But first, what is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is when a third-party (you!) promotes a company’s products, services, or even courses, and earns a commission every time someone uses your link to complete a purchase.

Amazon’s affiliate program, Amazon Associates, provides an especially easy way to monetize your content by recommending products you already use and love. Because Amazon is such a widespread shopping platform, most of your readers will likely be able to easily shop these links. 

Notice we say “products you already use and love” here? This is a critical component of successful affiliate marketers. By directly linking products you genuinely use and recommend, you’re building trust with your audience and providing them with tools to make your recipe.

Below we’re diving into five creative ways to incorporate Amazon affiliate links into your content to increase revenue.

1. Link Kitchen Tools in Recipe Blog Posts

One of the easiest ways to include Amazon affiliate links is by linking your favorite kitchen tools directly in your recipe blog posts or when you share content on social media. You can share the exact tools and gadgets you use to make specific recipes with your readers.

For example, if you’re writing a recipe post for a soup recipe, you can link to a pot you love to use or an immersion blender you swear by.

Be sure to be specific about why you recommend these items, whether it’s their durability, ease of use, or other features.

2. Create a “Shop My Favorites” Page

Lots of food content creators dedicate a page on their blog specifically to product recommendations. This “Shop My Favorites” page can serve as a go-to area where your audience can find all of your favorite cooking essentials in one place. 

Make sure to embed Amazon affiliate links for each item and write a brief description explaining why you love it or how you use it in your recipes.

This makes it easy for your blog visitors to see all of your favorite product recommendations, plus you can organize your affiliate links by category (i.e. baking essentials, pantry staples, etc.). 

3. Make “Essentials” Lists for Different Types of Recipes / Diets

Having “essentials” lists on your food blog is a great idea for food bloggers who cater to audiences with specific recipe or diet preferences . By creating curated Amazon shopping lists, you can give your audience exactly what they need for each category, such as:

• A “Vegan Baking Essentials” list with ingredients like coconut oil, vegan chocolate chips, and almond flour.
• A “BBQ Master’s Toolkit” featuring essential grilling equipment, from skewers to a thermometer, and ingredients like specific BBQ sauces or spices.

You can create these lists as a blog post or a page on your blog. Or, you can even send out an edition of your newsletter that goes over these essentials and links back to your Amazon storefront.

4. Share Amazon Product Roundups on Social Media

Social media platforms are perfect for sharing “roundup” posts that showcase multiple products at once. These can be structured as themed lists, such as “10 Must-Have Baking Tools” or “Best Pantry Staples for Quick Meals,” with each item linked to your Amazon affiliate account.

Tips for Social Media Roundups:

• Instagram/Facebook: Create a Reel that features your favorite products/staples and why you recommend them. You can then direct followers to the link in your bio or a blog post that contains the affiliate links.
• Pinterest: Create graphics with product images and link them back to a blog post or a dedicated shopping page.
• Stories: Use Instagram stories to showcase individual products with direct links or send followers to the link in your bio.This is a great way to share more “casual” recommendations with your followers and show your recommended products in action in your kitchen!

Social media roundups can be a super engaging and immediate way for your audience to discover new products.

5. Create Gift Guides for Food Lovers, Home Cooks, and More

Gift guides are a fantastic way to use Amazon affiliate links, especially during the holiday season or for special occasions like Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day. 

By creating a gift guide with Amazon affiliate links, you can help your audience find the perfect gift while earning affiliate income!

Tips for Creating Gift Guides:

• Choose a Theme: Create guides with specific themes like “Gift Ideas for Vegans,” “Holiday Gift Ideas for Bakers,” or “Essential Tools for the Chef in Your Life” These themes allow you to organize items based on interests and make it easier for readers to find something that fits what they’re looking for!
• Highlight Diverse Finds: Showcase a wide range of items that are a mix of price points, from budget-friendly finds to high-end gifts, as well as unique gifts to trending ideas, this will help your list appeal to a wide range of individuals.
• Include Descriptions and Personal Recommendations: Make sure to write short descriptions explaining why each product is a great gift. If it’s an item you have, or have bought as a gift, make sure to mention why you love it and recommend it.

Gift guides provide value to your audience by taking the guesswork out of gift shopping, while also giving you a chance to earn affiliate revenue. Plus, they can be evergreen or updated each year, depending on your preferred content strategy.

Ready to get started? To apply for the Amazon Associates Program, just visit the Amazon Associates website and click “Join now” to create an account. Make sure to fill out the required details about your website or social media platforms and wait for Amazon’s approval (which usually takes a few days!).

As always, make sure to be genuine in your recommendations to foster trust with your audience. By integrating affiliate links thoughtfully—through recipe posts, shopping pages, curated lists, and social media roundups—you’ll be able to boost your earnings while also offering value to your followers. 

And, don’t forget to include a disclosure policy in each blog post where you include affiliate links. If you’re not sure exactly what to write, you can start with something along the lines of:

“This post may contain affiliate links. This means we will receive a commission if you make a purchase. Affiliate links will be noted in the content. For more information on this type of content, please see our disclosure policy.”

If you’re looking to learn more about affiliate income, Food Blogger Pro members have a whole course on affiliate marketing here!

The post 5 Ways to Use Amazon Affiliate Links for Food Content Creators appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

While it may be easy to increase your blog’s income by adding additional ad units, writing spammy posts with many affiliate links, or pitching unrelated or untested products to your readers, the goal here is to increase your revenue-making capabilities without degrading the quality of your site.

The more value you can provide to your readers, the easier it is for them to return to your blog. Words to live by! 

Let’s explore some ways you can amplify your monetization strategies in this post!

1. Create and sell an eBook

Picture this: You’re a food blogger who’s worked hard to develop, test, photograph, and write recipes for your site. After running your blog for a while, you’ve accrued a number of skills unique to food blogging, but the only income you’ve made has been from the few ads you’ve placed on your site.

Now what?

If this sounds like you, it’s time to put those skills to work. Round up your 30-minute dinner recipes or your trusted photography tips and start working on an eBook! 

I’m a staunch believer in working smarter, not harder (okay, a little hard work is warranted sometimes), so if you’re going down the cookbook route, my recommendation is to let a digital cookbook template do the heavy lifting for you. You can purchase a template on Etsy, or you can even use Canva’s free templates!

You already have your recipe images, ingredients, and instructions handy so all you’ll have to do is pop them into the template and voilà! You’ve got yourself a cookbook that you can sell to your audience by promoting it on your blog, email newsletter, social media, etc. 

Real-life example: Pinch of Yum’s food photography eBook, Tasty Food Photography, launched a while back and has helped over 13,000 bloggers take their photography to the next level!

2. Offering services to bloggers

What’s your favorite part about running a food blog? Have you grown to love food photography? Or maybe you just love spending time in the kitchen whipping up new recipes?

Guess what? You can leverage those skills and offer your services to other food bloggers! There are always other bloggers out there looking to outsource certain tasks, and you might just be the perfect fit for someone.

Yes, that means you could actually get paid to do what you love. If that sounds like something you are interested in and have the bandwidth for, take some time to create a unique “job” description and price out your work. Join a few Facebook Groups to test the waters and see if anyone is interested in hiring you as their next photographer, writer, social media expert, etc.

3. Create an email newsletter

The email newsletter is one of the most reliable tools you can have at your disposal to build traffic and grow your business. 

Let’s say Google changes up its algorithm (lol, never), and you start to see your top recipes drop in rank. Or a social media platform ends up going kaput. It would be a heck of a lot harder for you to build your audience back up if you were relying on other platforms to keep that traffic flowing to your site.

With an email newsletter, you have a loyal and stable audience that is guaranteed to continue receiving your content. And believe it or not, you can actually monetize your email newsletter!

