help you get your ideal domain name.
What’s more, some of the best web hosts and web builders nowadays already come with their own built-in domain registers, so you can easily opt for those to avoid spending more money than you need to.
Choose a Web Hosting Plan
Once you register your domain name, it’s also very important to choose powerful web hosting to get your business online. Since you’ll basically be purchasing an online spot for your website, you need to make sure you’re entirely comfortable with the price you’ll end up paying.
So, feel free to shop around a bit before you decide on a provider.
Step 3: Build and Design Your Blog
Now comes the fun part if you’re looking for ways to turn your personal blog into a profitable business. Building and designing your blog is a very creative process that puts the reins in your hands. Depending on your approach, you will have a couple of options.
So you can either:
- Decide to code your blog from scratch – do this only if you, yourself, have the necessary skills to minimize the cost.
- Use a dedicated blogging platform – preferably one that offers many drag-and-drop, pre-made (but customizable) themes.
Decide on the Blogging Platform
If you decide to go for a blogging platform, it’s best that you – once again – shop around a bit. With so many good options to choose from, finding the right one for you should be a walk in the park.
If you’ve decided on using WordPress, for instance, try to learn more about how to start a WordPress blog before you begin building your website.
Rely on a Website Builder
As mentioned, website builders are a great option for people with little to no coding experience, but they also significantly shorten the process, even for individuals who are coding masters. Most of them offer pre-made website themes that can easily be personalized, so there’s really no reason to avoid using them.
Make Your Blog Cohesive With Your Brand
Finally, you also need to make sure that your blog reflects your brand identity and that you create a cohesive look throughout various channels and media you end up using, so that people can easily and instantly recognize that it is you (your brand) they’re interacting with.
Therefore, choose a color palette, font, logo and tone of voice that will stay consistent throughout.
Step 4: Start Posting
When your blog is finally up and running, this is where the true work begins. Hopefully, you already have some ideas – and maybe even complete blog posts ready to be published.
But before you rush into things and make all of your existing content live with just a few clicks, take some time to check and re-check the quality of your posts.
Post High-Quality Content
All of the posts that end up going live on your blog need to be error-free, both in terms of grammar and facts. As an aspiring blogger that’s looking for ways on how to become a food blogger and get paid you need to ensure you offer not only value but also stellar quality to your readers.
Hence, make sure that:
- All of your posts are proofread to avoid any spelling or grammar mistakes.
- All of the facts you choose to include are accurate, up-to-date and relevant.
- You can also choose to cover specific topics in-depth and provide answers/solutions to some of the most common questions/issues.
- Share real and personal examples with your audience.
- Make your copy skimmable, so that your readers can quickly and easily find relevant information.
Create a Schedule and Stick To It
Furthermore, if you wish to make your food blogging a permanent thing, you should also create a posting schedule and stick to it. Blogs that don’t have a reliable schedule usually don’t do very well, as readers are generally not likely to revisit a blog often unless they know they can expect fresh content.
Needless to say, this approach should be applied to all your posts to ensure consistency for your readers, among other benefits.
Use Keywords
Apart from making your blog aesthetically pleasing and representative of your brand and creating high-quality content, you also want to ensure that your target audience can easily find you online. And that’s where keywords come into play.
By conducting thorough keyword research and ensuring you choose the best ones for the content you intend to create (and the audience you wish to attract), as well as including those keywords in all of your copies, you can easily ensure that the right audience will find you organically.
And since one of your goals is to make money with your blog, attracting organic (not paid for) traffic is of the utmost importance.
Discuss Various Topics Within Your Niche
As mentioned previously, while it’s beneficial to have a main topic for your blog, this shouldn’t prevent you from diversifying your content occasionally. Besides varying the topics themselves, you can also create content of different lengths to keep it fresh and engaging.
Not every subject you wish to discuss or share some light on will require an elaborate and in-depth approach, so you shouldn’t try to make your posts longer than they realistically need to be.
Step 5: Promote Your Blog
Even though organic traffic usually brings the best value, the fact of the matter is that you will need to advertise your blog before things kick off on their own. Naturally, it’s best to start with this process from day one.
Identify Promotion Channels That Will Bring the Best Results
In the world of digital marketing, identifying the best platforms to advertise on is key. However, you can’t really expect to get the most accurate results from day one. Instead, you’ll need to do some research and see which of the marketing channels works best for your brand.
