As Google starts to treat the user-generated content from Reddit as a publisher in its own right, it is not uncommon to see Reddit posts in the top three spots on a SERP (search engine result page). Given the increased visibility of platforms like Reddit in Google search results, it makes sense to pivot some of your traffic-driving efforts to this platform.

Let’s start with the basics. What is Reddit? And who uses it? Reddit is a social media site/news aggregator/user forum hybrid that defies a super simple definition. In 2024, there are over half a billion Reddit users — and this number continues to grow. Most Reddit users are male (2 out of 3), and almost half of Reddit users live in the United States.

So if you’re looking to find a new traffic source for your food blog, are tired of the SEO grind, or just interested in an experiment, Reddit is a good place to start. So after you’ve secured your username on Reddit… what’s next?

Find Relevant Recipe Communities

There are over 100,000 active Reddit communities, or subreddits, on Reddit. Where should you be posting? A quick search on Google or Reddit for “Reddit recipes” will return numerous subreddits that might be a good fit for you. To give you a taste of some recipe-related communities, check out:

• r/recipes
• r/easyrecipes
• r/Cooking
• r/InstantPot
• r/EatCheapAndHealthy
• r/cookingforbeginners
• r/bakingrecipes

Try searching for keywords related to your niche to find smaller communities to post in. If you post lots of easy vegan recipes, you might try the r/veganmealprep community (with 59,000 members) as opposed to the r/veganrecipes community (with 525,000 members). The same principles of keyword research apply here — you want to find a Reddit “sweet spot” community (i.e. one with enough interest, but not too much competition) to allow you to breakthrough.

When you start exploring subreddits, you’ll notice important information about each community on the top right of the page — the number of members, how many members are online now, and rules (more on those, later).

Each subreddit also has its own rules and guidelines. Follow them! For example, you can see the rules for r/cookingforbeginners here:

Each subreddit will provide you with the “how to” of posting in that community. Some require photos with each recipe post, some require that the recipe is included in the post, etc. You’ll have to tailor your posting strategy for each subreddit accordingly.

Engage in Reddit Communities

Reddit has fairly specific guidelines around how to operate on the platform, especially around self-promotion. A good rule of thumb is that only 10% of your posts on Reddit should link to your website. Reddit prioritizes useful contributors over self-promotional users, and posting only links to your site (especially right out of the gate) is a surefire way to get banned from a subreddit. Becoming an active user on Reddit is an important part of establishing yourself as a useful contributor.

Start engaging with the content of other creators. Observe what type of content other users are posting. Notice what kinds of posts perform well. Just like E-E-A-T matters for search engines like Google, being an engaged, active user on Reddit will help build trust and authority within the subreddits that you hope to get traffic from (also known as karma on Reddit).

Posting Strategy on Reddit as a Food Creator

Unlike on platforms like TikTok or Instagram, the cadence of posting on Reddit is not as relevant (unless it’s a requirement of the subreddit that you post weekly on a Tuesday, for example). It can be useful to post mostly on weekday mornings (EST), as Reddit tends to see a surge in traffic around the lunch hour.

How can you start providing value to a subreddit as a food creator?

• Share cooking tips and tricks.
• Share your favorite products from different grocery stores.
• Share your go-to kitchen equipment and tools.
• Share easy recipes right in a thread (without linking back to your site).
• Answer questions posed by other users.

Some general recommendations for popular posts on Reddit:

• Include photos or videos.
• Solve a problem for other users.
• Post consistently.
• Respond to comments or questions promptly.

You don’t necessarily need to create new posts to gain traction on Reddit and appear in the SERPs. Publishing useful comments on relevant posts (especially ones that might already be ranking in Google’s top spots for keywords you’re trying to rank for) is another great way to get visibility.

Content on Reddit can be viewed as both viral and evergreen, especially in light of Reddit’s increased visibility on Google, so don’t despair if you’re not gaining immediate traction on the platform — be patient as you build trust within the community.

We’d love to know… are you currently posting on Reddit as a food creator? Is it a significant traffic driver for you?

The post Reddit as a Traffic Source for Food 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.

That’s why it’s important for you to understand how you can leverage emails to grow your blog.

As you continue to develop your blog, you’ll start to see a trend in the types of emails that come into your inbox. You may receive emails from readers who just love your content and want to say hi—try to respond to these emails if you can! Showing someone you heard what they said (and that you genuinely care) can go a long way.

Today’s post will focus on another type of email: support emails! The primary goal for this type of email is to solve a problem, not necessarily to connect or say hi. We’ll review the benefits and downsides of support emails (with corresponding action items) and the systems you can set up to mitigate emails for your site.

Let’s dive right in!

How support emails can be beneficial for your site

Believe it or not, support emails can be highly beneficial for bloggers! The benefits are twofold:

1. They help you identify what’s broken on your site.
2. They help you identify problems your readers are having.

Let’s review each one in more detail below, shall we?

They help you identify what’s broken on your site

You’ll find that as you continue to develop your blog, things seem to be breaking all the time and there’s always something to work on.

