How to Start a Food Blog and Make Money
Food blogs have become hugely popular in recent times. But is it really possible to give up your usual 9-to-5 grind, start a food blog and make money from writing about your favorite dishes? Yes! As previously stated, there’s power in blogging for income. Read on to find out how to start a food blog and make money.
Step #1: Start The Blog.
It’s time to start the blog. Get a domain name (GoDaddy sells the cheapest domain names) and sign up for web hosting (HostGator is a good option). Once that’s done, you can go ahead and install WordPress for free. Now, look for premium WordPress themes for food blogs. You will find many at Theme Forest.
[See this post for a domain name idea]
Step #2: Plan The Content
Start planning your content. You will have to do a fair bit of reading and do your research on healthy and sumptuous dishes that people love and want to know more about.
People generally want to have great food, but don’t want to spend too much time on its preparation and would like the ingredients to be reasonably priced and easily available. Those are the dishes you should cover with your blog.
You can have your own specialty or cover a range of cuisines, and create a special weekly recipe for the blog. You will need to learn to take great photographs of the dishes with your iPhone or with an advanced camera.
Step #3: Driving Traffic to Your Food Blog
Attract your audience with a Facebook page. Additionally, you should use a combination of social media advertising and Google AdWords to drive traffic to your blog. You should start by sharing photos of your dishes on photo sharing sites Instagram and Pinterest to drive traffic from them.
You should shoot videos of yourself cooking special dishes and share them on YouTube, with a detailed explanation of the whole process. Writing eBooks and selling them on Amazon is another great way to drive traffic to your site.
Step #4: Monetize The Food Blog
There are several different ways to monetize a food blog. You can try your hand at affiliate marketing, which means marketing products belonging to a different company on your blog, leading your visitors to the product page on the seller or manufacturer’s website where they can make the purchase, in return for a commission on every sale.
You can market the equipment or ingredients used to make your dishes for example. You can review various different types of blenders or write about the various health benefits of the ingredients. You could also review various cookbooks and diet books on ClickBank.
Don’t forget to lead your visitors to a link to an appropriate page on your affiliate network – which could be Amazon, ClickBank or something else. When they buy something, you make money. Your commission could be anything from 8% to 45% on each sale.
Other ways of making money from your food blog include selling advertising space on a pay-per-click network such as Google AdSense, or BuySellAds.
You can place ads from a local restaurant or food store on your blog for a fixed monthly fee. Another popular technique is to sell an eBook with dozens of recipes for $5 or more on your blog.
Final Thoughts – How Much Money Can You Make as a Food Blogger?
The possibilities for making money from your food blog are limitless. There are many food bloggers that make $10,000/month or more from their blogs, just by following their passion, using some of the advice given here and developing a dedicated readership. Are you up to the challenge? Start a food blog, give it your best shot, you never know what could happen.
