How to Start a Food Blog in 2023

Learn how to start a food blog (and make money) with this detailed guide written by a successful food blogger who has built several sites and can offer first-hand experience about the process.

Why start a food blog?

Speaking from experience, a food blog is a great creative outlet that can lead to all sorts of interesting and fun experiences. You get to share the recipes you've developed with the world, grow a community of friends and fans, and have the potential to partner with brands and organizations and make a good amount of money doing what you love.

But before any of that happens, you need to start at the beginning and create your new food blog!

How to start a successful food blog

There is a lot that goes into setting up and operating a food blog, and I don’t want to overwhelm you – so this post is going to focus on the barebones basics of setting up a new blog.

Think of the overall process of creating a food blog like the construction of a new home, and this post is about:

1. Picking a niche / Deciding on a lifestyle
2. Picking a name / Choose your style of home
3. Picking a URL / Getting your home address
4. Picking a host / Finding the right city or town
5. Picking an email address / Designating the homeowner
6. Installing WordPress / Framing the house
7. Picking a theme / Drawing up the floor plan

We’ll dive into the next steps like WordPress plugins, customization, creating templates, driving traffic, social media, and much more in other posts. I think this post is already more than long enough to give you some homework before I get into all that 😉

1. Pick a niche

What kind of lifestyle do you want? Do you want a small and efficient tiny home that can travel, or a comfortably large estate tucked away in the woods with room to grow?

You might be thinking “food, duh!”, but you actually need to niche down more than that for the best results.

Some examples of various food niches are:

• Budget Bytes – Recipes on a budget
• Minimalist Baker – Simple recipes without a lot of ingredients
• Hey Grill Hey – BBQ recipes
• Plant Power Couple – Traditional family recipes made vegan
• Gluten Free on a Shoestring – Affordable gluten-free recipes
• High Protein Kitchen – Easy recipes for a high protein diet (shameless plug 😉)

How to pick a food blog niche

Lean into your expertise

Do you already have a skillset you can leverage? If you studied the culinary arts to become a pastry chef, maybe you could focus on teaching others how to create beautiful baked goods. Or maybe you worked as a nutritionist, and you could help develop healthy recipes for meal planning.

And if you don't have existing expertise with food, maybe your food blog could be a chronicle of your journey in learning how to cook or bake, and you can share your experience with others. It worked for Julie Powell!

Are you already known for anything specific?

Do friends and family already request you make that one thing every time you're invited to a party? Or are you the person everyone you know comes to for advice about baking cookies because yours are always perfect? If you already have a reputation for making something amazing, think about how you can build on that.

Choose something you enjoy

Pick a food niche that you enjoy and something with which you're able to stick. Don't decide to be a vegan food blogger if what you really love and make routinely is steak and dairy!

I didn't have any dietary restrictions when I started Stress Baking, but after getting sick I found that I needed to lean more into high-protein recipes and it got harder to organically create my usual cakes and other baked goods.

While it became more challenging to create content for SB, it was an opportunity to create HPK and serve a brand-new audience!

Who do you want your audience to be?

Speaking of audience… who do you want your audience to be? If you can define your ideal reader, it's much easier to figure out how to connect with them and grow your blog.

I'm not talking about a generic grouping like “women over 30”. Defining your ideal reader like you're describing a specific human being will be the most helpful in finding the right audience. Example:

A woman in her 30s, has a full-time job, has elementary school-aged kids, lives on a modest budget, and needs dinner recipes that can be made ahead of time for little preparation during the work week.

Consider your brand identity

This can feel a little overwhelming, especially when you're first starting out. But really, you just want to take into consideration how you want to be perceived by your audience.

Do you want to be a polished and picture-perfect presence that inspires others to be the same? Or do you want to be more relatable and messy? (I clearly leaned into the latter for Stress Baking – just check out my bio picture)

There's something to be said for aspirational brand identities, but there's also something to be said for lower-effort imperfection.

2. Pick a name

What style of house do you want? A single-story ranch or a huge multi-story beach house?

I personally feel like this is the hardest of all the steps to starting a new food blog. You want to pick a name that is catchy, memorable, not too long, easy to spell, and leaves room to grow.

What I mean by the last one is that you don't want to pick a name that boxes you in too much – there's a line that can be crossed where you've niched down too far.

For example's sake, I'm going to propose two different blog names:

• Leslie's Homemade Italian Recipes
• Leslie's Homemade Gluten-Free Italian Recipes Made in Massachusetts

Obviously, the latter isn't something anyone would willingly choose 😆 But the point is that if you chose something like that and you didn't want to make GF recipes anymore, or if you moved states, your blog name wouldn't make sense anymore!

1. Keep keywords in mind – For the best chance at people finding you, ensure you've got a name that has a bit of keyword optimization. If your blog is keto, having “keto” in the name would behoove you.
2. Keep it (relatively) simple – You don’t want the name to be too long or to include too many long words because that will increase the chances that people will forget it or that it will be misspelled.
3. Puns are cute, but be careful – Try to avoid words that could sound the same when spoken out loud, but are spelled differently (e.g. soul vs. sole, time vs. thyme).
4. Avoid hyphens – There's nothing wrong with using hyphens, per se, it just adds complication when you get your URL.
5. Check for corresponding social media handles – If you plan to use social media, check that the handle you want is available across all the platforms so you can keep your handle consistent and make it easy for users to find and follow you.