When you’re in the thick of it, you might not be able to identify all of these issues yourself. You know how they say it’s always good to have a second set of eyes to check for any errors? Well, luckily, your site is in the public domain, so you’ve got many more eyes to rely on!

Here’s an example of an email you might receive from a reader:

I’m trying to find your chocolate chip bundt cake recipe, but it’s not coming up. Did you take the recipe down?

Even if the search feature is actually working on your blog, if you hear from multiple people that it’s not working, then something is wrong with your blog’s user experience. It might technically be working, but if your users can’t figure it out, then it’s as if it’s not working. 

The name of the game here is to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible. Resolving these issues as quickly as possible also helps you build trust with your readers.

Action item: When you get a “I need help, something’s broken” email this week, see if there’s something you can do to fix the root issue.

They show you what problems readers are having

Sometimes, you’ll receive emails that can help you identify problems readers are experiencing. These are a bit different compared to the “I need help, something’s broken” emails because they often contain valuable insights that can help you develop a solution to that problem.

Read that last line again.

These emails are a great opportunity for you to create a product or service to help people solve a problem. This also happens to be one of the best ways to earn an income from your blog! 

Here’s an example of an email you might receive from a reader:

I love your blog! I was thinking of starting a blog, but I have no idea where to start. Do you have any advice for me?

In our case, the Pinch of Yum team created a Resources page to share their favorite plugins, photography equipment, and tools they use to grow their blog. This page serves two purposes:

1. It’s the perfect guide for anyone looking to start their own food blog!
2. They earn revenue from any purchases made through the affiliate links.

Sounds like a win-win situation, right? That’s because it is!

Keep a close eye on these emails and think about how you can develop a solution to problems that arise. Can you develop a page, product, or service to address these problems? How can you monetize it?

Action item: Create a “problem log” to keep track of the questions you get asked. Use this “problem log” as a guide for creating a product that you can eventually offer to your readers.

The downside of support emails

Don’t get me wrong, these emails are not always rainbows and butterflies. Ideally, you’re able to resolve issues as quickly as possible or you can develop a solution to a problem. Sometimes, you’ll receive emails that:

1. Contain problems that people want to solve as quickly as possible and…
2. Could have been solved without an email.

Here are some examples to illustrate what I mean:

• I just purchased your eBook and was unable to download it. I tried to find the download email again but I couldn’t. Can you help me?
• I’m having trouble logging into Food Blogger Pro. I have tried to reset the password for the account several times, but it doesn’t work.
• How do I update the credit card on file for my Food Blogger Pro subscription?

When it comes to emails like this, the best customer service is no customer service.

Let me explain.

It’s kind of like going into a really busy coffee shop to get a cup of coffee. The line is out the door, but you notice a self-service option where you can insert your credit card into a machine, pour your coffee, and go on your merry way. Everyone wins! The coffee shop gets paid, the barista saves time, and you save time while still getting your coffee (there’s a great YouTube video from ZenDesk that helps paint the picture of that analogy).

In such a case, the best customer service is no customer service. Said differently, the best customer service is a self-service line.

This can be something as simple as an FAQ page. With an FAQ page, the reader doesn’t have to wait to get their problem solved, and the blogger doesn’t have to spend time replying to the question.

It’s a waste of everyone’s time if you’re getting that could have been solved with an FAQ or dedicated support page. In cases like this, you want to do whatever you can to build virtual self-service lines that will help people quickly get their questions answered without having to get in touch with you.

Action item: Create an FAQ page or dedicated support page on your blog to reduce the I need help emails that could be solved without an email.

How do I set up a self-service email system for my blog?

Ready to free up your time answering emails and get your readers where they need to go? Great! Let’s explore some solutions together.

First, it’s important to note that the solutions will vary depending on where you are at with your blog. Here are our suggestions based on your blog size and the number of emails you get:

1. Create a basic contact form (beginning blog w/ low email load)

When you’re just starting out, your email load will probably be pretty manageable. The main objective is to create a contact page that allows your readers to contact you. Feel free to check out the Pinch of Yum contact form as a reference point! 

To get started, create a new page in WordPress and call it “Contact.” Sign up for the free version of Wufoo and create a basic form with fields for (1) Name (2) Email and (3) Message/Question.

We recommend Wufoo because it’s not as buggy as the contact forms that integrate directly into WordPress. Wufoo will also store the form submissions in the cloud so you can retrieve information in case you accidentally delete the email. Super handy!

2. Create a “smart” contact page (midsized blog w/ medium email load)

The idea with a smart contact page is that it helps direct people to the right place before they hit submit. Pinch of Yum currently uses a smart contact page by utilizing some advanced features with Wufoo.

Here’s a video explaining how we’ve previously set this kind of form up on Pinch of Yum:

3. Set up a support ticket system (business blogger w/ high email load)

The support ticket system allows for a really high level of functionality. The other advantage of a support ticket system is that it allows you to delegate support tickets to a team of people.

