How can you earn money with a food blog?
Some of you out there may have a food blog that you’ve created because you love cooking and want to share your passion with other people. If that’s the case, maybe you’ve also asked yourselves if you could earn money thanks to it. In which case, I’m about to make your wishes come true and tell you exactly how you can use your blog to make money from your passion! Isn’t that neat?
Before we start though, I’ll just say that you shouldn’t expect to make massive amounts of money from day 1. Building your online presence takes time, and rushing things will bring nothing good. So take your time, think your actions through, and let’s get on with it!
Put advertisements on your blog
The easiest way to monetise your blog is to incorporate advertisements. To do so, you can directly contact the brands you’re interested in. For this to work though, it’s recommended to already have adverts on your blog. And Google Adsense is the perfect tool to do it!
Google Adsense offers many possibilities, such as direct ads, integrated search bars… With those, you are paid by the click (if the visitor of your website clicks on a direct ad, or clicks on an ad through the search bar). Obviously, it’s better if the ads are on the same subject as your blog, so for a cooking blog you could try and get ads for cookery books, kitchen utensils, etc.
Adsense also offers a wide range of customisations, meaning you’ll be able to have control on what the ads look like so they are not too intrusive and fit in well with your blog’s theme (colour scheme, font…)
However, it’s worth mentioning that in order to earn an acceptable amount of money with Adsense, you’ll need thousands of visitors a day. Suffice to say that while Adsense is the easiest way to monetise your blog, you can’t completely rely on it (unless your blog is already pretty well-known).
Don’t worry though, the rest of this article will guide you through what you can do on top of that to make more money!
Sell services and products
With a food blog, it’s pretty easy to go from a simple blog to a small business. There is a plethora of services you can develop!
You can sell training courses, either by pre-recording videos and creating a subscription so visitors can gain access to them, or by offering one-to-one sessions (on video call or in person!)
The choice of the subject is yours to decide: courses to train people on a particular technique, or with a special ingredient, themed meals, etc. You could also do a group activity where you and several clients are on a video call and you cook together (for example during quarantine in France, a TV program was created where 2 chefs cooked while on video calls with people, who cooked the same dish as them).
You can also offer to sell your services for a special event. For example, if your blog mainly focuses on baking, you can start a small business where you bake cakes for children’s birthdays. Or, if you’re not intimidated by big projects, you could offer to do a catering service for a large party, or even weddings.
You could also, if you wanted, write a book that contains your tips and favourite recipes, and sell it as an eBook (or a PDF) on your blog. More ideas on: https://www.lesexpertsdelaprudence.fr/ .
Get partnerships and affiliations
You can also seek out partnerships with websites and brands. Just like Youtubers can have affiliate links and earn money when clients buy something on a website using their link (for example, beauty/makeup youtubers sometimes have affiliate links with makeup brands), so can you!
Partnerships can also involve a discount code where you get a commission when customers use the code on for their orders.
You could seek out partnerships with Amazon, online libraries, kitchen utensils shops, etc.
Publish a cookery book
As I’ve already mentioned the possibility of creating an eBook and selling it on your blog, in this section I’ll talk about publishing a book with a publishing house.
Editors nowadays use the internet to sniff out new talents. For example, some YA books were originally published on platforms like Wattpad.
Well, who’s to say that the same thing couldn’t happen to you? Of course, your blog would need enough visitors to come up in the search so editors could find it, so it’s unlikely it will happen for a new blog.
But it definitely is a possibility! Let’s say an editor finds your blog and is interested in you. What next? There are 2 main options here:
– Either the editor already has a cookery book idea they want to publish, and they contact you because they think you’ll be a good fit to write it
– Or they like your style but have no idea as of now, and maybe will work with you to develop an idea (the 1st option remains the more likely)
If publishing your own cookery book is something you want, you can also directly contact publishing houses if you have a cookery book idea, or a manuscript already written. There’s no guarantee it will work, but trying doesn’t hurt!
Write for other people
Just because you have your own food blog doesn’t mean you can’t write for other people too! As one of my Creative Writing lecturers used to say ‘writing improves all writing,’ which means that by doing this, you will also increase the quality of the articles you publish on your own blog, while making more money!
And you could maybe get a partnership with the people you write for, where you promote each other on your own blogs! That way it becomes beneficial for everyone.
Writing articles for other people can also help you gain new insights and develop new, unique, ideas for your blog, which could increase your visibility.
