Interested in starting a daily recipes blog but not sure how to do it? In this article I’ll explain the steps you need to take to start and run a successful daily recipes blog.
Running a successful blog will allow you to make money through advertisements, affiliate links, ecommerce or other ways. People are always looking for recipes, your content should be popular if you position your blog correctly.
Okay, let’s consider the steps you need to take to start and run your blog.
Table of Contents
Determine Your Niche and Target Audience
Targeting a niche makes it easier to focus on your target audience, the people you write content for.
For instance, you could focus on:
- style of cooking
- ethnicity (thai, chinese, indian, mexican)
- baking and/or desserts
- recipes for single people
- recipes for busy people
- people on a budget
It might be tempting to write blog articles that serve everyone but niching down helps you compete. Many of your competitors will be well established with much bigger audiences and budgets than you.
To read more about finding your niche you can read this article: The Ultimate Guide to Finding the Perfect SEO Niches for Your Business or Blog
Once you have determined your niche the next step is to figure out who is your target audience.
You can think about the following factors:
- age
- gender
- income
- their interests and hobbies
The better you understand who you are writing for the easier it will be to write content that appeals to your target audience.
Creating Your Brand and Blog Name
You need to spend some time developing your brand. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you decide on your brand.
What does your brand represent?
What values do you want to portray?
What is your Unique Selling Point (USP)?
What is your brand voice and messaging?
How do you speak to your target audience?
This includes the tone you use, is it casual, funny, formal etc.
What messages are you conveying to your audience?
Research your competitors
It can be a valuable exercise to spy on your competitors to see what works for them. Get a list of your top competitors and check out their websites to see what messaging they use in their content.
Use an SEO tool to quickly generate a competition report on your competitors. You can use this widget below to analyse a website. Just enter in the domain of a website competitor, e.g. “acme.com” and a report will be generated for you.
You want to research the following:
- what keywords do your competitors use to get search traffic
- what keywords do they use in paid ads
- how much traffic do they get on their website
Competition research is a valuable tool for website owners. Use these reports regularly to spy on your competition! Don’t copy their content but it’s good to copy topics and ideas that are working for them.
For more about competition research read this article: Dominate Your Niche with Comprehensive Competitive Content Analysis
Tips for choosing a name for your recipe blog
Having trouble coming up with names for your blog? Here are some tips to help you:
- Keep it simple: Choose an easy to remember name, that is easy to spell and pronounce
- Make it descriptive: If your blog is focused in one area try and add it to the name, e.g. “savory”, “sweet”, “spicy”, “vegan”, “gluten-free”, etc.
- Use your own name: Think about using your own name, brand the blog around you. Afterall, you are unique so can’t be copied by anyone else
- Be creative: Maybe think about using a pun, rhyme, anything to make your blog name more memorable and catchy
- Research your competitors: Check out the competition, what names are they using? Look for opportunities to differentiate yourself.
- Think about your target audience: Choose a name that will appeal to your target audience, taking into account their age, gender, and interests
Choosing Your Blogging Platform
Now it’s time to decide what blogging platform to use. Your blogging platform can affect many different aspects of your website including:
- Easy of customization
- Maintainability
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- Ability to rank well in search engines
- Speed
- Ease of use
As you can see it’s an important decision.
Tips for choosing the best platform for your blog
If you are willing to spend some time learning WordPress I recommend this option. You will have control of your platform and can choose from a huge list of themes and plugins.
WordPress is the best platform for SEO because you have more control of the speed of your website and can customize every part of your website. More tightly controlled platforms, although easier to use, limit what you can change.
If you have no technical skills and would prefer a simplified platform then Weebly may be the better option for you.
Hosting service
If you want to use WordPress or some other blogging software you will need a hosting provider. They provide you with a “host” – a web server that runs your website.
Hosting providers will provide a managed service that covers updates and security fixes to the web server. You will still be responsible for keeping all your themes and plugins up to date though.
For WordPress hosting I recommend SiteGround. This is the service I use for this blog, it has good security and performance and you can easily install and set up a WordPress blog in minutes – including choosing and registering a custom domain:
If you prefer to use different blogging software you can find a hosting provider or a custom service instead.
