Thinking of starting a blog? Want it to become a business and your full time job one day? Not sure how that is all possible?

Well, here it is. How a food blog becomes a business and a job!

Honestly, I love that so many people ask me how my food blog is a business and my job. 

I get it. When I first started my blog as a hobby, I didn’t even know it could be a business one day or that it could be – or would be – my full time job, and my very own business. 

Since I’ve decided to leave my 9-5 career and do this full time (that story is here), I am asked this question almost daily. 

Today, I want to share how a food blog can become a business, and is now my full time job. 

Here are the ways a food blog becomes a business: 

1. Sponsored Work 

Just like any other brand, a brand that becomes known, and builds a reputation in a niche – becomes a something that can be leveraged and income generating.  

Tiger woods is a person. But, he is also a brand.

His own brand. Because he built himself into a known brand, other brands want to leverage that to put their product in front of their own parallel target market – which just so happens to be a similar person that follows/buys into Tiger’s brand. People that love Tiger woods, probably also like golf and golf products! 

Brands then pay to work with and collaborate on projects with him.

Their product is then placed in front of their target customer – and it is done so by someone the customer likes and trusts. 

This is called influencer marketing. This is not new. Sports stars have been doing this forever as endorsements. 

Bloggers do this type of work too. 

 

But, in the age of Instagram and blogging, anyone that puts in the work to generate an audience can become a brand and generate income this way. 

This is a hustle. As a brand yourself, you now can put yourself out there and pitch to brands to work with them as well. 

Side note: I only work with brands I genuinely align with, use, and like. This is why my readers trust me. 

Sponsored work can land anywhere from a couple hundred to thousands of dollars per post. 

2. Affiliate Marketing 

When you love a brand and use them, you can then become an affiliate for them.

This means that you then start to make a commission of sales generated from you talking about the product. Do you ever see a blogger talk about a product on instagram and say swipe up for it. That can be (not always is) affiliate marketing and every purchase from that link, the blogger receives a commission. 

Affiliate sales can generate as little as $1 or as much as thousands of dollars per month for bloggers.

3. Website Ads

Once you have built awesome content, and have built a reader base (all for free with sweat equity over the course of probably a year or two), you can then partner with an Ad network – such as Mediavine.

This can be an incredibly lucrative stream – WHEN  YOU HAVE TRAFFIC to your site.

Once you qualify for a “good ad network” like Mediavine, you are are going to make about 2 cents per page click. Yup a whoopping 2 cents. 

But, once you have hundreds of thousands or millions of website visitors in a month, this is now a revenue stream for your business. 

100,000 visitors to your blog. That is $2000. 1 million viewers – you just made $20k… in a month

 This is why food blogs have ads.  This is so the readers get FREE content, while the creators are being compensated for their time. 

What all goes into making a food blog post is a whole different discussion – but spoiler alert it is HOURS AND HOURS of work per recipe post.  My friend over on Two Sleevers has laid all of that out here if you are interested. 

Ad income can generate as little as $1 or as much as tens of thousands of dollars per month for bloggers.

4. Sell Your Services & or Knowledge

When you become a brand that is known for something, you are probably now an industry expert in it.

I mean if people are following and listening to you, you are probably onto something and know a thing or two. 

This can lead to even more income generating opportunities like:

• Photography and videos for other blogs or businesses  (food products or menus). For example, my photos are now on Williams Sonoma for a brand!!! 
• Recipe creation for food product brands
• Social media advising/management for others
• Speaking engagements
• Teaching formal classes
• Your time for your skill set (in home meal prep services, kitchen and pantry organization, etc).
• Digital products such as ebooks (see mine here), and my friend Kelly (over at The Family Freezer makes an astonishing income with digital products).
• Physical products to solve a problem for your reader (see mine here).

All of these revenue streams can amount to thousands of dollars per month. 

Before you jump into blogging as a business and a job…. 

Once a blog has traffic to it and the blog is a brand, food bloggers income is really limitless. There is real potential to make 4 & 5 figure income each month with a food blog. 

Sounds great, right? It is. But… rest assured it is not easy. It is THE HARDEST thing I have ever worked at in all my life. 

Bloggers work for free and hard for most often a year before they see a return. All while still working a day job too (in some cases like mine). 

If you want to monetize a blog, know that you have to be passionate about what you are doing or it just won’t work. You have to start a blog for anything but money if you want it to succeed. 

I worked on my blog for 2 years before it generated income, and 4 years total I worked on my blog and a full time job to get to the point I am at today. 

It is one of the hardest things I have worked at in my life. But… it paid off. 

 

So, there is is. This is how a food blog becomes a business, and allowed me to leave my day job! 

Do you have any questions about blogging as a business? Leave them in the comments?

Interested on more of the story of becoming a blogger?

Check out my post “How being laid off turned me into the Meal Plan Addict blogger” and “I quit my 6 figure job to be a blogger – here’s how” posts!