Another blogging niche that recently exploded, and no wonder because there’s never a person who wouldn’t love food. Be it an old homemaker, who cooks like nobody’s business; some sort of baking fanatic, or someone who just enjoys trying new recipes-from time to time-it’s a perfect way for sharing all that enthusiasm with the rest of the world.
The thing is, however, it’s not exactly about snapping pretty pictures of your dishes and posting them in the web; creativity, minimal amount of technical know-how, and a whole lot of sweat and toil go into making that fantastic food blog post. No problem thoughwe have the guide to get you started, whether you are thinking of jumping in as a newbie or you have been considering being a food blogger for quite some time.
By the time you finish reading this post, you will be prepared and ready with a concrete plan of action to get your food blog up and running, share your recipes with the world, and perhaps even make it into a business. Okay, let’s begin!
Why Start a Food Blog
Now that we’ve laid all that out, let’s talk about how to actually set up your blog. But first, let me tell you why food blogging is such a great idea:
- Share Your Passion. Food blogging allows you to share what you love. It might be baking, cooking for your family, or trying a new food from another country-there certainly is someone out there who’ll be interested.
- The fun of starting a blog isn’t just to document recipes that happen to turn out right often – it’s the food photography.
- Make Money (Yes, Seriously!): If you really do care about your blog, there are millions of ways that you can monetize it. Sponsored posts, affiliate links, sales of digital products-and many, many more.
- Hook into a Community Food blogging, for example, connects you to the same species of enthusiast people who, just like you, love food. That is a pretty excellent way to meet new people and get feedback on your work, building your very tribe online.
Sounds cool, isn’t it? Well, since you have come up with that all-of-a-sudden urge to start a food blog, let’s get our feet wet and dirty by just getting straight down to business, so here is how to launch your food blog in five steps.
Step 1: Choose Your Food Blog Niche
You’re going to want to establish a niche right off the bat when you are building a food blog-and by niche I mean narrow it down somewhat so that you stand out in a very crowded room. There are tons of food blogs out there, so what’s so special about yours?
Here are some potential niche ideas
Recipes: This is the basic food blog. You can add recipes for any kinds of dishes, from breakfast to dessert.
Diet-specific: When dieting, there’s almost any diet-vegan, keto, paleo, gluten-free, and so on-and you really tailor the blog to recipe offerings for that specific audience.
Food photography: If you have a love for food styling and photography in general, share your experience with others who want their food to look fantastic in photographs, too!
Restaurant Reviews: If you truly aspired to become a foodie, who loves dining out? Share your experiences-from fine dining to street vendors-for the world to see.
Travel and Food. If you enjoy moving to different countries of the world, trying new food in different regions, something you could specialize in is documenting your journeys and recipes from other parts of the world.
Now, this is not to say you can’t diversify into other niches much later, but it makes you settle down and attract a much more dedicated audience.
Step 2: Domain Name & Hosting Solution
Time to give a name to your domain on the Internet. It should be memorable, catchy and pertinent to the niche you are targeting in your blog. For instance, TastyVibes.com or BakingWithLove.com can be just great.
Now you’ve got your domain name-that is to say, the actual place that your website is going to live on the internet-you’re going to want a hosting provider. Something that’s reliable, secure, and fast.
Some of the good ones to know about for food bloggers:
Bluehost: Pretty great for new guys; WordPress connects pretty easily and has pretty solid customer service.
SiteGround: Good for speed, security, etc.
WP Engine: Okay, if you’re willing to pay the premium extra to have that for your site
All of these Web hosting services will register your domain name free for you so that’s a one-two punch.
Install WordPress
WordPress for blogging. No-brainer. Extremely intuitive: smooth customizations and hundreds of thousands of themes and plugins designed to particularly suit the food blog.
Now that WordPress is installed on your computer, it’s time to add a theme to your blog. There’s good reason a theme will determine how your blog looks and how it will function-your food blog really is all about the visuals. That means you want to pick a theme that works well with photography and renders your recipes readable too.