One of the easiest ways to do so is to drive traffic back to your blog so you can continue to earn that sweet, sweet ad revenue. You can also promote any digital products or services (we’ve really come full circle here ) to your audience and drive more sales!

Interested in learning more ways to monetize your email list? Check out our blog post, 6 Ways You Can Make Money with Your Email List, authored by email marketing expert Allea Grummert from Duett!

4. Create a resources page

If you’re running a food blog, chances are you’ve got some plugins, tools, and/or equipment that help you keep things humming. You’ve done all of the research, testing, installing, uninstalling… you get the gist. 

What are you going to do with all of this experience that you’ve got under your belt? Create a resources page (with affiliate links) to serve as a guide for those looking to start their own food blog!

You’ll not only provide a wealth of invaluable information to your readers (remember what we said about providing value earlier?), but you’ll also earn revenue from any purchases made through your affiliate links. 

Many plugin and hosting companies have affiliate programs that you can sign up for, so be sure to check those out and apply for the programs beforehand. Then, you’ll want to think about the physical tools and equipment that you use on a regular basis, such as your camera, standing desk, etc. 

Once you’ve got your list, you can create a Page in WordPress and make it available for your readers to read through. Check out Pinch of Yum’s Resources page below!

5. Brand deals and sponsorships

Brand deals and sponsorships can be the key to turning your passion into a profitable venture! Imagine getting paid to talk about your favorite kitchen gadgets or drool-worthy ingredients. It’s like getting paid to eat, right?

By partnering with complementary brands, you can not only build recurring income but also boost your blog’s reach and influence. Imagine showcasing your culinary creations with top-quality ingredients or kitchen tools, all while earning a commission. 

Something worth noting is that it’s important to maintain authenticity and align with brands that you actually value and will resonate with your audience. Remember, your readers trust your recommendations, so you should still aim to create high-quality content to establish yourself as a trusted voice in the food blogging sphere!

From sponsored recipe development to product reviews and social media campaigns, the possibilities with brand deals and sponsorships are endless!

So there you have it! These are just a few additional ways that you can make more money from your blog outside of your usual affiliate links and ad revenue.

Which one of these five things are you not doing that you could take action on? I’d love to hear if you implement one of these things and what the result is.

The post 5 Ways to Make More Money from Your Food Blog appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

The good news is that the most common advertising terms are fairly simple to figure out, especially if you have examples to reference. In this post we’re going to look at seven different advertising terms every food blogger should understand and explain them using simple and easy to understand examples. The advertising terms we’ll be breaking down are:

1. Impression
2. Fill rate
3. CPM
4. CPC
5. CTR
6. CPA
7. RPM

Throughout this post we’ll be using a fictitious food blog called Yum Yum Tummy. Here are the stats for this fictitious food blog:

• Page views: 1,000
• Number of ads: 3
• Number of ads that have been clicked: 5
• Number of products purchased: 1

Let’s dive into some advertising term definitions!

1. Impression

Impression: Anytime an individual ad is displayed to a visitor on your website.

With our example food blog, Yum Yum Tummy, we have 3 total ad units on display. If a visitor came and looked at a single page on our blog it could potentially result in 3 impressions.

We could also say that the 1,000 page views we have on our blog could potentially result in 3,000 impressions.

1,000 page views x 3 ad units = 3,000 potential impressions

I say potentially because we have to factor in the ad network’s fill rate.

2. Fill Rate

Fill Rate: The number of times an ad is displayed divided by the number of times an ad could be displayed.

Here’s how that works with our example blog. As we talked about before, we have 1,000 page views and 3 ads on our website. That means we have the potential for 3,000 impressions.

However, it’s very rare for an ad network to have a 100% fill rate.

Let’s pretend we’re working with a fictitious ad network called Fooder Inc. We know that Fooder Inc. has a fill rate of 60% this month. Using our stats and this fill rate we can assume that we’ll have around 1,800 impressions.

 (1,000 page views x 3 ads) x .60 (60% fill rate) = 1,800 impressions)

That means we have 1,200 possible impressions that won’t be filled. What happens to this remnant space? It depends on the ad network.

Some ad networks show very low earning ads while others show public service ads (PSAs) for organizations like Charity Water or the American Cancer Society. Your ad network should have no issue with telling you what they do with remnant space, so be sure to contact them if you’re not sure what’s currently happening with your ad units.

3. CPM

CPM: Cost per 1000 impressions.

Before we jump into the details of CPC, we should mention that there are two different types of ad networks: CPC-based or CPM-based. More on CPC below! So how much can our blog earn from those 1,800 impressions? If we’re using a CPM based ad network then we need to know what the CPM rate is to figure out how much income our blog will earn.

Let’s continue to use Fooder Inc. as our imaginary CPM based ad network. Last month the CPM for Fooder Inc. averaged out to $2. That means our 1,800 impressions will earn us a total of $3.60.

1.8 (thousand impressions) x $2 CPM = $3.60 income

A few important things to know about CPM advertising:

• There are peaks and valleys in the advertising cycle. The beginning of the year typically has lower numbers and the end of the year typically has higher numbers.
• Ad networks will sometimes provide a higher CPM number that represents the total CPM that they’re getting from the advertiser. Make sure you understand what your cut of that CPM number is. For instance, if an ad network says they get a $6 CPM, but your cut is 50%, then you’re actual CPM is $3.
• Always remember to factor in the fill rate. A $5 CPM isn’t that great if the fill rate is only 10%.

The key to increasing your income with CPM based advertising is (1) increasing your traffic and (2) finding the ad network with the highest CPMs.

4. CPC

CPC: Cost per click.

When learning about CPM we pretended that we were working with a CPM advertiser. We’re now going to pretend that we’re working with a fictitious CPC advertiser called Clickster Inc.

So how much can our blog earn from those 1,800 impressions if we’re using Clickster Inc. as our advertiser? It depends on how many people end up clicking on an ad.

Our 1,800 impressions could make us zero dollars if we’re using a CPC advertisers and no one clicks on an ad. We could even have 1,800,000 impressions and still not make anything if we don’t have anyone clicking on the ad.

CPC is all about the click. The more clicks you get the more potential income you can make from your blog.

In our example stats we had 1,000 page views, 3 ad units, and 5 total ads clicked. Let’s pretend the CPC rate for those ads is $1. That would mean that we would earn a total of $5.

5 ads clicked x $1 CPC = $5 income

The key to increasing your income with CPC based advertising is to get more people to click on your ads. The issue with this is that the best way to increase clicks is to place ads in places where people are more likely to see them, like in the middle of your blog post. This creates a poor user experience for your readers.

A few important things to know about CPC advertising:

• Never try and earn a quick buck by clicking on your own ad. The ad networks are smart and it’s almost guaranteed they’ll catch invalid clicks.
• Most CPC ad networks don’t have stringent rules requiring ads to be placed above the fold. Try experimenting with CPC ads in places where CPM ads might not be able to be placed, like at the bottom of a sidebar or above the comments section of a post.
• Some CPM networks will let you use ad networks like Google AdSense to backfill any impressions that the CPM network doesn’t fill. Make sure you continue to follow the CPC rules for these type of situations.

5. CPA

CPA: Cost per acquisition.

Cost per acquisition is a type of advertising where you (the creator) are paid when a visitor clicks on an ad and purchases (or signs up) for a product. A common type of CPA advertising is affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing you’re only paid if someone ends up purchasing the product that was advertised.

If we look at our Yum Yum Tummy stats we know that we had 1,800 impressions, 5 clicks, and 1 product purchased. If our ads were CPA based ads then the only stat that matters is how many products were purchased.

Let’s pretend that the ads we were running were for the BlendTec affiliate program. BlendTec pays a 15% commission rate. Let’s pretend the product that was purchased was a $500 blender. We would end up earning a total of $75.

