This post was updated on May 15, 2023
This Post May Contain Affiliate Links, Which Means I’ll Receive A Commission If You Purchase Through My Link, At No Extra Cost To You. Please READ FULL DISCLOSURE HERE.
Food blogging as a career definitely has its appeal. It can also be overwhelming and complicated (if you let it be). People who are passionate about food often wonder if they should start a food blog and possibly get paid to pursue a hobby, passion and love of food.
I was there myself years ago and then again after the pandemic, asking this question and many others. Obviously, I decided to go for it. Should YOU start a food blog in 2022, too?
The short answer is YES! YES, you should most definitely start a food blog in 2022.
Just make sure you do your research first and have a plan in place, that allows for growth and gives you a great start as soon as you hit publish on that very first food blogging post.
This is advice from a girl who has built many successful brands for myself and clients for over a decade, across multiple niches. In fact, these reasons can be applied to any blogging niche. You can totally do this!
5 Reasons You Should Start A Food Blog In 2022
I’m about to give you 5 incredibly great reasons to start a food blog and back those reasons up with some great information.
Food Blogging (with the intention of earning an income) isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s not difficult exactly, however it is time-consuming and it is a legitimate business venture. You get out of it, what you put into it!
I am writing this post for people like me who love food, enjoy food and want to intentionally create content around food.
A Quick Added Note
It’s quite possible that you’ve landed on this entry of mine during a time where I’m completely re-building my website, after having it crash and ALL of my recipe posts (about 45 total) were lost.
Yes, I cried my eyes out.
I’m 1.5 years into my strategic blogging business and to have this happen is completely devastating.
I did learn a VERY valuable lesson, which I plan on sharing as soon as I’ve re-published 84 articles total. I have 5 finished so far. Yep, just 5.
So if you go looking for recipes on Girl Planted, during the May 2023 timeframe, chances are you’ll only find a handful, as I’m having to essentially recreate them all. Sigh.
Come back in about 6 weeks and hopefully ALL of them will be published once more.
Updated Thoughts In 2023: 1 Year After Starting My Food Blog
Do I still think blogging is relevant in 2023 and do I think you should start a food blog or any topic blog of your choice? YES, 100%!
Girl Planted just celebrated it’s very first year and what a year it was!
If you’re interested in seeing my month by month notes and breakdown of earnings (and struggles) you can see my 1 year income report here.
I just recently reached another HUGE milestone with my blog and my brand that may have given me a bit of whiplash, so to speak, so GP is growing again.
In fact, my blog is quickly becoming an organic, powerful SEO marketing engine for my brand and I see such amazing things happening in my future.
I’ve committed to writing a new income report every 3 months for 2023, consider subscribing to my emailed hello’s if you’d like to stay in touch.
Why Start A Food Blog In 2022?
- To pursue a hobby or passion (it’s so fun!) and make money sharing that passion.
- To challenge yourself in ways you probably have no idea exist yet! This is a good thing, I promise. 😉
- To build a community of foodies who share similar interests, who can relate and who will benefit from your blog.
- To be yourself and let your personality shine bright! This is quite possibly the BEST reason to start a food blog.
- To grow and flourish as a person, baker, cook, recipe creator, recipe reviewer, business owner.
What Types Of Food Blogs Are There?
What’s great about the food blogging niche is that despite being super competitive, there are still many ways to find an audience. The best way to do this is by choosing an overall brand for your food blog, based off your hobby and passions within the crazy big topic that is FOOD.
No, I’m not talking about the graphic design elements or even your blogging theme. I’m talking about your voice, your message, your style and figuring out who it is you want to reach with your posts. More on that later.
A great place to start is by choosing a food blog type.
- Nutritional / Diet Food Blog
- Health Benefits / Medical Style Blog
- Food Recipe Blog
- Food Tasting Blog
- Restaurant Critic / Review Blog
- Cookbook Review Blog
- Drink Recipe
- Drink Tasting
- Drink Review
- Cuisine-Specific Food Blog
- Local / Location Specific
- Eating Genre Specific
- Baking Food Blog
- Sustainable Eating
- Garden / Backyard Food Blog
- Lifestyle Food Blog
- Travel Food Blog
- and many more!
