One of the most common goals for food content creators is to make money through sharing recipes online. And one of the best ways to monetize your content? Affiliate marketing! Affiliate marketing is a great, passive way to earn revenue and can be an especially valuable source of income before you meet the criteria for major ad networks.
If you’re making a dollar from your food blog, you could probably be making two. If you’re making $100, you could probably be making $200. If you’re making $1,000, you could probably be making $2,000. I could keep going with that, but you probably get the gist by now: it’s time to maximize your blog’s earning potential! 💰
While it may be easy to increase your blog’s income by adding additional ad units, writing spammy posts with many affiliate links, or pitching unrelated or untested products to your readers, the goal here is to increase your revenue-making capabilities without degrading the quality of your site.
The more value you can provide to your readers, the easier it is for them to return to your blog. Words to live by!
Let’s explore some ways you can amplify your monetization strategies in this post!
Let’s face it — advertising terms can be confusing. But if you’re looking to turn your food blog into your career (or a money-making side hustle) then it’s important that you have a solid understanding of advertising terminology.
The good news is that the most common advertising terms are fairly simple to figure out, especially if you have examples to reference. In this post we’re going to look at seven different advertising terms every food blogger should understand and explain them using simple and easy to understand examples.
As a food content creator, one of the most popular ways to grow your income is through working with brands. While brands do reach out to individual content creators, sometimes it’s best to be proactive and pitch to brands. However, crafting the perfect pitch is meaningless until you identify the right brands to collaborate with. The process of finding brands to reach out to involves researching, networking, and thinking strategically!
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.
There are lots of different ways that food creators can monetize their businesses. While ad networks might be the main source of income for food bloggers with significant traffic, the income from running ads on your site can be less than satisfactory if you’re getting just a few thousand page views per month.
Alternatively, working directly with brands can be a reliable source of income if you are able to start and maintain a sponsorship. For most food bloggers, developing a blog media kit is the first step in the brand partnership journey!
Did you know that one-third of content creators send weekly emails, and less than 26% send an email monthly? Why are so many bloggers, content creators, and marketers leaving money on the table?
In my experience as an email marketing strategist, most bloggers aren’t taking full advantage of the opportunities their email list offers because they simply don’t know the strategies they have at their disposal.
Many people start and run email lists because “that’s just what you do” as a blogger, but there is a magical realm of high return on investment, or ROI, you can step into, if you know a few solid strategies and how to implement them!
If you’ve ever had a paid partnership with a brand, you know that contracts come with the territory. And if you haven’t done any sponsored content yet, now is the time to brush up on your negotiating skills and contract terminology.
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!
Working with brands on sponsored content is one of the most popular ways that food bloggers, influencers, and content creators can monetize their online businesses.
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.
We have a bit of a different blog post for you today! And it’s all about how we made our very first $100 from food blogging.
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: