Starting a Food Blog – The Complete Guide

Are you a foodie? Do you enjoy taking pictures of succulent meals or your delicious concoctions and sharing them with your friends or on Instagram? Whatever your reason, starting a food blog is an excellent way to indulge your passion and build a following. Everyone has different tastes when it comes to food, and, in recent years, blogging about food has exploded in popularity. This has turned the food blog movement into an open forum for bloggers various food niches to share their recipes with a hungry world, and has also become a way to make money online.

Why Blog About Food?

If you love to cook, starting a food blog gives you an excuse to get creative in the kitchen. Each food blog brings something unique to the metaphorical table. Whatever you like to cook or bake, there’s someone out there searching for the perfect recipe. Start blogging about your area of expertise, and you’ll begin to build a following that can get you noticed and bring you unexpected perks – in fact, some food bloggers have turn their passion into a lucrative online business!

If you’re a person who enjoys a good meal, blogging about your discoveries is an excellent way to share your favorite food. Achieving and publishing beautiful photos of food is an art that foodies across the world have mastered to serve craving fans.

Creating Your Food Blog

There are essentially 3 steps to follow to create your food blog before you can start posting photos of your creations or findings:

• You need a domain name and a web hosting service to host your blog on the Internet;
• You need a to install WordPress; and
• You need a nice looking theme for your food blog.

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1. Choose a Domain for Your Food Blog

When it comes to a food blog, you’re free to use your imagination in choosing a suitable name and domain name. Some user their names, others a name that hints to the theme of their blogs (for example, a domain name with “cupcakes” in it probably means the blog will be about, well, you know, cupcakes), while some just invent something.

Our only recommendation is to go with a .com, or .ca if you’re targeting Canadians, domain name. Yes, some blogs have success with other domain name extensions, like .net or .org, etc., but .com is still the king in the Internet World.

You’ve chosen your domain name? Great, we’ll register it while getting a web host for your future blog.

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That’s it, you’re good to go. You can log into your new blog administration backend and start posting your food photos right now if you want. Although, young grasshopper, I suggest you find yourself a nice looking theme for your food site first. That’s the next step. Let’s make your precious pretty.

3. Install a Theme for Your Food Blog

The look of your food blog will be just as important as the photos you post. The theme should reflect you and your photography. The exact theme you choose will depend on your taste. Some general guidelines to help you in your quest: simple, clean, easy to navigate. While you should be very proud and like your food blog, remember that you’re also doing it for an audience; think of your readers.

Where do you get a nice food blog WordPress theme? There’s a lot of options on the web. We like to go for either of the following two:

1. StudioPress.com – StudioPress created a WordPress template called Genesis which allows to install beautiful themes. We use Genesis for this very site. For food bloggers, StudioPress offers two very pretty food blog themes: Foodie Pro Theme and Brunch Pro Theme. Your hardest choice will be to decide between the two. StudioPress offers very detailed guides to install and modify their themes. We highly recommend them.
2. ThemeForest.net – ThemeForest is a marketplace where designers, including WordPress theme designers sell their themes to blog creators like you and I. There’s a lot of choice, and you’re bound to find a great theme for your blog. The only drawback is that you have to pay for the theme
3. WordPress.org – You can go directly to the source. WordPress offers a lot of free themes in its repository. Use the search function to find one that catches your eye. The only drawback is that these themes, being free, are available to everyone, I mean everyone. So chances are the theme you choose here will also be used on many other websites.

Installing the theme afterwards is fairly simple. You just need to go in your administrative backend, choose Appearance and then Themes. Choose Add Themes and then Upload Theme. Then, it’s simply a matter of selecting the zip file of the theme you bought from StudioPress or ThemeForest, or downloaded from WordPress. Click Install Now and Activate the theme when the installation is complete. Voilà!

Monetizing Your Food Blog

It’s obviously possible to use your food blog as a source of additional income. If you’re willing to put in the hard work, it can become a full-bloom business. We won’t lie, making money with a blog, in any field, is not as easy as 1, 2, 3, but many people succeed through hard work, skill and patience. You’ll essentially need to master two things: (1) great content/photos, (2) good marketing.

As we’ve shown above, creating your food blog is now easier than ever with the technology available online. As you’ve seen, we recommend using WordPress to build your blog. As for the content and photos, this is one area where you’ll have to shine and put in the work. The good news? It’s all in your hands.

As for marketing, don’t be afraid of this scary word. With social media (i.e. Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the gang), it’s now much easier to build a loyal following.

Once you have these two systems in place, branch out from there and try one or more of these potential revenue streams to make money with your blog:

• Write posts about food related products you love with affiliate links to the products on Amazon;
• Publish and sell an e-book of your recipes;
• Display ads from AdSense or another advertising network;
• Connect with companies that will pay you to develop recipes that include their products;
• Sell ad space on your blog directly to advertisers.

If you gain a decent enough following, you may be able to use the money you earn to transition to being a full-time food blogger.

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Food Bloggers to Follow

When you see a food blog that’s doing everything right, it’s a pleasure to simply browse the site, read recipes and look at pictures. These blogs all have that professional quality thanks to the care and attention of talented bloggers behind them:

• The Kitchn – Recipes, cooking advice, kitchen tips, tutorials and more for the aspiring cook
• Two Peas and Their Pod – Family-friendly recipes with simple, fresh ingredients
• Pinch of Yum – A wife and husband duo who started blogging about food, and now make over $80,000 a month in revenue (yes, that’s right, 80k per month) through various means. They’ve worked hard for years, so don’t expect to achieve this level of success in a few weeks.

Whatever your goal is for your food blog, you’ll be joining a vast community of others who love food and cooking as much as you do. The company of these talented chefs brings inspiration to create and share your own recipes with a growing crowd of followers across the Internet.