This step will take time, so it’s important to get it going as soon as possible.
Some of the channels that generally bring good exposure include, but are not limited to:
- Social media channels, like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
- Email marketing
- Referrals
- Word-of-mouth marketing
- Guerilla marketing
Embrace Guest Blogging
Guest blogging can also be a great way to attract new audiences. By posting your content on other (relevant) blogger’s pages, you’ll be able to draw more attention to your website.
Additionally, accepting guest posts is a great way to attract a new audience that is sure to follow the blogger you decide to feature on your page. This cross-promotion can do wonders for the success of your blog.
Make Regular Updates
Last, but certainly not least, aim to make regular updates to your already-published posts. That way, you can easily ensure that even some of your older posts stay relevant – and, most importantly, accurate.
Step 6: Monetize Your Blog
In the end, once you’ve ensured that you did all in your power to make your blog as great as it can be, it’s time to start looking for ways to monetize it. Since every brand is unique, not all of them should rely on the same monetization channels.
Instead, you need to identify the ones that bring the most value to you, in particular.
For instance, if you decide to sell various cooking products and utensils through your blog, you may also benefit quite a bit from affiliate marketing. On the other hand, if your content mostly focuses on creating healthy meal plans, you may benefit more from influencer marketing.
As you can see, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here, so let’s explore some of the most popular options.
You can monetize your blog by:
- Accepting sponsored posts: This allows you to both expand your reach by making your blog visible to a larger audience and boost your profits by charging a certain fee for every post.
- Tapping into affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing will enable you to, once again, reach a wider audience, but also make a small profit from every purchase you’ve managed to secure. The more products (or services) your blog visitors choose to purchase (or hire), the bigger the profit you can expect.
- Displaying ads on your website: You can earn extra profit by displaying various (relevant) ads on your website. Therefore, make sure you leave enough space for featured ads when designing your blog’s layout.
- Offering premium content: Another way you can make a profit is by creating specifically tailored or premium content for your readers who are willing to pay for it. This may be in the form of personalized meal plans, customized food prep ideas, or specific dietary menus – like vegan, vegetarian, Keto, Paleo, etc.
Do note, however, that these are not the only ways you can make your blog lucrative, but what sets them apart is that they usually don’t require any monetary investment on your part. So, they’re certainly the best starting point.
Once your blog starts making money, you can also choose to invest further into it and:
- Create a YouTube channel
- Host food prep/food photography classes
- Create and sell your cooking products
- Write and publish a cookbook
The most important thing to emphasize here is that the amount of money you can expect to make from your food blog will depend on your approach. If you have enough time and resources to put into your blog from day one, you can expect your income to start growing steadily.
However, if you’re only doing it as a hobby, with the hopes of making some passive income, the profit you can expect to get will reflect your engagement.
So, make sure you clarify with yourself how much you’re willing to invest in your food blog – both time and money-wise – so that you can get a clearer picture of what you can expect to gain from it.
Wrapping Up
Simply put, the more time and effort you put into creating, designing, shaping, and developing your blog, the better the results you can expect to see.
However, as an aspiring food blogger who’s interested in learning how to start a food blog and get paid, you can also rely on experts, such as those at HostPapa, who can help you set up and maintain your newly founded blog and provide any additional services you may end up needing.
If you’re in need of excellent small business web hosting services, consider getting started with HostPapa to explore which of their offered options works best for you.
FAQs
How Much Do Food Bloggers Make?
Depending on their level of engagement, food bloggers can either make passive income from their endeavor or turn it into a full-time career. So, there’s no clear answer, as it will all depend on your commitment and personal engagement, as well as the quality of your website and the posts you decide to feature on it, among other things.
Can I Make Money From a Food Blog?
Yes, you absolutely can! No matter if you decide to take on a more active approach and offer various food-related courses or products, or you go for a more passive approach and only choose to feature ads and affiliate posts, there is definitely profit to be made.
Is It Profitable to Start a Food Blog?
Yes, starting a food blog can be extremely lucrative as it does not require a big initial investment, yet it leaves plenty of room for monetary growth.
How Do I Start a Food Blog for Beginners?
If you’re a beginner looking to start a food blog, it’s best that you first do your research and look for in-depth guides that will help you make sure you’ve tackled all of the steps of the process accordingly.
