Do you want to start your successful food blogging journey but are overwhelmed with the amount of time and effort you need to put into it?
Food blogging is an amazing blogging niche if you have a passion for food and writing. If you are a beginner it also does not need lots of learning and resources to start doing it.
However, you may find it difficult to start your own blog, coming with your domain name and all that jazz.
This is why we have curated the simplest guide for you to easily learn how to start a food blog.
Why Start a Food Blog?
Food Blogging is that type of industry where people who do it are most passionate about writing and at the same time they love food. But Starting a Food Blog can bring in many wonderful experiences to you.
So in the context of these wonderful experiences let me tell you why you should start a Food Blog.
1. Express your passion for food
There are millions of people out there wondering and looking for answers, the answers that possess in your mind. Starts expressing your passion for food in your blogs and it will help so many other people.
Maybe you know the best way to make a certain dish or you know the best keto diet, tell it to people on the internet and you will also get lots of benefit in return.
2. You like writing
If your writing is something you are passionate about then Food Blog can be a very good option for it. There are many things to write about in this niche and you will never run out of things to write.
The learning curve does not take much effort and time. So you will not have a hard time writing about it.
3. Writing Cookbook
If you have prior experience writing cookbooks then using that knowledge in your Food Blog can be amazing.
4. Earn income
It is probably the biggest reason why it is worth your time. Blogging as a beginner may not bring much profit but over time you will start earning money through your Food Blog.
5. Understand yourself
With food blogging, who knows you might spark something in yourself that allows you to understand yourself. Writing helps you learn about many things.
How to Start a Successful Food Blog and Make Money
Follow this guideline to have a perfect food blogging journey:
1. Pick your food niche
Many beginners who want to run a food blog start their journey by deciding the food blog name or looking for hosting platforms. This is not the right way to start a food blog and make money.
Although those things are also important they are not the first thing you should be worrying about.
The first thing you need to do is to pick the niche for your food blog. You have to be as specific as possible since there are many types of foods and millions of food blogs on the internet.
Being very picky about your Niche will allow you to outbreak through your competitors. On the contrary, having a generic niche might appeal to a wide range of audiences but it will be very hard to gain traffic since the market is well saturated.
If you are a beginner, then it is advised to target a very specific group of people with your Food Blog niche.
By having a specific niche, you will narrow down your audience and also your competitors. It will be easier for you to compete against a few other sites in your niche. Although your target audience will not be as big, it will certainly bring in people who are likely to be very much involved in your blogs.
Finding your food blog niche can take some time. While some may be exciting niche but you may not be that passionate about it after doing it for a long time.
Are you into the paleo diet? Or you are more passionate about a vegan Food Blog? Choose that niche that makes you want to write more about it and something which has a profound knowledge of.
2. Choose a Name and Buy a Domain
A great food blog requires a compelling and amazing blog name. The name of the blog should resemble the domain name as well.
You need to buy a domain name but a domain requires a name which you have not decided yet. So let’s talk about the blog name first.
You need to have thorough research about your niche and your top competitors. See what kind of blog name they have and see the similarities between each blog.
Furthermore, ask yourself why you want to start a food blog. Many times an inspiring name can generate in your mind if you look from within.
Know the type of readers you are targeting and see what keywords they are using when searching for a food blog in your niche.
You can also find the keywords from the focused keyword of one of your blogs or your whole website.
Now after choosing your blog name, you have to buy a domain. Here we recommend the top-of-line web hosting called Bluehost. It has an excellent set of features that you can get at reasonable prices.
The best of getting Bluehost is that you get a free domain.
With Bluehost, you can create your domain later if you are having a hard time deciding your domain name.
3. Find a Reliable Web Host
After choosing and buying your domain name, the next you need to do is to find a reliable Web Host.
Your web hosting provider is the place where you store your website and it will also deal with all the showing up of the website. (In this context, make sure that your website is accessible on the internet).
Here we have tested plenty of web hosting and there is no doubt that Bluehost is the best and a very reliable Web hosting service for your food blog.
Bluehost should be the web host of choice because it provides an excellent server and data storing center where all your website’s information will be safe.
Along with Bluehost, you should also choose WordPress as your CMS. They both are well integrated.
You will not face any issue creating and running your food blog on WordPress hosted by Bluehost.
Of course, there are various plans of Bluehost to choose from. You can go for the plan which you think suits your needs the best.
Each plan will also show its exclusive features for you to understand which plan to go for.
4. Install WordPress
Bluehost offers its native way of installing WordPress in just a few steps. Since WordPress is a third-party CMS that will be used with your Bluehost, Bluehost made the whole process very simple.
You can go to MySites or Marketplace where you can directly install WordPress.
Here are the steps to install WordPress with My sites.
STEP 1: Login to your Bluehost account.
STEP 2: On the side menu, you will see the “My Sites” option, click on it.
STEP 3: Now simply click on the “Create Site Button”.
STEP 4: Fill up the Site Name and Site Tag line.
STEP 5: Click Next and select the domain you want to install.
STEP 6: There will be an option to choose the directory where you have to select where you want to install the files.