You probably don’t need this support ticketing system unless you receive many emails about your products or services. We implemented a support ticket system for Food Blogger Pro for three reasons:

1. We want Food Blogger Pro to feel like a business rather than a personal blog. The support ticket system helps to maintain professionalism on the site.
2. We found that there were some really common questions that people had about their memberships. The ticketing system made it super easy for us to create a “self-service” type of customer service.
3. We knew we would want a dedicated team member to respond to support tickets, so we needed to set up and prepare a ticket system.

We are currently using Intercom for our support ticket system. Here are the features we’re using right now:

1. Messenger

Members can contact us by clicking on the chat bubble at the bottom right-hand corner of any page. When someone clicks on this, a window comes up where people can either search for answers to their questions or contact us directly. 

When members opt to contact us directly, we share the following with them:

1. Our typical response time.
2. A link to our support page so that they can find a help article to answer their question.
3. A list of articles generated by Intercom that may answer the member’s question.

2. A Help Center page

The Help Center page allows us to build out a set of frequently asked questions so that members can easily find what they’re looking for without having to contact the support team.

Sometimes emails gets a bad rap. They can take up a lot of time, but if you work hard to eliminate the “bad” emails then you’ll be left with the helpful emails that will help you continue to grow your blog.

Do you have any tips for handling emails and interacting with readers? Do you respond to all of the emails you get? Just some? Do you have any customer service tips? Share your thoughts with us below!

The post Leveraging Your Email Inbox to Drive Blog Growth 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.

As a recipe creator, you can submit your recipes to these food sharing sites, and then these sites will display and feature those recipes. These food sharing sites are all a little different, but submitting your content to them can be part of an effective traffic-building strategy, especially when you’re just starting out.

One quick note before we dive in — over the years, many food sharing sites have come and gone. These days, many social media platforms (like Pinterest) perform similar functions to the food sharing sites of yesteryear.

That being said, before you start submitting your recipes to a food sharing site, it’s important to check when the most recent posts on the site are dated. If there aren’t any recipes posted within the last month or so, don’t waste your time!

Let’s dive into some of our favorite food sharing sites!

Foodgawker

Note: Foodgawker was recently sold and was subsequently relaunched on November 14, 2024.

When you think of food-sharing sites, Foodgawker probably first comes to mind. It’s one of many “gawker” websites, but Foodgawker is where you’ll want to submit your recipes.

Foodgawker needs to accept your recipe before they actually post it, and they review each photo to make sure that the food looks appealing, that the white balance looks natural, and that the composition is tempting.

We like Foodgawker because content creators submit links to their recipes, rather than the full recipes themselves. This means that if a Foodgawker user wants your recipe, they’ll need to go to your site to get it.

Pro Tip: When you submit your recipes to Foodgawker, make sure you include an enticing description to help encourage clicks through to your site! Your description will be shown directly under your photo on Foodgawker’s feed.

Yummly

Yummly is a unique food sharing site-meets-personalized recipe aggregator. Users can save recipes, plan meals, and more all on the site, so it’s essentially a recipe collection app for readers.

You can add your recipes to Yummly by adding a Yum button to your site (more details here), so if your readers are already using Yummly, it could be a really great way to get your content on the platform.

FoodYub

FoodYub is another option amongst the user-submitted recipe sharing sites. You can sign-up for FoodYub for free and submit your own recipes to the site. Each recipe image links directly back to your blog!

Recipes on FoodYub can be sorted by category or by ‘most clicked’ or ‘most recent’ etc.

Trivet Recipes

We are also big fans of Trivet Recipes (and not just because it was actually founded by one of our FBP members)!

After signing up for Trivet Recipes, submitting your recipes is super simple, and users can filter recipes by category or even search to find exactly what they’re looking for.

Spillt

We had one of the Founders of Spillt on The Food Blogger Pro Podcast in 2023 and immediately fell in love with their mission to build a recipe-sharing app designed to drive traffic to food blogs.

Spillt is a social app that allows users to save, rate, review, and share recipes. There is also a plugin that automatically shares newly posted recipes to Spillt and also adds the recipe reviews and ratings back to your site! You can read more about why food bloggers like the app here.

Punchfork

Last but not least, Punchfork! The site (and/or app) displays ingredients for each recipe, but not the directions (so users need to click through to the food blog for the full recipe).

While you can’t submit individual recipes to Punchfork, you can submit your food blog to be considered for the site using this form.

An important note…

All food sharing sites have different sizing and editing recommendations that you should consider before you submit your recipes to each site.

Question: Do you have a favorite food sharing site? Let us know in the comments!

The post Our Favorite Food Sharing Sites (2024) appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

As you probably already know, everyone’s keyword research process is different, and each of those processes have quite a few steps.

So in today’s Part 2 of our Keyword Research for Food Bloggers series, we’re just focusing on 6 keyword research tips that can help you along on your keyword research journey. They’re actionable, related to recipe SEO, and good things to keep in mind whether you’re looking to start or optimize your keyword researching strategy.

We’ll cover:

1. When you may want to start your keyword research
2. Why we like longtail keywords
3. Where you should (and shouldn’t) include your keyword
4. Why keyword research isn’t the end-all, be-all
5. How long it may take to see results from your keyword research
6. If every post you publish should have ranking potential

Ready? Let’s dive in!

