Food blogging industry is growing rapidly. So if you’re looking to start a food blog, this is the RIGHT time. Do you want to know how to start a successful food blog? You’re in the right place.
Anyone can start a food blog but starting a successful food blog that makes money is the REAL deal.
Do you want to launch a food blog but don’t know how to get started? This detailed article is exclusively for you.
How to Start A Food Blog In India
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.
- Always use descriptive words while coming up with a domain name. It’s not only easy to tell your visitors what your site is all about but often you will get the domain name.
- If you come up with a great domain name but if it’s not available, add affixes (For instance, Foodies.com is a good choice if it’s not available, you can try adding IndianFoodies.com, AsianFoodies.com etc. We hope you got the idea).
- Use your own name as your domain name if nothing works.
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.
- Customer reviews/reputation: Don’t choose a web hosting that’s launched a year ago, chances are it’s hard to predict their reputation. Make sure to go for a hosting service that’s serving its customers for at least a decade.
- Technical support: You can’t ignore this thing especially if you are not a tech savvy or new to blogging world. If you somehow got into an issue related to hosting, you have to get customer friendly support staff who are available 24×7 on any given day.
- Control panel: If your web hosting service has a cPanel (control panel), you’re in lucky hands. It’s not only dead easy to create your WordPress blogs within minutes but you are going to get everything extra smooth (activities such as setting up email, creating FTP accounts etc).
Step 3: Install WordPress
Step 4: Get a gorgeous looking theme
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 create a successful food blog that makes money.
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.
- 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.
How to Make Money As A Food Blogger In India: Top 5 Ways
Quick note: We actually have written a detailed guide on making money from food blogs. So make sure to check it out if you want to learn more about how you can make money as a food blogger in India.
So how to become a food blogger in India to earn more? Here are top 5 ways to make money as a food blogger in India.
1. Promote affiliate products
Whether you know it or not, the blog you’re currently reading earns over $10K per month (read more from here). Most of that income comes from affiliate marketing. It’s the #1 way most food bloggers use to earn more money from their blogs. Find and analyse your competitor sites. Figure out what affiliate products they are promoting. Think about how you can smartly promote those products to make money from your blog.
2. Sell your own products
If you are looking to earn passive income from your food blog, start selling your own products.
Here are some ideas;
- You can sell recipes such as eBooks, recipe guides, video recipe tutorials
- You can create a membership site and offer “premium content”
- And the list goes on
3. Start and monetize a YouTube channel
YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine after Google. Every food blogger should consider creating a YouTube channel as soon as they launch their blog. Why? There are lots of people who use YouTube for searching food related recipes. So having a food related YouTube channel helps you attract more audience and it also helps you earn money from AdSense, sponsors and so on.
4. Use Google AdSense or its alternatives
AdSense is one of the widely used ad publishing platforms for most food bloggers. You need to attract a ton of search traffic if you want to earn decent income from AdSense.
If you’re finding it hard to get your AdSense account approved, you can try these top alternatives to Google AdSense and some of them have a huge potential.
5. Offer consulting
Once you see some success in running a food blog (after getting some traffic and earning from your blog), you can start offering consulting services to your audience. Most of them want help. So you can offer 1 on 1 coaching depending on your time and needs.
Also make sure read and analyse some successful food blogs in your niche as you’ll get even more ideas on how to become a food blogger and get paid in India.
