How to Start A Food Blog And Make It Successful In 2024 [Working]

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.

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.

1. 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.

2. 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..

3. 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 2024 [Step by Step Guide]

how to start a food blog in 2024

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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).

Pro Tip: If you are confused about choosing a reliable hosting that is also affordable, we highly recommend you to check out Hostinger. They are in the hosting business for over a decade and serving millions of satisfied customers including me.

Another reason to choose Hostinger is they give you free domain for 1 year.


Step 3: Install WordPress

Most beginners find it really hard to install WordPress. But when you sign up for Hostinger and get your domain name (for free), 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 Hostinger hosting

Once you click on the above link, you will be taken to Hostinger hosting home page where you need to click on the “Claim Deal” button to continue. The hosting will be just $2.69 per month if you use our exclusive link.

Here’s what it looks like;

hostinger bp deal

Step 2: Choose the plan

Once you click on the Claim Deal button, you’ll be taken to the web hosting package where the coupon is automatically applied.

web hosting plan hostinger

As you can see, Hostinger offers a free domain for 1 year so enter any domain name that you want.

Step 3: Finish the payment

hostinger deal

As you can see, you’ll get the 4 year hosting for just $129. Finish the payment process and once you’re done with it, log into your Hostinger account to install WordPress. That’s it!


Step 4: Get a gorgeous looking theme

So congrats! By now, you’ve successfully installed WordPress on Hostinger. 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 14 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.

semrush suggestions example

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.

biryani keywords

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.

serp semrush

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:


FAQs

How do I start a food blog?

It does not matter what niche you want to start a blog. All you need a registered domain and web hosting. After that, you can choose an appropriate theme and start blogging.

How much do food bloggers earn in India?

There is no limit. If you have a passion for something and follow the right blogging approach, you can start earning $1000 in a small time frame.

How do food bloggers get paid?

There are so many ways to monetize a food blog. For me, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways. Apart from that, you can go with Google AdSense or alternatives, sell your own products, YouTube channel, sponsored posts, consultation, etc.

How do I start a food blog for free?

You can take advantage of free platforms like Blogger, Tumblr, and even WordPress.

How do I start a food blog on Instagram?

You can start a micro food blog on Instagram by selecting a niche. Start with making an attention-grabbing profile followed by unique and engaging content consistently and promotions.

How do Instagram food bloggers make money?

Start focussing on making a follower base. Once you reach a certain level let’s say 5000 you can get started collaborating with the local brands as well the big brands. Moreover, you can promote affiliate products and your products.


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, use the right hosting and knowing your monetization strategy as they are the 3 important factors that can make or break your blog’s success.

Let us know if you have any questions before making your own food blog, we’d be glad to respond to your comments.

About Author
Anil Agarwal is the Founder of Bloggerspassion. He is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable blogs for over a decade Now. He has been featured in Over 100 Publications including Forbes, The HuffPost, HubSpot, Shopify, Semrush, Kinsta, Bluehost, Hostinger and G2.com etc. Know more about Anil Agarwal from here.

Reader Comments (26)

  1. The successful story of food blogging is something that we all need to understand. Thanks for the information on this topic. Subscribed your blog.

    Reply
  2. HI

    I will tell one thing. One of my friend’s running food business in india. He want to start a food blog. Actually your article i share with my friend. So he can take advantage.

    He start working on it… Slowly Slowly

    Reply
  3. Hey,

    What a guide, I must say, your guides are awesome and I enjoy reading them. You write to the point and with clear and eye-catchy UI, your blog looks great.

    By the way, is SEMrush better than Ahrefs? any solid study for this?

    Thanks!

    Reply
  4. Hello, This very usefull and helpfull for everyone who needs to begins and acquire from a food blog.The way you clarify it bit by bit is astonishing and nice.I as of late beginning my food blog too.It is very helpfull for me and the progression you clarify about Analyze your opposition and Keyword Research is truely and actually quite significant.

    Reply
  5. Hey, This very usefull and helpfull for every single person who wants to starts and earn from a food blog.The way you explain it step by step is very amazing and nice.I recently start my food blog too.It is very helpfull for me and the step you explain about Analyse your competition and Keyword Research is truely & really very important.
    At last Thank you so much.

    Reply
  6. Can we buy domain name through go Daddy? As I’m planning to start a food blog, can I link it to google Adsense? What will be the total investment be done on a food blog? Including WordPress subscription as well as domain name.

    Reply
    • Yes, you can absolutely buy a domain from GoDaddy and then connect it to whatever the web host you want such as Bluehost, SiteGround, HostGator and so on. And yes, you can link to Adsense (if you’ve their account in place). If you are looking to host your blog on a good web host which is affordable, go for Bluehost as it also provides free domain (so you don’t need to purchase domain separately from GoDaddy) and their hosting costs you around $100 (not more than 6 to 7K in rupees) for one year.

      Reply
  7. I am active blogger since 2016, and currently writing about Travel. something which I missing is reliable hosting, can you recommend me some best hosting plans?

    Reply
  8. Hi This is really very useful for me as I have started food photography and want to start a food blog. can you please suggest me whether I should go for Ah ref Tool or for Semrush for keyword search?
    Thank you for sharing Such a useful information.

    Reply
  9. Incredible Post for new blogger. I am influencing a nourishment to blog on blogger. I didn’t locate any appropriate layouts. Is wordpress superior to blogger??

    Reply
  10. Hi there,
    Nice post. I am trying to make a food blog.Should I do keyword research? Is it important? because heard about Nisha Madulika.

    Reply
  11. Hi, @Anil
    This is really nice post.. Thanks for Guide To Start A Food Blog.. I think it’s very helpful for anyone…

    Regards
    Raj Sharma

    Reply
  12. Make money anywhere ain’t easy it requires dedication and patience. After 2 months of travel blogging i finally broke into the $200 mark last month ( i have been blogging on another niche topic since 10months which gave me the experience and taught lot of things) . Was a lucky streak though, this month is halfgone and i am still on $50.
    I feel the key lies in publishing good quality articles and not overdoing things from the start. One should start at a pace at which they can commit to even if it is 2 quality posts a month and hold onto to it for long. I am still an amateur writer so i limit my articles to 600 words which is good enough to communicate the story my readers.
    I do share my articles a lot on social media and that keeps the traffic coming. Lets see where this approach takes me to.

    Reply
  13. Great Post for new blogger. I am making a food blog on blogger. i didn’t find any suitable templates. Is wordpress better than blogger??

    Reply
  14. Hi there,

    Nice post. I am trying to make a blog on food.Should i do keyword research? Is it important?

    Reply
  15. Hey Author

    I am not interest in making Food blogging but i am interested in blogging and making money. Suggest how should I pick topic for blog. I am very much interested in movies. Should I try for blog of Movies?

    Avantika
    Delhi

    Reply
  16. Great post, Anil. I am also trying to make a blog on food. That’s valuable information for me.
    Yes, I agree with you that keyword research is the most important step to find a exact keyword which can boost your blog ranking.

    Regards
    Anjali

    Reply
  17. very helpful post. some tips will help me to increase my traffic. i have one question i am using wordpress seo by youst in my blog. this plugin only need focus keyword?
    will i have to serach by semrush tool or focus on content. according to youst “now googld didnt use meta keywords” so which type of keywords we need to increase traffic.

    Reply

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