Are you a lover of food? Do you like cooking so much? Is the kitchen is your favorite place in the home, and you like penning down something, but you don’t have an idea on what to do with all these? Why not start a food blog today.
There are several ways to make extra income, blogging is one of them, but when you now have a flair for cooking, you can narrow your blogging down into food blogging.
If you are a good writer, I promise you that a considerable amount of money is waiting for you.
There are good numbers of food bloggers in the world. Some of them are Dana Shultz, the author of Minimalist Baker’s Everyday, Elise Bauer of Simply Recipe, and Ella Woodward who writes for Deliciously Ella.
Also, there is Deb Perelman owner of Smitten Kitchen, Ree Drummond, and Ed Levine, who happens to be the author of Serious Eat, among others. There are many food blogs, and yours can also be a part of them.
Confused about how to start a food blog that will make it to the top pages on the internet? Don’t be, as starting a food blog is not that cumbersome when you have the necessary skills and information.
Before Starting a Food Blog
Blogging can be overwhelming and intimidating; even me, as of 2017, I knew nothing about blogging.
However, with the help of a guide like the one I’m about to give below, I cannot only start a blog but also provide a good tutorial on it.
It is currently one of the hottest money-making machines we have around. A good number of people want to go into blogging, but they don’t know how to. Firstly, you need to decide on your area of specialization.
When choosing an area of focus, it has to be something you have passion for.
Since blogging is about sharing your personal experience with something, it has to be something that interests you so much because your audience wants to read what you are doing and not what you read.
Since food blogging is your choice, let’s now move on to how to start a food blog. Starting a food blog as a beginner can be stressful, especially when you have no background information on blogging.
Although, you need to know that having a blog with hundreds of your food recipes is not enough until you start earning good money from it.
So, if you want to make money from a food blog or you want to start a cooking blog, this post will do the magic for you.
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Why Should You Go Into Blogging
There are several reasons why you should venture into blogging, and some of them are:
Blogging is a Passive Income
Just like every other type of blogging, food blogging is a form of passive income. With a nice post, you will keep getting money in as much as people are still reading it.
From the corner of your room, .you can make millions of dollars. Isn’t that interesting? Blogging is a very lucrative online business if you know how to do it right.
Blogging Gives Room for Personal and Business Recognition
The same way lifestyle blogs and health blogs give personal and business recognition, food blogs also do. A successful blog will make you prominent and accessible within your field even in the blogging world generally.
So if you run a successful food blog not only will your name be popular but your business as well will be popular.
In a case where you sell a condiment with the food blog, you run, and it is part of your ingredients, such seasoning will be famous among people into food blogging as well as your readers.
So if you want to sell yourself as well as your business to the world, why not try blogging.
Blogging Projects Experience
Show me a better way to share an experience if not through blogging. It gives room for sharing as much experience you have to your readers. It projects the voice of a blogger making it more visible.
If you have new food recipes and you don’t know how to inform people about it, then blogging gives you that voice. With blogs, you can share your experience through text, sounds, and now videos as well.
So if you are so much interested in sharing an idea, blogging is a perfect way out.
Blogging Builds a Community
This is a beautiful way to connect with thousands of people that you may never meet. Blogs are communities due to their interactive forms. You speak to the people with your text and videos while they also share their thoughts through comments.
Blogging is an excellent platform for teaching your readers, and you can as well learn from them through their comments.
For you that food blogging is your choice, you get to teach people about different recipes you have tried out, and they can also educate you through their comments on their owns too.
So if you want to sell yourself by sharing experience, teaching and also learning yet you get to make good money, then Blogging is a must for you.
How To Start a Food Blog
When starting a personal food blog, the following are the steps to be taken:
Get a Name For Your Blog and Also Buy a Matching Domain Name
The journey of every blog starts with choosing a name. The name of your blog should depict what the blog is all about so, it should be descriptive enough for the readers to guess what it is about from the name.
The name does not have to entail cooking, words like food, recipes and eat can just reflect in the name.
After deciding on the name, you can now go-ahead for a domain name. It is preferable for the domain name to end with .com. In the domain name, there cannot be any space or punctuation in the domain name other than a dash.