1. Start your keyword research process before you develop your recipe.

Yep, keyword research can start earlier than you may have expected.

Of course, there are going to be recipes that you want to publish that aren’t great keyword research candidates (more on that in a bit), but it helps to start researching keywords early in the recipe development process.

Why?

It can help you figure out what can make your recipe unique and even more valuable to searchers who are searching for more specific terms.

For example, if you’re wanting to develop a chocolate chip cookie recipe, you may want to start by using a keyword research tool (I’m using Ahref’s Keyword Explorer for this example) and search for that term:

The Keyword Difficulty is super hard, but the Volume is really high. This is saying that a lot of people are searching for this term, but it’ll be pretty difficult to rank for that keyword unless you have a ton of people linking to your site.

So a regular ol’ chocolate chip cookie recipe may not rank in the first few spots in a Google search, but are there any other related keywords we can try to rank for?

This is where we can click around under Keyword Ideas to find different iterations on this search term. If you click View All under “Terms Match,” you’ll see other keywords that include “chocolate chip cookies” along with other terms.

The search volume goes down, but the keyword difficulty (the KD column with all of the colors!) also tends to goes down.

Of course we have some variation here due to the fact that there’s a lot of content about certain keywords (for example, in the image above “how to make chocolate chip cookies” has the same keyword difficulty as “chocolate chip cookies,” even though the search volume is wildly different), but in general, when less people are searching for a keyword, the easier it will be rank for that keyword.

Ideally, you want to target a keyword that has high volume (aka there are a lot of people searching for it) and a lower keyword difficulty (aka the tool you’re using thinks it would be easier for someone to rank for that term/there aren’t many good results for that term).

Keep in mind that other tools may have their own terms for Keyword Difficulty (for instance, it’s called Score in KeySearch), but it’s still a helpful data point to keep an eye on.

And those keyword variations we found? That’s our next tip!

2. Lean into the power of the longtail keyword.

A longtail keyword utilizes those extra terms (also known as modifiers) to form a keyword that has less search volume but is also less competitive.

An example is “one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookies.” As you can probably imagine, the keyword “chocolate chip cookies” is incredibly difficult to rank for. It’s highly competitive and has a lot of search results (121,000,000 on Google at the time this article was written!), and it would take considerable effort and SEO power to rank within the first few search results for that keyword.

So instead of trying to write a post that targets the “chocolate chip cookie” keyword, we can use extra terms (or a longtail keyword) to help us reach searchers who are more likely to click on our blog post in a search result.

Not only is vegan a modifier, “one bowl” is too. By making “one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookies” your target keyword, you’re targeting searchers who are searching for a more specific need than just chocolate chip cookies. Therefore, you’re fulfilling their needs (the recipe) and satisfying their intent (wanting to find a one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe).

And as you can probably imagine, this is why it’s helpful to start keyword researching before the recipe development starts! That way, you can let these modifications help inform the recipe development process.

3. Know where to include your keyword in your blog post (and where not to).

There isn’t a way to tell Google “hey this is the keyword I’m trying to rank for, so please rank this blog post accordingly.” At least, not directly.

Instead, your strategic use of a keyword within a blog post can tell search engines what your post is about and what types of searches this blog post helps satisfy. Search engines are always looking for content that will help satisfy user intent, meaning articles and posts that get the searcher the information they’re looking for as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

So where should you include your keyword? In general, you’ll want to make sure your keyword is in:

• Your post title
• Your recipe title
• The first paragraph
• Image file names
• Your meta description
• Other parts of your post where it fits naturally

If you use your keyword too often throughout your post in an unnatural way, you’ll be at risk for keyword stuffing, which is a common form of “spam” search engines like Google keep an eye out for. If you’re looking for a rule of thumb about how often you should use your keyword, we’ve heard that a 2% keyword density, meaning your keyword makes up only 2% or less of your content, is a solid percentage. You can measure your keyword density with tools like SEO Quake or Semrush.

That said, as long as your post sounds natural and you’re not throwing keywords into your post just to add them, you should be a-okay. You don’t need your keyword in every heading or every paragraph –– include it where it makes sense, and leave it at that.

And do you need to type your keyword in the exact word order each and every time? No, especially if it sounds awkward or unnatural. Search engines like Google can read and understand keywords in any order and understand your intent. For example, some variations in word order for our “one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookies” keyword could be:

• Vegan chocolate chip cookies
• Chocolate chip vegan cookies
• One bowl vegan cookies

You don’t need to use the exact “one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookies” phrase over and over in your post. Write in a natural, helpful way, and search engines will understand.

4. Keyword research is just one small part of the greater SEO equation.

The goal of keyword research is to find keywords that you can target that will:

1. Bring organic search traffic to your site.
2. Not be too terribly difficult to rank for.

Google’s ranking algorithm is made up of hundreds of different factors, so keyword research is just a small portion of what can affect how your post gets found via search.

This article from Ahrefs does a good job at describing some of what we do know about Google’s ranking factors. Some of the most well-known ranking factors include:

• Backlinks
• Freshness (or recency)
• Keyword mentions
• User experience
• Topical authority

So just keep this in mind as you’re doing your keyword research –– it’s just one part of the very large SEO equation!

