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How To Create A Money-Making Food Blog In 2023
Many agree that good food is so loved. Sometimes, you love your food and spend most of your time browsing about food. That’s why starting a food blog would be such a great idea. If you are a food fan, maybe becoming a food blogger is your way.
- Choose a blog name that arouses your appetite
- Register for an account for hosting
- Make plans related to blog development
- Choose a suitable platform for your food blog
- Add the finishing touches and publish your first recipe
We have tons of blogging basics that we’ll cover and lots of great food too you can try. Immediately, this is how to create a food blog!
Step 1: Choose a Domain Name for Your Blog
Before talking about how to create a blog, you need to think about something that is the main element of a site: the name of the site itself. Most people will use the same domain name as their managed blog. Some websites are trying to rebrand, however, the process can be tricky, so it’s best to find a great name from scratch and you’ll be wearing it throughout your career as a food blogger.
In essence, choosing a name is something you should take seriously. There are also a few quick tips for determining your domain name and blog:
- Keep it short. The shorter your blog name, the easier it will be to remember. There are no written rules regarding this, but if you are having trouble creating a name, a simple name may be the best choice.
- Look for an available name with a .com domain. When it comes to top-level domains, .com is certainly the most popular TLD, so choosing a domain name that’s available with .com can be a great strategy. Granted, you have a wide variety of options, but choosing the popular option doesn’t hurt at all.
- The domain name must reflect the content of your blog. For example, you might not name your food blog ‘John’s Diary’ or ‘My Personal Blog’. If you choose a name like that, people may not be able to guess your blog’s content when you promote it.
Since you want to start your career as a food blogger creating a food blog, you may want to use the name of the food and the type of recipe you are going to share.
If you do a quick search, you’ll find lots of shorter, catchy names, like “Plated“, “Pinch of Yum” and “Pick Up the Fork“. Think of something as memorable as the name in the example above, which has both food and cooking elements.
In this step, we recommend that you create a list of five to ten blog name options that you want. Then, check if the name you want is available, using your favourite hosting domain checker or registrar:
After you find a suitable and available domain, all you have to do next is register the domain. To register a domain name, you will need to purchase a one-year plan and provide some personal data. After the subscription period expires, you can renew it.
Step 2: Register a Hosting Account
Now, you have both the name and the domain for your food blog. The next step is to choose a hosting package, which will become the ‘home’ for your website and content.
If you are not familiar with the concept of web hosting, this discussion might be a little tiring. In fact, understanding the concept of web hosting is not as difficult as you think.
The first thing you should do is find a trusted web hosting service. After that, first look at the hosting packages offered. For example, there are several common package options:
- Shared hosting. With this package, you will be sharing the server with other people. This package is the cheapest, but reliable enough for beginner food bloggers.
- Business hosting. This package is like the sports car hosting world. You will get your own resources and take advantage of cloud computing capabilities. Business hosting provides the best performance as well as flexible customization. There are goods, of course, there are prices. This package is usually the most expensive.
- Virtual Private Server (VPS). With a VPS, you will get your own virtual computer, even if it is located the same as the physical server other customers are using. The difference is, you can get rooted access and your own resources. However, managing a VPS server requires technical expertise.
If you are not familiar with the world of websites, shared hosting can be the right choice. In fact, if you don’t have anything so urgent that it requires more advanced action, we’d recommend using shared hosting. Nor are we lying when we claim that a shared hosting plan is the cheapest:
With Siteground, you can access great shared hosting plans. This package is also more than enough for those of you who are starting to develop a blog to get traffic of more than thousands of visitors per month.
In addition, you can get 24/7 customer service support and a one-click installer for your blog without having to add a certain fee. You can also upgrade your plan to a more up-to-date one as your blog grows. That way, you will save a lot of money while blogging.
Step 3: Create a Plan for Your Food Blog Growth
So far, we’ve covered the foundation of your blog. Now, we’re going to go into the specifics of how to create a food blog.
However, before going online to your blog, there are several questions you should answer, such as:
- What type of content would you like to publish?
- How often will you publish the content?
- Will you make the entire content of your own, or use force to outsource? If so, how much money will you spend?
- Are you looking to monetize your food blog? If so, how do you monetize the blog?
Let’s start by addressing the first question. For example, maybe you want to review a restaurant, or share a new recipe, take photos of each step of the recipe and share it with everyone. You can also focus on reviewing the latest culinary products.
Regardless of the type of blog you choose, you have to make sure that the topic you choose is indeed something you are interested in. If not, then you will feel tired very quickly, and find it difficult to motivate yourself to continue the blog that has been created.
After determining the type of food blog, you need to create a blogging schedule that covers at least your first month. For starters, we recommend posting one to two posts per week.
Many people tried to write dozens of posts when they started their blogging careers. If you can do that, more power will be for you. However, it’s important to understand that it takes time for new blogs to gain traction. Your goal is to get through the first few months with full enthusiasm. That way, when real traffic starts coming your way, you can scale your food blog even further to meet the demand.
