Having a food blogging website means you can share your experience, build an audience, and monetize your cooking skills. Some food bloggers are making a huge income from their food blogs, and if you aren’t one of them, you’re missing out on something big.
Use the food blog monetization strategies listed in this post to make money as a food blogger. Here, all the mentioned strategies are beginner-friendly, popular, and easy to employ on a food blogging website. Join us on our journey to learn how to monetize food blogs.
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How to Make Money as a Food Blogger: Top Food Blog Monetization Strategies
Food bloggers who want to monetize their websites and turn their cooking passion into a sustainable income source can use one or more food blog monetization strategies with relative ease. To make money with a food blog, you can:
- Sell Ad Space to Advertisers
- Promote Affiliate Products
- Host Live Cooking Classes
- Sell Cooking Courses and Cookbook
- Create Sponsored Food Blog Posts
- Sell Cooking Products and Kitchen Essentials
- Sell Gift Cards
- Create Paywall Content
So, let’s begin exploring the monetization strategies one by one.
1. Sell Ad Space to Advertisers
Monetizing through ads means selling your ad space to advertisers and earning revenue from the impressions and clicks the ad generates. It’s one of the easiest and effective methods used by food bloggers to monetize website traffic and generate sustainable income.
To monetize a food blogging website through ads, you can either choose to sell your ad space directly to advertisers or to an ad network.
Well, choosing an ad network is a more optimal option because you don’t have to search and pitch advertisers based on your selected categories, and you don’t have to stay in the queue to get approved. So, what exactly is an ad network?
What is an Ad Network?
An ad network works as an intermediary between advertisers (who want to buy ad space to advertise their business message) and publishers (who want to sell ad space to monetize their website).
Advertisers and publishers don’t have to interact personally for payouts, ad formats, or other things. Using an ad network helps you focus on your business, on how to increase your reach and revenue. It brings both under one umbrella, but in a unique way.
Also Read: What is an Ad Network: How it Works and Why it Matters?
Best Food Blogging Ad Formats
- Native Ads: Native ads seamlessly blend with the content and design of food websites, allowing you to connect with your audience and boost engagement.
- Banner Ads: Banner ads are visually appealing, often in rectangular format, and stand out from competitors with eye-catching graphics.
For instance, Pinch of Yum, a food blogging website, shows a variety of ads, including this Coca-Cola ad for website monetization.
- Video Ads: Video ads are promotional ads used to promote business products and services through visually appealing content and pleasant sound effects.
- Sticky Ads: Sticky ads are fixed ads that remain at the same position as the user scrolls, used to capture users’ attention and improve click-through rate.
- Recipe Card Ads: Recipe card ads appear alongside the digital recipe cards.
These ad formats blend seamlessly with your food blogging website design and content, helping you make money as a food blogger.
Popular Food Blog Monetization Ad Network
7SearchPPC is a popular ad network that offers a dedicated dashboard for advertisers and publishers to monitor their earnings, clicks, impressions, and other data based on their account accessibility.
The dashboard has a clean, simple, and easy-to-use interface that includes all the necessary settings needed to monetize a website.
Along with this, you can access different ad formats, add any number of websites, receive bi-monthly payouts, and contact customer support to get help with your queries.
All your earnings depend on the clicks and impressions the ad generates.
2. Promote Affiliate Products
In affiliate marketing, whenever a reader completes a purchase using your affiliate link, you earn a commission.
Food bloggers recommend kitchen essentials, pantry items, photography tools, cookbooks, and other cooking products on their blog posts, newsletters, and shop pages to earn affiliate commission.
Popular food blogging websites, like Minimalist Baker, also use affiliate marketing to monetize food blogs by promoting cooking products on their Shop page.
Use the points below to monetize food blogs more effortlessly and increase the purchase of your affiliate products.
- Create a separate landing page to promote affiliate products.
- Promote affiliate links in your food blogs more naturally and provide honest product reviews.
- Mention that you use these products in your kitchen for cooking.
- Use high-quality images, clear CTAs, and faster load times.
- Promote cooking essentials using your newsletter and social channels to raise awareness among your readers about the products.
Keep track of the products that generate the most conversions and promote them more often on your blog posts and social channels.
3. Host Live Cooking Classes
Host live cooking classes that cover a wide range of content, and acquire loyal fans who trust your recommendations and are ready to make purchases.
Streamline your cooking topics based on your expertise and interest. There are a variety of topics you can host classes on, including basic culinary skills, popular cuisines ( French cuisine, Indian cuisine, and Korean cuisine), beginner-friendly meals, baking, breakfast recipes, simple and quick-to-make dishes, and more.
4. Sell Cooking Courses and Cookbook
Another option to make money as a food blogger is by selling cooking courses. Readers are seeking mentors who can offer genuine cooking advice and help them improve their cooking skills. Additionally, it is a profitable food blog monetization strategy.
Break down courses into meals, food categories, basic cooking, specific cuisine, improving culinary skills, and how to start cooking online to make money with a food blog.
Selling Cookbooks is another method to make money with a food blog. You can offer your delicious food recipes in an ebook format, giving your readers the freedom to read and access the recipes offline whenever they want. Offer the PDF version of the cookbook on your website or platform, such as Amazon.