P.S. Depending on the tools you use for keyword research, you may come upon information about your domain authority, authority score, or domain rating.

These metrics are developed by companies like Moz, Ahrefs, and Semrush and are not ranking factors in the eyes of Google. It’s a nice metric to see and understand, but it’s not used in determining your post ranks in search results. You can find more information about this metric here!

5. It may take some time to see results from your keyword research.

How long your blog has been around, how old the post is, and how many other websites have linked to your content can all impact the length of time it may take to see results from your keyword research. That means that it’s possible that, for new content, it may take days or months to actually see significant organic search traffic numbers for that post.

Since it takes time, try setting yourself up for that eventual success by making your post as well-researched and thorough as possible. Some things to keep in mind are:

• Add some related internal links to that blog post
• Add links back to the blog post you’re optimizing in some of your existing related blog posts
• Make sure your image names and alt text are descriptive
• Make sure your images are the correct size
• Keep quality guidelines like E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in mind to help make your post as helpful as possible
• Fill out all recipe plugin fields
• Help your readers easily navigate your blog post and get to the answers they want faster with a “Jump to Recipe” button, FAQs, and a table of contents

By focusing on those other SEO elements and by making sure that your post is as comprehensive and helpful as possible, it may help move that ranking needle even quicker!

6. Not all posts will have keyword ranking potential… and that’s okay.

All of this being said, if you have an incredible recipe for a regular ol’ chocolate chip cookie, does it mean you shouldn’t post it if you don’t think you can rank for it?

Of course not! If it’s still content that your readers, email subscribers, and/or social media followers will love, it’s still great content. Just because it may not rank in the first few positions in a search result, your content can still be helpful and fulfill a need for your readers, and it can still drive traffic back to your blog through other avenues like social media or email.

In fact, for most bloggers, the majority of their search traffic comes from just a handful of posts –– not all posts are organic search super stars.

Plus, as your blog grows, your keyword volume and ease at which you can rank for keywords can grow. And you can always go back to posts you’ve done keyword research for 6-12 months later and tweak as needed.

That’s why it’s so important to write for your readers and not for what you may think search engines want –– Google isn’t reading, using, and sharing your posts; humans are.

And that’s a wrap on this two-part series all about keyword research! Here are some other resources you might want to check out to dive even further into keyword research fun:

• 362: How to Increase Your Organic Traffic with Keyword Research with Aleka Shunk
• 405: How Keyword Research, Resilience, and Resourcefulness Helped Casey Rooney Make a Six-Figure Income in Two Years
• Juicing the Low-Hanging Fruit: Optimizing Old Content for SEO
• 7 Mistakes Food Bloggers Make When Writing Recipes

What other keyword research questions do you have? Leave them in the comments below, or add them to the queue of our upcoming member-only Q&A with our Keyword Research Expert, Aleka!

The post 6 Keyword Research Tips for Food Bloggers appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

There are a bunch of different keyword researching tools that creators can use to optimize their blog posts, and in this post, we’re going to cover some of our (and our community’s) favorites.

Let’s dive in:

1. Use the right tools to find (and track!) keyword performance.

There are tons of different keyword tools available these days, and they’re available at all different price points.

Popular Free Keyword Research Tools

Google

Did you know you can use a regular ol’ Google search to do some keyword research? It’s true! Check the People Also Ask or Related Searches boxes within a Google search and see how Google suggests you end a search to get ideas.

You can also utilize tools like Google Trends or Google’s Keyword Planner (which lives within Google Ads) to see what searches are trending and refine your keywords.

Browser Extensions

There are a few browser extensions that our members, Experts, and team love:

• Keyword Surfer: This extension allows you to see keyword information within a Google search and gives you estimated traffic information for results
• Keywords Everywhere: The free version gives you difficulty metrics, trends charts, related keyword information, and more.

You can even get creative to get an idea of what people are searching for. Places like Pinterest, YouTube, Reddit, and Quora can all be effective places to find keyword inspiration.

Popular Paid (or Freemium) Keyword Research Tools

KeySearch*

Price: starting at $17/month after 1 month trial

KeySearch is one of the most popular keyword research tools because it’s a little more cost-effective than others. In fact, they have a limited free trial plan (hence the asterisk)!

KeySearch uses Google APIs and shows you information like search trends, keyword difficulty, search volume, related keywords, and more.

Ubersuggest*

Price: starting at $29/month

Ubersuggest is another one of those “freemium” keyword research solutions, and you get 3 free searches per day if you create an account.

You need to upgrade to get information like historical keyword data, searcher information, and other information, but it could be a good starting point!

AnswerThePublic*

Price: starting at $9/month

Owned by Neil Patel Digital (the same company that makes Ubersuggest), AnswerThePublic gives you information about questions related to your keyword as well as different versions of your keyword in visual graphs.

What’s the difference between Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic? According to the Neil Patel team, “AnswerThePublic helps you get strategically creative. Ubersuggest takes you on a deep dive into endless keyword data opportunities.”

