Whether you know it or not, 9 out of 10 food bloggers don’t earn even a penny. There’s a HUGE competition out there. So if you want to succeed, you need to do most of the things right (starting from picking the right web host to building an audience, using the right monetization strategy, and so on). Do you want to launch a food blog but don’t know how to get started? This detailed article is exclusively for you. In this detailed tutorial, we’re going to show you;
Why you need to start your own food blog How to create a food blog in 5 easy steps 3 Things you need to know before creating a food blog
Quick note: This detailed tutorial on how to start a food blog in India is NOT only for Indians but everyone around the world can use this tutorial to start their own food blogs. You can also check our How to Start a Blog in India that Makes $10K a Month from here. So let’s jump into the details without much ado.
3 reasons to start your own food blog
Wanna start a food blog and make it successful? Still, have a doubt that is it good to take up this niche? Then here are the 3 reasons that you should go ahead with it. And you will surely embrace your decision of starting a blog.
- It supplements your income: Well, everyone starts blog to make income. But if you are not having fun you won’t stick with it and the money will never come. When you start to see some money is coming and can cover your car payment you will get even more excited.
- You can’t imagine to where it can take you: When you start a blog, you may find new friends through your blog, or develop your writing style so much that you feel like writing a book in a totally unrelated area. You can offer book deals and you just never know where this will take you or what sort of doors will open up to you..
- Enhances your own experience: When you blog about what you know, you can introspect and enhance your experience on your end. Your blog itself will serve as a documentary of where you started and how far you have come. You will become a better cook by showing others how to cook or instructing them on a subject you are passionate about.
How to Start A Food Blog In 2023 [Step by Step Guide]
Step 1: Choose a great blog name
Choosing a good domain name takes time. Unless you already jotted down few ideas, it’s really a daunting task to come up with a memorable name for your blog. Here are few characteristics of a great domain name.
It’s often short, simple, easy to spell and type It’s catchy, easy to pronounce and remember It’s unique and doesn’t contain numbers or hyphens
Examples: www.foodbloggers.com, www.howtostartfoodblog.com, www.foodies.com etc If you have no clue about choosing the perfect domain name for your blog, here are few amazing tips for you.
Step 2: Choose a reliable hosting for your blog
The biggest factor that could decide your blog’s success is the hosting you choose. Sounds strange, right? In fact, that’s true. If you choose a web host that is not reliable, you are not only giving your website visitors a bad user experience but Google is going to penalize your search results because of bad loading speed. Yes, your loading speed largely depends upon the hosting you choose. So make sure you select a reliable hosting that is not only fast but secured. Here are 3 important factors to consider before choosing a web hosting service for your food blogs. Pro Tip: If you are confused about choosing a reliable hosting that is also affordable, we highly recommend you to check out Bluehost. They are in the hosting business for over a decade and serving millions of satisfied customers including me. Another reason to choose Bluehost is they give you free domain for 1 year and they offer “anytime money back guarantee” offer.
Step 3: Install WordPress
Most beginners find it really hard to install WordPress. But when you sign up for Bluehost and get your domain name (for free from Bluehost), installing WordPress on it is just a breeze. It won’t take you more than 5 minutes! Step 1: Click on this exclusive link to install WordPress blog on Bluehost hosting Once you click on the above link, you will be taken to Bluehost hosting home page where you need to click on the “Get Started Now” button to continue. The hosting will be just $2.95 per month if you use our exclusive link (which usually costs you $8.99 per month) Here’s how it looks like; Step 2: Choose a domain name Fortunately, Bluehost offers a free domain for 1 year so enter any domain name that you want. Step 3: Enter your account information and click “next” Select any package. Please pick your account plan and here are the Bluehost discounted pricing details for you. If you’re on a budget, go with their Basic plan as it only costs $35.40 for 1 year. Have a look; And finish the remaining steps like creating a password, finishing your payment process. Once you’re done with it, log into your Bluehost account to install WordPress. That’s it!
Step 4: Get a gorgeous looking theme
So congrats! By now, you’ve successfully installed WordPress on Bluehost. Now is the time to get a great looking theme for your blog. There are so many themes available for WordPress blogs. WordPress itself has a “theme” directory that has literally thousands of free themes. But here’s the thing: “don’t use a free theme” They don’t offer you anything from customer support to frequent updates and they often fail to give you search engine and mobile friendly functionalities. There are multiple theme frameworks that give you search engine friendly and mobile responsive themes that include Genesis, Thesis, Elegant themes etc. If you are on a budget but still want full access to a handful of themes, we recommend you to try Elegant themes. They offer you 87 stunning WordPress themes at just $80. Want to know more about Elegant themes before considering them? Click here to read the review of Elegant themes.
Step 5: Start blogging
So that’s it. Once you installed an appealing theme on your WordPress blog, you are ready to go. Go to your WordPress dashboard, select Posts and start adding new posts to serve your audience. Here are few powerful tips to get the most out your blog posts.