To do this, you will need to outsource or pay for freelancers. For example, suppose you use freelance writers to write on your blog occasionally.
However, food blogs are quite interesting, as they often require hands-on experience. Because of this, finding freelancers who can do hands-on experiments can be difficult, although you may.
Ultimately, you need a plan to monetize your blog if you want to generate income from your hobby. As a food blogger, you have several options. For example, you could use an affiliate link for a kitchen appliance product to earn a small commission when someone uses your link to shop.
You can also open an advertisement service for a restaurant in your area, or create an online cooking class for a fee. All of them are options that can be selected, so we recommend that you explore and study each of these options and choose which one is the most suitable for you.
Step 4: Choose Your Blogging Platform
Perhaps, the most important step in learning how to create a food blog is determining how you create a website. There are several ways you can choose from in this step. For example, you have an excess budget, so you choose to pay people to build your website. However, you can also create a website on your own, especially if you have web development experience or skills.
Also, if you don’t have these skills, you can still create your own website using a Content Management System (CMS), which makes the whole process of building your website easier. As the name suggests, a CMS is a platform that allows you to publish and manage many different types of content. When it comes to CMS blogging, these platforms typically include functionality for organizing your posts, setting up individual pages, managing users, and more. Although there are many options you can choose from. So let’s have a look at a quick review of three of the best alternative CMS platforms.
On the first list, we will recommend WordPress. This CMS is the most popular CMS for blogging platforms. WordPress is easy to use for beginners, but also flexible for complex websites. A dynamic community is built around a CMS, and you can customize your site using themes and plugins (of which there are thousands).
Next up is Joomla!, which is not as beginner-friendly as WordPress, but still works. Joomla! Very good at managing various types of content, which means Joomla! It is suitable for those of you who don’t just want a blog. The platform is easy enough to customize, but not as easy as WordPress.
Lastly, there is Drupal. Among the CMSs, Drupal has a reputation for being the hardest to pick up, as it is one of the more advanced solutions. However, these efforts can pay off because the platform is so scalable and flexible. That might be overkill for a small food blog, but if your website gets bigger, you might still want to consider Drupal (since it’s also one of the safest CMSs).
Many bloggers recommend WordPress as a blogging platform. This is because WordPress strikes a balance between ease of use and richness of features, which is perfect for a food blog.
For that, install WordPress on the web hosting of your choice. Once you have WordPress installed, let’s move on to the next section to start your career as a food blogger.
Step 5: Make the Final Touches for Publishing Your First Recipe
You’re almost at the finish line of how to create a food blog tutorial. At this stage, you should have an active website and domain and a plan to develop your blog in the future.
This means it is time to make your first post, it could be a recipe or a review. However, before you run into the kitchen, there are still a few things you can do to enhance your blogging experience. For example, a matter of theme. While the default themes that WordPress provides aren’t bad, you might want something more specific:
You choose this niche then you are lucky. There are lots of amazing WordPress themes related to food that you can use. For free themes, you can see them in the WordPress.org theme repository. There is a search bar that can be used to search for specific types of themes. For example, as below what appears when we enter “food”:
Remember to check user reviews for any theme before you install it on your site. As a good rule of thumb, you should try to use themes rated 4 stars or higher. Also, make sure to check if the theme has received the latest updates as you don’t want to use an outdated one.
Furthermore, you may prefer to use a premium WordPress theme. Premium themes are not always better than other free themes, but usually premium themes tend to include some additional features that you might find useful. One of the best places to look for premium themes is the ThemeForest repository:
Once you’ve chosen a theme for your food blog, your next stop should look for plugins that can enhance your site and make your life easier. Since your blog is focused on food, you may want to take a look at recipe plugins, such as WP Ultimate Recipe:
These plugins allow you to style your blogging recipes like a pro, and they can give your blog a much more serious look. Another brilliant option, if you want to monetize your blog using affiliate links, is Amazon Product in a Post :
This plugin allows you to add links to Amazon products that you want to promote on your blog. If someone ends up using one of these links to buy a product, you will get a portion of the profits, if you are an Amazon affiliate.
In any case, you should take the time to look around and check out other interesting plugins related to food. It’s like sorting and choosing themes – look for the highest-rated and most current versions, to ensure that you only add high-quality plugins to your managed site.
When you’re done polishing up your blog, remember to work on your first recipe or review. Selesa! You just learned how to start a food blog!
Conclusion
Learning how to create a food blog is easier than you think, right? Once you have a domain and hosting, don’t forget to choose the best blogging platform and start writing your review or recipe. In a way, we are big fans of WordPress, as the platform is flexible enough for most types of sites, and this CMS is perfect for food blogs. In addition, the wide variety of plugins available can make it easier to write recipes or food blog reviews.
Do you have any questions about how to create a food blog? Let’s share in the comments!
