The truth is that food blogging, when done right, is still a profitable venture for the food enthusiasts like you. However, to see results and start making money from your food blog, you need a solid monetization strategy.
Read on to learn how to monetize a food blog the right way.
How to Monetize a Food Blog
You can make money from your food or recipe blog by:
1) Selling recipe books
Cookbooks do really well in this industry, and the good news is that you can turn some of your well-performing recipe posts into cookbooks, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
With a photobook publishing company like Blurb, getting your print copies for sale is as easy as creating an account, starting a book project, uploading your files, placing your order, and waking up to a stack of books on your doorstep the next morning.
You can then sell these from your website, or you can choose to self-publish using Amazon Kindle print-on-demand services.
2) Running Display Ads
Recipe blogs see tones of traffic; thus, by signing up with a premium ad network like Mediavine and Thrive Ads, you can start bringing in a couple of thousand dollars a month through native ads.
These networks work with Google AdSense, but they only accept quality advertisers, and their technology is top-notch, ensuring that they showcase only relevant ads that are more likely to interest your audience.
3) Use your food blog as a portfolio to get freelance work
As an expert food blogger with a proven track record, you can start writing for bigger food publications that remunerate you generously.
Simply send a pitch to a few food blogs that hire writers and present your best-performing blogs as samples.
4) Become a food photographer
As a food photographer, you’ll be doing social media campaigns for food companies. You take pictures of their food products, and you let them use your photos on their social media platforms.
Similarly, the brands can pay you to display the images on your favorite social media platforms.
5) Create online courses for food bloggers and food lovers:
As a food blogger, you can teach other food bloggers how to grow and scale their blogs.
Some of the on-demand courses that you can offer to food bloggers include:
- Food photography,
- How to make money food blogging
- Starting a food blog,
- Social media for food bloggers,
- Instagram for food bloggers,
- Pinterest Marketing for food bloggers,
- YouTube for food bloggers, etc.
You can also create courses targeted at your readers such as healthy dieting, paleo diet, keto diet, healthy juicing, etc.
6) Start a membership site
Why not start a membership section on your blog where you offer tutorials, guides, videos, guides, planners, etc., around cooking, food storytelling, healthy, etc.?
You can charge anywhere from $5 to $49, depending on how resourceful your site is.
7) Start a meal planning service
Some people would want to work with you one on one, so you can offer a meal planning service for them. You can niche down based on your ultimate goal.
For instance, weight loss, healthy eating, quick fixes for busy moms, etc. Once you have a solid group, say, 10 plus people, create a Facebook group for them to better manage your time.
This model can be quite sustainable since, like membership sites, it is more dependable and predictable.
8) Affiliate marketing
Add affiliate marketing to your food blog monetization tactics, and you are almost sustainable.
Here, you promote other people’s products and services and earn a commission for every purchase, depending on their terms. You can sign up for amazon associates and use your affiliate links every time you mention that kitchen equipment or cookbook that you found helpful.
Also, why not start promoting your web hosting provider? Check to see if they have an affiliate program, and if they do, then the net could use another insightful guide on how to start a food blog.
There are several other affiliate networks you can join to find brands that you can promote.
9) Become a recipe developer
You’d be surprised but many food companies outsource their recipe development to food bloggers. Think of this as a choreographed dance between research, testing, and tasting.
While this isn’t an easy task, if you love developing your own recipes, this can be quite rewarding as brands pay huge amounts to work with you.
Ready to Start a Food Blog?
Read our detailed guide on how to start a food blog step by step. In the post, I share everything you need to get started right away.
