How To Make Money As A Food Blogger

99% of food bloggers make less than $500 per month.

If you start researching Food Bloggers that are actually making any life-changing income, you’ll find only a handful.

Why?

No, it’s not because it’s a competitive market.

No, it’s not because they are better cooks, photographers, or smarter than you.

No, it’s not luck.

The handful of successful food bloggers are 3 things:

1.) Consistent

2.) Committed

3.) Funnels (no, not gluten-free funnel cakes)

I’ll warn you, this is not your average “make money blogging” article with generic tips about how to apply to Google Adsense, beg other blogs to guest post, or other virtually useless strategies that just you frustrated and confused.

I’m going to reveal the process that I used to take my food blog from $0/month to over $10K/month. I didn’t accomplish this overnight, but I was consistent and I kept going when I wanted to quit. Now I work from anywhere and I get to do what I love!

Click HERE to Download a FREE Sales Funnel That I Use In My Health and Food Blog That Helps Me Sell Over 500 Healthy CookBooks A Month

6 Steps To A Successful, Money Making Food Blog

With the thousand and one things that go into starting and running a food blog, you might be surprised I have narrowed it down to just six steps.

I’ve found that keeping things simple is the fastest and least stressful way to starting and maintaining a blog.

So, here we go….from start to never finished, let’s get to food blogging!

Step 1: Start A Food Blog

Setting up a food blog is VERY easy and most people can do it in a few minutes by following this tutorial.

A few people do get stuck and if that happens to you, contact me via live chat (at the bottom of the screen) or email (nick@bloggingwithfunnels.com) and I’ll help you to get it right. I help someone out almost every day so don’t hesitate to ask.

You have to make two decisions before you start your blog:

1. What domain name you want to use.
2. Where you want to host your blog.

CHOOSING A DOMAIN NAME

As you can see, the domain name of my blog is bloggingwithfunnels.com. It’s my blog’s address on the web. Whether you’re in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Asia, or anywhere else I would recommend using a .com name (as opposed to a .co.uk or other country extension). You want your blog to have a global audience and .com is the most known domain ending.

On the other hand, my current highest earning blog is a .net and I know of other bloggers who are making $100K/month with a .co domain name. So, if the name you want isn’t available in a .com don’t worry about. Pick a .net or a .co or even a .org and you’ll be good to go.

The most important thing to remember, is to just START. Don’t delay because of a domain name ending.

CHOOSING A WEB HOST

Web hosts are online services that store your blog and allow visitors to access it. The host you choose matters. Some people go with free hosts in hopes of saving a few bucks.

Trust me, this is NOT in your best interest.

If you don’t start with a host that’s reliable, you’re going to have to pay people to fix your blog when your host disappoints you.

I have tried many hosts and prefer Bluehost over all of the others I’ve tried (FatCow, Host Gator, 1 and 1, HostNine, GoDaddy, Host Monster) because they are super reliable and have 24/7 support via phone, email, or chat (critical). They also make it really easy to set up a blog.

Because Bluehost is really awesome, they are usually a little more expensive than most other hosts. By expensive, I mean by just a few bucks a month. The host you choose can make or break the success of your blog, so don’t skimp on your host.

Once you have your web host, setting up a blog is simply a matter of a few clicks, as you see from my start a blog in 28 minutes or less tutorial here.

Ready to get started with Bluehost? Click here to start the process!

Step 2: Start creating awesome content

For a food blogger, content probably starts with creating and posting RECIPES! Hundreds and hundreds of recipes! That’s right, if you’re starting a food blog to make money, then you better be ready to post a lot of content, recipes, and posts.

Unless you get lucky and post some recipe that goes viral right away, it’s going to take some time to start getting traffic. And that’s OK, all the successful food bloggers I know, ALL started with ZERO traffic.

But through consistency and commitment, traffic starts picking up, you start growing your email list, your start learning what your audience wants and likes, and pretty soon your website will be attracting thousands of people from all over the world.

Step 3: Create a “Freebie” Lead Magnet To Build Your Email List

A lead magnet is an incentive that marketers (and bloggers) offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address, or other contact information. Lead magnets usually offer a piece of digital, downloadable content, such as a free PDF checklist, report, eBook, whitepaper, video, etc.

Why Every Food Blogger Needs a Lead Magnet

If you want to generate leads online, then your business needs a lead magnet. Period.