0.15 (15% CPA commission) x $500 price of product = $75 income

It might be easy to see that number and think that you should just switch all your ads to CPA ads because the payout is higher. However, the reality is that affiliate marketing isn’t as easy at it seems. You have to have a good understanding of the process and make sure that you’re using affiliate links in the right place throughout your blog.

6. CTR

CTR: Click through rate.

Click through rate can be found by taking the number of clicks divided by the number of page views. It’s an important concept to understand because it’s used a lot in internet marketing, so make sure you take your time with this one.

Nerd Note: It’s also possible to calculate CTR by taking the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions, but in this example we’ll be using page views.

We know that Yum Yum Tummy had 5 clicks on 1,000 page views, so our CTR would be 0.005%.

5 clicks / 1,000 page views = 0.005% CTR

With CPC and CPA based advertising one of the ways to increase your income is by finding ways to increase your CTR. One of the most common ways to increase CTR is by performing split testing. We won’t go over that right now, but it’s definitely something you should look into if you’re serious about monetizing your food blog.

7. RPM

RPM: Page revenue per thousand impressions.

RPM shows you how much you make from every 1,000 page views on your blog. It’s commonly used to measure the performance of your ads, but I like to use it to measure the overall effectiveness of a site’s income generation. The equation looks like this:

(Total revenue / Number of page views) * 1000 = Page RPM

Let’s move away from our example food blog and use Pinch of Yum’s traffic and revenue from way back in the November 2013 Traffic and Income Report and the December 2013 Traffic and Income Report.

November

• Revenue: $15,363.75
• Page views: 1,428,175
• RPM: $10.76

($15,363.75 revenue / 1,428,175 page views) * 1,000 = $10.76 RPM

December

• Revenue: $19,829.98
• Page views: 1,294,900
• RPM: $15.31

($19,829.98 revenue / 1,294,900 page views) * 1,000 = $15.31 RPM

Wow! The RPM is drastically different.

December was a much better month compared to November. When looking at these numbers we can see that in December we earned almost $5 more for everyone 1,000 page views when compared to November.

Increasing your blog’s overall RPM is one of the most important things you can do to increase your income as a food blogger.

And the best part about RPM is that you don’t have to increase your blog’s traffic in order to increase your RPM. That being said, RPMs are, in large part, out of your control. Raptive has a great post about what goes into RPMs, but it basically boils down to the value of each individual visitor to your site, the layout of your ads, and the blog content on that page.

So how exactly do you go about increasing your blog’s RPM? Mediavine has a really thorough guide to improving RPMs, but many of the suggestions are the same as you’d find when looking for general best practices for SEO and optimizing user experience on your site (i.e. improving site speed, creating high-quality content, etc.). RPMs also tend to fluctuate with the seasons, so prioritizing updating, publishing, and sharing holiday content in Q4 is always a smart RPM strategy.

If you ever have any questions about increasing your RPMs — ask your ad network! They’re usually really happy to help and point you in the right direction. This is also a great opportunity to do some digging yourself — which of your posts tend to perform the best when it comes to RPMs? What makes them different from other posts? Replicate that!

There you have it: impression, fill rate, CPM, CPC, CTR, CPA, and RPM. Seven simple advertising terms that will help you leverage the earning potential of your food blog.

The post 7 Simple Advertising Terms Every Food Blogger Should Understand appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

However, crafting the perfect pitch is meaningless until you identify the right brands to collaborate with. The process of finding brands to reach out to involves researching, networking, and thinking strategically.

Below we’ll cover 5 ways to find the right brands for pitching. Let’s dive into it!

1. Consider what YOU use

The first way to find brands to pitch to is… seeing what you use on a daily basis! What better place to start than in your own kitchen? Look around and take note of what brands are in your pantry, what brands you frequently use in your recipes, and what brands you find yourself recommending to your community. 

You can also use the grocery store for inspiration. As you shop, what brands do you notice that are in your niche? For example, if your niche is baking desserts, look at the baking aisle to see what different brands exist.

P.S. If you see any brands you haven’t heard of/used yet, make sure you enjoy the products before reaching out. Building trust with your followers is a key part of having sponsored content perform successfully. When the recommendations are authentic and the content doesn’t just read as an “ad,” your audience is much more likely to engage with it.

2. Follow brands on social media

Another way to find brands to pitch to is through social media. Start by seeing what brands already engage with your content and with the content of those in your niche. Make sure to follow those brands!

As you follow them, you’ll be recommended similar brands. Once you have a list of brands, you can take a look and see if they already work with creators – not only does this help identify if they’re a good fit, but it can also help inform your pitch.

Additionally, see what brands your followers follow. You can even use Instagram Stories to ask your community what brands they love and are passionate about. 

Once you follow the brands, take note of the latest news, new products, and upcoming campaigns they share. And don’t stop there – you can also engage with their content by liking and commenting to establish a connection with the brand/social media manager.

3. Join an influencer network

Did you know plenty of influencer networks exist specifically to pair brands with creators and vice versa? Sites like Ubiquitous, Skeepers, and The Lobby are all influencer networks that pair influencers with brands. On these sites, you usually have a profile that explains what your niche is and links to your socials. Sometimes brands may reach out to you and other times you can reach out to brands with open campaigns.

One thing to note is that often when going through a network the rate of pay is usually less significant than what you would get if you did an individual pitch. This is because the rate is usually already set, rather than negotiated. However, this can still be a great way to start, especially to build a portfolio/relationship with brands (see how to make a media kit here).

4. Check brand partnerships of those in your niche

A great way to find brands that are not only a good fit, but also actively working with creators is to identify the brands that creators in your niche have collaborated with. You can use Instagram or TikTok to look through your explore tab, feed, and the individual feeds of those in your niche to see what brands have partnered with creators who share similar content. 

You can also check blogs to see what brands prefer to work with bloggers. Some sites, like Pinch of Yum, have a dedicated page for sponsored content that you can browse through.

5. Utilize the Internet

When in doubt, use Google! Start by searching brands in your industry and see what comes up. For example, if you’re a vegan food creator, search ‘vegan food brands’ and take note of any brands that would be a good fit for your audience.

Even if they don’t have a big social media presence (yet!) they may still want to work with creators to spread the word about their brand. 

By following these steps you can identify and connect with brands that are a great fit for you and your audience. And, by being proactive you can increase your chances of securing collaboration opportunities!

FBP members have access to our entire course all about Sponsored Content and a brand email template! Join here today!

You can also use the below resources to help craft the *perfect* message and successfully land sponsored opportunities:

• Negotiating Contracts for Sponsored Content
• Negotiating with Brands using the MAGIC Framework
• Working with Brands Podcast Episode
• The Confident Pitch Podcast Episode

Question: What’s your favorite way to find brands for pitching?

The post 5 Ways to Find Brands for Pitching appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

For many food bloggers, the ultimate dream is to “go pro” and turn their blog into a business that can generate a full-time income. It’s possible, but it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, luck, and diversification to make that much money from your food blog. That last one, diversification, is a concept that people don’t often think about when they consider creating a full-time income from their blog.

People often use the phrase “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” when referring to diversification, but that phrase doesn’t really work for what we’re trying to communicate in this post. We like this phrase better:

Fill your empty egg carton.

Okay, we’ll be the first to admit that it’s not as catchy, but the visual of the egg carton helps to communicate the point that we’re hoping to make, which is this…

It’s really hard to create a full income from just one income source (i.e. one egg), but when you fill all of the possible income sources (i.e. openings in the egg carton), it becomes much easier to make that much money from your food blog.

