Last Updated 4 weeks by Emily Standley-Allard

Table Of Contents show

Back in 2019 I jumped on the bandwagon and bought a food and wellness blog from Flippa. It was already somewhat profitable, but I wanted to make it even more so. Here’s the story of how I bought, built and sold my food and wellness blog.

The blog was called HealthyFoodLife and it’s been bought and sold since then. After tweaking and adding to the content it became a $10,000 per month money making passive income blog. Here’s how I did it! 

Kefir
Images by Pixabay.com

Everybody around the world adores enticing food images and appealing new recipes and I’m no exception. Food is much more than just energy for your body. It is a powerful experience in so many capacities. Great food awakens so many fantastic sensory experiences. From emotion to memories and even a sense of longing and nostalgia.

If you have a means of differentiating yourself and a love and passion for great food, starting a food blog can be a fantastic vehicle to begin a blossoming career.

Being a die-hard foodie, I also love to write about food, look at glossy images of food, collect, share and read about recipes and go to different restaurants and cafes, experiment with different dishes, so I thought, why not start my own successful food blog?

Creating a hugely successful food blog takes some work, but like anything if you are really passionate about it, growing your audience can be a really fun journey to undertake!

Even food bloggers who have a small audience can be wildly successful with a dedicated and specific audience.

I’m sure you’ve viewed some recipes from some very popular food bloggers on Pinterest. These bloggers can earn between $4K -$120K per month! 

Related Post:

How 37 Bloggers Earn $2K – $1Million Per Month

Keep reading to learn more about how to start a successful food or wellness blog like I did, and don’t miss out on these easy tips!

I sold my healthy food blog to another foodie on Flippa for profit – if you want to really get into the nitty gritty, read how to build any type of successful blog to sell for profit and passive income read THIS post – How To Create a Profitable Website You Can Sell for 50K)

Why did I sell it? Because I had my main blog to work on, plus a beauty blog I just purchased and didn’t want to have to hire additional staff to run the food blog. As much as I loved it I received an offer I couldn’t refuse!

Basic Steps to Start a Food Blog

The basic steps to setting up a self-hosted WordPress food blog that is both beautiful and functional are outlined in this post:

Your blog will have your own domain name and your own distinct look, and it will be able to scale with you as your blog grows. When you’re starting a food or wellness blog, I recommend following these steps for the best shot at success.

1) Define the nature of your food blog

Not every food blog is created equal! If you want better chances to grow your readership and really find the right audience, you should consider getting more specific about what you want to cover with your blog.

Are you going to do a recipe blog? Are you going to talk about food on more of a wellness or health/nutrition perspective?

Perhaps you’re going to visit restaurants and write your opinions on the meals you try?

Whatever you decide to focus on, it is very important to give your food and wellness blog a proper direction. This will help you channel the content in a much more focused way, and truly appeal to the right type of readers.

 

figs
Image by RitaE from Pixabay

 

Pick the Right Recipe Plug In

You definitely need to choose the right recipe plug in if you’re going to add recipes to your food blog.

What is a Recipe Plug In?

A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. In the case of a recipe plugin, it adds a recipe card to your posts where you input your ingredients, directions and any additional information pertaining to the recipe.

See image below.

I would definitely consider adding the WP Tasty Recipes plug in to conveniently add stunning, SEO formatted recipes easily to your blog.

Every food blogger should use this plug in!

wp tasty screen shot

This is the only recipe plugin I will recommend getting because let’s get real, it was built by food bloggers. Let’s face it, food bloggers are the only ones who truly know what a recipe plugin needs in order to function properly.

WP Tasty Recipes rocks because it literally checks all the boxes you need to make it successful.

Built by Bjork and Lindsay, owners of the super successful food blog Pinch of Yum, they created the plugin with a few specific things in mind:

  • Ease of use for both the user and the reader.
  • Easy for search engines to read. WP Tasty Recipes uses JSON-LD structured data to provide an in-depth view of your recipe to search engines, including both Pinterest and Google.
  • Flexible formatting so you can write recipes the way you like it, and make the recipe card look the way you want it to.
  • Video integration. Since video is the wave of the future, the plugin allows video embedding so you can show how the recipe is made right next to the ingredients!

Bjork and Lindsay have inspired many people to start a food blogs. They went from making $72/month, to well over $20,000/month in the span of just 3 years!

Bjork and Lindsay are an established source of information for all things related to food blogging. They own Food Blogger Pro, a website packed with video tutorials on how to start, grow and monetize a food blog.

They have tons of information and useful tidbits for aspiring food bloggers from around the world. So if you’re interested in food blogging I highly recommend you check them out!

So when I saw that they had launched a recipe plugin, I was psyched and immediately loaded it for my healthy food blog!

WP Tasty Recipes delivers on all fronts – it’s solid, easy to use (the interface is almost the same as if you were creating a new post in WP), the style of the recipe cards are polished, and the customer support decent.

The bottom line? I gave it 9.5 out of 10 because their customer service can honestly take slightly long to reply at times.