5. Create Sponsored Food Blog Posts
Food bloggers create sponsored recipes, product reviews, restaurant reviews, event coverage posts, and more to monetize their personal food blogs. Use these three points to make money with a sponsored post.
- Create delicious food recipes and promote them on your website and other channels to establish your brand and get higher-paying partnerships.
- Highlights sponsored food posts using banners and pop-ups to capture more attention from readers.
- Mention that your food posts are sponsored to maintain trust and transparency.
Mention a brand’s product in your food recipes more naturally, because it doesn’t disturb the user’s experience, maintains readers’ trust, and increases your chances of connecting with other brands as well.
6. Sell Cooking Products and Kitchen Essentials
Make money with a food blog by selling cooking products and kitchen essentials to let your readers upgrade their kitchen products and renovate their kitchen space.
Beginners and professional food bloggers can launch their own line of cooking products, such as bags, cups, and bottles, to monetize their food blogging website.
For this, you can include high-quality images, clear CTAs, and a quick and simple checkout process. Also, try to provide a clean and appealing user interface to capture users’ attention and influence their purchasing decisions.
7. Sell Gift Cards
Buying gifts for loved ones is one of the most difficult jobs. You keep searching for the best gift, but end up being completely confused. In such scenarios, gift cards can be the best option.
Gift cards are the perfect gift for people who love buying kitchen products. It enables your users to gift their loved ones the gift that makes them happy.
8. Create Paywall Content
If you’re creating unique food recipes and tempting videos, you can put them under your premium content.
It’s not a good practice to put all your food recipes behind a paywall. Strive to maintain a balance between your free and premium content. Food bloggers create different subscription models based on categories, video recipes, meals, and cuisine. Here, you can try to offer at least two subscription models to offer more accessible options to your readers.
Luckily, there are many food blogging website monetization methods, each with its own benefits. As a food blogger, you can use one or multiple revenue models, depending on your availability and resources.
Useful Food Blogging Website Monetization Tips
Your food blog monetization efforts won’t show actual results if you don’t know how to maximize them. Therefore, below we’ve listed some food blog monetization tips that help you achieve better results from your efforts, such as establishing a stronger brand presence, building a potent user base, and increasing website revenue.
- Choose the food niches you’re interested in and want to prepare recipes for, such as healthy eating, baking, or vegan, and stick to them.
- Give time to understand your target audience.
- Create recipe posts with intuitive images and videos.
- Cover trending recipes and seasonal favorites.
- Use keywords with moderate search volume and competition.
- Publish content regularly. Target 2-3 blog posts per week.
- Provide a clean, simple, and intuitive user experience with ample white space.
- Use more natural lighting to capture images.
- Learn photography, social media, SEO, promotional skills, and photo editing tools like Canva.
- Find guest posting opportunities to build backlinks.
- Maintain interaction with your fans via comments, community forums, and social channels.
- Collab with other food bloggers to build brand awareness and gain attention.
- Run ads on your blogging website for effective monetization. You can simply register with an ad network like 7SearchPPC for free to do so.
- Promote affiliate products, merchandise, deals, and other exclusive food recipes through your newsletter.
- Never recommend products and services to your audience that are not trustworthy.
Reaching the right audience with the right intent to generate a consistent flow of income isn’t possible if you rely on a single income stream; therefore, it’s always advisable to adopt multiple revenue models.
Offer real value, discover your unique selling point (USP), and dedicate sufficient time to your food blogging business. Don’t treat it like a side hustle. Take it seriously if you truly want to grow your food blogging website.
All Set to Make Money with a Food Blogging Website!
Make money as a food blogger and turn your cooking hobby into a full-time business using the food blog monetization strategies mentioned in this post. A food blogger’s website can expect to earn money within 2-3 months through display ads and affiliate marketing.
Connect with 7SearchPPC to monetize food blogs through targeted ads. It’s free to register, easy to use, and has a dedicated customer support to help you with your queries. Register as a publisher to make money with a food blog.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it possible to grow recipe food blogs?
Ans. Yes, it’s possible to grow recipe food blogs using the tips listed below:
- Stick to your food blogging niche.
- Publish valuable content that satisfies user intent.
- Publish, promote, and learn consistently.
- Use relevant SEO keywords in your content creation. (Tip: Don’t overuse keywords and use the ones that have moderate search volume.)
- Use mouth-watering, high-quality multimedia files.
- Create brand presence on social channels.
- Incorporate a combination of revenue models.
How much money can I make with a food blog?
Ans. A food blogger’s earning depends on their niche, audience size, traffic, and food blog monetization strategy. If your audience base is large, with moderate traffic, and you’re using various income streams, you can earn more than $100 per month.
How frequently should I post recipes to grow my website?
Ans. If you’re creating long-form content, including detailed recipes and supporting it with stunning images and recipe videos, then you can create two posts per week, as it takes time to curate. If your focus is on creating short-form content, you can target 3-4 food blog posts.
How much does it cost to start a food blogging website?
Ans. Starting a food blogging website using self-hosted WordPress can range from $100 to $300, depending on the functionalities you require.
Can I start a food blogging website without any experience?
Ans. Yes, you can start a food blog with no experience. If you love creating new food recipes for your family and loved ones, and want it to reach an audience, you can start food blogging. If you work on your planning, strategies, and try to provide real value to your audience, you can become a successful food blogger.