Let’s use some realistic numbers. The most recent studies have shown that the median household income for a family in the U.S. is $70,784. We’re going to use this number as the base income for our “full-time blogger” experiment. We know that it’s not enough for some people to live on (and it’s more than enough for others to live on), but we had to pick a number to use.

The monthly (before tax) income for someone that makes $70,784 comes out to $5,898. We’re going to use this number and divide it among all of the possible ways to create an income as a food blogger. My hope is to show you what it takes to create a full-time income from your blog if you’re intentional about filling in the empty spaces in the egg carton (i.e. diversifying).

If you have just one egg (one source of income), you’d have to create $5,898 from that one income source per month. Two eggs would both need to generate $2,949 per month. In our example, we have 18 different income sources, so 18 eggs would need to net $328 per month. That’s going to be our “per egg” price point.

Is the goal to be creating an income from every. single. possible. income source? No.

Is the goal to create an income from as many sources as possible? Absolutely.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at each “egg” and estimate what it would take to earn $328 from that income source.

1. Display Advertising

When you think about how to make money from food blogging, display advertising is probably the first thing that comes to mind. Display advertising is commonly found in a blog’s header, sidebar, footer, and body of the text in a blog post.

Most display advertising is paid based on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or CPC (cost-per-click) basis. Depending on the time of year, you can expect to earn between $1-$3 for high-quality CPM based ads and $.25-$1.00 for CPC ads (for a food blog).

It’s tough to provide an exact traffic number, but we’re confident that you could earn $328 a month on display advertising with 50,000 – 75,000 visitors to your site a month.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you promote an affiliate link to a product or service to your audience, and earn a commission from any sales made through that link. For food bloggers, this could look like sharing the kitchen tools or food products that you use and would recommend.

Let’s use Blendtec (a blender company with an affiliate program) as an example. Their affiliate program pays an 8% commission. That means anytime that someone clicks on your affiliate link and purchases a product, you get 8% of the purchase price. In order to get to $328 dollars a month, you would need to sell $4,100 worth of Blendtec products. That might sound like a lot, but many of Blendtec’s blenders cost at least $400, which means clicks on your affiliate links would need to result in 11 blender purchases in a month.

Keep in mind that these numbers are just for one affiliate program. There are thousands and thousands of affiliate programs (like Amazon) that you can choose from and promote on your blog (here’s a list of nearly 70 more options from our FBP Affiliate Expert, Justine!), so the $328 price point is easily achievable if you’re intentional about doing smart affiliate marketing.

3. Freelance Writing

Freelance writing is a great way to bridge the gap between quitting your “regular” job and blogging full-time. If you find yourself getting to the point where you’re almost ready to make the switch to blogging full-time but can’t quite justify it financially, then you can use freelancing as a way to quickly bump up your income.

Just a word of warning with this one: be sure that you don’t spend too much time freelancing if your ultimate goal is to be blogging full-time. One of the most important things with building a blog is continuing to add high-quality content to your publication (i.e. your blog), not other publications. As soon as you can justify it financially you should prioritize producing content for your blog full-time.

Despite my note of caution, at $125 per post, you could earn $328 a month by publishing just three freelance articles.

4. Recipe Development

Many food companies need recipes to promote or integrate into their product, and oftentimes these food companies don’t have in-house staff that can do the recipe development for them.

Enter: food bloggers.

Companies will often look to food bloggers to develop recipes for them. As you grow the list of recipes on your food blog, you’re essentially growing your recipe portfolio.

Recipe development, much like freelance writing, is another example of an income source that can be used as you transition into blogging full-time. Carefully consider any jobs that pay less than $100 per recipe, as your time might be better spent developing content for your own blog.

You can develop three recipes per month at $150 per recipe, and you’d be earning well over $328 each month!

5. Recipe Licensing

Recipe licensing is a bit different than recipe development. With recipe licensing companies pay you for recipes that you’ve already developed (as opposed to developing a brand new recipe). The price point on recipe licensing is usually a bit lower than recipe development because it is work that you’ve already done.

If you licensed a recipe for $85 you could get to the $328 price point by licensing 4 different recipes in a month.

6. Food Photography

Much like recipes, many companies (think food and beverage companies, restaurants, publications, marketing agencies, other bloggers, etc.) need photographs of food to use. Taking on freelance food photography projects is a great way to create an income from the skills you’ve developed while building your food blog, but it’s important to know that the process will look a little different than when you’re photographing for your own food blog.

You should be prepared for 1) specific guidelines, 2) constructive feedback and 3) the client asking you to reshoot a recipe.

It’s important to know those three things when you’re determining your rate for food photography projects. For example, Lindsay, Content Director at our sister site, Pinch of Yum once did a photo shoot and asked for $100 per photo (one photo per recipe) shooting a total of 10 recipes. This initially seemed like a good price, but we quickly learned that there was a lot of time, energy, and cost that went into shooting 10 different recipes. On top of that, once we sent the photos over, they came back with specific requests for the photos to be different, like using a different bun for a burger or having less lettuce in a salad. In the end, we felt like $100 per photo wasn’t worth the time and energy it took, so keep that in mind!

A full-day food photography shoot could earn you anywhere from $300 (very low end) to $10,000 (very high end).

7. Sponsored Posts

More and more companies are realizing the power of sponsored posts. A sponsored blog post usually means that a brand will pay you to write a blog post about their product or using their product, and then have you publish that post to your blog. A sponsored social media post often involves a Reel, post, video, or Story that features the product.

In essence, the brand is buying your audience’s attention and the trust that you’ve established with them. It’s an effective type of advertising for companies, as many users have become blind to ads, but if the promotion occurs naturally within the content, it’s really hard to miss.

Payouts for a sponsored post can range from $50 to $10,000 (sometimes even more!) depending on your blog’s traffic stats, your social following, your audience’s engagement, and more.

8. Paid Newsletters

Paid newsletters are on the rise, and platforms like Substack, Ghost, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, and MailerLite make it (relatively) easy to get started. Newsletters provide an opportunity to niche down to a certain category of recipes (think vegetarian or gluten-free) or can simply serve as a way to provide exclusive content (like recipes or recipe videos) to your subscribers.

Most content creators on these platforms charge $5-10 a month for the newsletters, but it’s worth noting that the platforms do charge for their service (i.e. Substack takes 10% of all revenue), so definitely do your research before committing to a platform. Assuming you charged $5/month for your newsletter, you would need ~75 paid subscribers to net $328 a month.

Not ready to commit to a paid newsletter service? Another way to monetize through email is by selling ad spots in the free newsletters you’re already sending to your subscribers!

9. Video Ads

As video becomes more and more popular, so does the prevalence of video advertising. Video ads usually appear in the form of a pre-roll ad (before the video plays) or a hover-over ad (appears over a part of the screen as the video is playing).

The most common way to monetize videos with ads is through the YouTube Partner Program. CPMs for video ads vary greatly, but for this example, let’s say that yours is $3. That means that for every 1,000 views you get on your video, you’d make $3.

It doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up as your video is shared and seen. You’d need ~110,000 views on just one video with a CPM of $3 to make that $328 per month.

10. Video Product Placement

Remember that episode of The Office where Jim is trying to get Karen her bag of Herr’s Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips? Was there a reason why Herr’s, a real chip company, was chosen for this storyline?

It probably wasn’t random. It was probably the result of paid product placement.

You can do similar product placement when creating recipe and food-related videos or featuring recipes on your social media accounts. The most common way is to get a company to sponsor your recipe. If you make a soft pretzel recipe and partner with a flour company, they can sponsor your video and you can include their product in the video.

But you can still make money from video product placement even if you don’t have a company to sponsor it.

How you ask? Good question.

You can mention products that you use in your videos and include your affiliate link to that product in the video. As someone is watching the video they might be inclined to click on the link and look at (and hopefully purchase!) the product.