STEP 7: Click Next.
Steps to Install WordPress from Market place.
STEP 1: Go to your Bluehost account.
STEP 2: Go to the Website section and then select “Install WordPress”.
STEP 3: Choose the domain name where WordPress will be installed.
STEP 4: You can also add a subfolder or simply leave it.
STEP 5: Change the email address, username, and password from the advanced options. However, you don’t have to change it if you don’t want to. You can use your Bluehost account information.
STEP 6: Check the license and service agreement and hit the “Install Now” button.
5. Select your food blog theme
Selecting a food Blog theme is a very interesting and exciting part of this process. There are an endless amount of themes to choose from.
WordPress itself offers a large library of amazing themes. But you have to keep in mind that choosing the most eye-candy-looking theme might not be the right theme for you.
You can consider what type of blog you are operating and choose your theme accordingly. For example, if you writing about babies then selecting a playful theme will be a better choice than going for a minimal theme that seems more sound for tech niche blogs.
The theme that you choose must have these things.
Great Design: Designs can be subjective so you have to let your artistic mind make the decision. You should also use your logical and analytic mind to choose an appropriate yet well-designed theme.
Fast Response: When your readers visit your blog they should be able to snap through the elements of your theme without any error.
Everything about your theme should work seamlessly otherwise your great-looking theme will not be that appealing if it is not responsive in the first place.
Optimized for SERP: There are multiple things that you can do for your blog to rank higher in Google search.
Since we are at the theme section of the article, let’s talk about the connection between theme and optimization.
A well-designed along with responsive attributes of that theme will eventually positively affect your google rankings.
User experience: The user experience of your blog is one of the most crucial factors that keep your visitors keeps visiting.
The site has good content, has useful plugins, great response time, and impeccable uptime. All these lead to an astonishing user experience in a blog.
Amazing customer support: Whenever you have a technical issue or error, how fast the customer support responds to you? Amazing customer support should be able to contact you on the same day and assist you through your problem in the best way possible.
To run the best food blog on WordPress, we recommend Astra, OceanWP, Divi, and Neptune. These themes are offer layouts, templates, and design options that are perfect for your Food Blog.
6. Create the Content and Start Blogging!
The main reason why your readers visit your Food Blog is because of the valuable content you publish in it.
To execute wonderful content day in day out, a blogger should have a great content plan. A content plan is nothing but a plan that is well versed and has all the elements of delivering great content regularly.
Creating a schedule is the very first thing you need to do in your content plan. Make sure to have a regular posting schedule so that your readers keep wanting more and getting more.
If you are just starting your Food blog then posting 4 to 5 times a week is a good start.
Later down the line, you can start posting weekly when you start to get a respectable amount of visitors.
PRO TIP: If you are lazy to write or want to increase your writing speed, you can use ai content generators 😉
Learn what your audience wants and start blogging around those topics. Similarly, checking what your competitors are blogging about can help you come up with even more amazing content.
To make your content more engaging and your blogging next level, you have to use high-quality photographs and videos. This powerful medium gives an extra edge to your blogs and helps improve your connection to your audience.
7. Promote your food blog
There is a reason why marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry. While you don’t have to spend billions to promote your blogs, you certainly have to take measures to ensure that your blogs are reaching a potential audience on the internet.
You don’t have to spend a single penny especially if you are a beginner. Although paid marketing can help your blog reach more traffic tremendously. You should resort to that for later.
You can start posting about your newly published blogs on social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.
Another way to promote your blogs is to collaborate with other bloggers. In this way, you can give backlinks to each other and increase the level of reach. This is a great way to get exposure to your Food Blog especially if you are collaborating with someone who has more regular visitors than yours.
Optimizing your Food blog has the biggest impact on your site. You need to optimize your Food blog SEO so that it increases the organic search traffic and more monthly visitors.
Using long-tail keywords, making your blogs optimized for mobile phones, and writing long-form content improves your site’s SEO drastically.
8. Monetize your food blog
The monetizing aspect of something you are passionate about is probably the best thing about it. The situation is the same with Food Blogging.
Now that you have made much great content that gets constant readers weekly, you should reap the benefit of all your hard work in your blog.
There are many ways to start earning income and passive income once you have established a full fledge blog that has a dedicated audience.
You can start selling cookbooks in the form of ebooks and hard copies. If you have the resources to sell both then you should go for both.
People who entrust you and your blog will consider buying them and in return, it will be helpful to your business.
Starting a Youtube channel that promotes your blogs can also reap many benefits in your favor. Since people like to consume content in the form of videos, there is no better platform than Youtube where you can post them.
Run ads through Google Adsense and ads will start to pop up on your site. This will increase your income and it depends on the number of visitors you get.
The more visitors you get, the more ads will be shown and the more you will earn from Adsense.
Conclusion
Blogging and making money from blogging takes time even if it’s Food Blogging. But that should not stop you from putting hard work into it especially if you are passionate about it.
There are many elements of optimizing your blog and strategies that we have covered in this article. If you have implemented the things we have mentioned above then you will surely run a successful Food blog.
