You launched a food blog. You’ve got a serious passion for food and cooking and you’ve heard about all the money you can make with this type of blogging. You decided to jump on the bandwagon to see how much coin you can earn. Good for you. That’s the right step to take. After all, each and every food blogger on the planet started off doing the same thing as you just did. Everyone started by taking the very first step. Now that you’ve got your website set up, you’ll need to post recipes and food related content regularly and after you’ve got some traffic, you’ll need to monetize your site. Yes, that’s what folks call “making money via a website.” The website will be “monetized.” So whenever you hear or read that word, that’s what people are referring to.
You Need Popularity to Become a Successful Food Blogger
I’d like to give you a word of warning before you delve into your blogging any further. Blogging is competitive. It’s not for the faint of heart. If you don’t plan on giving your all and posting very high quality posts at least three times a week and aggressively pushing those posts through your social media channels, you might want to find something else to do. A few years ago, you might have gotten away with creating an online journal of sorts of your cooking endeavors, all the while hoping to strike it rich, but those days are over. Today, food blogging is akin to becoming popular in high school. You need to have an attractive personality and a heck of a lot of friends. In the food blogging world, your attractive personality will grow your social media audience and will create a buzz about you. All your friends will translate into links pointing to your website. Websites like linking to other websites if they think it’ll make them look good. Trust me, the entire thing is extraordinarily shallow. No one ever said the internet was a fair place. To win, you’ll need to create a buzz and make friends. It’s that simple.
Takeaways:
- Food blogging is hyper competitive.
- Winners post to their blogs at least three times per week.
- Winners have huge social media followings and post through those channels.
- You need to be popular to win.
How Much Money Can You Make as a Food Blogger?
Back in 2015, I read through one of Lindsay at Pinch of Yum’s income reports. At that time, she was earning about $50,000 per month, give or take. Of course, she also had expenses, but still, that’s a lot of money. Most food bloggers, and bloggers in general, will never make a dime. That’s mostly because they quit blogging before they garner any traffic. Getting traffic to a website takes time and apparently that’s not something most people have. Or patience, for that matter. The question remains – how much can a food blogger make? The answer lies between nothing and millions per month. Again, most food bloggers never get what it takes to become successful. They then quit, but those who are hard working and clever can earn a fortune. You can almost guess how much someone is making just by looking at their Instagram following. For instance, you know Deliciously Ella, Minimalist Baker, and Smitten Kitchen, to name a few, are making quite a bit, as they’re Instagram followings are well over one million. How much are you currently earning on your own website? How much will you be earning in five years? That all depends on how hard you’d like to work.
According to ZipRecruiter, the national average yearly income for a food blogger is $73,199. They’ve also got a beautiful table that breaks down the average food blogger income by state, if you’d like to look at that. My advice would be to ignore these numbers and go for the millions per month. It’s like learning how to punch. You don’t learn to punch the wall. You learn how to punch through the wall.
Takeaways:
- Most people never earn a cent from food blogging.
- The most successful food bloggers earn millions of dollars per month.
- Big social media followings equal big incomes.
- The average a successful food blogger earns is $73,199 per year.
PS – If you’d like to see what kind of Instagram followers the best of the best have, check out my post that lists the top food bloggers on the internet today.
How to Make Money by Food Blogging
If you’re a food blogger, you’re likely interested in making money as you do it. Making money isn’t only inspirational and motivational, it also ensures you produce high quality work. Good work is rewarded while shoddy work is ignored.
In the next sections, I’ll list and discuss the ten most popular methods for monetizing your food blog. What I share will be true for most blogs and websites on the internet, but because you’re currently reading from a food and cooking related website and because the food industry is so far reaching and has such depth, we’ll stick to that niche.
One last thing: Below, I won’t tell you how to go about implementing any of these monetization options. My goal is to merely inform you that they exist and that they’re being used by top earners.
