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.

There are lots of food blogs and cookbooks out in the world, and it’s only natural that you take inspiration from them. Whether you need a little guidance on the process for a complicated baking technique or want to riff on a unique flavor combination in someone else’s recipe, recipe adaption can come in many different forms.

But how exactly do you go about properly attributing your recipe to the OG recipe creator? That’s what we’re here to discuss! 

P.S. We’re not going to get into the nitty-gritty details of recipe copyright in this post – though if you’re curious to learn more, check out this article and podcast episode!

What is recipe attribution?

Put simply, recipe attribution is when you share where the recipe originated from with your readers. Let’s explain recipe attribution with a little example:

Food blogger Lillian sees a recipe for pasta with butternut squash, spinach, hazelnuts and parmesan cheese in a cookbook. “How delicious does that sound?!” she thinks. She makes the recipe for her family, but makes a few substitutions based on what she has in her fridge and pantry. Lillian decides to swap out butternut squash for acorn squash, spinach for kale, and hazelnuts, for walnuts. She also adds some canned tomatoes. Lillian loves the final product, so she writes out the recipe in her own words, instructions and all. Lillian wants to give credit where credit is due, so she includes a sentence at the beginning of her blog post and in the recipe card, sharing that she found inspiration for this recipe from a cookbook, and links to the cookbook. 

The last sentence in that example is a great model for recipe attribution. A complimentary mention of the original source (in the blog post and/or in the recipe card) is a good starting point, but a link back to that source is even better. 

Here are some examples of recipe attribution from our sister site, Pinch of Yum:

Of course, there is a lot of gray area when it comes to recipe attribution. There is even a Food Blogger Pro forum thread all about recipe attribution that has been going strong for almost 10 years! One of the main causes for debate is about when, exactly, recipe attribution is necessary…

When do you need to provide recipe attribution?

A general rule of thumb is: if you change three or more ingredients in the recipe, and rewrite the recipe instructions in your own voice, you can consider it your own. Even so, stating that the recipe was “adapted from” or “inspired by” the original recipe is a good idea. 

If you’ve altered a recipe so significantly that no one would recognize it as an adaptation of another recipe and written everything in your own words, attribution is not necessary. And, of course, some basic recipes are considered common knowledge (like mayonnaise, salad vinaigrette, or a simple pie crust), and don’t merit attribution.

Psst! David Leibowitz has a really thorough post on recipe attribution if you’re looking for more reading on the subject!

Why worry about recipe attribution?

There are so many recipes out there, it could be easy to think that no one would ever notice a little *borrowing* of a recipe. 

But beyond the ethical implications of failing to disclose your sources, you would also be missing out on a potential SEO boost for your food blog.

You can think of proper recipe attribution (with the link to the original recipe) as an easy SEO strategy. Linking to relevant and helpful external sources makes your content more valuable and useful to the reader, which is always a win (both for your brand and for SEO)!

Another potential bonus of recipe attribution is that, often, the story of where you found inspiration can make for interesting blog post content. Tell your reader about the recent visit to your favorite local restaurant that inspired the recipe, or share more about an incredible new cookbook you discovered. Recipe attribution doesn’t have to be boring!

When it comes down to it, we like to follow (and recommend!) the “better safe than sorry” mantra when it comes to recipe attribution. 

But we’d love to know… what’s your strategy when it comes to recipe attribution? 

The post How to Correctly Attribute a Recipe appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

: we are officially launching brand-new Coaching Calls with Bjork this month!

What exactly are these Coaching Calls? So glad you asked!

In this post, we’ll dive into what the Coaching Calls are, how they’ll work, and how to get registered for the chance to participate!

What are the Food Blogger Pro Coaching Calls?

Food Blogger Pro members can sign up for the chance to participate in a 1:1 Coaching Call with the one, the only… Bjork Ostrom (our trusty Food Blogger Pro cofounder). Coaching Calls are an opportunity for members to work through their specific blogging or business questions and problems with Bjork. 

