So, you’re an awesome cook and you’d like to share your recipes with the world and maybe even make a little money too?
The best way to do that is to start a food blog and it’s not as hard as you might think, here’s what you need to know.
A Quick Guide On How To Start A Food Blog
There are 6 simple steps to starting a food blog and this is what you need to do.
Choose A Blog Name And Buy The Domain Name
Start by giving it a name and that name should be short, related to cooking and to you, easy to spell and most of all be memorable.
Then your next job is to see if there’s a .com (or at a push a .net) domain extension for that name – you can check on Bluehost here.
If there is – buy it. If not, choose another name and don’t give up, this process can take a little time to discover the right name for your blog.
Don’t be tempted to opt for a name that doesn’t end in .com or .net though, it’s harder to get traffic to sites like this as people tend to use them for web spam.
Total cost for 1 year: $15 (or less depending on offers)
Choose A Web Host And Pay For Webspace
A webhost is the company that will keep your blog on the internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without interruptions.
We recommend Bluehost for your web hosting and you can buy your hosting for as little as $2.95 a month.
Pick the cheapest plan and use that, you may need to upgrade in the future but it won’t be for a long time.
You get the biggest discount by signing up for 3 years and that should help you stay committed to your blog too.
Total Cost for Year: From as little as $35.50.
Install WordPress For Free
WordPress is the software that your blog needs to run on and it’s very easy to use and install.
If you bought your web hosting and domain name from Bluehost, the installation bit is super easy as they do it for you.
If not, log into the CPanel of your web hosting and install WordPress, most hosts will have one-click installation routines which make this super easy.
If they don’t, you may need to contact your host to get them to walk you through how this is done.
Install A WordPress Theme
OK, that’s most of the technical stuff out of the way.
Now, it’s time to make your blog look good and stand out from the crowd.
To do that you need to buy and install a WordPress theme, you can find some great suggestions for food related themes at athemes.
Buy a theme that you like and then log into your site’s WordPress and upload and activate the theme in the theme manager options (this takes a few minutes at most). (Find full instructions on installing a theme on WpBeginner here).
And boom! Now, your site looks amazing.
Add Google Tools To Your Website
Now, you need to set up Google Tools to help you get traffic to your blog from search engines and for that you need:
- A gmail account – get a new one here if you don’t have one already
- Google analytics – set that up from here
- Google search console – set that up from here
And that’s it! All the technical stuff is done.
Start Blogging!
Now, you can start blogging, if you want some ideas on how to blog check out our favorite food bloggers, YouTubers or listen to a few food podcasts.
WordPress is super easy for blogging in as it works almost exactly like a word processor does but here’s a great introductory guide to WordPress to help you out.
Good luck
Starting a food blog is easy and it’s not super expensive to do.
The hard part comes in updating it regularly and sharing it with your friends, family and readers but you know that already, right?
If you’re going to take your cooking to the next level and you want the world to know it, blogging is great fun.
And if you’re successful, your food blog can also make you money.
There are plenty of food bloggers out there who are millionaires thanks to blogging, you could be next.