11. Digital Products

Digital products, like eCookbooks, courses, or meal plans, are easy ways to add an income stream to your business. On Pinch of Yum, we sold one eCookbook in a PDF format. The only place we sold this eCookbook was on Pinch of Yum, but others have had success selling eCookbooks on other sites like Amazon.

Meal plans are another great way to use the content you’re already creating (recipes) and package them in a user-friendly product for your readers. Everyone is busy, and meal plans help to take some of the guesswork out of the weekly planning and grocery shopping process. You can offer a 1-week meal plan (side note: this would make a great email opt-in), or a multi-week meal plan with grocery lists. While a PDF is an easy way to put together a meal plan, you might also consider providing meal plans through a membership service, like Patreon, or an email subscription service, like Substack.

Price points can vary greatly for digital products, but $10-$40 is a common price range. At this price point, you’d need to sell 9-33 copies of your product monthly to reach $328 per month.

12. Hard Copy Cookbooks

A hard copy cookbook isn’t for beginner bloggers, but it’s an important income stream to mention because many bloggers will someday write their own hard copy cookbook.

This income stream is a little bit different than the others in that there is usually a big payment up front (an advance) followed by smaller payments (royalties) that you’re paid based on how many books are sold.

And while you can work with a publisher on a hard copy cookbook, you can also self-publish your own hard copy cookbook.

13. Memberships

A membership is the ultimate example of recurring income, as people sign up and pay on a recurring basis (usually monthly or yearly). Patreon is a popular choice for building a membership community, and your fans can pay either monthly or per post for the content and special perks you share there.

Another option for creating a membership with a lower barrier to entry is to create a membership on a social media account you already run (like a channel membership on YouTube or a subscription on Instagram). These memberships allow creators to provide exclusive content (think videos, Stories, posts, Reels, etc.) to certain paying members on your social media channels.

Does it sound like a lot of work to create and run your own membership site? Well, it is. Trust us, we know…

But you don’t need to create your own membership site in order to create passive income from a membership site, and the answer once again has to do with affiliate marketing.

There are a handful of sites that charge members on a monthly basis and also have an affiliate program that pays on a monthly recurring basis. The Food Blogger Pro Affiliate Program is one of them.

In becoming an affiliate for a membership-based site with a recurring affiliate payout schedule, you can get the benefit of recurring income without having to put the time, energy, and money into building your own site.

The top tier of The Food Blogger Pro Affiliate Program pays $11.60 a month per member, which means you’d need to refer about 28 people in order to get to the $328 a month in recurring income.

14. Speaking Engagements, Workshops, and Classes

“But I’m just starting out!” You might be saying… “How could I ever get people to come and learn from me?!”

Even if you’re at the beginning stages of your blog, you probably have knowledge that people want to learn from you, and a great way to teach people this knowledge is through a class (in-person or virtually).

What is the one area that you feel you really know best? Is it photography? WordPress? Photoshop? What about a cooking class?

Take this specific skill you have and create a class around it. Not only is this a way to create income from your blog, but it’s also a great way to connect with other bloggers (which is probably more important than creating income).

Eventbrite is an easy to use site that allows you to collect payments and distribute tickets for classes and events.

At $50 a ticket, you’d need 7 people to attend one of your classes to make a little over $328.

15. Consulting/Coaching/Mentoring

Consulting is similar to teaching a class, but it’s usually done on a one-on-one basis. The best way to figure out what type of consulting you should offer is by paying attention to the types of questions that people ask you, both online and offline.

Do people always ask you about staying fit? Or maybe people ask about how you put together a well-designed blog. Maybe your friends are always wondering how you make healthy food that your kids will actually eat.

These questions that people ask are like little arrows that point you towards the subject area that you could be consulting on. Once you’ve picked a subject area, build a page on your blog with different consulting packages that describe your expertise and what a client will learn if they decide to work with you.

At $150 an hour, you’d need to consult 3 hours a month to make $328.

16. Podcasting

Along those same lines, maybe you want to share your expertise in audio form. We do that for Food Blogger Pro with The Food Blogger Pro Podcast.

It does require a high production value, but it can help you reach a new audience or reach your current audience in a new way.

One really popular way to monetize your podcast is to sell ad spots to sponsors. You can charge sponsors a one-off fee or sell your ad spots based on the CPM model we talked about before with display ads and video ads.

And! If you create show notes for each episode (here’s an example of what our show notes look like), you can include affiliate links to products you mention in the episode.

17. Physical Products

Beyond selling cookbooks, we’ve seen lots of food creators have success with selling physical products like branded mugs, t-shirts, aprons, and other cooking tools on their sites. If you have a loyal community, this is a great way to 1) make some extra money on your blog, 2) increase brand loyalty, and 3) get some free advertising out of it!

You can print a custom t-shirt for about $12, and if you sell the t-shirts on your site for $25, you could make $13 per shirt. With that profit, you would need to sell 25 shirts to make $328.

18. Creator Funds

YouTube and other platforms all have their own versions of Creator Funds, through which creators are compensated directly from the platform for the content they create.

Most of these Creator Funds have specific eligibility criteria, so not everyone will qualify for them initially. For example, TikTok requires that you have >100,000 video views in the last 30 days, and at least 10,000 followers.

Creator Funds alone aren’t likely to provide a reliable income stream. But combined with the other 17 income streams on this list? Now you’re talking!

Our point with this post wasn’t to try and convince you to create an income from every possible income stream.

Our point was to show you that when you start to add different income streams to your blog, it becomes easier to achieve that goal of “going pro” with your blog and creating a full-time income.

So what areas of your “egg carton” are empty? Which one are you going to be filling next? Were there any areas that we missed that you think are important to include?

Here’s to a full egg carton and, in turn, a full-time income from your blog!

The post 18 Ways to Make Money From Your Food Blog in 2023 appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

Alternatively, working directly with brands can be a reliable source of income if you are able to start and maintain a sponsorship. For most food bloggers, developing a blog media kit is the first step in the brand partnership journey!

So let’s start with the basics:

• How do you find brands to partner with?
• So what is a blog media kit, exactly?
• What to include in a media kit for your food blog
• But wait! How do I design my media kit?

How do you find brands to partner with?

One way to start a brand collaboration is to sit by your computer and stare at your inbox waiting until a company reaches out to partner with you.

But that can take quite some time, and doing something active may help you move the needle a bit more efficiently!

The more reliable way to go about finding a brand partner is to determine the companies that you think would mesh well with your brand and reach out proactively with a pitch.

This requires time, research, courage, and perseverance; but you’re much more likely to see results.

So, after you’ve found a list of companies to reach out to, what do you say? What do you send them? This is where your media kit really comes in handy.

So what is a blog media kit, exactly?

A media kit is a one or two-page document (often a PDF) or page on your website that sums up your blog in a nutshell. Think of it as your brand’s elevator pitch.

The media kit should provide everything a brand needs to know to make a decision on whether or not you’re a good fit for a partnership.

Now, this isn’t to say that a company won’t ever explore your website or your social media pages. Not at all. But a media kit is your first impression or your foot in the door. If you are thoughtful about putting together your media kit, you’ll have more success converting potential brands into partners.

So what exactly does a media kit contain? Let’s find out!

What to include in a media kit for your food blog

A summary describing you and your blog

People want to work with other people who they feel they have a connection with. In this short blurb, you want to convey who you are, what you do, and what is important to you. It’s also a good idea to include a good headshot of yourself so the person reading your intro can feel like they are hearing the words from you, a real person.

This is where you talk a bit about your blog and why your blog is a good match for them. Explain the type of content you post and share a bit about your brand values. Consider linking to some of your best-performing blog posts in this section!