Always write compelling headlines. Did you know that 8 out of 10 people decide whether or not to click on your posts by just reading your headlines? Try to come up with 3 to 5 headline ideas and choose the best one among them. We also recommend you to try Portent tool (free) that helps you easily find unlimited rocking headline ideas. Make sure to find keywords before even writing a word on your posts. More on this later in the same article (below on “finding keywords” section). Start connecting with other food bloggers. Make a list of all the good blogs in your niche, you can do this by Googling something like “food + top blogs”, “food + top forums” etc. Leave comments, write guest posts, tweet their stuff and email them frequently to grow your network.
3 Things to consider before creating a food blog
Want to know how to become a food blogger and get paid in India? Here are 3 things to remember if you want to learn about how to start a food blog that actually makes money.
1: Do you enjoy cooking?
If you don’t enjoy cooking or coming up with new recipe ideas, then it’s really hard to makes money from food blogging. Passion is the REAL key to food blog’s success. Make sure to get ready to spend more time on kitchen, try to com up with unique recipe ideas and narrow down your target audience (instead of serving everyone, write recipes for Asians, Indians, or any other specific region). That way you will attract more loyal audience and subscribers quickly. Pro tip: Forget about making money from your blogs for the first 6 to 8 months. Just focus on building loyal audience and subscribers around your blog. Then, analyse how other top blogs in your industry are monetizing their blogs. Repeat the same. You will succeed in making money from your blogs really quickly this way.
2: You will need a lot of time to promote
It feels horrible if no one notices/reads or appreciates your recipes, right? You need to spend a lot of time in networking with other food bloggers. Things like leaving comments on other blogs, write food recipes for others (to capture their audience), engaging with influencers on social media etc. This always takes too much time, so you need to set aside at least 2 hours a day in promoting your work. Otherwise, it’s almost impossible to build and grow your blog.
3: You need an email list
Did you know that 80% of top online marketers income come from their email list alone? Email list is the goldmine. If you start collecting emails from day 1, you will never regret your decision later. Try GetResponse for free (30 days) to grow your email list
Offer a freebie (like a video or an eBook on recipes) to grow your email list really fast. Use popup’s, you can try LeadPages or SumoMe. They work like a charm to grow your list. Engage with your email subscribers often. The more you add value to your list the more buyers you will get (when you promote some affiliate products). Treat your email subscribers as a family instead of “buyers”. It goes a long way.
Keyword research is the KEY to any successful food blog
First off, thanks for reading all the way through almost the end of the post. Here’s the tip to start a food blog that makes money: “the money you make is directly proportional to the traffic you get”. And not any random traffic, it must be search traffic. Getting more visitors from search engines is really hard especially in the beginning. So here’s the most effective tip you can implement to quickly grow your search engine traffic. Keyword research. Before you write even a word on your post, find keywords that are proven to drive more traffic. We’ll show you how can you do it. We personally use and highly recommend Semrush tool (you can also give a try to LongTailPro which costs you just $37/month) to find better keywords that help you increase your search traffic quickly. Quick tip: Click here to start your 30 days free trial with Semrush One of the biggest mistakes most beginners make is: they write posts without targeting any keywords. And they keep on writing posts for a few months to only realize later they are struggling to increase their website search traffic. How are you supposed to get more traffic from Google if you are not at all targeting the specific keywords that your target audience type on search results? This is the #1 reason why you should start using long tail keywords while creating content. If you are wondering how to do keyword research, here’s a detailed guide aimed at beginners to find profitable keywords in almost any niche. Make sure to check it out. And just for YOU, we’re going to give you simple analysis of keyword research for food blogs (I’m going to use Semrush for keyword research here). Step 1: Once you’ve logged into Semrush dashboard, you will find “Keyword Research” tab at the left side, enter any keyword of your choice. And make sure to select a database that suits your target audience (select Google India database if you are targeting to “Indians”). In our example, we’re entering the keyword “biryani recipe” and selecting Indian database. Step 2: Semrush not only gives you the overall monthly search volume for the keyword you enter, it also gives you the most relevant keywords you can target. Pick any of them and start using them on your blog posts to increase your search traffic. Step 3: Analyse your competition. It’s a waste of time to try to rank for highly popular keywords because they are already being targeted by TOP blogs. So make sure to choose the low competitive keywords so you can rank easily even if you have a new blog. In the above screenshot, Semrush is showing you the top search results for your desired keyword. Go and analyze all the top search results and figure out how they are ranking at the top. See, how good is Semrush? In 3 simple steps, you got a lot of keyword ideas that you could use to boost your overall search traffic. What Others are Reading:
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Final Thoughts
If you like this tutorial on creating a food blog that makes money from scratch, please share it with your friends so they can benefit. Creating a blog is although easy but making it successful is not as we said above. If you want to know how to become a food blogger in India, make sure to do proper keyword research, using the right hosting and knowing your monetization strategy as they are the 3 important factors that can make or break your blog’s success. So what are you waiting for? Start your blog today using Bluehost. You can also use my WordPress installation service which is free if you are afraid of screwing things up while installing WordPress on Bluehost. Note: Few of the links used in this tutorial are affiliate links. It means, we earn a small commission when you buy anything using those links without costing you anything extra. Let us know if you have any questions before making your own food blog, we’d be glad to respond to your comments.