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Are you looking for a culinary blog? Do you like to cook and write or pose what you prepare?
If your answer is yes to at least one of these questions, then a culinary blog can be an activity to work on with pleasure. It is a topic of maximum interest and you know that you will always have readers who need your advice, from all age groups.
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But what happens if you are not passionate about cooking and do not have the necessary material resources to start a culinary blog? If you want to build a business around a blog, then you need to choose a niche that you like and in which you are directly involved and practical. The example in this article is the culinary blog, but the advice we offer is generally also valid if you start a blog in another field (example: construction, installations, IT, communication and public relations, medicine, lifestyle, etc.) .
Why choose the culinary blog as a business model?
- You turn your passion for food into a productive activity that can bring you income.
- You can improve your cooking skills, try new things and become more creative in your work.
- It offers you a wide range of monetization possibilities, from affiliations, advertorials, partnerships with companies and advertisements.
- You can build a community of people with the same interests and passions as you.
- Possibility to launch a complementary product to the blog (for example, a recipe book) that your readers will buy.
- You can expand your culinary blog on social media, through video and photo posts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.
Why not choose the culinary blog as a business model?
- There are already many blogs in this niche and the market is over saturated. If your blog does not bring anything new and does not differ from the existing ones, it will be difficult for you to attract a constant number of readers.
- You need frequent content to have a successful blog, which involves a lot of time invested.
- In the first at least 6 months, a newly launched blog will not have relevant organic traffic. So, you need to be prepared to invest money in social media ads to get traffic in the beginning.
- The culinary blog requires more than an investment in text articles. Professional equipment is needed to take photos and videos, and image and video editing software, as well as a microphone for audio recordings.
- You will need to learn (if you don’t already know and don’t want to pay an agency to do this) the following skills: content writing, social media, SEO, Facebook and Instagram Ads, video editing, email marketing photo retouching and a little graphic design .
- Your investment will also be in the ingredients used for cooking: if you want to cook every dish you write about, you will need many ingredients, many washed dishes and especially, time available.
In other words, at first it will be a lot of work. If you already have a job and want to do this blog as a leisure activity, you will probably need to allocate an average of 4 hours a day, according to your work schedule.
How to launch a culinary blog?
Step 1: Choose your niche
You will have a better chance of success if you go from a good start to a clear niche. Over time, you can expand your range of topics to write about on the blog, but establish your niche from the very beginning.
You can go on vegetarian recipes or easy-to-prepare recipes for students. Or, you can only choose gluten-free and sugar-free recipes. Another option would be to go only for desserts or only dishes. You have a wide range of options, you have to choose the one closest to your possibilities.
Step 2: Choose the name
There are two options:
- Your name: for example, Chef Marie. This means creating a personal brand that is associated with the culinary field of the blog. Position yourself as an authority in your niche.
- A brand name: for example, Laura Cuisine or Sweet Chef. Any name you decide that suits your blog or culinary project can become a brand name to use in your external communication from now on.
Step 3: Domain and hosting
The name chosen earlier can also be a domain name for your blog. Also choose the right web hosting company for you, depending on your budget but also on your future needs (for example, additional image and video hosting space or maybe a special podcast hosting, if you plan ).
Step 4: Create the site
Being a blog, we recommend the WordPress platform.
You can always choose to collaborate with a web design agency to create your site or you can create it on your own, if you have basics in programming, design and online marketing.
Step 5: Create visual materials
Every online business must have a minimum of branding materials, such as: logo, banners, slogan or tagline, Facebook cover, Instagram profile picture, image templates used in social media, thumbnail templates for YouTube videos, templates for images used in articles .
Especially in the culinary field, where it is necessary to focus on the visual side, here we recommend that you put your personal imprint on all the images and videos you make.
It is advisable to hire a graphic designer for these templates and especially for the logo and cover photos, so that your project gets a professional look from the very beginning.
Step 6: Integrate the culinary blog with social media
Create accounts on all social networks to reserve his name. Even on LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google Plus or Twitter, where you know you will not have such intense activity, create accounts and customize them with the name, image and description of your project.
However, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram accounts need more attention in terms of descriptions, profile pictures and covers, because they will be the most accessed, especially if your audience is predominantly from your country.
Step 7: Make an editorial plan
Before you start writing, create an editorial plan for social media and one for blogging.
These plans should contain, first of all, the list of post topics you want to write, divided by week.
We recommend that at the time of launching the blog, you have at least 10-15 articles published. After that, you can vary with a post every two to three days on the blog and at least one a day on social media.
It would be advisable to treat the posts as a daily part time activity that you do. Therefore, if you want to reach a certain level of traffic and popularity, I recommend posting once a day on the blog and three times a day on Facebook and Instagram.
You can post on YouTube once a week, but also, before launching the channel, have at least 3-4 videos posted.
Being a culinary blog, there are many topics you can address. In the beginning, you will have very few readers and followers, therefore a daily post would not bother them, but would attract new readers every day.
Once you have formed a constant base of followers, you can reduce your posts, depending on your niche.
Step 8: Write, publish, promote
Once you have completed the above steps, all that remains to be done is to maintain a stable publishing pace on your blog and promote each article posted. Reply to comments and be active on social media.
You can create a short, visual version of the article for Instagram users or a video version for YouTube users.
Conclusion
Perseverance and quality content are the most important components of the success of your blog.
I hope all these tips help you and, regardless of the niche you choose, consider the culinary blog as a profitable business model for you!