A look at who your audience is

You have to look at this one from the sponsor’s side. No matter how cool of a person they think you are and no matter how much they love your blog, they still want to make sure that sponsoring your blog will be advantageous to them.

A brand will usually be looking to partner with a food blog with an audience that resembles the demographics of the audience they are trying to reach and sell to. Think age range, gender, location, etc.

You can save yourself time and effort if you do your research beforehand and send your media kit only to those companies that you already know have a similar audience. But don’t be scared to go outside the box either. You never know when a company is trying to reach a different audience than they currently have!

A glance at your business metrics

A lot of sponsorship opportunities require promoting your blog post or the product on social media. Because of this, potential sponsors will want to know more about your followers and engagement on social media, in addition to information about blog traffic.

What metrics should you include? At a minimum, monthly average page views or monthly average unique visitors (use Google Analytics to find these!), and social media following are important to feature. If you have an impressive email subscriber list, include that, too!

Details on the services you offer

You will want to set aside some space in your media kit to communicate exactly what types of partnerships you’re looking for. There are a wide range of services a food blogger might offer, including, but not limited to:

• Recipe development
• Food photography
• Videography
• Copywriting
• Guest blogging
• Giveaways
• Food styling
• Sponsored blog posts
• Product reviews
• Sponsored social media posts
• Speaking engagements
• Brand ambassadorship

You certainly don’t need to offer all of these services – pick and choose the services that are the best fit for your skillset and brand.

Information on companies you’ve worked with

If you’ve previously worked with other companies, your media kit is the best place to display that. Brands want to work with desirable bloggers, and showing that you have already worked with other companies for your recipe development, photography skills, or social media reach can help you close the deal.

To display this, you can either list the companies with brief explanations of the partnership or just display their logo to keep it simple. Here’s an example of this in the media kit for Pinch of Yum:

Do you have concrete success metrics or testimonials from previous brand partnerships? Include them here!

Contact information

This is almost a no-brainer, but it is something you don’t want to forget! Make it easy for the company to get in contact with you in case they want to start working with you. Provide your email address or include a contact form if your media kit is on your website.

And finally, photographs

As food bloggers, photographs are a big part of what we do, and they can be really instrumental in securing sponsorships. Many companies want to see their product displayed in big, beautiful photographs on your website. So, show off your photography skills by including some of your best photos in your media kit.

But wait! How do I design my media kit?

Good question! Designing and formatting a media kit can be just as difficult as coming up with the content to put in it. So what is a person who’s not all that experienced in design supposed to do?

Fortunately, there is an answer! We have a Creating a Media Kit Course for Food Blogger Pro members, with in-depth lessons all about designing your media kit in InDesign, PhotoShop, and Canva!

Whew, that was quite the list! You should now have everything you need to know to build your very own media kit and start making money with sponsorships. Get to it!

We’re curious… do you have a media kit? What did you include in it?

The post How to Make a Media Kit for Your Food Blog appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

This is a guest post by our Email Marketing Expert, Allea Grummert!

Allea is an email marketing strategist & conversion copywriter and founder of Duett. She helps online business owners make a lasting first impression through welcome & nurture sequences that engage readers, build brand loyalty, and optimize conversions for sales and site traffic.

To learn more about Allea, listen to her on the Food Blogger Pro Podcast or watch her Email Marketing 101 course in the Food Blogger Pro community here.

Did you know  that only one-third of content creators send weekly emails, and less than 26% send an email monthly? Why are so many bloggers, content creators, and marketers leaving money on the table? 

In my experience as an email marketing strategist, most bloggers aren’t taking full advantage of the opportunities an email list offers because they simply don’t know the strategies they have at their disposal. 

Many people start and run email lists because “that’s just what you do” as a blogger, but there is a magical realm of high return on investment, or ROI, you can step into, if you know a few solid strategies and how to implement them!

There are many, many ways to effectively (and ethically) make money with your email list. 

My biggest tip: Avoid diving into every strategy at one time. Instead, pick 1-2 strategies that feel the most advantageous, doable for your current level of brain space, and exciting to you in this season. Then commit to consistency and quality as you execute. You’ve got this!

1. Send Traffic Back to Your Blog

The whole “make money while you sleep” thing isn’t necessarily a myth — it’s completely possible, especially with ad services like Mediavine and AdThrive, full-service ad management companies who are paying you to get eyeballs on their ads hosted on your blog.

So why does this mean you should be sending more emails? Because sending emails with links to your blog posts sends traffic back to your site where those ads live.

Little by little, that blog traffic will add up. (1% Infinity, right?!)

2. Promote your Cookbook

If you’re publishing a cookbook, there are a few different ways to use your email list to promote the cookbook in order to earn sales both in the short- and long-term.

First, be sure to announce that cookbook to your existing email list! Share it on social media, of course, but email marketing is a surefire way to get more sales. Why? Because your email list already knows you and loves your recipes, which makes them a warm, ready-to-buy audience.

Second, once the cookbook is launched and out into the world, be sure to promote it in your automated welcome and nurture sequence emails. This way, no matter when someone joins your list, they’ll learn about your cookbook and have an opportunity to buy.

Third, take advantage of seasonal promotions to share about your cookbook even more. Pick a couple of times throughout the year to promote your cookbook from a new angle to your existing list. They may already know about your cookbook, but perhaps they forgot about it or it wasn’t a good time for them to buy at first — now’s your chance to remind them!

3. Sell a Digital Product

Even if you don’t have a published, hardback book to sell, that’s okay! There are plenty of ways you can sell digital products as a blogger.

Keep in mind that nearly half of bloggers making over $50,000 a year sell their own product or service while only 8% of lower-income bloggers do the same.

A few ideas would be to:

• Publish a PDF ebook
• Create and sell a course that solves a problem for your audience
• Create an ongoing membership program that regularly shares new content (stuff that’s unavailable anywhere else)
• Develop meal plans!

You can promote these digital products to your list any time of year (yes, along with your new recipes!), as well as in your automated welcome and nurture emails so that new subscribers learn about them too.

The great thing about digital products is that you can sell them to 10 people or 100 people without having to put in any additional work.

4. Offer a Service or Group Program

Interested in connecting face-to-face with your audience? Consider:

• A small group program with a handful of participants for a short period of time (say, a “recipe bootcamp” for a few days or a 6-week group coaching program)
• One-to-one coaching or consulting (like as a dietitian or nutrition coach)

Providing a service like this supports your readers in a way that will help them experience a more personalized interaction than simply following along with you on Instagram or reading your blog posts.

Not only that, but selling a one-to-one service or group program is a way to make more money (with a smaller audience) than relying on a massive audience to sell low-cost digital products. Food for thought.

And just like you’d promote a product to your list, email your readers about how they can work with you in these other ways! You can promote a service or group program regularly — or you can choose to promote it really well a couple of times each year.

5. Drive Traffic to Affiliate Pages

As you create content for your readers and email subscribers, you may naturally find yourself recommending services, tools, products, or other items. Affiliate marketing allows you to make money by serving as the middle man between your readers and those recommendations. 

You can promote specific affiliate programs or services like ButcherBox, HelloFresh, and even Food Blogger Pro, and you can always send traffic to your Amazon Storefront so that readers can buy your suggested products or ingredients. Affiliate marketing benefits everyone involved — you, your readers, and the services you promote! 

Logistically speaking, what does this look like? Your email newsletter can direct readers and traffic to your blog posts that feature your affiliate links and recommendations (like this one) or, you can even create affiliate pages on your site like a resources page or a coupon page.

These pages can feature your best resources and paid products, as well as the tools, services, coupons, and items you recommend.

