How to Start a Food Blog (And How to Monitize It)

Starting a food or lifestyle blog can be a daunting task when you have to take care all of the technical challenges that comes with starting up - like finding a suitable hosting provider, installing plugins and configuring a custom domain.

In this article we'll take you through how to overcome some of these steps to allow you to finally do what you initially wanted - share your passion around food and connect with other food enthusiasts around the world!

Finding a hosting platform

To setup a food blog you'll need a place to host your blog in order to make it available on the web. A hosting platform is essentially a web server from which people all over the world can access your blog.

There are different ways of getting your blog up and running depending on the work you're willing to put into it as well as your budget.

Self-hosting

Self-hosting your blog means finding, buying and seting up your own web server. This is often done by buying an online space (for example a VPS) and setting up your blogging software manually including admin panels and various plugins.

Setting up your own web server comes with benefits such as being a cheaper and more flexible option, though for a lot of people it can also be a tedious task - especially if you don't have previous technical knowledge. This leads us to the next option in the queue:

Managed hosting

With managed hosting you don't have to think about setting up and configuring your own web server as mentioned in the previous section. Platforms that offer managed hosting usually provide a batteries included service with a pre-installed bundle of everything you need to start a blog.

Managed hosting can also come with further benefits such as automatic data backups, technical support and security measures to keep your site safe from malicious actors.

The benefits gained from using a managed hosting platform usually comes at the expense of a higher price and less control over technical items.

Some examples of managed hosting are wordpress.com/ (not to be confused with wordpress.org) and wix.com. Both of these are some of the most popular blogging platforms that allows you to setup a personal blog in a short period of time.

There are other ways of getting up and running with a food blog in an easy manner which we will get into further down in the article.

Setting up your blog

Once you've found a way of hosting your platform it's time to build and design your blog. If you're using blogging software such as Wordpress or Wix you'll usually start out with a basic starter theme. In order to put some personality into the site you'll need to build the blog into the direction you're going for.

Choosing a theme

If you're an experienced programmer or web developer it may be viable to design your own blog theme, but for most people it's usually an easier route to use a pre-build (free or paid) theme and go from there. Blogging platforms usually include a way to costumize and tailor your site to your own likings through page builders and settings sections.

Adding plugins

To further costumize your blogging site (and actually make it a food blog), you'll eventually need to install plugins for stuff like search engine optimization (SEO), recipe and ingredient organization (often as recipe cards in your blog posts) and other features. This is often times one of the pitfalls that people fall into when creating their own blog, as plugins can significantly decrease the page speed and user experience of your site, as it is third party code being injected into your website.

Thought there are also platforms such as Wasabee which specialized within food blogging and supports everything you need in order to get started with a food blog and therefore does not need to load external code from third party plugins. This is often times one of the easier and better solutions if you care about SEO, user experience and page speed though for some people it is at the expense of the flexibility in being able to choose your own plugins.

Make it personal

To make your blog personal and consistent you need to provide a brand identity by uploading assets such as a site logo and header images and using brand colors and typography to convey your personal style.

Writing your first blog post

Now it's time to start writing! It can sometimes be a difficult task to get content out so we have outlined a few of the most important thoughts and preparations when you write your blog posts:

• Set up a posting schedule and content plan. One of the most important aspects of running a succesful food blog is to provide consistent content that resonates your with readers and visitors. This makes your blog more recognizable and reliable which will lead to recurring visitors and supporters. Having a schedule and plan may also ease some of the stress and worries that can occour when you have to create content for your website.
• Create your own style by experimenting with ways of writing, using a certian photography style or the way you engage with your readers. There are millions of personal food blogs on the internet and you will need a way to stand out against everyone else. There is also no harm in trying out different ways and communicating with your audience in order to find a way of running your blog that suits both you and your readers.
• Keep SEO in mind when writing your articles. Search engines like Google and Bing are some of the biggest channels for driving visitors which makes search engine optimization very valuable when writing blog posts. This includes tasks such as doing keyword research, writing quality content and providing experimenting with different lengths for your blog posts.

If you wish to find out more on how to write your own recipes, check out our latest post about how you write a recipe

Promoting your food blog

In the previous section we mentioned the use of SEO for generating traffic to your site. Ranking high in searches can be one of the most beneficial ways of getting visitors but can often times be a slow way of getting started as you'll need to build up a portfolio of blog posts in order to organically attract visitors and make yourself known to search engines.

Using social media

Another great way of generating traffic to your food blog is by setting up social media accounts for your blog and create content suitable for that platform such as filming short-form videos of your cooking or creating infographics about topics close to your blog's. As social media platforms already have a massive amount of active users, it can be easier to engage and attract new visitiors through these and lead them to your food blog later on. Social media can also a great platform to engage and communicate more with your audience on another level.

In order to simplify the process of creating content on social media you can use a scheduler and plan out your content ahead of time.

Monetizing your blog

You may be wondering how to to monetize your blog once it's starting to drive traffic. There are various ways to make money off of your blog which makes it possible for you to pick and choose a way that resonates well with the way you want to run your food blog.

Here are some of the most common ways that people earn money through food blogging:

Affiliate marketing

One of the most common way of earning money through a food blog is by doing affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing works by promoting products and services through your blog posts, for example by recommending a brand's cheese grater for creating a recipe.

A lot of companies provide affiliate and referral programs that makes it easy to incorporate promos which can lead to benefits for both the blog owner, the blog visitor and the company which receives the exposure.

An important part of providing affiliiate marketing on your food blog is to not promote items and services that are not related to the content that your blog provides. Visitors might get confused and irritated with your blog if you start promoting racing bikes under a recipe on how to create the world's best carrot cake.

Displaying advertisements

Running ads through services such as Google Adsense can be a good way to monetize your blog. Ads work by placing advertisement elements on your blog in places where visitors might click them and hence generate revenue for you.

You can also find private advertisers by providing a note that you're looking to advertise on your blog and that you'll accept e-mails regarding this. This may also be a better way of finding suitable advertisements for your blog that resonates well with your visitors so that you're not advertising gaming keyboards on a food blog for example.

As with many other monetization techniques, there can also be downsides when running ads on your blog - one of the most obvious ones being that visitors can get annoyed with eye-catching and interrupting advertisements when trying to read through your content. Advertisements may also not be the most suited way of monetization if you do not have a large amount of visitors where focus should rather be on providing quality content that ranks well on search engines.

Sponsored post

Letting companies and other people promote themselves through paid content on your site can be a lucrative way of monetizing your blog, but before you start engaging in sponsered content you should take note of some of the pitfalls of doing sponsored posts on your blog:

• You usually need a large amount of traffic in order to get people to want to do sponsored posts on your blog.
• Sponsored content can have a negative effect on your blog if it does not suit the theme and topic of your blog post and can lead to visitors abandoning your food blog. Many sponsored posts are also done for the sake of backlinking which in combination with poor content can lead to you being punished by search engines and going down in ranking.

Final words

I hope that this article has been a help in shining some light on some of the topics at play when you're creating your own food blog (and blog in general). While it requires work to get up and running with your own food blog, it can also be one of the most rewarding experiences to share your culinary enthusiasm with the rest of the world.

If you are interesting in quickly getting started with food blogging, we recommend using Wasabee to easily create, host and manage your very own blog without much hassle.