But other than that, WP Tasty Recipe is a wonderful plugin you will thoroughly enjoy using.

tasty recipes

Granted there are loads of other recipe plugins you can try but it’s confusing and frustrating and why not just go to the best and not waste time?

chocolate mousse

2) Focus on beautiful visual media

When it comes to great food blogging, visual content is key. A picture speaks more than a thousand words, and while writing quality is important, you should make sure that you can back up your posts with amazing videos and photos!

Most people think that they can simply use their iPhones to take pictures of their meals, but it’s 2023, and you really need something a little more involved to stand out.

Consider spending a few hundred dollars on a DSLR camera and learn how to use it! Great photos and videos can make you stand out from the myriad of iPhone bloggers out there!

The Best FREE Stock Photo Sites for Your Blog

 

3) Involve other people and create thought-provoking features to expand your audience

You can easily come up with ideas and create content on your own. However, you’ll definitely benefit from collaborating with others. Team up with guest writers to give your blog a different voice and expand your audience every now and then.

You can also interview people or feature interesting foodies, just to spice things up! Featuring other people is a really good way to add more relevance to your blog.

The people you feature will love the attention, and they might want to promote their feature through their social media, thus leading to more exposure for you!

foodie social media instagram

 

4) Use social media in order to reach more people.

Posting great content on your blog is a good start, but it might not be enough to steadily grow your following.

If you really want to take it to the next level, you need to have a consistent active presence on social media platforms.

Crowdfire makes automatic social media posting from your blog or website simple! They even recommend content for your selected platforms. Try if for FREE HERE! 

Social sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and especially Pinterest are really great for bloggers who want to grow their audience and reach out to more people!

Make sure that you promote your posts through each and every platform, and do not miss out on the amazing exposure that you can gain from social media.

Recommended Reading

How to Market On Pinterest – The Ultimate Guide

How to Create an Epic Social Media Strategy for Your New Website

Another added benefits of using social media is that you can also take advantage of the power of these platforms to communicate with your readers and interact with them, creating a more meaningful connection with the audience.

Kefir yogurt parfait
Image by Pixabay.com

5) Post content on a regular basis.

It is very important to post content on a very regular basis, without overcrowding your blog or overwhelming your readers. If you post content very sporadically, it might look like your blog is not very consistent.

As a result, you might quickly lose the interest of your readers. On the other hand, if you post too much content, you risk driving people away, because they’ll be oversaturated with your post!

The best way to make sure that you keep posting quality content on a fairly regular basis is definitely scheduling.

Take time to plan your monthly blog features in advance. This way, you can get organized and know exactly what to post, and when.

Most food bloggers go as far as planning their yearly blogs as well, especially by focusing on special events and holidays (especially posting special features for major Holidays like Easter, Christmas or Thanksgiving, for instance).

Planning is indeed one of the key elements of any successful blog.

Having a calendar plotted out in advance can also help you get organized and produce much better content to begin with!

How to run your blog when you’re away

Berries
Miracle Berrie by Pixabay.com

Bonus tip: create a meaningful relationship with your readers.

As a food or wellness blogger, it is very important to create a meaningful relationship with your readers. Building a following is really all about establishing a great personal connection with you people.

Why would your audience read your food and wellness blog, as opposed to the thousands of other food blogs out there?

The answer is: because of you. Your personality should really shine through, and your blog should be your own voice. Don’t be afraid to shine for who you really are, and don’t miss out on the amazing opportunity of communicating with your readers.

If they ask you questions or comment on your content, do your best to answer everyone. Better yet, ask them questions and let them know that their feedback matter!

Ask them what articles they have enjoyed the most, or why not, even involved in the content-creation process!

Many food and wellness blogs have cool Q&A articles with their readers, or post content based on popular demand.

Make your audience feel special and give people a first-hand experience of your enthusiasm.

Get Your Blog Ready for Sale

Just like a house or car if you want top dollar for something you have to get it in tip top shape to be appealing to buyers.

Granted, when I bought the blog it was NOT in the best of shape and lacked a lot of content but it had a TON of potential which I profited from.

But overall it’s a good idea to make sure your content and traffic are all on par with your audience and looks great to potential buyers.

Be ready to show traffic statistics, any companies your in collaboration with and the financial details. All of that will be asked for upon any given offer along with other questions.

To see how to get top dollar from your blog read this post on how a 3 year old blog sold in 5 days for $43,000!

Conclusion

These are the basic steps to start a successful food or wellness blog but even more goes into it to keep it running successfully and smoothly!

If you are interested in acquiring a blog that’s already established I recommend checking out some of the sites on Flippa.

Or, if you have a food or wellness blog and you want to sell it like I did, you can reach out to them for a free website valuation and see how much you could get in return! The results may surprise you!

Follow me for the latest and greatest ways to grow your traffic and build your epic online business!

Latest posts…

Categories List

TikTok Marketing Tactics You Need To Know

How to Get 10K Followers on Instagram Organically

How to Start and Grow Your Business On YouTube

Best Free Blogging Tools to Grow Your Blog Fast

The Rise of The Social Media Influencer & How to Become One

How to Turn Your Blog Posts Into Video In Less Than 5 Minutes

How to Start a Money Making Blog in 5 Steps

how to start a food blog

About Emily A

Emily Standley Allard is a nationally published author, content creator, social media and SEO professional. She is a digital content strategist who has helped companies and individuals improve their online presence since 2014.