The right plan of action will show the way to triumph. Not all are gourmet but everyone likes food, oops tasty food! Food lover and a cooking enthusiast who takes pleasure in cooking are always on the guard for the right place for trying out new recipes. Hence there is a need for food blog. They are not only popular but also easy to monetize.
Pros & Cons to Start Food Blog
First the Pros-
- Earn while you enjoy cooking, capitalize on your passion
- Be brilliant enough to be creative with your food creations
- Get started effortlessly with a reasonably priced menu
- Easily monetize through affiliate programs, sponsorships, and advertisements
- Build a food and eating community
- Organize cookery shows and publish cookery books
Now the Cons
- Need to create new ideas for content on cooking regularly for successful blogs
- Required to regularly take great pictures of your cooking process and delicious outcomes
- May take some time to establish a good readership for a decent income
Starting a Food Blog
The following tips for earning from food blog may appeal to you:
- Plan the Type of Food Blog You Wish to Start–Specialized services always have an engaging appeal than general topics and food also finds this exclusivity. When considering distinctiveness, think the readers are gluten, crab or sugar-free, vegan, or frugal cooking so and so forth. You can even dedicate yourself to in a type of food such as side-dishes, chocolate, confectionery or oven fresh.
- Christening a Perfect Blog Name–To be available on a domain name that also labels and designates your blog, select the right name. Be descriptive with your selected name without limiting but with a provision to expand on your idea in future. Like a ‘bakers blog’ would sound too specific and narrow so why not ‘confectioneries-savories and canapé’….sounds relishing!
- Your Own Domain Name &Web Hosting– Although you can create a blog on free sources such as Blogger or Weekly, however, the viable and successful bloggers, host themselves. Almost all web-hosts would include the purchase of your domain name at the commissioning stage. You may even buy them independently by choosing a web host that provides WordPress install, easily. By the way, there are other content management platforms, but in the easy to learn series, WordPress is second to none in terms of popularity.
- WordPress on Your Web Hosting Account– Your host provider can guide you about activating from within your hosting account. After installing, choose a theme that syncs well with food. Moreover, even from within your WordPress dashboard, you can search “food” themes and install it. We would further advise that for getting the best results, select a theme that is responsive in order to adjust for easy reading on devices like tablets and smartphone. Also being easy for readers to navigate and further optimized for search engines. You can even get themes for free, but consider purchasing a theme for greater customization and features for future development.
- Maximize Your Site potential with plug-ins –Askimet, among others, is the basic plug-ins you need to install for comment spam filtering, social media tools. This enables people to share your content, caching up to make your site load faster and easy on your host. Avoid putting your E-mail address on your blog lest you invite spam and Google Analytics.
- E-mail List–More income can be generated through E-mail lists. Want to know how? New recipes and dishes can be E-mailed by reminding people to return to your website so that they can click on your monetization options. Besides this, you can even E-mail special promotions offers during festive seasons. Further, you can put your E-mail to optimal use by attaching a sign-up form on your blog. In addition, you can woo your visitors to subscribe by offering a freebie such as recipes or cooking videos.
- Add Recipes– Immediately engage your readers with your best 10 to 15 recipes. Next is to create a blogging schedule for adding several recipes on a weekly basis. Supplement your recipes, with mouth-watering appetizing pictures with step-by-step instructions. You may even add personalized information such as improvements you made to the recipe or even engage your visitors with a little of grandma or mother stories about the history of the recipe.
- Promoting Your Blog–It is not necessary all blogs are read by people, which you have initiated with great effort. They cannot read when they do not know the subject. Quite true you want to optimize for search engines, but you cannot rely on search engines alone for driving traffic to your blog. You have to set up social media accounts such as Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter to share your recipes for a wider outreach. Create videos for posting on your blog and publish on YouTube whenever you get an opportunity. Develop an online marketing plan to reach your target market effectively.
- Monetize Your Blog –To make money you need traffic; so need to market before you monetize. But once you got the flow of visitors to your blog, you can start adding money-making resources. Some of the options include contextual advertising such as Google AdSense and other affiliate programs; such as promoting cooking tools, etc. As you grow and develop your skills, you can start writing your cookbooks, write articles for magazines, sell training videos and promote your culinary skills on television programs.
We would advise you not to forget off-line marketing strategies. Blogging has turned into a business; it would be wise to take care of statutory legal mandates like licenses, permits or self-employment taxes pertaining to that region.
