Cooking can be a stress buster for many people. Some are passionate about the end result, while some enjoy the process of preparing a delicious dish. But what if you can take your hobby and monetize it through a food blog?
Initially, it does feel overwhelming to cater to multiple aspects of starting a food blog. Trying to make it a hit among the netizens and earning sufficient money from it can also be daunting.
Fret not! This guide will make it easier for anyone hoping to start a food blog. With web hosting taken care of by Bluehost, your entire focus can be creating amazing content and running the blog.
Let’s get started!
Step-by-step guide on starting a food blog
The following list outlines the steps that you can take to start a food blog.
1. Pick a specific niche for your food blog
Picking a particular niche of food blogging and developing the blogs around it is essential. Being too generic or too broad in your topics might increase the chances that no one group is interested in your blog. Additionally, a niche will help you sustain the ever-growing competition in the space.
Choosing a specific niche also ensures you have greater chances of attracting readers. The more unique the niche, the more chances people will follow the page or website.
A big question is picking an appealing enough niche for your food blog. Many types of food blogs are getting popular across social media platforms—recipe blogs, vegan blogs, keto diet blogs, low-carb diet blogs, and baking blogs.
It’s essential to strike a balance between what’s popular and what you are passionate about. If you optimise for trending topics, you might lose interest in your blog. For example, if you enjoy eating clean and whipping up healthy salads, go ahead and make that your niche and toss those greens!
2. Choose a hosting and a blogging platform
Content management systems (CMS) or blogging platforms can help you create, publish, edit, and manage content online. Hence, you need not worry about switching your cooking apron for a coding hat.
WordPress is the most popular blogging CMS, used globally by millions of active users. It’s easy to use and has many options to customize the website. It can also provide an option for free hosting if you have a limited budget. But the free version has limitations, and the premium might be a bit higher.
Finally, you need to pick a web hosting provider. We recommend using Bluehost. It is one of the most trusted and successful web hosting providers. It has millions of active users across the globe. It’s scalable and provides 24×7 online support by WordPress experts.
3. Add an attractive theme for your food blog to make it aesthetically pleasing
Visually appealing blogs garner more traffic. Hence, customizing your website with attractive themes is a sure-shot way to garner attention.
WordPress offers a lot of free themes for food-based blogs that you can use. Alternatively, you can pay for a premium theme from websites like ThemeForest that grabs your attention.
Here is a ready list of paid theme websites for your WordPress blog.
1. Nutmeg Plus
Nutmeg Plus themes are SEO-affable, mobile-friendly and support multiple WP plugins. They are also easily customizable with many font and color options.
2. Essence
Themes from Essence can easily allow you to change the colors and layouts of your website pages. Additionally, you get a lot of customizable options like text fields and checkboxes. You also get responsive designs with custom widgets to connect with social media platforms.
Lastly, you get robust customer service support should you have any issues or queries.
3. Neptune
Neptune themes are great for food bloggers because the themes can allow them to publish nutritional information about different recipes. A theme from here can also allow you to organise your cuisines per their places of origin.
All the themes here provide excellent social media functionality and great SEO performance.
4. Be consistent with updating your blog
Once you have published the first blog, it’s time to be consistent with posting content. Readers prefer to read those blogs that have a regular schedule and are well-edited.
It’s best to plan for the content, draft the blog, and shoot the videos, if needed, in advance. You should start editing at least a week before the publishing date. It will give you ample time to set everything right if anything goes haywire.
It’s also imperative to interact with the followers. You need to verify if they like the content you are posting. You can seek feedback if they expect to see something else.
This can also be done via analytics plugins to see which blog performed the best.
Adding videos, photos, and GIFs to the textual content adds to the aesthetics of your blog. You can post lip-smacking pictures of your cooked food for extra appeal.
When posting videos, though, the editing and the lighting needs to be consistent. You can also go on YouTube to learn how to shoot your cooking videos.
The blogging space is very competitive. Hence, you might not get the desired traffic unless you go all out on promotions. Social media platforms can be a good tool for your blog promotions.
What should you do?
Start by creating accounts for your food blog on different social media platforms, posting content on them and collaborating with other food bloggers. Doing this can give your blog a much-needed SEO boost and improve its popularity.
6. Find different ways to monetize your food blog
Once you set up processes to bring followers to your blog, you should start exploring ways to bring in revenue. Here are some easy channels.
i) Create a YouTube channel: YouTube is a great way to make money through advertisements. You can also use the channel to promote your blog.
ii) Sell ad space with Google Adsense: Adsense finds advertisements suitable for your website and audience. You make money through selling space on your blog website for these ads.
iii) Affiliate marketing: You can generate much revenue using affiliate marketing links. You make a commission for every reader that clicks on these links and makes a purchase.
iv) Publishing cookbooks: If your blog gets enough eyeballs, you can publish a cookbook as a paid or downloadable resource. However, you should do this only if you have a large number of followers.
Frequently asked questions
Question 1: Where can I download visually attractive free themes for my blog?
Here are some resources for you! Also, check out the free themes on the WordPress site.
Question 2: Can I use any additional plugins in a blog to keep it safe or boost SEO?
Of course! Plenty of additional plugins can be used to protect the blog from spam. There are also quite a few that facilitate boosting the page’s rankings.
a) Akismet
b) Tasty Pins
d) WPRocket
Check out other Fintober blogs and subscribe to Fintober to learn more about interesting income sources.
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