1. Display Ads
Once you begin receiving traffic to your website, the easiest method, by far, for monetizing it is to add display advertising. Most people who use the internet, but don’t own and operate websites, have no idea what advertising is or how it works. The most popular and easiest to implement display advertising source is Google AdSense. Basically, to add this type of advertising using this source, you’ll need to register for a Google account and then gain acceptance into the program. Once that’s completed, you’ll post a few lines of code to your site. That’s it. Of course, there are various advertising solutions offered by AdSense and some implementation is more involved than others, but to get started, it’s as simple as adding a line or two of code that’s generated by Google.
In order to gain acceptance into the AdSense program, you’ll need to demonstrate that your website is of the quality that Google allows their ads to show. You don’t need to exhibit any level of traffic, per se, but you will need to demonstrate that you’re not posting to a disallowed topic and that your website isn’t spam related. After all, Google needs to protect its advertisers.
As you grow, you’ll likely move to other display advertising solutions as well. Examples of these might be Mediavine or AdThrive (now Raptive). Companies like these are in contact with the largest brands out there and act as an intermediary between the company and your website. Ad placements are similar to that of AdSense, but with these types of solutions, you’ll need to demonstrate that your website meets a minimum traffic threshold. Most of these types of advertising alternatives include options such as text ad placements, image ads, as well as video advertising.
Effort: Very Easy
2. Direct Ad Sales
When you take advantage of an ad network, such as AdSense, Mediavine, or AdThrive to handle your website’s advertising, you pay a healthy percentage of your earnings to those companies. For smaller websites, it’s definitely beneficial to have an outside vendor handling the advertising. As a company grows, however, and earns millions in advertising revenue, direct ad sales becomes a contender. With direct ad sales, you would handle all the advertiser scouting, negotiations, creatives, commissions, etc… If you have people to do all that, then great. If you don’t, stick with the ad networks.
With direct sales, you’ll have complete control over how much you charge advertisers as well as which ads you specifically display on your website. It’s best to have a sales staff handling most of the involved tasks though, as those tasks can become overwhelming. Also, if you’d like to set up direct ads, you’ll need technology to handle the ad serving. If you run a WordPress website, you can run a plugin called Advanced Ads. There are also tons of other ad serving software solutions available, so search around for what suits you.
Effort: Difficult
3. Affiliate Marketing
You’ve seen affiliate ads all over the place. The internet is full of them. When you watch a video on YouTube and the presenter discusses a product and says, “There’s a link in the description,” there’s a good chance that link is an affiliate link. If you’re reading a recipe post on a food blog and in the post a cooking product or ingredient is linked to with a question mark in the linking URL, that’s most likely an affiliate link. By becoming an affiliate for a company and linking to specific products, certain categories, or the company’s website in general, you earn a commission when a sale is made. It’s an incredible concept and a lot of money can be earned by taking advantage of it, especially if you weave the links through your posts in clever and natural ways.
What is affiliate marketing? Simply put: there’s a company that’s trying to sell products (the merchant). There are people who are willing to advertise those products for the company via special links (the affiliate). When a link is clicked and a sale is made, the person who placed the link on the internet (the affiliate) earns a commission. The merchant pays that commission. It’s really that simple.
I hope you can see the potential here. I used to be an affiliate for a website hosting company and I’d earn $80 for each sale that was made through my links. Since I was a website developer and since I used that hosting company for my hosting accounts, I earned a lot of extra money by having my customers sign up for hosting through my links. Now think of affiliate marketing on a larger scale. Let’s say you run a food blog that receives one million visitors per month. Even if you have a meager 1% conversion rate with your affiliate links, you’re going to make a lot of money. The trick is to align yourself with the right merchants. Ones who are reliable and who pay high commissions.