How Do I Choose A Food Blog Type?
Choosing a type of food blog to create can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. You just have to START somewhere.
This is where I come in as a seasoned branding strategist and help you brainstorm all the food blogging ideas.
This is the fun part, so don’t be afraid to jot down big dreams and crazy ideas on a blank piece of paper. All you have to do to choose a food blog type is confidently answer these key questions:
- List all the reasons why you love food.
- Write down all the things you are great at, when it comes to food and/or being in the kitchen.
- Write down the types of foods you love making, baking, cooking and/or preparing the most.
- What are some things you don’t like, in regards to food?
- What does your own lifestyle look like, as far as eating goes?
- What is your eating style i.e. are you into healthy eating or comfort foods?
- What could you talk about over and over, when it comes to anything food related?
- What makes you, as a person, different from all the other food bloggers in the world?
- What would you like to get out of food blogging or as a result of earning money as a food blogger? – i.e. what are your goals?
- Write down as many food-blogging-related ideas as possible. Start with recipe ideas or meal ideas.
Reason 1 - To Pursue A Hobby Or Passion And Make Money Sharing That Passion.
Isn’t this the goal for anyone wanting to be their own boss?
Sometimes we fall into a self-enclosed trap that is building a brand purely out of monetary reasons. I used to be this person.
I started my entrepreneurial journey in my early twenties and made some HUGE mistakes, all centered around my desire to make “a ton of money.” Needless to say, I wasted years of my life, my skill and lost tons of money.
Pursue a business out of a hobby, passion or even an interest. It’s completely cool to be motivated by money; That’s the end goal, right, to make a real living doing what you love?
I have found that pursing a business idea that stems from a genuine personal interest that has the income potential built into the actual business plan, makes for the best and most successful venture.
I personally saw this come true for my Portrait And Wedding Photography Business then again for Stylish Milk, my instagram-based business (back in the good ‘ole days. Yep, I’m an Instagram OG, ha!).
My food blog is now (March 2023) a year old and I have recently transitioned my brand to being a home and intentional lifestyle blog. It’s become more than a passion. It’s now a full-time business venture for me.
My point is, follow an interest and let that guide you in building a blogging business.
free resources for new bloggers
3 Important Legalities Your Blog MUST Have
Making sure your blog is legal is SUPER important. Here’s an article I wrote that will help you understand WHY this is something you’ll want to take a moment to read and then implement.
Already blogging, but need those disclosures?
Reason 2 - To Challenge Yourself
Utilizing a WordPress site as a marketing tool (what I personally use to custom build a wordpress website from scratch) is SO challenging.
There’s an entire science behind building posts and what to write and how to know what to write. The nerd in me freaking LOVES it!
There’s quite a bit of research that needs to happen before you even open a new post to start creating content for.
No matter your blogging niche, “the overall blog post formula” works well.
It’s not your traditional blog post, either. As a food blogger, this is something you’ll want to have a plan for to make some real traction with search engine sites and start earning income sooner than later.
So, let’s get real here for a moment. There are two types of blogging. The first is your more traditional blog. It’s the blogging of the 2010’s where people wrote personal stories and shared their hearts and souls with their readers.
Do these blogs still exist, of course they do! But a lot of these bloggers who were doing really well, fell off the face of the planet and stopped blogging to pursue social media content creating instead.
The second form of blogging is by far the BEST way to approach building and launching a more evergreen content creator brand that you have control of and can own your audience with.
Now, this is a loaded topic and I’ll be diving into it in a future FREE series for my fellow creators, but for now I can tell you this – blogging is my preferred way to create content.
Blogging is a marketing tool for me only. My email list is where I get more personal and social with the people who want to connect with me, the creator.
