How to start a food blog and make money

Welcome back to your favorite desserts and baking blog:)

You landed here because you Googled “How to start a food blog and make money.” Well, hello there! I will make sure that you leave this blog post feeling motivated and sorted. Sounds good?

I started food blogging way back in December 2019. It began as a digital document where I can store all the recipes spread across at least 4 notebooks. Cut to 2023, and I am making monthly money from my food blog!! So what exactly happened in these years, and can you do that too? More importantly, can I help you do that in just a year?

YES, I CAN!!

How? Well, I will be the Master Shifu to your Po and help you avoid every single roadblock that I faced that will bridge the gap from years to just 1 YEAR!

I will not lie and say it won’t require work or will happen in 1 month. No, I will be honest with you and spill just the truth over here. So if you want to be making money, you have to put in some work. Cue “Work” by Beyonce. *dance break*

Okay, I am back. Let’s make you some money now.

How to start a food blog and make money in a year: Step-by-step guide

Select your niche
Naming your blog
Purchasing domain
Purchasing a good hosting
Creating your website
Launch your food blog
Creation of social channels
Creating a newsletter
Monetizing your blog
Establish a schedule

Select your niche

Now, when I started, my blog was all over the place. I would post recipes for pizza, pasta, Bengali breakfast, and whatnot. You may know a dozen cuisines, but it is helpful for you to stick to one niche. You don’t have to figure it out right away. Start posting and select a niche based on these three:

-What you love to make

-What your audience loves

-What people are already struggling with

I learned that many people are scared to bake and have never tried. I decided that being a pastry chef, desserts and bakes are easily something I can niche down to. Some sample niche ideas for you to get started:

-Vegan pastry recipes

-Gluten-free baking blog

-Oats recipes (yes, you can even niche down to one ingredient)

You can select two niches, but do not go beyond that as it becomes confusing for your audience on what kind of content they will expect from you.

Naming your blog

I recommend not overthinking too much because, honestly, we all tend to overthink over here. Set a deadline of three days, and I promise you will surely come up with a name by then.

Here’s how I came up with the name for my blog. I wanted to make it unique, and the best way to do so is by adding your name. Then I knew I wanted to add dessert to it, and then a few word plays later, I came up with Alishasdessertsafari.

You have to select a name that is:

-Unique

-Easy to spell

-Easy to pronounce

-Easy to remember

Purchasing a domain

Go ahead and check your name on www.namecheap.com to see if it is available. Wait, hold up, don’t just stop there.

Check if it is available on YouTube, Instagram, and other social media so that you can have the same name for everything. Back then, I did not post videos on YouTube, but I just made an account so that no one else could make an account under the same name.

However, I still can’t get the same username on Twitter, but that’s okay because I don’t post much over there.

Note: Don’t buy the domain just yet because it is often free with hosting. I made this mistake, so please don’t spend your money here when you can get it for free. Of course, if you want to start designing your website later, I suggest buying just the domain name for now.

Purchasing a good hosting

Hosting is where your site will be hosted. It will store all the data of your blogs so that your audience can access it anytime via the Internet. Now, I started with GoDaddy when I was using Wix for my website. I shifted to Bluehost when I shifted my site to WordPress. Honestly, as a new blogger, BlueHost is all you need.

They have excellent customer service, and from personal experience, I have annoyed them a lot because I had no one else to ask all these complicated web-related questions to. They helped me with website migration, setting up the nameservers, and even minor queries.

Their plans are also super affordable so that you can go ahead. You can check out their membership over here.

Finding the right platform

This exact step is where I wasted three years!!! If only I had known that food blogs have to be on WordPress. Do not waste any time on Wix or WordPress.com. Every recipe blog needs a recipe card where you will be listing ingredients and steps, and WordPress.org is where you will be able to create it. You can start here for free, but keep reading, and I will tell you why it’s not a great idea.

WordPress is easy to use once you get a hang of it, and it provides you with tons of plugins to customize your site the way you want to. Every food blogger whose name shows up on Google uses this platform.

I started on Wix and then shifted to WordPress.com and then finally to WordPress.org, so I know how annoying it is to first build a site and then build it over and over again.

Creating your website

I started on WordPress.org with a free theme but soon shifted to a paid theme because I wanted my blog to look professional and have advanced features. Now, there are amazing paid themes out there, but I can only tell you about what I use. I use Kale Pro, and it is fantastic.

The customer support is incredible, and they make my life so much easier. Also, they are the sweetest. The Kale Pro theme has a built-in easy recipe card feature.