3. Pick a URL

Think of this as your house's address. We're putting the cart a little before the horse, but for the sake of the analogy – just roll with it.

Once you've picked a name, it's relatively easy to pick the domain name – provided it's not taken.

7 tips for choosing the best domain name

1. Check the name and URL together – When searching for the perfect blog name/URL combo, it's best to look for the availability of both at the same time. It would be a shame to pick a name you love and not be able to get the corresponding URL, or vice versa!
2. Stick with .com – Domains with .com at the end are the most common and most popular choice. While there's nothing wrong with other options like .net, .info, or .org, they're less common and your audience will likely assume it ends in .com. So you could have a killer blog name and domain name, but if the .com version goes to someone else's site, you might have lots of confused visitors that have trouble finding you.
3. Match your blog name – It's not the end of the world if the URL is not exactly like your blog name, but it's certainly easier if it is.

And then the same tips I mention above for when you are deciding on your blog name:

4. Keep keywords in mind
5. Keep it (relatively) simple
6. Puns are cute, but be careful
7. Avoid hyphens

Most popular domain registrars

Note: On June 15, 2023, it was announced that Google Domains registrations would be purchased by Squarespace, which means current Google customers will become Squarespace customers. Google Domains customers will have their pricing honored for the first year on Squarespace, but the timing of the migration has not yet been announced.

• Google Domains – I've always liked using Google Domains for my URL research for a few reasons:
  • It will tell you if the URL is available and how much it costs
  • If it's not available, it will make suggestions for other URLs or extensions (.com, .net, .org, etc.)
  • Most domains are $12 per year, but it will give you estimates for aftermarket prices if they're taken but for sale
  • If you purchase the domain with Google, it will also help you get set up with Google Workspace so you can purchase the corresponding email address domain as well.
• Bluehost – Bluehost domains start at $13 per year, but they also offer a free domain for your first year if you signup for one of their WordPress hosting packages that start at $2.95 per month!
• Squarespace – Their domains start at $20 per year. They also offer website hosting, but for a long-term goal of monetization, you'd want to skip that and go with WordPress – more on that in the next section below!
• Namecheap – Their domains start at $14 per year, but they frequently run seasonal sales to get the first year at a discount. Check the fine print on what you're locked into with regard to terms and pricing after that.
• GoDaddy – Their domains start at $22 per year, but offer a lot of various packages and multiyear deals to get discounts on your first year. Check the fine print on what you're locked into with regard to terms and pricing after that.
• Namechk – Namechk will look for the domain you want as well as check the various social media channels for the availability of your handle – which is neat! I can't really tell what their pricing is because it was all over the map when I checked for various URLs. Be warned: If you add a URL to your cart, they automatically upsell by adding other products to your cart, which I'm not a fan of. You can remove them, but you have to notice it first.

4. Pick a host

Find the right city or town. Do you want to be supported by a small plot of hilly terrain in a coastal town, or a large flat field in the heartland?

What is a blog host?

Your blog's host is the company that will store all your posts, pictures, and code in their services to allow your blog to be accessible by anyone on the internet.

1. BigScoots – Pricing starts at $32 per month. This is who I'm with now and I'm thrilled with the customer service and uptime.
2. Bluehost – Pricing starts at $2.95 per month. I was with them near the beginning of my blogging journey – the service was good, and the price is definitely right when you're just starting out.
3. Cloudways – Pricing starts at $11 per month
4. Agathon – Pricing starts at $80 per month, but I've spoken to people who negotiated other rates that better suited their blog's size.
5. WP Engine – Pricing starts at $20 per month
6. WPopt – Pricing starts at $7 per month

5. Pick an email address

Designate the homeowner. Who is going to be receiving the bills and answering the door?

It's not a requirement to have a custom domain for your email (that's the @stressbaking.com in mine), so in theory, you can just make a free Gmail address like stressbaking @ gmail.com.

The catch with that is that when you go to create and send emails to your list, your deliverability might suffer since it's not seen as a verified business email. Having an email to match your blog's domain will help you avoid anything like that.

For $6 per month with Gmail, you get your custom email address (plus additional emails if you end up growing your team), 30GB of storage, and access to the full Google Workspace suite on the Business Starter plan.

It may feel like overkill when you're first getting started, but I personally think if you're serious about turning your blog into a profitable business, it's worth the cost of a Starbucks latte each month.

There's no rule about what address you have to use – some popular choices are:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

6. Install WordPress

Get the framework of your house in place.

Once you've chosen your blog's host, they will set up a self-hosted WordPress instance for you. I'll use BigScoots as an example since that's who I'm with currently.

• Once you've signed up with them, they will set up your WordPress instance at the domain you've selected. So the URL you will log in to will look like this:
  • https://www.thisisyournewblog.com/wp-admin
• They email you a notification once that's completed, and then you'll use that URL (and the admin user they've set up for you in the BigScoots Portal) to log in to your new blog. Eee!