As a food blogger, it’s a no-brainer to sign up with the biggest affiliate program around – Amazon Associates. As you well know, the products are endless on Amazon and pretty much all of them can be linked to and earned a commission from. That’s perfect for ingredients, kitchen equipment, cutlery, etc… If you’d like to join an affiliate program that’s available from a single company, you can do that if they offer one. Also, you may join an affiliate network, which is much easier to locate suitable companies from. Example affiliate networks are ShareaSale, Pepperjam, and CJ.com (Commission Junction).
Effort: Very Easy
4. Sell Cookbooks
This one will take work, but if authored, published, and marketed correctly, you can make a lot of money from it. If you click through to my Best Food Blogs & Bloggers page and then click to visit a few of the top food blogs, you’ll find that many of those who own and operate those blogs have written cookbooks. If you’d rather not deal with a publisher and if you’re good with putting an ebook together, you can sell it directly from your website. That way, you’ll receive every last dime from your sales.
Who’s popular these days? Which food bloggers are selling cookbooks? Here’s a list of them: Ree Drummond, (The Pioneer Woman), Heidi Swanson, Molly Wizenberg, Erin Scott, David Lebovitz, Mimi Thorisson, The Sprouted Kitchen, Deb Perelman, Izy Hossack, Joy the Baker, and Louisa Shafia. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but some of these authors are best selling. Again, imagine receiving millions of visitors to your website every month and pushing a cookbook on your pages. If you’re already that popular from blogging, you’re definitely going to sell the cookbook.
Effort: Difficult
5. Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are wildly popular with food blogs. Actually, they’re wildly popular with almost any type of blog. YouTube is full of sponsorships as well. When you’re reading through some recipes on a food blog and you see a line that says, “This post is sponsored by…,” there’s a good chance the blogger is what’s referred to as a brand ambassador for the company that’s sponsoring the post. If the blog isn’t that popular, the blogger isn’t likely making much money from the sponsor, but if the blog receives tons of traffic, like Simply Recipes or The Kitchn, which get something like 13 million visitor per month, you can count on the company paying out thousands for every sponsored post.
Sponsorships between a company and a blogger can often be a one time thing. They can also come in the form of a continuous relationship, meaning, the blogger will sponsor many posts for that company throughout the year. These types of arrangements can become quite lucrative.
If you own a food blog and are interested in sponsoring some products, you can reach out to the company that sells those products directly and ask them about working with you. You can also work with agencies that deal with this sort of thing. If you’re blog doesn’t receive too much traffic yet, you’ll find that companies will generally offer you free products for sponsorships. But if you’re one of the most popular food blogs on the internet, you’ll be sure to make serious money this way.
Effort: Moderate
6. Online Food Courses
If you think about it, as a food blogger, you’re already in the industry. You’re writing about food, ingredients, and methods of cooking. If you currently write about specific diets or traditions (or any niche, for that matter), all the better. Really, the most important activities you’re engaging in that can propel you forward, you’re already doing – writing and photographing. You’re killing it on a daily basis, which puts you in a unique position to take the next step. All you need to do is organize your talents in such a way as to teach others to do what you do.
Ask yourself, “Do I have a relatively stable following?” “Is my visitor base large?” “Do I think there are those who visit my website who might want to learn more about my style of cooking on a deeper level?” If you can answer yes to any of these questions, you may want to look into developing an online food course.
“What kind of course?”, you ask. “Where do I start?” There are many different types of formats from which you can choose. You can create a simple ebook and sell it directly from your website or you can sell it from a marketplace like Amazon or Ebay. If you wanted to elevate your teaching to the next level, you can take advantage of a learning platform such as Udemy, Skillshare, Craftsy, or Teachable. You can even jump on YouTube to start your own cooking school. And if you wanted to keep your courses in-house, you can take advantage of the very comprehensive WordPress plugin called LearnPress (WordPress LMS Plugin).
This topic is deep, so I can’t go into all the nuts and bolts here, but just know that it’s not a far-fetched idea for you to teach others about food, cooking, and blogging via an online class. Many people do it and have enjoyed success. Lindsay from Pinch of Yum joined this area and now offers an entire website committed to the huge market of food bloggers who would like to learn how to grow their businesses. Check out Food Blogger Pro for more information on Lindsay’s offerings.
