7 Tricks to Ensure Your Food Blog’s Success
If you intend to earn money through your food blog, you have a tough game ahead of you – for it seems that everybody and their dog has their food blog these days. No matter how good you are, there is some pretty hefty competition out there. And this competition is already firmly established, which means that you are going to work extra hard to attract any attention. So, you are going to need some tricks up your sleeve to make a name for yourself. Here are some of them.
[bctt tweet=”Want an awesome food blog? Here’s what to do.” username=”blogherald”]7 Tricks to Ensure Your Food Blog’s Success
1. Learn Photography
You won’t sell your recipe to your readers unless you can demonstrate how impressive and appetizing the result looks. When it comes to these, have you ever noticed that professional food blogs are always photo-heavy? Many use next to no text on article selection pages at all, going with huge, beautifully made photos of delicious foodstuffs. You cannot use someone else’s photos – which naturally leads to the need to learn how to make your own. And if you cannot shoot photos that will make your readers salivate, you have no chances to survive in this niche.
2. Transform Recipes into Videos
No, we don’t mean filming how you cook – it has already been done to death and takes a lot of time to watch to boot. What we talk about is a video that combines the best features of both a text recipe and a video – like this case done with the help of Spiel. It is short – the visitor won’t have to spend half an hour watching how you prepare the ingredients, slice them, talk about unrelated subjects to fill the time and so on. It is visual and vivid, clearly showing how everything is done and how things are supposed to look. And it just looks cool and unusual – exactly what you need to give your blog that extra something. A video is always an excellent way to build engagement, and unusual videos are even better.
3. Choose a Niche You Are Passionate about
It is true for any area of expertise, but spheres with hectic competition like cooking are especially tricky in this respect. You cannot be just a food blogger – you should concentrate on something very narrow, something you know like the back of your hand, something you are truly interested in. You want to become an authority – and it is much easier when you already have a solid foundation.
4. Create a Recipe Index
Blogs are an awesome way to impart information, but God – are they a hassle when it comes to finding things. It may not be much of a problem while the blog is relatively young, but give it a couple of years and anybody trying to find a recipe they once read using nothing but tags (which they may remember incorrectly) will waste a lot of time and probably won’t find anything anyway. So make an index of all your recipes, divide it into clearly defined segments (main courses, snacks, desserts, etc.), combine entries with photos and make sure the readers know the index exists in the first place.
5. Create Your Own Recipes
When you post a recipe you’ve found somewhere, or somebody taught you, even if it comes from a source you are pretty sure most of your readers have no contacts of, it is still unoriginal. Chances are, your readers can find it, or something very similar to it, somewhere else. Your creations? Another thing entirely. The good thing about them is that you don’t have to limit yourself to simply retelling them – you can speak about your reasoning behind them, how you came to the results you demonstrate, what you’ve tried and what didn’t work (to help readers avoid the same mistakes). Your recipes are what brings a food blog its most loyal readers.
6. Submit Your Posts to Recipe Submission Sites
Websites like foodgawker.com may have extremely high standards, but once you are clear, and your original recipes and photos are published there, they immediately start bringing a steady and abundant flow of traffic and new readers.
7. Promote Relevant Affiliate Products
Readers are often annoyed when a blogger openly promotes some sort of product on his blog. Happily enough, food blogging is a particular case – nobody is going to be surprised if you support products you use in your cooking, products you believe in and genuinely like. Just be true to yourself and authentic – if you promote something, make sure it is good enough, or you will lose the trust of your readers.
Food blogging is an incredibly competitive area – but incredibly fascinating and exciting as well. Follow these tips, be original, don’t betray your ideas, and we are sure your blog will find its readers!