The idea of starting a food blog might appeal to you if you love to cook, would like to make money at home, and have the relevant skills to get started. Here’s a look at everything you need to start a food blog!
*This post may contain affiliate links to products I find useful when making this recipe. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*
When it comes to food blogging, I like to think that there are two very different kinds, so it’s important to know what you mean before you get started.
There are food bloggers who review restaurants and meals and talk about the foods that they love to eat.
Then there are the food bloggers, sometimes known as cooking bloggers or recipe bloggers who write and share their recipes.
Of course, there’s typically a bit of overlap. I think of myself as a recipe blogger, but I do the occasional review or try the occasional product for a brand, and I’m sure some reviewers share their recipes sometimes.
For this article, I’m talking about the writing recipes kind of food blogger. Because that’s what I am, and what I know most about.
About Me
I didn’t start with any intention of being a food blogger.
I started a mom blog in 2016 when my kids were little. Partly, because I was probably a bit bored and lonely on maternity leave, and deep down because I hoped to make money off it so that I could avoid going back to work.
My husband was a chef, and my son was about to start school, my daughter would be going to a childminder, so my work needed to be super flexible. Which isn’t easy.
I did end up leaving work, to become a freelance writer. It took years until my blog made any kind of regular income.
Mom blogging wasn’t for me. But I found that I loved sharing recipes. So, I rebranded and carried on.
I very much didn’t have a clue what I was doing and learned about SEO and things like that along the way.
I still wouldn’t say I’m an expert, and there’s always a lot to learn. But I have learned from my mistakes, and I do make a steady income as a food blogger so I’ve got lots of advice to share.
Can You Start a Food Blog for Free?
Yes.
I actually started my first blog for free, using the free version of WordPress and a free theme.
Starting a free blog is a great idea if you want a hobby blog, or you want to test the water, to see if you enjoy blogging.
But to run a profitable food blog, you need to go self-hosted, which means paying for web hosting and a domain name, at the very least.
You can still manage with a free theme, and you certainly don’t need to spend a fortune on expensive plugins and subscriptions. When I first started making money, I was probably spending £8 a year on my domain name and around £12 a month on hosting.
Even now, my theme is fairly cheap, and I only pay for a premium image optimisation plugin. Off-site, I also pay for a keyword research tool, but it’s the £12 a month one, Keysearch (affiliate link), not the £150 a month one, and Lightroom to edit photos.
So I’d say you can start a hobby blog for free and while a professional blog will have some expenses, it doesn’t have to cost the earth.
Everything You Need to Start a Food Blog
So what exactly do you need to start a profitable cooking blog in 2022? Let’s take a look!
A Platform
I use WordPress and totally recommend it. Things like Blogger are popular too, but WordPress is easy to use, and ideal if you are looking to grow your blog, partner with an advertising provider and work with brands.
A Niche
You might be thinking “well recipes are my niche” but think of all of the different options? You can certainly do a bit of everything, but it’s a good idea to have a specific niche that you focus on and can become known for.
Things like vegan versions of old favourites, gluten-free food, no-bake puddings, cooking with kids and cooking for couples or singles are great.
Having a niche at the start can help you to plan content, pick a domain name and design your branding. It will also help you to work out who your target readers are, which makes it easier to market to and write for them.
But if you aren’t sure, it’s ok for this to happen naturally.
I started with “family food” but over time, certain categories have been more popular than others, so I’ve focused on them more.
A Domain Name
First, you need to choose a name.
You can change this later, but it’s a bit of a pain, so I recommend thinking about it carefully. I also recommend using a tool to see if the brand name that you want, or a variation of it, is available before you get your heart set on a name for your blog, only to find out that someone already has it.
I buy my domain names from my host, and it’s super easy to check to see if they are available.
It’s a good idea if your domain name reflects your niche, in this case, food, and recipes. Just so people can easily see what you do. But I find most of my readers come for a recipe without giving my name any consideration. Not having a particularly relevant brand name has never hurt me.
Hosting
Good hosting is essential, and it’s worth getting it right as soon as you start your food blog, or as soon as you go self-hosted.
I didn’t.
I was with a host for a few years, and it was awful. My site would go down all of the time, and they’d fob me off with the worst excuses. But I didn’t get much traffic at the time, so it didn’t matter.
I swapped to Lyrical Host when I started to take my blog more seriously. My site hasn’t been down once since, and their tech support is a huge help because my knowledge of that side of things is very limited.