How the Coaching Calls Will Work

Coaching Calls will be conducted via Zoom and will provide Food Blogger Pro members with a way to ask at least 3 specific questions about their blog and business to help them reach their current goals. 

Coaching Calls aren’t audits, nor are they a place to advertise a blog, brand, and/or business. Instead, they’re a place for food bloggers to spend an hour talking through their biggest questions about starting or growing a blog, brand, and/or business with Bjork.

We will record each conversation and post it to our Live page during the first week of every month so that the greater FBP community can learn from the advice! 

Best of all, Coaching Calls are included in your membership! If you’re an active member, you can submit an application and watch each month’s recorded Coaching Call.

How to Sign Up for a Coaching Call

Active Food Blogger Pro members can submit an application here. Only one Coaching Call will be published each month, so even if you submit an application, it’s not a guarantee that you’ll be selected for a Coaching Call.

We hope you’re as excited about these Coaching Calls as we are! If you have any thoughts or questions about these calls, be sure to leave them as a comment below!

The post Introducing Food Blogger Pro Coaching Calls appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

“Virtual assistant” can mean a lot of different things. You might be looking for a generalized VA to manage emails, schedule your calendar, and handle other administrative tasks. Or perhaps a more specialized VA (think social media manager or email marketing manager) is a better fit.

If done strategically, hiring a virtual assistant can take certain tasks off of your plate and allow you to focus on the responsibilities that you enjoy, and that benefit your business, the most.

If you think you might be ready to hire a new team member, we’ve put together a handy, step-by-step guide to get you started!

1. Brainstorm the tasks that you want to outsource.

The first, and perhaps most important, step to building your team is determining what parts of your job you need, or want, someone else to do. Ask yourself these questions:

• What parts of my job drain me?
• What aspects of this job do I dislike?
• What are my weaknesses? Could someone else perform certain tasks better than I can?
• What’s keeping me from doing the parts of this job that I enjoy?

If there are certain responsibilities that keep popping up as you answer these questions, those are the tasks you should consider outsourcing. 

You may find that the tasks fall into a similar skill set and could be handled by one hire. Conversely, you might have a list that reflects several totally different skill sets, in which case you could consider hiring several different part-time virtual assistants.

Need some inspiration for tasks to hire out?

• Social media scheduling
• Photography or videography for your blog or for sharing on social media
• Responding to social media comments or emails
• Adding data fields to old recipe cards
• Categorizing recipe posts
• Drafting email newsletter broadcasts or sequences
• Keyword research
• SEO optimization for older blog posts
• Graphic design for holiday gift guides, Pinterest pins, or your website
• Recipe testing

2. Determine your budget and how you will compensate your team member.

Once you’ve figured out what tasks you’re going to ask your virtual assistant to complete, the next step is to set your budget. In general, the more specialized the skill set you’re hiring for, the higher the hourly rate will be. Upwork provides a handy chart with the breakdown of the hourly rate you can expect to pay for various types of virtual assistants. 

There are two main approaches to paying a part-time virtual assistant: by hour or by task. For example, if you’re looking for someone to complete a one-off task (i.e. categorizing your blog archives or photographing a certain set of recipes), paying a set-rate for the task might be a better option than an hourly rate, since you’ll have an exact number to budget for from the get-go.

3. Develop an onboarding process.

That’s right — before you’ve even hired your new team member, it is critical that you think through your onboarding process to make it as seamless as possible for you and your new virtual assistant. 

The next time you complete the tasks that you’re planning to outsource, create thorough process documents that explain everything someone completing that task for the first time would need to know. We at Food Blogger Pro love Loom and Google Documents for this! 

Taking the time to get an onboarding process in place now will make training new employees much easier and more efficient later.

4. Draft a job description.

Now it’s time to write your job description. The more specific the job description, the better! Specifics will help ensure that your applicants are the best match for the position you’re filling.

Consider including:

• A brief description of your brand, blog, or company
• The qualifications and experience needed for the role
• Expectations and responsibilities:
  1. Tasks or deliverables 
  2. Hours/week or hours/month
  3. Time period (until no longer needed, 3-months, a year)
  4. Availability 
• Compensation
• Job status (employee vs. contractor)

5. Post the job listing online!

You’re officially ready to share your job listing with the world! Sharing the job listing with the people who already follow you and know your brand is a great place to start. Post the job listing on your social media accounts and blog, and include the job listing in your email newsletter!