Don’t forget you will need to find and register a custom domain for your website and this is usually an extra cost.
Use WordPress as your blogging platform, it gives you the most freedom
Designing Your Blog
Your blog needs to be visually appealing to get attention and traffic from visitors. Boring websites, with few photos, or big blocks of text will not generate much user engagement, likes, shares or comments.
Choose a nice theme that is fast, lightweight and mobile friendly.
Food blog template
If you have web design skills you can design your own blog but, for the rest of us, we need to find a visually attractive food blog template.
Luckily, I will show you one that is easy to install and set up. It comes with starter content so you can see a full recipe blog website instantly. You will need to modify the content for your particular needs and then you can start on your first blog post.
Here is what the home page looks like:
The theme you can use is called Neve, it’s developed by a well known and respected company called ThemeIsle.
Once you have installed the Neve theme you need to install the Recipes starter pack. This themes your website as a recipes blog and include some content and images so you have an instant recipes blog in only a few minutes.
The starter pack requires the Neve Business plan so you will need to purchase the theme to unlock the Recipes starter park. Using a premium theme is recommended as you will get regular security fixes and bug fixes and have access to all the premium features not available to free theme users.
Your recipes starter kit gives you the following styled pages:
- Home page (I’ve shown this page above)
- About page (modify to let people know more about yourself and your brand)
- Contact page (contact information)
- Ebook page (this is a template for a “Download my recipes ebook” promotion)
- A blog list page for each category of food (Meals, Desserts, Breakfast and Snacks)
Here is what the Meals blog list page looks like:
As you can see the blog pages are visually appealing and can be browsed easily by visitors. Recipes are placed in categories so a visitor can find the type of recipe they are looking for faster.
Don’t waste time trying to design your own blog layout invest in a professional theme instead
Writing Your First Post
To help you write content that can rank well in search engines you need to do keyword research. Find keywords that people are searching for, with good monthly search traffic and with low competition.
You will need a keyword research tool to do this. Don’t try to guess keywords, you won’t get organic search traffic doing that.
You can use this widget below to generate a keyword research report, try a keyword research like “healthy meals for one“:
I’ve written about keyword research tools before, I recommend SE Ranking tool it does keywords research, competition research, tracks your keywords rankings and audits your website for SEO issues.
Once you know the keywords you want to target for your article the next step is to write the article. Don’t forget to add images to make your article more visually appealing.
It’s better to use short paragraphs of only two or three sentences. Large blocks of text are difficult to read and will cause low user engagement.
Also add the following to your articles:
- bullet points
- sub-headings
- bold certain phrases to draw attention
- add links (internal and external)
- images
- table of contents
Don’t try to write the perfect article, just learn as you go. With time you content will gradually improve in quality and formatting. Building an audience can take a long time even if you are doing everything correctly.
Monetizing Your Blog
There are various ways of monetizing a blog, I’ve covered this topic before: 12 Surprising Money Making Blog Ideas You Haven’t Thought Of
I’ll briefly go over a few ways to make money from your recipes blog.
The starter kit already has a “Download my recipes eBook” page. This a free ebook used to build a mailing list from your visitors.
You can offer a page listing recipes book visitors can buy. Sign up with Amazon Associates to get affiliate links for books and add them to your website.
In addition to books use affiliate links for:
- Food deliveries (fresh and cooked)
- Kitchenware
- Cooking courses or trips
- Wine pairing for your food recipes
You can also display ads on your website. Perhaps you know local businesses that would like to advertise on your website? You can use Google AdSense or other ad agency but you will need to build an audience first before you can join an ad network.
E-Commerce
Sell stuff directly from your website. You will need to handle the delivery and customer service yourself so this is not as simple as ads or affiliate links. You do get to keep all the profit though.
Final Thoughts
Here is a quick summary:
- Determine your niche and your target audience
- Decide your brand and your blog name
- Choose your blogging platform (WordPress is recommended)
- Design your blog
- Start writing articles
- Decide how you want to monetize (ads, affiliate links, e-commerce)
It’s never been easier to start a blog. The cost is low, all you need is a hosting provider (like SiteGround) and a nice looking theme (such as Neve).
Okay, now it’s over to you. You have everything you need to start a daily receipe blog. Good luck!