This is a HUGE topic within a topic.
Reason 3 - To Build A Community
You don’t actually have to build a community, if you don’t want to.
So if this is something that is a major NO for you, don’t worry! You can definitely be a successful blogger without having a community.
But let me try and change your mind with a few ways you can build a community in order create opportunity for traffic growth and income through ad revenue, brand sponsorships, brand partnerships, affiliate marketing, your own product, etc.
- Email List
- YouTube
- Patreon
- TikTok
- Discord
- Snapchat
There are many more, however, these are my personal favorites.
Random fact: I am not a huge fan of social media myself, as I have trouble being “social” all the time. Social media is extremely fast-paced and it isn’t my first choice in building a community.
This wasn’t always the case. In the early days of instagram, my account grew to 20K authentic followers and I genuinely loved the community I built there.
That niche community was vital in my success with landing a 5-Figure brand sponsorship.
Having a community is POWERFUL so it should definitely be in the business plan, somewhere. In fact, it’s one of my MAIN goals for the Girl Planted Blog, this next month ahead.
Updated for 2023: I actually decided to NOT be on social media for a full year and have built a small, but thriving email newsletter.
Reason 4 - A Platform To Be Yourself
Regardless of your chosen blogging niche, every single post you publish is an opportunity to help your visitor.
Now, here’s the thing. People don’t really read blogs in 2022 unless you have successfully made a more emotional, personable connection (something I’m doing more of in 2023).
What I mean by that is your traffic will be mostly comprised of new visitors and less of return visitors.
This is because we live in a world where people are searching for specific things, finding the answer they are looking for and closing out their browser, FAST.
Don’t fret, my friend, because this is where your personality comes into play!
A website’s blog is a strategic SEO marketing tool and an incredibly powerful one at that.
In fact, each individual blog post should be considered it’s own money-making opportunity, so providing incredible value to the person who clicks on your website because of their specific search query, is key.
You can easily convert a new visitor to a blog subscriber (hint: email list) with helpful content and a great personality.
Don’t be afraid to be yourself and talk to that person as if they were sitting on the sofa in your living room and y’all are chatting casually as friends.
Let your personality shine while you are genuinely helping your reader and then ask them to do something specific if they found your information valuable; i.e. to subscribe, follow you on social media, leave a comment, download your freebie offer, buy your digital product, click on your affiliate link, etc.
This is your call to action, which you have to ask for otherwise they won’t know to do any of those things.
I know that I crave experience and kindness from real people, verses robotic AI responses, when doing my own google searches.
Talk to your bestie in each and every post and the right people will be naturally drawn to you and will be more inclined to trust you, follow you, communicate with you. Our greatest asset is ourselves.
Reason 5 - To Grow And Flourish
Blogging as a business is challenging, thrilling, sometimes boring, but overall incredibly exciting. If you treat your blog as a business, primarily a start-up, you’ll see growth and success in many different ways.
There’s a science behind blogging with the goal of earning income and once you’ve figured out what that means for yourself, your blogging niche and your workflow, you’ll grow leaps and bounds!
If you stick with it, through the tough parts especially, you’ll one day find yourself experiencing those items you placed on your vision board.
I also want to add a little side note here – blogging isn’t a get rich quick kinda gig. It’s hard work, time-consuming and a legitimate business venture.
Follow what interests you in life and create a plan. All that’s left to do at that point is getting to work! You’ll be so happy you did.
Just don’t give up. If you need someone to cheer you on, I’m right here.
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Final Thoughts (in 2023)
A year of being online and actively blogging, I stand by every word I originally wrote for this post and fully believe that no matter the niche or topic you choose, you can have a successful blog in 2023.
It just takes time, dedication, commitment, love and perseverance.
If you’re at the very beginning of your content creating journey and need help figuring out all the things, my HOW TO BUILD A BRAND IN 7 DAYS Series will help SO much.
I even have a tutorial for DIY Logo making and DIY Mood Board.