Why? Because email is a very personal thing. People aren’t simply going to give you their email address without a good incentive, even if they like your brand. As a blogger/marketer, it is your job to give them a compelling reason to do so.

What Makes a Good Lead Magnet?

There are 7 things that your lead magnet should do if you want it to be absolutely irresistible:

1. Solves a real problem – if your lead magnet doesn’t solve a real problem that your customer avatar has, or if it doesn’t give them something they really want, it won’t work at all.
2. Promises one quick win – your lead magnet should promise (and deliver) one quick win for your avatar. In other words, it should help them to easily achieve something.
3. Super specific – don’t create a lead magnet about something general. The more specific you are about the benefit of your lead magnet, the better it will convert leads.
4. Quick to digest – PDF checklists tend to convert really well because they are so quick and easy to digest. eBooks or lengthy reports may make your prospects feel overwhelmed.
5. High value – your lead magnet should have both high perceived value and high actual value.
6. Instantly accessible – your lead magnet will work best if it is something that can be delivered right away. People love instant gratification.
7. Demonstrates your expertise/passion – when someone consumes your lead magnet, it should demonstrate your expertise and shows how passionate you are about a subject

Can you think of some potential lead magnets for your blog/future blog?

Step 4: Make a Landing Page For Your Freebie

Landing pages are very important to making money from your food blog. Landing pages are different than your blog posts.

Blog posts will provide the first introduction to your prospect/reader. From there, you can send your prospect to a landing page where you’ll offer your freebie/lead magnet.

Here’s the software I use to make landing pages in 30 minutes or less.

And here’s a quick video showing you exactly the steps you need to take to create an awesome high-converting landing page with ClickFunnels:

Step 5: Create A Digital Product

Digital products refer to something such as an online course, an ebook, a recipe cookbook, an audio class, or a video course that walks you through a specific topic. These have become very popular in the past few years.

This is by far the best way to make money on your website. Once you create the course, the majority of the work is done, which means you can make monthly recurring passive income.

When I started my food blog, I was totally focused on the wrong things to try and make money.

Some mistakes I was making include:

• Trying to get traffic to generate ad revenue from Google Adsense, which are literally pennies per click
• Promoting Amazon products only getting pennies for a successful sale
• Finding OTHER people’s products to promote, sometimes making a good sale

Step 6: Make a Sales Page To Sell Your Digital Product

In order to sell a product online you need to have a sales page and a way to accept payments. Gone are the days where you mail a check or money order to claim your book.

Today’s online buyers want fast and easy ways to pay and instantly access what you’re offering/selling.

A sales page is the easiest way to showcase what you are offering.

Look at ANY successful blog and you’ll end up on one or multiple sales pages.

ClickFunnels, a software I use for all of my blogs makes it VERY easy to make a beautiful sales page with a few clicks. Try ClickFunnels for FREE and I’ll send you a sales page template.

Here’s a video I shot for you about creating sales pages inside ClickFunnels (it’s so easy!):

Bonus: Other Ways To Make Money From A Food Blog

You don’t HAVE to create your own digital product to make money from a food blog. There are a few other ways to build a successful money-making food blog:

• Physical products (t-shirts, magnets, coffee mugs, etc…)
• Paid sponsorships or private advertising
• Advertising networks (Google Adsense, Mediavine, etc…)
• Contact local vendors and ask if they would sell your food

Affiliate sales commissions are another way to monetize traffic. You can put up links (either manually or automatically with help of coding) within your content text to hyperlink to relevant merchandise and get paid if your visitor happens to buy something from the seller by going through the affiliate hyperlink. Merchandise could be kitchen equipment products, kitchen accessories or groceries. Check out Amazon’s Affiliate program to get started. You can also run affiliate marketing for some of the services that you use — email provider, hosting provider, blog theme framework.

Easiest way to start monetizing your blog is by putting up digital ads.There are a bunch of services (like, Google AdSense, BlogHer, Gourmet Ads, Yellow Hammer) which can deliver ads on your blog. They charge a commission and pay you for showing ads to your visitors. You need to sign up, go through an approval process and follow their technical guidelines. How many ads to put, where on the web page to put, which service to give preference are some of the considerations you will run into as you advance through the process. How much you earn per ad impression depends on the Ad Network and geographical location of your visitor (US traffic is most valuable). Typical rates (for per 1000 impressions) range from $1–5 to $10–18.