AnswerThePublic has a 7 day free trial and limited free features so you can try it before deciding it’s right for you.

RankIQ

Price: starting at $49/month

RankIQ analyzes the content that ranks in higher positions in search results and identifies the topics and subtopics a blogger may want to include in their blog posts. It also provides you with estimated ranking information like competition, time to rank, and content targets.

RankIQ also has a Content Optimizer tool where you can get optimization tips on the blog post you’ve already written and a Keyword Library to help you find keywords based on any niche. Depending on your plan, you’ll have a limited amount of reports per month available, but you can buy additional reports as needed.

Ahrefs

Price: starting at $99/month for full access

Ahrefs is the keyword research tool that we use the most here at Food Blogger Pro. In addition to their Keywords Explorer tool that can help you find and analyze keywords, they have other site-maintenance features like site audits, broken link checkers, and linking information.

Ahrefs actually does offer a free plan called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools that gives you limited access to some of their features. One of the most helpful features is their Organic Keywords report, which shows you the keywords you’re already ranking for and the position your post is in for that keyword. We recommend signing up for this free plan first before deciding if Ahrefs is right for you!

Semrush

Price: starting at $119.95/month for full access

Similar to Ahrefs, Semrush helps you research, track, and analyze keywords and learn more information about your site. You’ll be able to set up projects to run site audits, check your on-page SEO, learn about your backlinks, and more.

In terms of price and features available, it’s very similar to Ahrefs. That said, Semrush is a robust tool for those who are interested in getting down into the nitty gritty of optimizing their sites!

What about tools for tracking keyword performance?

Once you’ve done all of the keyword research, recipe development, blog post writing, and promotion, how do you actually measure the impact of all of your hard work?

There are plenty of tools out there for this (and most of the tools we covered above allow you to track keyword performance), but some of our faves include:

Google Search Console

This free tool from Google allows you to dig into your search result performance and see your average position for some of the keywords you currently rank for. Click Search Results, and then toggle “Average Position” to on to see that data over time.

While Google Search Console is a helpful tool, it can be a little tough to find your exact ranking since it calculates average position based on where the top result is sitting. Since search results on desktop and mobile can vary (you can rank third on desktop and eighth on mobile for the same keyword), we recommend using the “position” data point within Google Search Console as guide when analyzing your keyword performance.

Clariti

Clariti is our sister site, and it has some pretty slick keyword rank data and functionality right now. You’ll soon be able to track change in keyword rank position over time!

How do you choose the right tool?

This is a great time to use the frustratingly classic response: it depends.

When you’re analyzing keywords and finding potential ranking opportunities, different tools will show you different information in different ways, so it’s up to you to figure out which one (or ones!) can give you the information you need to effectively make decisions.

And you don’t need to use just one keyword research tool. In fact, it’s helpful to use a few to compare data and dig deeper into different keyword opportunities. Not all tools source their ranking information from the same spot, so there will be some discrepancies between what you see in one versus another.

At our sister site, Pinch of Yum, we use:

• Ahrefs for keyword research
• Google Keyword Planner for keyword research
• Topic (a tool available for those running Raptive ads) for keyword research
• Google Trends for keyword research
• Clariti for keyword tracking
• Google Search Console for keyword tracking

How do you actually use these tools?

We’ll get into some keyword research tips and tricks in tomorrow’s part 2 blog post, but at a super high level, here’s how a food blogger may approach keyword research using some of these tools:

Step 1: Search for a keyword idea in a Google search.

• Add words to your search to play around with modifications of your keyword and see what Google tries to auto-complete your search with (for example, type in “vegan chocolate chip cookies” to see other variations on that search term).
• Take a look at the top results for those searches –– are they well-researched and thorough? Or is there an opportunity for you to create a better resource for searchers?
• Take a look at the People Also Ask and Related Searches boxes to get an idea of the types of answers searchers are in need of. You can use this information to come up with recipe ideas, to answer commonly asked questions in your blog post, or as a focus keyword for the blog post.
• If you’re using one of the browser extensions we mentioned, take note of the data it provides for your initial and additional keywords.

Step 2: Use a keyword research tool to discover search volume and keyword difficulty.

• Search for your initial keyword, as well as the variations you found to get a sense of the traffic opportunity.
• Look for keywords with a search volume of at least 100 monthly searches if you’re starting out as a new blogger. As an experienced blogger, you may want to shoot for keywords that have a bit more monthly searches (think over 1000, depending on the keyword).
• Keep in mind that seasonality can affect these numbers, so don’t be afraid to target a keyword with a lower search volume if you can create some really awesome content about it.
• Look for keywords with lower keyword difficulty (this means it may be easier for you to rank!). While each keyword tool calculates their “difficulty” level in different ways, a good rule of thumb is to try and find keywords with a difficulty under 30.

Step 3: Choose your focus keyword and create your content!

• Keep any secondary keywords you may want to try and rank for in mind, as you may be able to incorporate those secondary keywords into your content (for example, if a secondary keyword to your primary “chocolate chip cookies” keyword is “gluten free chocolate chip cookies,” you can have a section in your post about making them gluten free if you’ve tested it).
• Your #1 focus should always be to create the best content you can for your readers, so don’t fall for the trap of keyword stuffing (aka using your keywords too often within your blog post).

