Love Food? Love Money?
Why not make money food blogging?!
It’s your perfect side hustle!
Let’s discuss 7 ways to make money food blogging…
Key Discussion Points
Why Make Money Food Blogging?
Who doesn’t go online like twice a week to find something quick and easy to make for dinner?
I rustled up a cheeky mac ‘n’ cheese just before writing this blog!
Food blogs have quickly become one of the most profitable and easy to maintain types of monetized sites out there today.
You can make a lot of money from a relatively simple site. Thousands!
Once your page is up and running, it can also become passive income. That’s right – earn money whilst you sleep.
Here’s how.
How To Make Money Food Blogging
The key to making money from a food blog is – don’t put all your eggs (benedict, fried, scrambled, or poached) into one basket!
It’s vital that you spread out your monetization efforts so that you can maximize your earnings.
Here are the seven income sources we’ll cover that food bloggers use to make real money:
Display Ads
Affiliate Marketing
Instagram
YouTube
Pinterest
TikTok
Selling Products
#1. Make Money Food Blogging With Display Ads
Many food bloggers out there claim display ads on their site or YouTube videos as their number one stream of income.
Basically, companies will pay you to let their ad appear on your website.
The longer your readers stay on the page, the more they click around, and the more they click on the ads themselves. More clicks equals more money!
To get started with this type of monetization, you’ll first need a website. Check out our handy article on how to start a wordpress blog on bluehost.
Once you’ve got a food blog up and running, you’ll need at least 10k website views to get started with even the most basic of display ad companies.
Ok, Google Adsense will let you start much smaller – but your earnings will be negligible. Focus on getting those pages numbers up before getting too obsessed with ad placement.
Once your blog gets a little more exposure, you can start working with blogger fan-favorites for display ad management, like Mediavine!
#2. Monetize Your Food Blog with Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is something you definitely know about, you just may not have known its name.
You know when you read a food blog and there’s a blue hyperlink to another cookbook, a kitchen tool, a meal subscription kit, or even some cooking class?
Or when you watch a YouTube video and the vlogger says, “I’ve got a link for you guys in the description, please use my link”?
Those are both usually examples of affiliate links.
If you use those links to make a purchase, the blogger will make a certain percentage of the profit!
Here’s a really informative article about the nitty-gritty of affiliate marketing for food bloggers (and no, that’s not an affiliate link).
Here are some popular affiliate programs for people who blog about food:
– Thrive Market
– Sunfood
– Home Chef
– Pinch of Yum
– Food Blogger Pro
– Nuts.com
– Shareasale
– AWIN
#3. Drive Traffic To Your Blog with Instagram
There’s no arguing that social media is a very powerful business tool.
Starting an Instagram account to correlate with your blog can drive your traffic numbers on your website up. Big time!
On an Instagram account, you can market yourself. You can build a brand around yourself and let your followers/blog readers get to know you.
Share your day-to-day life with them, cook recipes on your story, and interact with them in the comments and messages. The more followers you gain on social media, the more people you’ll see visiting your blog.
Not to mention that Instagram is the absolute best place to score paid brand deals.
Basically, brand deals work like this: If you have a big enough following (or influence), companies will pay you a certain amount of money to create a post in which you support their product or service! Here’s a list of some brands that are looking for foodie influencers as we speak!
#4. Supplement Your Food Blog With A Food Vlog on YouTube
If you’ve got the time and resources to create, edit, and post food-related content to YouTube, you’ve got a great chance of driving more traffic to your website!
Not only that, but you can monetize your YouTube channel independently with display ads and affiliate links (remember those?)!
YouTube is a great platform for food bloggers specifically because cooking a recipe can be made into a “how-to” style video, one of the better-performing types of videos on YouTube. You can also create videos reviewing and discussing different food products from different companies which may land you a few sponsorships.
Just like on Instagram, brands will pay food-related YouTubers money to talk about them in their videos!
When your following is big enough, you could charge $10,000+ per video sponsor.
#5. Make Money Food Blogging With Pinterest
If you use Pinterest, then you already know how helpful it is for finding recipes.
Most times that you’ve wound up on a food blog, you were probably led there by a dreamy-looking pin on Pinterest!
If you don’t use Pinterest, here are a couple of numbers for you…
Over 10 million people follow Tasty on Pinterest (You know, the mega recipe blog?). Over 3 million people follow Food Network on Pinterest.
What’s even more surprising? There are individual food bloggers on the platform with these same crazy follower numbers! Pinterest is all but irrelevant.
Turning all your blogs into pins is a huge strategy for driving more eyes to your site, increasing your profits from ad revenue, and increasing the likelihood that you profit from affiliate links and other methods of monetization.
#6. Use Tiktok to Make More Money As A Food Blogger
Now listen. This is kind of like Pinterest, but also… not at all.
If you’re on Tiktok, you know that it’s pretty much the only social media app where your content has a good chance of going viral… without having to use any money to boost it.
This makes Tiktok a really valuable asset for bloggers, because if you can get a ton of eyes on a piece of content and use it to drive traffic to your website, then you’re going to see your numbers skyrocket!
So, even if you’re not a Gen-Z kid, make a Tiktok, follow the trends as best you can, and keep posting until you have some videos go a bit viral!
If you’re still not convinced that it’s good for your blog, you can quit, but… we bet you’ll be a convert.
#7. Sell Your Own Food Blogging Products
Last but not least, sell your own stuff related to your blog!
No, we don’t mean t-shirts and mugs (“buy my merch guys”), we mean valuable eBooks and online courses.
Having digital products available for your readers to buy is a great way to see a little extra cash flow from your food blog.
You may be thinking, “how would I ever get people to buy an eBook or online course from me?” Well, you increase your traffic to your site and price those products right for the value and market, and you’ll see some sales!
Something we have learned from all of our business ventures… offer free value to the reader. This is usually in the form of great content and resources.
Providing consistent value over a period of time cultures trust. Trust converts readers into customers.
Go Out There And Make Money Food Blogging!
So do you feel prepared to join the food blogging community?
You should!
It’s a low-overhead, low-risk business that you can start from the comfort of your own home.
Who knows, you may just find yourself making more than a bunch of good food.