If you want to make money from a cooking blog, you need good hosting. You need to know that your blog isn’t going to crash on a big traffic day.
I highly recommend Lyrical for hosting, and you can get 10% off using my affiliate code – DonnaD10.
A Theme
I use GeneratePress Premium (affiliate link) which I absolutely love. I use it on four different sites, all for one price, the support is fantastic and there’s so much that you can customise without needing to know code.
GeneratePress is also super-fast, which is a must if you are looking to grow traffic and build a business.
There is a free version of GeneratePress, which is great. I just like all of the extra options that you get from the premium version, and it’s still significantly cheaper than many other options.
Google Services
You don’t need Google services to run a blog. But if you want to grow your blog Google Search Console gives you tons of useful information, and Google Analytics is the best way to measure traffic.
Connecting to these services is super simple. You can find guides here and here.
WordPress Plugins
When it comes to plugins, I really think less is more. Whenever I see a plugin, I first ask myself if there are other ways to do it, and when I do install a plugin, I try to find one that does lots of things, instead of needing different plugins for lots of jobs.
I have 12 plugins. Keeping the number low is great for site speed.
I use GeneratePress Blocks, which lets me add more customisation to my site. Askimet, which is great for catching spam comments.
I use Yoast for SEO on one site, and Rankmath on another. Quite like both.
Then I use Wordfence for security. Then just a few for my ads and my theme.
As a food blogger, you’ll want a recipe card plugin. These are great for user experience but also for SEO. WordPress Recipe Maker is very popular. But I use Mediavine Create Cards. I just prefer it, and it’s free, whereas you have to pay for extra bits of WPRM.
You don’t need Jetpack. Most new bloggers get it because it does a lot and it’s easy. But it’s very big and slows your site down. There are other ways to do everything that you can do with Jetpack, and it’s easier to never have it than to replace it later.
Content
To start a blog, you need some posts.
As well as recipes, you’ll need things like:
- An about me page
- Privacy policy
- Categories – When it comes to these, keep things simple. You can use tags to break things up into ingredients, so just have categories for important distinctions. The most basic food way to explain is categories are “main” “starters” “desserts” and tags are “chicken” “beef” “cheesecake”. My categories are the main headings you see in my menu. Remember, you can optimise your category pages for SEO.
You might also want to think about your menu layout and any tags that you want to use.
Social Media Profiles
You might want to use your personal profiles, but it can be a good idea to separate your business.
I’m not huge on social media, but having profiles gives me places to promote recipes, the opportunities to work with brands, and a way to engage with and learn from other bloggers.
An Email Provider
I use Mailerlite. Mailchimp is also popular with new bloggers, but I could never quite figure it out. I find Mailerlite much easier to use.
Most of the time I send my subscribers an RSS feed. Which is just an automatic email of new posts. I do this once a month. Occasionally I’ll send a roundup. Like before Christmas I’ll send a list of posts using leftover turkey.
It’s a great way to build traffic using the content and followers that you’ve already got.
How Many Recipes Do You Need to Start a Food Blog?
Erm. One?
Some people will tell you that you need 10 posts, or more, to get started. But to be honest, you aren’t going to get much traffic to start with anyway, so I always go live straight away and populate my blogs as I go.
One well written, optimised post is all that you need to get started.
Top Tips for Starting a Food Blog in 2022
My tops tips for anyone starting a recipe blog in 2022 are:
- Just do it
- Get a good host and the right domain name, other things are easy to change later
- Learn about SEO from the start so that you don’t spend ages writing content that no one will ever read
- Think about what you want. If it’s a hobby, you aren’t going to want to commit yourself to it like you would if you wanted a career
- Join Facebook groups with other bloggers, and learn from them
- Write for your readers – not for yourself. Do some research to find recipes that are searched for, but haven’t been covered by a million other people.
- Google and Google Trends are great ways to find out what people are looking for, and what they need help with. It’s a great start if you don’t want to pay for keyword research tools
- It’s also a great idea to read other food blogs, preferably those that are top of the search engine results pages. Don’t copy, but do learn from their layouts, menus, and how they structure posts.
- Practice photography – food blogs need photos. I’m not great at this, but my photos are so much better now than they used to be. If your phone has a good camera, I’d start with that. I’ve got a Nikon and actually now take quite a few with my iPhone 12 camera
- Don’t expect to earn money fast
Blogging is great, but there’s a lot to learn and understand. If you want a successful food blog, you should expect it to take a lot of time and hard work.