There are a few drawbacks like it does not have a serving calculator or calorie counter, but it works fine for me and fits my current budget. It’s just 5000 INR or 60 Dollars annually.

You can check out Feast themes if you have a higher budget.

You can also hire someone from the Kale Pro team or a UI/UX designer to design your site. I did it myself with the help of this extremely detailed video by Ben. Here, he designs a website with a Kale theme, so if you buy it, the tutorial is over here.

To give you a rough estimate, it took me two months to figure out everything and launch my website again in December 2021. Since then, I have kept updating my website regularly as and when I learn something new or see a cool feature on another blog.

Launch your food blog.

Now it’s show time! You are officially ready to launch your food blog.

Before you launch, here is a list of things you have to do:

Decide the frequency of your blogs- how many blogs per week and at what time? I post three blogs weekly at 6 pm because it works for me. Ideally, it would be best if you were writing two blogs per week to get that desired income way quicker.
Write at least 10 original, well-researched blog posts so that when you launch, you have at least 10 content pieces ready to be published.
Make sure you have external and internal links in the posts.
Make sure you have good-quality pictures in your blog post.

Creation of social channels

This is the fun part! You are now going to create social media handles where you can promote your blog every time you post a new blog post. Every social media platform has its unique way of working. I recommend taking your own time with each platform. I used to write captions and post pictures on all my social media handles. I would put way more time and focus initially just to grow on Instagram. Once I understood how it worked and created a system that worked for me, I decided to focus on Pinterest. If you are handling other responsibilities, I suggest focusing on Pinterest because it is what all bloggers swear by.

Creating a newsletter

I use MailChimp to send newsletters to my subscribers every week. I send out newsletters just talking about my blog post. You can be as creative as you want to. If you are wondering why you even need a newsletter, let me tell you.

TikTok got banned in India, and numerous TikTok influencers suddenly lost their jobs. When you rely on social media handles to keep your audience, you don’t have any direct access to your audience. A newsletter is a great way to ensure you have direct access to your audience. It’s also a great place to connect with your audience.

Monetizing your blog

Let’s talk about money now!

So you have done all the steps, and nothing is there in your bank account. Don’t worry. Let’s make that happen. However, please be prepared not to earn anything in the first few months. Some bloggers will tell you that you can start earning from the first month; please believe them and follow them, but I will not say that because I couldn’t do that myself.

If you have 0 experience with blogging, chances are that in the first few months, you will be busy doing all the groundwork as you should because that is going to help you make money later.

Here are two main and most popular ways to earn money via your blog, and both are passive:

Running Ads

I have registered myself with Ezoic.com, and they are perfect if you are new to blogging. They also have features that optimize your site and improve your site speed. Every blogger runs ads to make a little extra passive income. This income source solely depends on the amount of traffic you are driving to your website. The income will be erratic, but it’s worth it because you must simply set it up and then let the money roll in. How easy! Currently, 50% of my earnings are from the ads I run on my site. Check them out over here.

Affiliate Marketing

I am a big fan of the concept of Affiliate Marketing. I recommend many ingredients and equipment in every blog post to make your life easier. So, I am already recommending products, and by signing up for affiliate programs, I can earn a little commission with zero impact on my audience. I say it’s an absolute win-win. I have signed up for the Amazon affiliate program, and you can do that over here.

Here are three other popular ways to earn money via your blog and these are active:

User Generated Content

This is when you reach out to brands to create content for them. Don’t let the number of Instagram followers hold you back. Reach out to as many brands as possible; most will reject you, but few will accept you.

Selling digital products

This is a phenomenal source of making money. If you have a blog, you will love the process of creation. Once you fall in love with creating, there is no turning back. Digital products are easy to create; if you can provide value to your audience, they will surely buy. Also important to note that digital products are highly scalable, there is no limit to how much you can make using them.

Establish a schedule

Now that your blog is up and running, all you have to do is establish a schedule that works for you. I dedicate 1.5 to 2 hours to my blog every day. It’s a little time that you have to invest every day to see long-term results. In case you feel that you are all over the place, you can grab this little weekly blog plan that takes care of all aspects of the blog that you should be focusing on. I have created checklists for every day, along with the time that it will take. Move it around so that you can fit it into your schedule.

Lastly, have fun; you will eventually grow, and it becomes easier over time. Love the process of setting it all up, and once you are done, you will be so proud of yourself. If you have any questions, drop it down in the comments or reach out to me on Instagram.

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Thank You.

How to start a food blog and make money