Effort: Difficult
7. Create an App
If you’ve already got a vibrant website filled with awesome content, you might want to consider taking a portion of your content strictly mobile. That’s where an app comes in.
Note: An app wouldn’t replace your website. It would merely accompany it.
To start, you’d have to decide what type of content you’d post to the app; recipes, cooking classes, videos, etc… and then you’d need to have the app created. When ready, you’d distribute it through the app stores, such as Amazon App Store, Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Samsung Apps, and the other more popular distributors.
To make money through your app, you could charge an upfront fee to download and access it or you could charge a membership fee to access it once installed. You could also forgo the fees and use the free model that includes advertisements, just as you already do on your website. Basically, apps are just like websites, but they’re installable on mobile devices. When downloaded, an icon is added to one of the device screens for easy access. Remember, there are some elements of the population out there who still don’t know what the internet is. The do know what apps are though, so you can capture their business via this method.
Effort: Difficult
8. Sell Merchandise
It seems like every influencer out there these days sells “merch.” “Click the link below to buy some merch.” “Check out my merch store.” And some of these guys are selling lots of it. It’s a huge money maker for the most popular bloggers and YouTubers. Are you popular enough for people to wear your name on hats, aprons, shirts, and other types of clothing? Do you have a huge following on your food blog, YouTube channel, and Instagram channel? If so, selling merch just might make you lots of money.
I remember back in 2005, CafePress was the company to use to glue your logo across the chest of a shirt and to ship that shirt out for you. These days, there are more merchandise vendors than you can count. Examples? If you’re interested in selling merch, check out these vendors: Teespring, Icon Printing, MerchLabs, Killer Merch, Bonfire, Fanjoy, Captiv8 Promotions, Represent, Printify, and Printful. An entire product listing is easier to set up than you think.
Effort: Moderate
9. Premium Membership
This option is sort of like the “Create an App” option above. In the simplest sense, if you’re popular and if you think your visitors would like to read and view exclusive content that’s not open to others, you may want to consider creating a premium membership option. This can be an area of your website that requires payment and a login. If you’re running your food blog on WordPress, you can easily set up a membership site using a plugin. Take a look at these options: MemberPress, Restrict Content Pro, s2Member, MemberMouse, Paid Memberships Pro, LearnDash, and WooCommerce Memberships.
I’ve seen alternative options that can essentially help you set up the same type of restricted environment. Take a look at Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, and Memberful for this option.
Effort: Moderate
10. Consulting, Coaching, & Freelance
The task of setting up a food blog isn’t a difficult one. The cooking isn’t too difficult either. It’s when a food blogger needs to start taking stellar photos of his or her food, writing content, developing recipes, and marketing posts on social media that things get tough. There will inevitably come a time when that food blogger asks, “What am I doing wrong? Why doesn’t my photography look as good as everyone else’s? How can I attract more visitors to my website?” That’s where you step in to provide those answers.
If you’ve figured out the tricks to taking awesome photography, have developed a system for writing recipes, have figured out the best method for writing your posts, and are a social media marketing whiz, your knowledge is worth a lot of money.
Think about it. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. You’re running a successful food blog. You’ve figured out the tricks. You have the photos and the visitors to prove it. Plus, you’ve already got the audience. It’s those people who already visit your website who might want to launch their own cooking blogs. Take advantage of the situation and offer your services to those who may need them. You can offer consulting services to identify issues and to determine the best course to take, coaching services to guide the blogger through the process, and freelance services to do the actual work yourself. For a fee, of course. If you’re earning thousands of dollars per month through your food blog and others would like to buy your knowledge, it may be lucrative to sell it to them.
Effort: Moderate
Those are ten of the most popular methods for making money through your food blog. If you’ve got others to add, please let me know in the comment section below. I’d love to read them. Thanks!
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