You can also post on job boards, like Upwork or LinkedIn. Lots of Food Blogger Pro members have had success looking for VAs on the Food Blogger Pro Forum, in the Food Bloggers Virtual Assistants Facebook Group, or on Tastemaker Conference’s Freelance + Jobs page!

Lastly, don’t underestimate the power of word of mouth. Talk about your job listing with other food bloggers, friends, and family members! You never know where you’ll find the perfect match for your position.

6. Interview potential applicants.

While not always necessary, we recommend conducting interviews with your top applicants. They can be short and informal, but will ultimately help you select the best candidate for the job, and the best fit for collaborating with you!

Try to ask all applicants the same set of predetermined questions to keep the interview and decision-making process as fair as possible.

7. Hire your virtual assistant!

Congratulations! You did it. Now use all of your newfound spare time to grow your business (and maybe relax a little bit, too!). 

P.S. Here are a few other hiring resources we wanted to share!

• How To Hire A Good Virtual Assistant (The Ultimate Guide) – EmilyPerron.com
• How To Use Your Zone Of Genius To Hire The Best Freelancers – EmilyPerron.com
• Running Your Food Blog Like A Business – Food Blogger Pro
• How much does it cost to hire a virtual assistant? – Upwork
• The Food Blogger Pro Podcast Episode 246: Hiring – Building a Better Team with Moses Balian
• The Food Blogger Pro Podcast Episode 286: Build Your Team – How to Write an Eye-Catching Job Listing and Hire the Right People with Emily Perron
• Five Tasks Every Food Blogger Should Outsource to a VA – Dianne Jacob

Have you ever hired a Virtual Assistant for your blog? Any tips to share?

The post Tips for Hiring a Virtual Assistant as a Food Blogger appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

Who benefits from website accessibility? LOTS of your readers! One in four U.S. adults in the U.S. live with a disability, and making your site more user-friendly benefits everyone, including:

• People with visual impairments who may require a screen reader
• People with limited hand motor skills, arthritis, or other mobility issues that make using a keyboard or mouse difficult
• People with color blindness
• Non-English speakers who use translation services
• People with epilepsy who might be triggered by a bright screen, motion, or flashing images
• Older readers (did you know that the average person’s ability to use a website declines by about 1% every year after the age of 25?)

It might feel overwhelming when you first dive into creating an accessible website. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) may seem lengthy and complicated, but we’re here to help you understand them!

While it is very difficult to achieve 100% conformance with the WCAG guidelines, you should view this as an ongoing process of improving your content to be as accessible as possible. Baby steps! So, let’s get started.

We’ve rounded up three simple ways that you can make your food blog more ADA compliant today:

1. Write descriptive and meaningful alternative text for your images

Visually impaired people may use a screen reader which is software that reads and navigates website content and turns it into audible speech or braille for the user (watch a screen reader demo).

In this context, alternative (or alt) text is a simple description of what appears in an image on your website, and is used to achieve the same purpose as the image for those who cannot see the image. You can learn more about how alt text can be used on this page.

Alt Text Quick Tips:

• Limit your alt text for each image to between 100-125 characters.
• When brainstorming alt text, think: “What would someone who can’t see this image need, or want, to know if they’re using a screen reader?”
• If an image has a text overlay, be sure to include that text in your alt text description, too!
• Do not include the words “photo” or “picture” or “image” in your alt text – they’re redundant and won’t improve your SEO or make your site more accessible.
• For a button or link image, alt text should describe the purpose of the link.
• If an image is purely decorative, the alt text should be empty.
• Avoid hashtags and keyword stuffing.

For more information on alt text, check out the FBP Quick Win on Understanding the Alt Attribute and our blog post on The IMG Tag and How it Can Super Power Your Food Blog.

