Are you looking to start a food blog and not sure how to get started or what to expect? Than this is the perfect article for you!
In this article we will explore how to create and start making money from a food blog in 2025. Many new food bloggers often ask how to get started and what to expect, so we will cover that in this guide. The best advice I can give is to start a food blog because you love food and the idea of sharing recipes with the world. If you focus on quality content the audience and money will follow.
Getting Started and Creating a Food Blog
Your Brand Identity
The first and most important topic is your brand. Once you decide you want to start a food blog you should consider the brand you want to build and focus on a niche. For example, do you want to focus on gluten free desserts, Italian pasta, a particular cuisine, healthy baby food, everything chocolate etc. That is not to say you can’t add other recipe and styles to your site, but rather focusing on being an authority on a topic (more to come on that in the SEO later). You want people to associate your niche to your site.
Hosting your Food Blog
When selecting hosting you need to decide if you want to have your site hosted with a platform or do it yourself. There are several hosting platforms to consider, such as WordPress.com, Godaddy, Host Gator, BlueHost. Each have pros and cons (outside the scope of this article) and should be weighed. The downside to some of these is speed and customization. I would recommend wordpress.com or Godaddy for the managed platforms as they are really easy to setup, backup and overall a good value. If you want complete control and are technical you could host it yourself in AWS.
Site Design
Most food bloggers use wordpress as their base template and it is a great and easy way to get started. There are loads of free themes to get you started with some offering pro versions for under $100. When selecting a theme you want to pay attention to the recipes. Do they use a plugin or is it just picture and text? I prefer to use a plugin as it makes adding ingredients, steps, pictures and more much simpler and uniform. The two most popular WordPress Plugins are WP Recipe Maker and WP Delicious.
Recipe Development
One of the hardest parts about food blogging is creating new and engaging recipes. It is best to avoid recipes that are saturated on the web and would be hard to rank for. Keep in mind that some recipes will do better than others and that is okay! It is all part of the journey and experience. For me, my best performing recipes are ones I least expected! Experiment and see what does best for you and your brand.
Keyword Research
As of writing this, there are over 202 million results on google for “chocolate brownie recipe”. However, if I search for ‘double chocolate fudge brownie recipe” there are only 6 million results. This would indicate that I should look to create a recipe and title that is more unique than just chocolate brownie.
What is the best way to do keyword searches? My preferred method is to use my Google Ads account to do some research. Note that you need to create ads though to use Google Ads and there is no longer a free service. A couple free options are Wordsteam and Semrush.
It is important to take the information provided with a grain of salt. They are past performances and are not always accurate.
How to Monetize your Food Blog
Once you have your brand identity defined and your site created it is a good time to start thinking about monetizing your new food blog! To increase your chances of getting approved you will want to have a few recipes already on your site. This can be as little as a handful, but the more you have the better chance of getting approved.
What are the Best Ad Networks for Food Blogs?
- Google Adsense – One of the most popular and easiest to use Ad Networks in the world is Google Adsense. It allows customization and control of where ads are placed. You can enable dynamic ads or specify exactly where ads are placed. Unlike other Ad Networks Google does not require minimum traffic usage. The downside is the payouts are less than with other providers.
- Monumetric – Monumetric is a good partner if you have at least 10k pageviews and are looking to upgrade from Adsense. They offer more control around the ads that you display. The downside is they charge a $99 setup if you have less than 80k monthly pageviews.
- Mediavine – Mediavine is considered the gold standard for Ad Networks among food bloggers. They require you to be in good standing with Adsense and have 50k monthly sessions.
Growing your New Food Blog
Now that you know how to create and monetize your food blog, let’s discuss how to grow it and start making more money! Obviously the main way to grow your site is to keep creating quality content that visitors find valuable. However, these tricks will help take you to the next level.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
We can’t talk about growing your site without discussing SEO. Many wordpress templates come with SEO tools and allow you to put in keywords.
SEO Tips:
- Use long tail keywords
- Perform keyword research
- Be an Authority on the subject (See Google’s guide on Ranking Results)
- Backlink to trustworthy sites (internal and external)
- Content and keywords should be aligned
- Add visuals when appropriate
Create Google Ads
Utilize Google Ads to drive traffic to key pages on your site. The best part about Google Ads is you can specify how much you want to spend, and can do as little as a couple dollars a month to start!
Build Social Media Channels
Build a web present on major social networks like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc. You don’t need to have a million followers to build an audience and start generating traffic. Just a few hundred followers is a great start!
Create a Newsletter
Creating a newsletter is a must and one of the most overlooked features. It allows you to create an audience that is genuinely interested in your recipes!
Should I start a Food Blog and How Much Can I Make?
When looking at how much money food bloggers can make it is easy to get sucked into “success stories” of people claiming to make 30k a month after 2 months. While that can happen it is rare. For me, I didn’t see consistent traffic and revenue until I passed 50 recipes. From there you can see your revenue exponentially increase as you keep posting recipes. What I tell new food bloggers is focus on getting traffic rather than revenue at first. Once you can get to 5k visitors a month the money will follow. Learn from your recipes that do well and have fun!
Money aside, if you are passionate about cooking and want to share your recipes you should start your own food blog today!