I highly recommend doing two things right off the bat:

1. Populate your site's general settings. In WordPress, go to Settings > General, and populate these fields:
   • Site Title
   • Tagline
   • Administration Email Address
   • Timezone
2. Change your post URL format. In WordPress, go to Settings > Permalink Settings > and change it to Post Name. This will give all your URLs a clean and descriptive format that looks like this:
   • https://www.thisisyournewblog.com/sample-post/

7. Pick a WordPress theme

Come up with a floor plan you'll appreciate and enjoy.

Now you're going to pick what's called a WordPress Theme – this is where it's easy to go down a rabbit hole for hours on end because the possibilities are truly endless!

What is a WordPress theme?

A WordPress theme is the template that your site is going to be built upon. It's a collection of code and stylesheets (you'll hear them called CSS files as well) that determine how your site looks to your users.

I'm going to dig more into the specifics of WordPress themes and the ways you can customize them in another post, but for the time being, let's discuss what you should be looking for:

10 Important Things to Consider When Choosing a WordPress Theme

1. Simplicity. You'll hear people talk about themes that have “bloat”. Those are themes that are weighed down by tons of plugins and unnecessary features, resulting in tons of extra code which slows the site down considerably. Try to keep it simple.

2. Speed. You want your site to be fast, and it's never been more important than it is today. Not only is it best for your users, but Google uses speed as one of the criteria of the Core Web Vitals that your site is graded upon.

3. Mobile-first, responsive design. A responsive design means that it will change and adapt to fit the screen of whatever device the user is using to view your site. I'm not sure what the official percentage is across the food blog niche, but my sites receive more than 80% of their traffic from mobile devices. So you better believe I'm going to want to design my site with those folks in mind!

4. User-friendly. Having a user-friendly site means a lot of things, but overall it means that you want your site to serve your audience in the most efficient way possible. Give them the options they need, the information they desire, and make sure it's easy to navigate.

5. Clear navigation. Speaking of navigation, you want it to be easy to click around your site and find information. That means that you need to have:

• an uncluttered menu (on mobile it's often displayed as three horizontal lines and called a ‘hamburger”)
• a search bar
• an overall design that makes it easy to find categories, meal types, seasonal recipes, etc.

6. Accessibility. People do not take into consideration how important web accessibility is, but WordPress has started taking steps in the right direction. Web accessibility means that the site is designed so that people with disabilities can use them effectively – this can mean the font size, color contrast, alt text on photos, captions on video, etc. It involves a lot of thoughtful work on the part of the developers and the site owners, but it's important and essential to be inclusive.

7. Gutenberg compatibility. WordPress Gutenberg is a block-based editor introduced in WordPress version 5.0; and honestly, it was a very divisive release! The WP “Classic Editor” was the standard up to that point, and then themes started adding support for Gutenberg. Now Gutenberg is the default editor, so the chances of you finding a theme that doesn't support it is small – but it's still worth checking!

8. Plugin support. You also want to ensure that the theme supports plugins outside of any developed by the theme creator. There are a bunch of plugins that will be essential and others that will be optional but useful, so you want to make sure the option is there.

9. Timely updates. You always want to ensure that the creator of the theme didn't just drop it into the market and then bail. There will always be WordPress updates rolling out over time to fix bugs and introduce new functionality, so you need the theme developer to be on top of things.

10. Customer support. And speaking of being on top of things, you also want to ensure they have decent customer support. If something were to go wrong, or even if you just have questions, you want to have someone (or a team of someones) to reach out to.

Free or Premium WordPress Themes

You can go one of two routes here:

1. Pick a free theme that meets the criteria we're going to discuss next
2. Or go all in and pay for the Feast Plugin or another premium, paid theme

Why choose a free WordPress theme

• It's free! You're just starting out, and if you want to keep your upfront costs low before you start monetizing your blog, this is certainly the way to go.
• You don't have to commit to anything. You're not locked into a specific theme, so you can play around with different free themes until you find what you like.
• They're tested and WordPress-approved. All the WordPress themes that you find in the official WordPress theme library had to adhere to specific guidelines before being approved by WP.

Why choose a Premium WordPress theme

• Better support. You're much more likely to get more prompt and attentive customer service with a paid theme. They'll also likely have documentation and guides you can reference as well.
• SEO optimized. It's also more likely that the theme has been developed with Seach Engine Optimization and Google's Core Vitals in mind. The Feast Plugin, specifically, is known for doing this and doing it well.
• Monetization optimized. If your goal is to join an ad network like Mediavine or Raptive and monetize your site, a theme that's already set up to handle that is a great move. Skylar of Feast works closely with ad agencies to ensure compatibility, and Mediavine even released their very own theme called Trellis which was developed with their clients' revenue in mind.
• It's like a cheaper version of a custom site. Speaking as someone who has been through costly site redesigns, I would recommend paying for a customizable premium theme over a fully custom website. It saves money, it's more compatible, and it's quicker to launch.

I'm going to wrap things up here for now, and we'll continue the fun in the other posts where we'll talk about plugins, essential pages for your new site, customization options, connecting Google Analytics, and much more!