Here are some of the really good WP food blog themes:
Foodie Pro: clean and minimalistic-design; your recipes shine
Cookely: particular to food bloggers; amazing features on recipe index.
RecipePress: highly user-friendly; provides built-in recipe card options.
Other useful plug-ins to get your blog rolling. Some of these are absolute basics:
- Yoast SEO: use these to help optimize posts for search engine purposes.
- WP Recipe Maker: Add recipes this easily, and looks great in your posts.
- Smush: You compress images, keep your site nice and fast—and visitors happy.
Step 4: Amazing Content
Okay! Now we’ve done all that business stuff out of the way, so let’s get to the good stuff. Make content! And don’t worry, this is where you really get to let your hair down. Here’s where you should start:
Recipe Posts:
Share your recipe if you do, but kindly obtain proper instructions on how to prepare the thing, clear, simple and in detail according to every step involved in the process of preparing it so that they may come with photographs. Good, step-by-step guides with visuals are very much loved by people.
Pro Tip: And take some shots of the dish when it’s ready. For all we know, one sees first and then eats. Superb pictures of food are indispensable, to say the very least. Learn how to photograph food, lighting and styling. You don’t need an SLR camera-even if you know how to make the right use out of your smartphone, that could do the trick too.
Connect with Your Readers:
Write and never forget your audience. Connect with them by responding to your comments, asking questions, and inviting feedback-that’s the way your blog will grow.
Post Regularly
Determine a posting schedule and follow it. It can be once a week or month; trying to update regularly is okay because your readers have known to expect new content on certain days.
I love how food blogs are full of character. Share the story behind the recipe, a failure cooking experience, or even family traditions. It is people who will come to relate to you as a person, not that great food guru.
Optimization for SEO
What’s the point of your recipes and great pictures if no one ever finds your blog? Enter SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is just a fancy term for getting the content on your blog to appear easy-to-find on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines.
Some basic tips to get you started:
Keyword Research Keyword discovery means you are looking for words that people use in search for your content. Making use of Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest to find the accurate keywords for you. Optimization of Size, along with relevant file names, and alternative text associated with images so that it helps pop up on Google Image Search.
SEO-Friendly Headlines: Find the keywords you wish to target and add them to your title on the blog, headings, and meta description
Step 6: Grow Your Blog Using Social Media
Follow these as the best way of growing your food blog. There are many more to try it on; it includes, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.
Instagram: it is the bread by which most good food bloggers shine since after all it depends on pictures. Take pictures of what you are preparing and maintain a behind-the-scenes angle, so to speak, sharing on how to cook tips and things that could possibly give sneak peeks inside your food world.
- Pinterest: If the food blog happens to be good, it can attract some great traffic from that source, mainly because mostly inspirational content exists in that platform. Therefore, your pins should be great, and the people should click on those to reach the posts directly.
- Facebook: Share the blog posts, engage with followers, and be in touch with users’ content.
Publication cycle: Write regularly, engage with your audience, and use very apt hashtags so that the followers of your blog multiply.
Step 7: How to Monetize Your Food Blog
Once you have acquired a following, this is how you monetize your food blog. The most in-demand ones are listed below.
- Affiliate marketing or revenue generated through other services related to cooking and food blogging.
- Appliance Screens: Specialty markets in cooking and food preparation.
- Affiliate Marketing: We are totally in love with these kitchen appliances and ingredients like. Every time our visitors click to buy using one of our affiliate links we get paid.
- Sponsored Posts: You get paid to write about brands and their products or services. Good for you, right? Only work with brands you really like or share the values of your readers.\.\
- Advertising Revenue: Once you have a good number of traffics moving through your blog you will also start raking some money by links to other commercial ads.
Sales of Products: Sell your cookbook on your blog if you have one. Sell your eBook or online cooking course from the blog. - Services: Many food bloggers nowadays offer services to food clients-cooking classes, recipe developments, and food photography services for individuals or companies.
Really, food blogging is a pretty fun hobby and rather rewarding experience. But such niche of food will provide an excellent opportunity wherein to share your love for food with other people. Meanwhile, proper niche only confines the creation of great