2. Use the headings in your blog posts to convey structure and meaning

Headings (like H1s and H2s) aren’t just for the design, or look, of your blog posts. They serve a purpose for SEO and also improve the accessibility of a website.

People who use screen readers often scan web pages by skipping from heading to heading. Because of this, headings should serve as an outline for your blog post.

Headings should always be nested by their level, or rank, to help users navigate the page. This means that your H1 heading is the most important, and the H6 heading is the least important.

You should only use one H1 per page (and it should be your post title), and the order of headings should descend based on the depth of the content (i.e. you should never have a H5 heading before a H3 heading). Last but not least, don’t skip headings (don’t jump from a H2 to a H4).

3. Rethink your Links

We all know how important it is for your blog posts to include internal and external links for SEO purposes, but the formatting and link text is just as important for accessibility!

First off, links on your page should be indicated by something other than a color change. The most common and easily recognized way to indicate that text is a link is to underline it.

Here is an example of what links look like on Pinch of Yum:

In addition to these visual changes, links are most useful when they make sense to a reader even out of context. Avoid using phrases like “click here, “read more,” or “here” as your link text. Instead, the link phrase should convey the purpose of the link.

Bonus: Add an Accessibility Policy to your website

Now that you’ve improved your website’s accessibility with these tips, it is a great idea to add an Accessibility Statement to the footer of your food blog. Why? An Accessibility Statement will demonstrate to your readers that you prioritize accessibility and social responsibility. It will also provide your users with information about the accessibility of your content and ask for feedback, when needed.

What should you include in your Accessibility Statement?

• A commitment to accessibility for people with disabilities
• The accessibility standard you used on your website (this site provides a handy check-list)
• Your contact information, in case a user encounters an accessibility issue on your site
• Any steps or measures you’ve taken to improve the accessibility of your website

This tool can help you generate an Accessibility Statement for your blog, and this website provides an example.

Want more information on creating an accessible website? Check out this podcast episode to learn more!

Now it’s your turn! Have you made any updates to your websites to make them more accessible? If you have, how did it go?

The post 3 Tips to Improve Your Blog’s Web Accessibility appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Money Money Money

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

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

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

3. Who Owns the Content?

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

Here are two common scenarios for influencer-created content:

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

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

4. You Can’t Sit With Us

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

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

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

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

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

5. The Edit

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

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

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

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

6. How Do We Call It Quits?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why negotiate with brands?

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

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

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

The MAGIC of Negotiations

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

M: Map What You Want

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

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

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

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

A: Assess What the Other Side Wants

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

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

G & I: Gather Insights

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

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

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

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

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

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

C: Collaborate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what can we do to protect that content that we create?

You’ve probably heard terms like “Privacy Policy,” “Terms of Service,” “Disclaimers,” and “DMCAs” before, but do you understand their purposes and if / why you need them for your own content?

That’s what we’re talking about today! And if you’re in a listening mood, we actually have a podcast episode all about this with our Legal Expert, Danielle:

First, a very on-brand disclaimer for this post: The information we’re sharing here is for educational purposes. It’s also for US-based websites and businesses. We recommend that you consult a lawyer before making any business-related changes on your site, lead magnets, or social channels. If you’re not based in the US, hopefully the information here will give you some ideas for things you can look into for your own country’s laws and guidelines.

In this post, we’ll discuss:

• Protecting Your Content with Monitoring and Takedown Requests
• What Is a Copyright and How to Register Your Copyrights
• Terms of Service –– What it is and What to Include
• How a Privacy Policy Works and How Often it Should Be Updated
• Where Disclaimers Should Go and What They Should Include

As you can see, this is a jam-packed post –– let’s dive in!

Protecting Your Content with Monitoring and Takedown Requests

A relatively simple way to protect your content is through monitoring and subsequent takedown requests. You can use a tool to find or manually search for other websites that are using your content (whether that be full recipes, photos, videos, etc.) without your permission.

Pixsy is a great tool to use if you’re looking for a way to automate the process –– it scours the web for your images and shows you where else they’re being used.

