How to start a successful food blog in 9 steps

You might be a café/restaurant owner or just someone who loves cooking at home for their loved ones like I do. You can create a great meal using the limited supplies you have in your kitchen, you’re not afraid to try new recipes and create your own, and even your friends and family come to you for food related questions… These are some of the reasons why you might want to start a food blog.

The way we look at it is, “if you love it, write about it!” If you’re a food-related business owner, a food blog can give you the chance to let your target audience know more about you and your business, as well as an exclusive look inside what you do. If you’re a home cook, food blogging will put you out there; you can meet other food enthusiasts and even attract the attention of food related brands and establishment and start making money off of your blog.

If you’re convinced you should become a food blogger, we’ve got a recipe you can tweak as you see fit.

How to start your food blog: 9 easy steps

Pick your focus
Give it a name
Choose your platform
Write your first post
Learn to take good photographs
SEO, SEO, SEO!
Set up an email list
Promote your blog
Monetize your blog

Now, let’s have a look at each step.

1. Pick your focus

Deciding on what you will focus on in your food blog is our very first step because this will also help you come up with a name, give you an idea of what kind of sections you need on your website, etc. Food, of course, is a very wide topic, and you need to pick your focus. Do you bake? Do you always try different kinds of pizzas? Do you only cook with organic ingredients? Or do you only cook gluten-free? Maybe you’ve mastered vegan recipes or maybe you can create a hundred different dishes from one kind of meat. Depending on what you like doing most, give your food blog a focus.

2. Give it a name

Naming a business or a personal blog can take up time and might be frustrating, but a strong name is very important. Make sure the name you pick is short, simple and easy to remember. Keep in mind that even if you expand or change and improve certain things in the future, the name will stay. Once you’ve picked the name, the next step is to purchase your domain name.

.com and .net are among the most popular, but there are also many new and exciting choices now. If you own a food related establishment, here are some alternative domain name extensions you can check out:

And if you’re a home cook looking to create your own food blog, here are some alternatives for you:

3. Choose your platform

Blogger and Tumblr are some of the choices that you might consider when it comes to choosing a platform for your food blog, but WordPress is the most popular choice for most blogs as well as websites. With many themes, plugins and add-ons to choose from, WordPress lets you customize your blog according to your needs and likes.

GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress solution makes it easy and simple for beginners and those with little-to-none technical knowledge. With it, you can easily and quickly get your food blog up and running. And what’s more, we take care of hosting setup and management for you so you can focus on your yummy posts.

4. Write your first post

You’ve got your domain name, you’ve got your hosting, and you’ve connected the two together… Now, it’s time to write your very first post on your food blog. This can be an announcement of your brand new blog, welcoming your visitors and telling them what they can expect from you. Make sure to let them know what your food blog is about (your focus topics), why they should keep coming back and what makes yours different from other similar blogs. Try and write the way you would speak to a friend; be sincere, be yourself.

5. Learn to take good photographs

Thanks to the latest technologies that blessed us with smart phones, you don’t need a professional camera or expensive gadgets to take good photos for your food blog. Don’t forget: it’s all about the light! Avoid overhead lights and using flash; take your photos under natural light. Don’t feel like you need to be stuck in your kitchen, do move around to find the best light source. Do experiment with different angles whether you move yourself or move items around in your setup. Lastly, make sure keep your setup clean and simple; if an item doesn’t add anything to the story, simply remove it from the frame.

6. SEO, SEO, SEO!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is what will help your food blog be found by people searching for topics you write about. In order to attract visitors to your blog and increase traffic, it is very important to think about keywords and focus on SEO. Here are 4 articles from our blog that can help you get started:

7. Set up an email list

Building an email list is an effective way of connecting with your audience. You can use it to let your audience know about new content on your food blog, remind them to return to your website. As your food blog becomes more established, you can run contests and competitions for your followers. To create emails that look great on any device, easily integrate email marketing to your food blog and track your success with smart campaign analytics, check out Email Marketing from GoDaddy.

8. Promote your blog

As you already know, the Internet is a large, crowded space. In order to get found, you must optimize for search engines, but when it comes to driving to your food blog, you can’t rely solely on SEO. Make sure you set up social media accounts for your food blog on platforms i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest and promote your posts on those accounts. If you want to give a kick to your promotion activities, check out The ultimate guide to Facebook Live for business and How to use YouTube for successful digital marketing.

9. Monetize your blog

When your promotion activities start paying off and you increase traffic, you can start monetizing your food blog. Some ways to do that are joining affiliate programs, adding Google AdSense to your blog, partnering up with brands to write sponsored posts. Here are some more tips on making money with your food blog:

Conclusion

This is a basic recipe that will help you start your food blog. As I’ve mentioned in the beginning, you can tweak it according to what you want to do and achieve with your blog. Before you start, make sure to do some research and check out the competition.