If you were to tell me that 1 out of every 3 new bloggers wanted to create a food blog I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.
I mean is there any better marriage than food, money, and blogging?
If you get to cook and take cool pics of the food that you make, why wouldn’t you want to create a food blog?
Well…
Hm…
I really hate to do this.
In this post, I’m going to spoil some things for you. I don’t want to kill your dream of building a food blog but I do want to show you how to tackle this interest blog niche moving forward.
Why do you need this help?
Well, to put it bluntly, almost every food blogger does this wrong and soon they are going to feel the ad revenue pain.
I know that’s a bold claim but hear me out.
Don’t worry, in this post, I’m definitely going to show you how to start a food blog and make it a success.
First, it starts with the fact that they aren’t really food bloggers.
Invasion of the Recipe Bloggers
The truth of the matter is that most food bloggers are really recipe bloggers. What do I mean by this?
I mean they mostly just write about recipes. There are some things about food but the focal point is always about the recipes.
Is this a bad thing?
Not at all if you understand what this means.
What it means is that if your audience comes for recipes then what they want are recipes. This is the big dilemma with food blogging.
It’s hard to get people to stick around for long on your site because they just want the recipe and nothing else.
Add to that fact that both Pinterest and Google are actively starting to show whole recipes right on their sites, then that doesn’t leave much room for the traditional food blogger.
So what can they do?
Turn the tables and become real food bloggers with a food blog niche that actually serves your audience
How to Start a Food Blog
Sorry, if you’re looking for info on how to set up WordPress or find hosting, this isn’t the post for you. That information is the same no matter what type of blog you’re trying to set up.
This post is about getting into the details behind the strategy of successful future food bloggers.
The first thing we need to look at is the food blogging audience.
The Audience
Is there really a difference between a food audience and a recipe audience? I think there is.
I think the recipe audience is a subset of the food audience so for food bloggers to grow in the future they need to expand their audience.
To do that they need to understand what the food audience wants.
Here’s what I mean.
When I was a kid, I had two imaginary friends, Julie and Thomasen. Let’s pretend Julie & Thomasen both started blogs about making food.
Julie has a recipe blog and Thomasen has a “food” blog.
They both are looking to help the “food” audience. What does the food audience want?
To say they want to know about food doesn’t help us out much so let’s think of a person in this audience. This person doesn’t represent the whole audience, just some of them.
They open their fridge and they have some broccoli and other assortments of things. They really don’t want to go to the store so they want to find out what can be done with broccoli.
A recipe blogger like Julie will help them by showing them a specific broccoli recipe that will possibly require ingredients that the person doesn’t have.
A food blogger like Thomasen will show them the different ways they can cook broccoli. This will give them an idea of how they want their broccoli.
After that they’ll show them the many different recipes that use broccoli in the cooking style that they prefer.
They may even go a step further and organize those recipes by the # of ingredients and price.
A food blogger like Thomasen should help someone enjoy food.
A recipe blogger like Julie will help give a person instructions.
That’s where I think the difference lies. It’s in the food blog niche that you choose: Recipes or Food? It may seem subtle and it probably is, but to me it makes a huge difference.
A food blogger can talk about the foods they’ve tasted on their travels. How they were able to cook for a family of 50 during Thanksgiving for just $100.
A recipe blogger is relegated to recipes. When they try to add more content to their recipes people get angry because those people just want the recipes.
And that’s a big audience that should be served, but if you only try to serve them then you’re going to be worried about people stealing your recipes or how you’re going to get people to stick around longer.
Not many people want that life as bloggers.
I think you have a choice. Be a Food Blogger or be a Recipe Blogger.