It’s a helpful solution for two reasons:

1. It can help you make sure that the images you’ve given someone permission to use are getting used in the correct way.
2. It can help you make sure that other sites and publications aren’t using your images without your permission.

Plus! Pixsy helps you issue takedown requests, recover compensation, and register your work, so it’s a great all-in-one solution that is really helpful for online content creators.

If you’re not quite ready for a robust solution like that, reverse-image searching on Google can be a nice (albeit, time-intensive) solution. If you’re using Google Chrome:

1. Go to an image on your site
2. Right-click the image and click ‘Search Google for Image’
3. Google will scour the web for instances where that image (or images like that image) appear

It’s not a perfect solution because it’s manual (think about doing a search for every photo on your site ) and Google returns images that may be similar-yet-not-exact-matches to your own image. That said, it is a helpful way to spot-check if you think or know a specific image is getting used in a non-approved way.

How to Respond When Someone Is Using Your Content Without Permission

If you use one of these solutions and find that someone is using your content in a way that you don’t approve, there are a few ways to respond.

The first and easiest way is to email the website owner (Hunter.io is a great tool to use if you can’t find their email address on a contact page!) and ask for them to:

1. Remove your content from their site, or
2. Give them the option to purchase that content for their own use.

You can also file a DMCA request to that website’s host. You can look up the website’s host using a tool like this. Then type ‘HOST_NAME hosting abuse’ into Google to find a way to report it to that host. Then you can email that host explaining:

• Where the original material lives on your site
• Your site’s name and URL
• Where the infringing material is located
• Your contact information

If the problem can’t be resolved with either of the options above, you can also file a cease and desist letter with a lawyer.

That said, getting a lawyer involved can get expensive and take a lot of your time away from other aspects of your business, so it’s good practice to ask yourself if the effort you put into this process is actually worth your time.

If the infringing site or company is actively taking money from your pocket (say, they’re using a photo from your site on a coffee mug that they’re selling), then you’d probably want to take action. If they’re just using a photo from your site in a listicle online, further action may not be required. That said, if you notice that a site is using your content without your permission repeatedly, it might be worth your time and energy to dig into it a bit further.

What Is a Copyright and How to Register Your Copyrights

The term “copyright” sounds super intense, but, luckily, your work is already copyrighted because you created and published it!

You have copyright rights as the creator of an original piece of content that is published in a fixed, tangible medium. So you have copyright rights, aka all of the exclusive rights in how that content is used and / or published, regardless of whether you publish it on a blog, on social media, on a wall, or in a book. Your words, photos, videos, paintings, art pieces, etc. are all copyrighted.

That said, a specific caveat for food bloggers is that, in general, recipes themselves are not copyrightable, as they don’t require enough creative expression to be considered copyrightable.

That said, if you want copyrightable recipe instructions, they need some sort of creative touch that sets them off as “your own.” “Whisk flour, water, and eggs together until combined” isn’t creative enough to be copyrightable, but something more creative and written in your own voice may be.

Registering Copyrights

As your blog and business grows, you may want to consider registering your copyrights with the government (you own the copyrights, you may choose to register those copyrights). Why would you choose to do that? If, for whatever reason, you have to enter a lawsuit over the use of your content, you’ll need to have the copyright registered.

The application isn’t terribly expensive, you can file online, and you can upload your content in bulk.

Does every content creator need to register their copyrights? No. But is it a “nice to have” thing, especially as your blog grows? You bet.

Terms of Service –– What it is and What to Include

Since your work is automatically copyrighted, there may be a time when someone breaches that copyright by using your content in a way that you haven’t approved. That’s where your Terms of Service policy comes into play.

Your Terms of Service is essentially a contract with your readers that protects your rights as a content creator and helps you dictate what your audience can or cannot do with your content. It’s typically a page that’s linked to in the footer of your site like this:

It can also be linked to if / when someone on your site is completing a transaction:

What to Include in Your Terms of Service

In general, it should cover:

• Prohibited uses of your site (i.e. readers can’t hack or spam your site).
• Copyright notices (i.e. readers can do X with your content).
• How readers can use your site (i.e. purchase policies, comment policies, and other policies about content usage).

