How to start your own food blog (step by step)

Welcome to our Food Blogging Tips page!

Are you thinking of starting your own food blog? We created this page to have a hopefully helpful list of how to start a food blog. Before testing the first recipe, or taking the first photo, or making the first video we researched quite extensively. We found there have been enormous amount in of information, tips, lists, groups that all point in the same direction, which is to help you become a food blogger. We by no means think that we are experts on this subject, but here is a list that represents our experience and choices so far.

Disclaimer: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and we will earn a commission if you purchase through those links with no extra cost to you. We currently use all of the products listed below and recommend only based on our current experience. Be sure to send us an email or comment below if you have any questions. Originally posted in October 2018. UPDATED in August 2019.

5 steps on how to start a food blog

Pick a name for your blog
Choose a domain and register with a web hosting company (use https for an SEO-friendly website)
Secure the chosen name for all social media channels you would like to use
Create and customize the website
Go live and post content

Okay, so you prefer something more in details. Below is the list of service providers, which we currently use to make this blog happen.

Web hosting

You need a self-hosted website with WordPress.org integration if you plan to monetize your blog at some point. It is better to start right from the beginning as migration can be a headache. Here is a cool infographic to show you why.

BLUEHOST

Before starting a food blog, we did a lot of research and Bluehost‘s name was popping up frequently. So, we went with Bluehost INITIALLY for the following reasons…

CHEAP – We didn’t know whether we would like to blog in the long run and as you can’t really expect to get any money for some time, we needed something cheap.
EASY & QUICK SETUP – Again, we didn’t have the money to hire IT help, so we needed something we can do on our own.
1-CLICK WORDPRESS INSTALLATION – We wanted to blog on WordPress.ORG, so we were looking for a host where you can connect WP easily.
24/7 CUSTOMER SERVICE – Well, all decent hosts offer this, and the online chat was pretty helpful. They solved all of our problems quickly.
FREE SSL-CERTIFICATE – Again, all decent hosts offer this. Here is an extensive article about why you are better off with https from the start.

If you would like to start with a cheap self-hosted website, here is our Bluehost affiliate link.

Why did we decide to change host after a year?

Well, we started to treat our food blog as a business and not as a hobby. And with that, we needed to make some business decisions.

The main reason we changed host after a year was that with Bluehost our SITE SPEED was really bad.

Site speed is a huge ranking factor in Google search. And you want Google to be happy with your site, don’t you? So you can have free and continuous traffic. There are actually 200 ranking factors, but these 13 ranking factors are the most important ones and site speed is among them.

CLOUDWAYS

And here comes Cloudways to the rescue. We had a mini SEO audit with Casey Markee, who is the No. 1 SEO-consultant for food bloggers. He showed us how terribly site speed affected our traffic and our ability to rank high in Google search. Going with Cloudways was one of his recommendations. And no regrets there. Let us tell you why they are a perfect host for us…

FAST SITE SPEED – Yes. Our page speed – according to Google’s analyzer – went from RED to GREEN. Yeah!!!!
SUPERB CUSTOMER SERVICE – The IT help via online chat was amazing. They helped me migrate the website from Bluehost for FREE!!! And we like free IT help! They solved every small glitch, problem, and setback helping in a way that a not so tech-savvy me could do everything without having to pay any additional IT consultants.
FIXING PAST ISSUES – Bluehost didn’t tell me to activate the free SSL certificate so I needed a chain-redirect, which they didn’t set up properly as the SEO-audit revealed. After migration, Cloudways could fix my wrong chain redirect quickly and easily as well.
HELPING WITH UPDATES – If there is a theme or plugin update, you can test your website on a staging server – which Cloudways provide you for free. Furthermore, if you have any issues, the online chat was more than able to help me with any issue that came up so far.
REASONABLE PRICING – I would say that the service and the fast site speed only justify the price they are asking for hosting.

So, here is a satisfied customer for sure. If you are interested in going with them, here is our Cloudways affiliate link.

WordPress.org

Emese had a very small blog when we were living in Luxembourg… Well, yes, I am not even sure I would like to link it here, but bear with me it was in 2012 and I have not updated it since. I was looking for a free and easy-to-use place where I can store recipes. That was all. And blogspot/blogger seemed easy enough. However, I still remember that back in 2012 I have already been looking into possibilities to migrate the blog to wordpress.org as it has already offered more beautiful themes and more SEO-friendly coding. This time, there was really no question that we will go with wordpress.org from the start. And I love it. Ok, sorry, we love it. The theme is beautiful and there is a ton of FREE plugins to choose from to make this site more professional and user-friendly without being or needing an expert in coding.

The Genesis Framework

When we did our research, it seemed that today’s go-to framework for food bloggers is the Genesis Framework developed by StudioPress. When we read all the things the Genesis Framework offers, we were not really surprised why everybody seems to choose this one. For a fair price you get…

tons of functionality and customizable options,
a search-engine-optimized coding (REALLY IMPORTANT!!!!)
screen-friendly appearance.

We are certainly no coding experts, but the theme was quite easy to customize based on all the support on the StudioPress site. They have this very useful guide, where you can get all the essentials to begin with. Click here to download The Genesis Guide for Absolute Beginners (PDF – 1.4 MB).

If you are interested in going with them, here is our Studiopress affiliate link.

Foodie Pro (Genesis child theme)

We chose and use Foodie Pro child theme that was developed specifically for the Genesis Framework and for food bloggers. We wanted to ensure that everything is optimized for a professional food blog. All the food blogs we look up to are using and recommending this theme. So far, we are very pleased with our choice.

It is clean and transparent with features and widgets specifically coded for food writing and food photography.
It was really easy to customize and to get a professional look right from the beginning.
It has awesome customer support including a Facebook Group with very responsive admins and email support with quick response time.

However, it is a paid theme, so if you are looking for a free one, you can definitely choose from any of the themes WordPress categorize under Food & Drink.

If you are interested in going with them, here is our Studiopress affiliate link.

Other services we use

MailChimp (for email marketing)

We believe that growing your audience cannot begin soon enough as your subscriber list will contain the most interested and committed visitors. Therefore, it is extremely crucial to have an option to subscribe from the beginning even if you don’t have an e-book or any other incentive to offer. At the moment we only promise to send out email updates once a week about our latest recipe. MailChimp is extremely well-organized and easy to use. They offer customized forms, html templates, GDPR support and so on. And the best part is that up to 2,000 subscribers it is completely FREE.

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So these are the services we use so far and very happy with them. Will let you know if it changes… Hopefully not…

If you have any questions, please feel free to drop us an email or a comment below.