In our Part 2 of this two-part blog series, we’ll dive into some of our very best tips to help you keyword research like a pro and make some awesome optimized content.

Watch this space. We’ll see ya for Part 2 tomorrow!

And remember: If you want even more keyword research info, join the Food Blogger Pro community! Members have exclusive discounts on keyword researching tools (like KeySearch) and resources (like the Cooking with Keywords course), as well as access to our new Keyword Research Expert, Aleka!

The post Best Free & Premium Keyword Research Tools for Food Bloggers (2023) 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.

A.
B.
C.
D. All of the above

It’s 100% okay and normal to pick any of these options (especially the last one) when you’re optimizing your content for SEO. But it really doesn’t have to be that way. 

As you probably know, “SEO” stands for search engine optimization. That means that there are things you can be doing to your posts to optimize them for search results. So if a post is better optimized, there’s a greater chance for it to show up higher in search results.

SEO isn’t a one-and-done kind of thing though; there are a ton of different tips and tweaks that you can apply to your blog posts to help you get more traffic (and in turn more email subscribers, higher ad revenue, additional social media followers, and all of the other positive outcomes that can result from more people visiting your site).

And I’m not just talking about new posts; you can actually improve the existing posts on your site. We like to call this “juicing the low-hanging fruit” because you’re addressing content you’ve already created and just making it a tiny bit better. And that’s what we’re focusing on today.

It may seem overwhelming to implement all of these different SEO strategies, especially when you’re trying to balance creating awesome content and optimizing it in a way that Google rewards (more on that in a bit). 

But it’s important to remember that you’ve already done the hard part. You’ve created content, photographed recipes, and started to grow your audience. Now it’s time to juice the low-hanging fruit on your blog and make sure that your posts are optimized (but not too optimized) for search.

So how do you do that? Let’s discuss:

Step 1. Figure out what’s missing in your older content

Yep, I’m talking about auditing your existing content to see where there are shortcomings. Some questions to consider are:

Are your image file names descriptive?

Image names are searchable by Google and may appear in search results if they’re descriptive and keyword-rich. So an image name like fruit-pizza.jpg says a lot more about what’s in the actual photo than something like img-1203.jpg, and your fruit-pizza.jpg image may show up in search results for “fruit pizza.”

Speaking of images, do they all have alt text?

Not only does alt text help those using screen readers, it also tells search engines (like Google) what’s in your images.

How about Pinterest Text?

This is the description that contributes to “Pinterest SEO.” Even though the Pin Description won’t display on your pins, it’s important to provide one and make it as descriptive as possible.

Do your posts have descriptive meta descriptions?

Meta descriptions suggestion you’re giving to Google for what to display in a search result.

Ideally, Google will show this description in search results, but Google does what it wants and will sometimes pull other information from the blog post like ingredients or the first few lines of the post.

The meta description should describe the recipe, include your keyword, and entice the reader to click on the result.

Do your posts exemplify E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T is a very on-brand and important topic for food bloggers to understand; it stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, and sites that have high levels of E-E-A-T are seen as high-quality resources and create a more well-rounded, future-proofed site.

Are all paid links marked as nofollow or sponsored?

You want to make sure to tell Google that an external link is paid for so that it doesn’t contribute to that site’s PageRank. Just a way to stay on Google’s good side.

Have you optimized your internal links and external links?

The link text for your internal and external links should have descriptive link text and include a keyword if it makes sense.

A descriptive link looks like this:

It tells the reader exactly what they’ll see when they click on the link!

Do you have any broken links?

When the Google bot crawls a website and it comes across a broken link, the crawl is interrupted. Broken links also negatively impact your site’s “user experience,” because a link that a reader wants to visit isn’t correct and leads to a 404 page.

You can install the Broken Link Checker plugin or use a tool like Clariti to help you identify (and fix!) those pesky broken links.

Are you using a solid recipe plugin?

While recipe plugins make your recipes eye-catching for your readers, for those who have WordPress sites, they also send important information to search engines.

Is your recipe card complete?

Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to fill out every section of a recipe card, or it might be an intentional choice to omit something (for example, some bloggers choose not to include nutrition information), but in general, you’ll want to fill out all fields that are available in a recipe plugin

Are you answering some of the questions your readers may have about the recipe?

Using tools like the Yoast FAQ block allow you to add special markup to the questions and answers in your blog posts for Google. Not only will the information within your FAQ block help your readers with answers to their questions, your FAQs could also end up as a rich result in the People Also Ask box within a Google search:

You could also use a top-of-mind tool to help you figure out some questions your readers may have when making your recipe: ChatGPT! Here’s an example:

You can also use ChatGPT to help you think of different ways your readers may want to customize your recipes:

Last but not least, you can optimize for keywords. Check out this podcast episode with Aleka from Keywords with Aleka for more information on keyword research for food bloggers.