Please note that Amazon’s Terms and Conditions limit you from sharing your affiliate links directly within your emails, but you can absolutely send readers to your general Amazon Storefront via email. If you want to better organize your affiliate links, you may want to host a recommendation page (like mentioned above) on your site. Of course, wherever you share an Amazon affiliate link, be sure to include an affiliate disclosure on that page and in your privacy policy. 

When you’re promoting an affiliate via email, the same kind of disclosure applies. Even if your affiliate program doesn’t require it, consider how this transparency can alleviate any “bait and switch” type of feelings someone might have if they don’t know how affiliate programs work. Here’s an example of mine from a recent promotion:

6. Sell Ad Space in Your Email Newsletter

You’re already creating great content regularly and sending it out to your email list (go, you!). But did you know you can capitalize on that “real estate” by selling ad space within your email newsletter? 

Here’s an example of how Pinch of Yum did this in a partnership with ButcherBox:

This blurb in their email was flanked (it’s a pun, get it?!) with Pinch of Yum content above and below this ad, and it fits so seamlessly in with the style and voice of the email that you barely notice that it’s a paid advertisement!

Advertisers love this kind of investment because it means they’re getting your audience’s dedicated attention on their product. It provides them with a great ROI compared to other methods of advertising. 

So if a sponsor or product feels like a good fit to share with your readers, why not charge for “ad space” in your newsletter and send it out to your list?

And, Yes, Email Marketing is Still the Strongest Way for Bloggers to Make Money

The more consistently you email, nurture, and serve your audience with great content, the more brand loyalty you build and higher ROI you’ll see. 

In fact, studies have found that for every $1 invested in email campaigns, content creators see a $36 ROI — snazzy, huh? 

By sharing how your story relates to your reader, sending delicious recipes they’ll love to make (and tell their friends about), as well as connecting them with paid and unpaid resources or products that they’ll love, your emails will be valuable, genuine, authentic, and engaging!

Ready to get started strong with email marketing and make some money while you’re at it? Let’s go!

The post 6 Ways You Can Make Money with Your Email List appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

We’ve reviewed the MAGIC Framework for negotiating with brands in the past, but we wanted to dive deeper into the most common areas for negotiation within contracts.

I know, I know, I can almost hear the snores through the computer screen. But learning the language of contracts can empower you to be a much stronger negotiator and can mean a difference of thousands of dollars in payment.

We’ve broken down six clauses of a sponsored content contract that often lead to negotiations between a brand and a content creator. Within each section, we’ll chat about the most important things to look out for and prioritize. Let’s dig in!

1. Who, What, Where, When, Why?

The scope of work is the outline of your project. This is the bread and butter of a contract because it outlines the work you’ll do for the brand! 

The main goal of the scope of work is a specific outline of the deliverables, including a timeline, point of contact, and the exact types of content the brand is expecting. 

If the brand is requesting a quick turnaround in the timeline, don’t be afraid to charge an additional fee! This is a great time to be specific about expectations surrounding product placement in photos and videos. Does the brand expect to be placed in one photo, or featured in 30 photos? Adjust your compensation accordingly.

Having a detailed scope of work can save you lots of heartache and headaches down the road, so take the time to make sure both you and the brand understand the scope of the campaign to get this part of your contract right!

2. Money Money Money

Payment terms are obviously an important part of a contract and the negotiation process, but the payment terms include much more than just the dollar amount. 

When will you be paid? You might see “Net 30” or “Net 60” in a contract, which means that you will be paid 30 or 60 days after the content or service is delivered. This time period is up for negotiation and can impact the amount you charge as well. You may also consider requiring a deposit before starting work.

We recommend finding a tool (like FreshBooks, Dubsado, QuickBooks, or a spreadsheet) that works for you to track payments and stay organized. 

3. Who Owns the Content?

This is a biggie! Ownership of Content is one of the most heavily negotiated sections of contracts, and it is often tied to compensation. 

Here are two common scenarios for influencer-created content:

• Influencer retains ownership of all influencer-created content and the brand either has no rights to the content OR receives a license to display on certain channels (i.e. digital channels). The influencer can request that there is attribution back to the influencer for a certain time period or for perpetuity. 
• Influencer assigns ownership, or all rights, to a brand and retains a license to display the content. Typically, influencers will charge a higher rate if the brand wants this full ownership. This might be described as “work for hire.”

Looking to negotiate ownership of content? Try starting with: “I wasn’t anticipating the brand’s ownership in my original quote; here is the new price to reflect ownership.”

4. You Can’t Sit With Us

Exclusivity provisions are sometimes included in contracts to ensure that you are not promoting a competing brand or category on your blog or social media pages. 

As with the other contract sections, it is important to be as specific as possible when defining who the competing brands are. Know that you can always ask the brand for a list of similar products or companies that they would consider to be off-limits. 

You also want to be clear on the timing of an exclusivity provision. If a brand specifies an exclusivity period of one year, you will not be able to work with any competing brands during that period. You will commonly see exclusivity for defined times pre- and post-publication. 

Lastly, it is important to specify what is excluded. Does this involve all other sponsored content? What about display ads? Will a product in your pantry in the background of a photo in another post be problematic? Be informed!

Exclusivity can make a big impact on compensation. If you are unable to work with any similar brands during a certain time period, you want to ensure you are being paid enough to cover that time. Don’t be afraid to negotiate with that in mind!

5. The Edit

In many contracts, the brand will want to see and approve a draft of the content and/or visuals before publication. 

It is important to know what editing rights the brand expects. We recommend that you only allow a brand to make changes to factual misstatements or misrepresentations of the brand. You don’t want to allow changes to your voice and style so that readers won’t recognize the content as yours.

You will also want to consider the timeline of revisions and how many revisions you will allow. If you don’t specify a cut-off date or the number of revisions, the brand may have full rights to ask for revisions indefinitely.

Lastly, decide how you will handle requests for photo reshoots, which can be time-consuming to complete. Again, specifying how many rounds of reshoots you’re willing to do would be helpful here.

6. How Do We Call It Quits?

“It’s not you, it’s me!” The Termination Clause is really just that – a pre-approved break-up plan. Mutual termination provisions allow both parties to know how to end a professional relationship. 

Is the right to terminate mutual, or is it only up to the brand? Can termination happen with or without cause? How much notice must be provided? In the event of termination, will the influencer be paid? What will happen to the unfinished content? 

Negotiating for a mutual termination provision can help to ensure that you are protected and compensated for the work that you’ve completed and give you the power to end a partnership if it is no longer serving you.

Phew! There is a LOT to consider when going through contracts with brands, isn’t there? Have you ever negotiated with a brand over sponsored content? What successes did you have? Any struggles to share? Let us know in the comments!

The post 6 Strategies for Negotiating Sponsored Content Contracts appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

That said, when it comes time to negotiate your rate and your work with a brand, it can get a little intimidating and complicated.

But knowing what to expect by doing some work ahead of time can help you feel more comfortable and confident when you get to the negotiations.

Allow us to introduce to you the concept of MAGIC, a framework created by our Legal Expert, Danielle Liss from Businessese, in our Negotiating with Brands Quick Win lesson available to all Food Blogger Pro Members.

This framework will help you approach negotiating with brands as a collaboration-based exercise, versus one rooted in conflict. It’ll help you identify and articulate what both sides want in a sponsored partnership so that both you and the brand are happy with the contracted work.

Why negotiate with brands?

When you set out to work with a brand, there will be a contract involved that outlines important aspects of the partnership.

As with most partnerships, each side is after a very specific outcome, which is outlined in the contract. On the brand side, they may want to get a new product in front of a new audience or signups to their email list. On the content creator side, you want to get paid what your work is worth.

That’s where negotiations come into play –– they help get everyone on the same page so that both sides of the partnership are happy with the projected outcomes and results.

The MAGIC of Negotiations

Let’s dive into the MAGIC Framework, shall we?!