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking –– that’s a pretty vague outline. And you’re right! But that’s because Terms of Service should be specific to your site.

There are lots of ways to generate Terms of Service language for your site. Danielle, our aforementioned Legal Expert, has a website Terms of Use template for purchase on her site — and Food Blogger Pro members can get a discount over on our Deals page.

You can also search for other templates online. Just note, again, that each template is exactly that –– a template. It should be customized to you and the way you run your blog and business, so if you have any thoughts or hesitations, we recommend reaching out to lawyer for assistance.

Since the whole point of having a Terms of Service policy is to protect your content and your rights as a content creator, the writing of your Terms of Service should not be taken lightly. And, in general, as long as your website stays the same, you shouldn’t need to update your Terms of Service policy very often once you publish it, so it’s best to spend some time getting your Terms of Service right from the get-go.

How a Privacy Policy Works and How Often it Should Be Updated

While your Terms of Service protects you and your content, your Privacy Policy protects your readers.

You should link to your website’s Privacy Policy in your website footer, and it should include information like:

• What information you collect about your readers
• Why you collect that information
• How you use that information
• Who you share it with

If you start using a new plugin or tool on your site that collects information about your readers (think Google Analytics, Hotjar, ConvertKit, etc.), you’ll probably need to update your Privacy Policy. Our suggestion is to audit your Privacy Policy at least once per year to make sure it’s up-to-date.

Again, you can find Privacy Policy templates online (including at Businessese), or you can work with a lawyer to create a Privacy Policy for your business.

Where Disclaimers Should Go and What They Should Include

Disclaimers are a way for you to say that you’re not liable for the results that your readers have as a result from consuming and acting on your content.

For example, if you had a blog post on your site about knife sharpening and a reader tries the strategy and cuts themselves or ruins their knife, a well-written disclaimer on your site could protect you if the reader tries to sue you for damages.

Depending on your business, the disclaimer can live within your Terms of Service or it can be on a completely separate page. For a food blogger who is just publishing recipes, a disclaimer within your Terms of Service should be sufficient. If you’re making claims about nutrition or specific eating habits however, you may want something a little more robust on its own page.

Another place you may want to use disclaimers is on social media, particularly if you sell products or services.

For example, if you’re giving advice via DMs on Instagram, maybe you have a Story highlight that you save to your profile with some bullet-pointed disclaimers. Since everyone has access to links in Stories on Instagram now, you can add a link to your full website disclaimer in your Stories and save it to that highlight as well.

The last place you may want to include disclaimers is in digital products or ebooks. It doesn’t have to be long, but it should include things like:

• The year the product was published
• Your company’s name
• How the reader can use it
• Who reserves the rights to the content (most of the time, that’s you, so including “All rights reserved” would be a good idea)

Food Blogger Pro members have access to an Ebook and Lead Magnet Disclaimer Template and lesson, so be sure to check that out if you’re distributing or selling ebooks or other digital goods to your readers!

Phew! That’s a lot of legalese, but hopefully you have a more well-rounded idea of how these important documents work and can protect you and your readers.

Have any questions? Leave them in the comments or bring them over to the Food Blogger Pro forum!

The post How to Protect the Content You Create Online appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s how Food Blogger Pro members responded:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How our team made their first $100 from food blogging

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

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

–– Leslie, The Baker’s Almanac

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

–– Katie, Well Vegan

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

–– Lindsay, Pinch of Yum

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

–– Alexa (it me), Fooduzzi

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

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

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

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

It’s one of those things that’s kind of obvious, but we don’t think about it much because it’s… intimidating? Scary? Official? All of the above?

But it’s true. And you’ve probably spent countless hours, days, weekends, and years DIYing it all, creating content, photographing recipes, searching for keywords, responding to comments, and sharing your recipes on social media.

And if you’re making money, working with sponsors, running ads, selling products, and/or joining affiliate programs, your blog is a business.

So let me ask you this: are you treating it that way?

To achieve serious blog growth (both in traffic and in income), you should be.