After choosing the domain name, what you need to do next is to check if it is available or not. If it’s not available, you will need to try out other names, re-arrange the previous one or change from .com to .org or .net.
However, you should note that your domain name should be short, easy to spell and memorable.
Get Your Blog Online
After concluding and checking out the domain name, the next thing to do is to get the blog online. This cannot be possible without a blogging host and software. These two now come together as one.
The web host helps in storing all files for your blog and make it accessible to readers anytime your domain name is punched on the internet.
The best web host for beginners is the Bluehost. It is the best as it’s reliable, affordable, easy to set up, fast, and offers 24hours support. Click here to start with Bluehost for as low as $2.95.
After 30 days of using this plan and you are not satisfied, you can cancel and this gives you access to a full refund.
How to Use Bluehost For Food Blogging
Firstly, when using this host, you need to pick a plan and as a beginner, the best plan for you to pick is the basic plan, which goes for $2.95 monthly.
Secondly, you will need to choose your term. As a beginner that you are, a year term is okay. So, to get the domain name free for a year, you will need to pay for a full year.
The last thing to be done here is to choose your add-on. For me, the only add-on I will choose here is Domain Privacy Protection which keeps your personal information away from the public.
Install WordPress
After doing that, the next thing is to install WordPress. With Bluehost, the installation of WordPress won’t be difficult. Here is how to install WordPress on BlueHost.
After installing WordPress, go to settings, then permalink settings page and change your permalink structure to post name and hit save. Then WordPress is good to go. The next is to beautify the WordPress.
Install a WordPress Theme
It’s getting interesting already although technical as well. The theme determines the feel and looks of your blog so when choosing a theme you need to be very careful.
There are things to look out for in a WordPress theme and they are:
Responsiveness: The theme you want to install should give an optimal view to your readers. They should be able to view without zooming in or out when using any device.
Design: The theme should be designed in a way that suits your aesthetic and offers the features you prefer.
Optimization: when building a theme, make sure the person building knows what he is doing because a well-designed theme will rank higher than a poorly designed one.
User-Friendly: Go for a theme that is easy and understandable. So when there is a need to edit a few things there will be no reason to edit codes.
At the start, you can begin with a free theme but as time goes by, save up to get a premium theme from a good provider. Here is how to install a WordPress theme.
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Set Up Google Tools
After setting up the WordPress theme, the next thing to do is to set up google tools. Firstly, you need to set up a google account and create an email address for your blog.
After creating the account, log in and set up the following tools.
Feedburner: this makes visitors subscribe to your posts by RSS or email and also track the numbers of subscribers on the blog.
Google Analytics: This tool is for monitoring traffic on your blog. Ensure you install the tracking code in your Yoast SEO plugin settings for proper monitoring.
Google Search Console: This tool will help in keeping your blog up and running.
Install WordPress Plugins
There are some plugins that have amazing features but they don’t come automatically with the theme. although there are some plugins for food blogs.
Below is the way to install a WordPress plugin.
Go to the WordPress dashboard, look for the sidebar for “Plugins.” Hover over “Plugins” and click on the “Add New” option.
After that, look for the “Search Plugins” field and search for one of the plugins by name. Whenever you find it, click “Install Now”, then, configure the plugin settings.
Begin to Blog
Finally, you can now load your recipes for people to see.
Tips for Designing a User-friendly Blog
Now that you have the full knowledge on how to create and start a food blog, here are some tips to look out for when designing a user-friendly blog.
Encourage Following
Whenever you are designing a blog, make sure it gives room for followers. Place prominent links to your RSS feed, social media on every page, and email subscription option.
Clear Navigation
Keep your blog as neat as possible so that there will be no room for any kind of confusion. An uncluttered blog will encourage visitors to keep coming.
Suggest Sharing
When designing your blog, ensure the blog Provide social media sharing buttons at the end of each post. So it can be shared on different media thereby increasing traffic.
Commenting
For any blog, you want to design ensure it doesn’t require CAPTCHAs or ask visitors to log in first as it freaks people out and it can reduce the number of visitors.
Conclusion
Food blogging is an interesting thing to do when there are great interest and passion. Now that you know how to start a food blog, go ahead and begin to make money.
You can drop a comment and also refer this post to your friends who have an interest in blogging. Hope you find this post very useful.