M: Map What You Want

This step is all about approaching negotiating with a plan, rather than just blindly diving into a contract discussion.

You’ve worked hard to create your brand, build your audience, and establish trust with your readers, so you’ll want to make sure to protect those in any brand partnership.

Some brands will request that you use specific language in your posts, while others will want more control over the photographs using their products. Some brands may want multiple rounds of edits before a sponsored post goes live, other brands don’t need to see a draft before your post is published.

As a content creator, it’s important to have a list of what I’m okay with and another list of things you don’t want to do before entering into a brand partnership. These lists will be different for every creator, so it’s worth it to take a few minutes to think about what you absolutely need out of a partnership versus what you’re willing to be flexible with.

A: Assess What the Other Side Wants

An important point to understand here is that, as a content creator, you’re helping a brand solve a problem that they have. They wouldn’t be looking for bloggers, photographers, videographers, or content creators if they didn’t have a problem that you could provide the solution for.

So before you enter negotiations, it’s a good idea to look at the deal from the brand’s perspective and figure out exactly what it is that you can do for them; think about what their problems are, what their goals are, and how you and your work can provide solutions for them.

G & I: Gather Insights

This is your chance to take your learnings from the M and the A steps to put it all together into a plan!

This is the step where you can take your “must haves” along with the goals of the brand to say, “Here’s what the brand needs, here’s what I need, and here’s how I think that we come together.”

When it all boils down to it, a negotiation is just a discussion to make sure that everyone involved in the partnership is happy and on the same page. This is where you get specific.

Some of the common clauses you’ll typically see in a contract for sponsored content work include:

• Scope of Work
• Payment Terms
• Ownership of Content
• Exclusivity
• Termination
• Drafts
• Likeness Release
• Reshoots

If you can enter into the contract negotiation phase with a plan for these items based on what you want and what the brand wants, the negotiation phase is nothing to be feared! Advocating for yourself while understanding how your work can help solve a brand’s problems is an important superpower when you start working with brands.

C: Collaborate

Collaboration over conflict; that’s what we’re after in negotiations! If something within a contract that a brand provides doesn’t work for you, ask about it. See if there’s a way to pivot and approach it from a different angle.

For example, if a brand wants to have complete lifetime ownership over the content you create for them, that may be a red flag for you.

Maybe they’d be willing to change the terms in the contract so the brand can license your content on certain, specific channels.

Or maybe they really do need lifetime ownership of the content. In that case, you can charge them more than the original offer since the brand will be getting more value from your work over a longer period of time.

Other times, you may not be able to come to a resolution with a brand, and that’s okay. But because you did some work ahead of time (the M-A-G-I of this framework!), you can be confident in that outcome.

Hopefully this MAGIC Framework can help you enter into contract negotiations with a little more confidence in the future, and if so, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

And if you’re interested in learning more about negotiating with brands (including information on all of those common clauses listed above!), Food Blogger Pro members have access to our full 52-minute long discussion with Danielle all about how to handle brand negotiations as a food blogger. Become a member and get instant access today!

Now, we’re curious: Have you ever done any sponsored work? How did you handle the negotiation process?

The post The ‘MAGIC’ Framework for Negotiating with Brands appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

Who is this “we,” you ask? The Food Blogger Pro community and the team here behind Food Blogger Pro and our sister companies.

We say it a lot, but every food blogging journey is different, and it’s really hard to compare one blogger’s story to another.

We all have different responsibilities in addition to trying to grow our food blogs. Some of us have full-time jobs. Others have kids or pets or other family obligations. We live in different countries where we rent or own our own houses. Some bloggers work on their blogs on the weekends, while others can spend a bit more time producing content.

That’s why it’s impossible to compare the growth of one blog to another; there is so much happening behind-the-scenes that impacts the way and the speed at which a blog grows.

So why are we talking about how we’ve made our first $100 today? To show you just some of the ways that bloggers have made it work.

Your first $100 is a huge milestone, and there are so many different ways you can achieve it. Here are just a few ideas:

How Food Blogger Pro members made their first $100 from food blogging

Our Question of the Week on our Member Dashboard a few weeks ago was, “How did you make your first $100 from food blogging?”

Here’s how Food Blogger Pro members responded:

Ads were the most popular way that our members made their first $100. And it makes sense! There are a lot of ad networks that work with bloggers to help them add, track, monitor, and optimize the ads on their sites. It’s also a relatively passive way to make some money from your food blog –– you place ads on content you’ve already produced, and your site will earn revenue when a reader sees or clicks the ad.

Another popular way that members made their first $100 was through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is relatively simple –– you join an affiliate program for a product or company you really love, you promote that product or company in blog posts or on social media using your affiliate link, and if a reader purchases through that link, you get a commission!

Amazon is probably the most popular affiliate program for food bloggers, but there are affiliate programs for just about any kind of product or service, like high-powered blenders. Even Food Blogger Pro has one!

That said, there is a bit of art to effectively using affiliate links.

For example, Q4 (aka the last three months of the year) is a great time to promote products and companies using affiliate links because readers are already in “Buying Mode.” With the holidays right around the corner, perhaps you publish a roundup of some of your favorite products using your affiliate links. A common form of those are gift guides (here’s a great example from Jessica at How Sweet Eats).

Some other popular ways that our members made their first $100 is through cookbooks (either a deal they got themselves or by contributing to a cookbook), sponsored content (both on their blog and on social media), and product sales.

All of that being said, 31.25% of respondees said they haven’t monetized their blogs yet. So if you’re in the same boat, you’re definitely not alone. Hopefully you got some ideas from what you’ve read so far, and if you’re looking for even more ways to monetize your site, be sure to download our free ebook, “16 Ways to Monetize a Food Blog.”

How our team made their first $100 from food blogging

The team behind Food Blogger Pro (and the other TinyBit companies) are made up of bloggers, business owners, cookbook writers, and creators, and we wanted to see how they ended up making their first bit of income from their food businesses:

Mine was through affiliate income! After launching my blog, I also started sharing recipes on my YouTube channel, and I always included Amazon affiliate links for any tools or equipment used for the recipes. As some of those videos got really popular, my affiliate earnings started to increase.

–– Leslie, The Baker’s Almanac

For Well Vegan, we started out focusing on meal plan subscriptions. Then we got tired of maintaining them! We didn’t do ads or affiliate income for several years.

–– Katie, Well Vegan

My first $100 on Pinch of Yum came through a combination of display ads and affiliate marketing for blogging-related products. You can read about our first money-making experience here, and you can see how our income changed over the years by checking out our income reports!

–– Lindsay, Pinch of Yum

Mine was through sponsored content on my blog! I established a bit of a relationship with a brand I really loved on Instagram (tagged them in photos where I was using their products, used their hashtags, DM’d with them a bit, etc.), and then I eventually reached out via email to see if they’d be willing to work with me. They said yes! And my first sponsored content contract was for $100 for a sponsored post on my blog.

–– Alexa (it me), Fooduzzi

It’s important to point out that when we all made our first $100, our blogs were, in the case of everyone but Lindsay, still are side hustles. So that first $100 was no small feat –– it was a result of working strange hours, photographing recipes on the weekends, and putting in the work to reach that goal.

Hopefully this post showed you that there are so many different ways to earn that first $100 from your food blog. If you haven’t hit that milestone yet, don’t lose hope. Try some of the strategies we talked about above and see what feels natural to you and your blog. We’re huge fans of diversifying income here (aka not relying on just one source of income when monetizing a blog), so feel free to experiment and adjust as needed.

If you have made at least $100 from your blog already, we’d love to hear about your first monetization experience in the comments as well: How did you make your first $100 from food blogging?

The post How We Made Our First $100 from Food Blogging appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.