If you want to grow your blog into a full-fledged money-making business that you’re relying on for some or all of your income, there are some things you should start considering today in order to pave the way for long-term success down the road:

1. Understand the basics of running a business (or hire someone to run it for you)

If you’ve built your blog from scratch, it can be quite the transition from “hobby blog” to “full-blown biz.”

Businesses need to answer to the government. They need to pay taxes, they have expenses, and they need to have an identification number. There will be contracts to review, forms to complete, and important decisions to be made.

As your blog’s CEO, you should have a basic understanding of how businesses work in your country and what businesses need to do in order to be in “good standing” with the government.

If you don’t have a ton of experience running a business, it can feel a little intimidating. Okay, maybe a lot intimidating.

But it’s a necessary step if your business is going to grow.

There are three big business wins that you can tackle right now:

1. Making sure that YOU are not your business –– This means that you should establish your blog as a business and make sure that you are not personally liable if something goes wrong.
2. Figure out how your business is paying taxes –– Your business income most likely won’t have taxes withheld, so you’ll need to pay taxes somehow. You can set aside a portion of your income for taxes at the end of each year or pay them on a quarterly basis. (More on managing your money as a pro blogger can be found here)
3. Understand what’s coming in and going out –– Have a system in-place for keeping track of your income and your expenses. It could be as simple as a spreadsheet (using something like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel) or a little more robust with a tool like QuickBooks.

If you want to learn more about these topics, we have a whole course covering the business of blogging in our Food Blogger Pro membership. You can also peruse episodes of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast, as we’re always talking about building and growing businesses online.

2. It’s okay to give up control to a team.

It can feel really daunting to give control of some parts of your business over to someone else. But it can also be freeing.

There are things you probably want to be doing that you just don’t have the time for. And there are most likely things that you’re currently doing that you don’t personally need to be doing. That’s where a teammate (or two, or more) can help.

Teammates can also help remove the pressure of having to run a business all by yourself, and they can be a really awesome support system for you when things get tough. I know about that first-hand; our Food Blogger Pro team is small, yet mighty!

You can hire employees or contractors, and there are really important differences between the two.

In the US, an employee would receive benefits and a W-2 at the end of each year. A contractor would receive a 1099 at the end of the year (if they make more than $600 in a year).

If you’re in the US and want to dive deeper into this topic, we recommend checking out this resource on the IRS website or this episode of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast.

If you’re not based in the US, definitely do some Googling to see how employees and contractors differ in your country.

We have both employees and contractors working for Food Blogger Pro, Pinch of Yum, and the other businesses we run.

3. CEOs decide when to invest back into their businesses

As CEO, you get to decide how and when to invest in your business. As the saying goes, “You need to spend money to make money.”

The Pinch of Yum team has invested in a lot of resources to help their business grow. In addition to investing in a team, an office, and gear like cameras and tripods, they’ve also invested in learning so they can do what they do even better.

For example, when Lindsay started Pinch of Yum, she wasn’t the skilled photographer you probably know her as now. In fact, here’s an example from one of the earliest recipe posts on Pinch of Yum:

Because we eat with our eyes, and because she actually enjoyed the process of photographing food, Lindsay decided to invest in herself. She took photography courses, spent time experimenting and redoing, and learned what it took to take a truly beautiful photo.

Not only did her photography get better, leading to more traffic and sponsored opportunities…

…she was able to write and sell an ebook based off of the knowledge she gained and applied to food photography…

…AND she was able to instruct other food bloggers who want to level-up their food photography game on Food Blogger Pro!

Because Lindsay decided to invest in her skills as a photographer, she was able to monetize and grow her blog through that skill.

So ask yourself: which of your skills can you invest in? How can you get a tiny bit better by investing in those skills and, in turn, help your blog grow, get in front of more readers, and make more money?

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Your role as your blog’s CEO means you have a lot of responsibilities. But if you tighten up the essentials, think about offloading some of your work to others, and figure out how you can invest in your business and in yourself, you can confidently step into and thrive in this role.

Let’s chat in the comments : What are some of the things that have made you feel more confident as CEO of your own blog?

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