How to actually implement and track those updates

Once you audit your content, you can manually go through it all to track your fixes in something like a spreadsheet, but you can also use tools to make the process a bit easier. We recommend checking out:

• Clariti* –– A tool that helps you identify, organize, and track site enhancements.
• Alt Text Tools –– A free WordPress plugin from Food Blogger Pro’s WordPress Expert, Andrew Wilder that allows you to see where you’re missing alt text on your images and where you can stand to optimize it.
• Tasty Pins –– This plugin allows you to easily add Pinterest Descriptions to your images.
• Tasty Links –– This is an auto-linking plugin that can help you add and optimize internal and external links, as well as add nofollow and sponsored tags to your links.
• Ahrefs or SEMrush –– These tools can help you figure out which posts need to be optimized for search results.
• Rich Results Test –– A free tool from Google that tells you a lot about your structured data and whether or not your posts are eligible for rich results.

*Clariti is our sister site!

Step 2. Check out your analytics (aka how is that older content performing now?)

Pretty self-explanatory, but there is a lot of information in data; you just need to know where to look.

Google Analytics

You can start with Google Analytics. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that helps you figure out how your content is performing, where your readers are coming from, and what kind of content your readers are enjoying.

If you don’t already have Google Analytics 4 (GA4) set up, be sure to do that ASAP! Universal Analytics (aka the older version of Google Analytics) will stop collecting data July 1, 2023.

Here are some GA4 resources you might find helpful:

• How to Set Up Google Analytics 4: Creating a GA4 Property blog post
• How to Set Up Google Analytics 4: Connecting GA4 to Your Site blog post
• Google Analytics course (for Food Blogger Pro members!)

Google Search Console

Next, we’d recommend exploring Google Search Console. It helps you dive deep into the content on your site and shows you specific errors, helps you submit your sitemap to Google, and gives you insights into which keywords are bringing the most traffic to your site.

An important note: if a post is already performing really well, don’t touch it. Unless it’s riddled with errors and/or obviously out-of-date, you should leave those high-performing posts alone and allow them to continue being the shining stars they are.

Confused by these two tools?

We have courses that can show you how to use both of these important tools for members on Food Blogger Pro!

Some other non-free analytics tools you could check out are:

• Ahrefs –– We mentioned this above, but their site audits are really helpful to monitor and improve the health of your site.
• SEMrush –– Another re-mention! SEMrush is a super powerful tool that helps you gather ideas, unlock keyword recommendations, and track your progress.
• Ubersuggest –– This freemium tool helps you understand your page ranking, see how your competitors are performing, and get content ideas through keyword research.
• Moz Pro –– From the well-known SEO pros over at Moz, you can use this tool to track your rankings, audit your site, and find link opportunities.

Step 3. Add some internal links

By now you probably have quite a few posts on your blog. Maybe it’s over 100. Or over 500. Or over 1000 like our sister site, Pinch of Yum.

That’s a lot of posts! And something tells me that you could add links to related content on your blog to some of your older content.

Let’s say you published a chocolate granola recipe back in 2015. It’s a decent performer, but you’ve since published seven other granola recipes on your site. 

You can go back to that chocolate granola post and add links to those related recipes (aka your seven other granola recipes!) so readers have a natural next step when they’re reading your content. 

If you do that, you’ll have just added seven powerful internal links to your site!

You can also add links to related/relevant recipes in your recipe cards. So if you published a grain bowl a few years ago that uses a specific sauce recipe, which now has its own post on your site, you can link to that sauce post within your grain bowl recipe card. 

Here’s an example from Pinch of Yum of what that could look like (this is for a naan-wich recipe that uses a baked falafel recipe and a Magic Green Sauce recipe, both of which have their own posts on the site):

Step 4. Don’t over-optimize

We just talked about a number of different ways that you can optimize your posts. But there can be too much of a good thing.

Over-optimizing is dangerous. Keyword stuffing, link spamming, and other strategies once used to get on Google’s good side will no longer help you. And, in fact, they could hurt you.

When in doubt, write for your readers. That’s what Google wants! It wants your content to be valuable, shareable, and helpful for your readers.

If you need help identifying which of your existing posts are good contenders for this “juicing” process, we have a whole lesson about it in our Republishing Content course for Food Blogger Pro members. We also have a republishing content blog series that will give you a little preview of what’s included in that course:

• Part 1: Why You Should Republish Content as a Food Blogger
• Part 2: How to Identify Posts to Update and Republish as a Food Blogger
• Part 3: What to Update When Republishing Content as a Food Blogger

——

Phew. That’s…a lot! But these are just some of the ways that you can juice that low-hanging fruit on your blog and get the most value out of your content.

Really solid SEO is such an important step in the ‘going pro with a food blog’ process, and so if you want to learn more, we recommend checking out our SEO-focused episodes of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast, some of our SEO-related articles on the Food Blogger Pro blog, and the conversations and courses within the Food Blogger Pro community. 

Now we’re curious: Have you successfully juiced some of the low-hanging fruit on your blog? How did it go? What did you learn? Let us know in the comments!

The post Juicing the Low-Hanging Fruit: Optimizing Old Content for SEO 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.