Can a Recipe Blog Make You Additional “Gig” Income?

Home-based entrepreneur starting a recipe blog.

Anyone that has spent any time in a kitchen has, at one time or another, searched the web for a recipe on the web.  What you probably did not realize was that you likely had just visited someone’s “gig” online money making business. This is one of the least expensive startups of a food related business that you can run from home and recipe blogs are popular and financially lucrative if you’re good at creating interesting content and can generate enough website traffic.

Recipe bloggers come in all shapes and sizes as some live and breath their own creations while others act as aggregators of the creations of others.  The money in recipe blogging is from affiliate marketing and advertising money where your blog’s sidebar features kitchen utensils, appliances, books and more.  In fact, many recipe bloggers will operate multiple blogs and this is a great home-based business and one that can be operated on a shoestring budget.  Once you learn how to blog, all you’ll need to succeed are some appetizing recipes, an appealing website, and lots of visitors.

But First…This is a Business of Cooking

Running a successful recipe blog is all about cooking.  At its most basic, cooking simply means applying heat to food and cooking techniques vary widely.  They include grilling food over an open fire, using electric and gas stoves to apply the heat, and even baking in various types of ovens.  History tells us  we’ve been enjoying cooked foods now for several million years.

Cooking is also an important job since some foods are not safe to eat without first being properly cooked.  Cooking not only heats the food and makes it more tasty, but it also helps kill harmful bacteria that can make you ill…or worse.  So to some, cooking is just a job.  To others, it is an art form and is referred to as part of  the culinary arts.

So…What is a Recipe?

Recipes are step-by-step guides or set of instructions that explain how to prepare and create a certain food, dish or meal.  Initially, cooking art was handed down from generation to generation.  The earliest known written recipes date to 1730 BC and were recorded on cuneiform tablets found in Mesopotamia.  With the advent of the printing press in the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous books were starting to be written on how to manage households and prepare food.  Modern recipes include (s)…

  • the name of the recipe and often the origin and history of the dish.
  • the yield or the number of servings that the recipe of the dish provides.
  • a list all ingredients and by quantity required in the order to follow the particular recipe. Describe it in step by step instructions.
  • step-by-step instructions to follow for preparation including how much time does it take to prepare the dish and plus cooking times.
  • necessary equipment used for the dish.
  • actual cooking procedures to include temperatures and bake times if necessary.
  • serving procedures (Served while warm/cold).
  • review of the dish (Would you recommend this dish to a friend?).
  • photograph of the dish (Optional but recommended).
  • nutritional value. This helps for dietary restrictions and often includes number of calories or grams per serving.

Starting a Recipe Blog for Income

A recipe blog is a special website or online platform where the author posts different recipes for their readers to try.  In today’s hectic world, not everyone loves to cook and many may choose to live takeout to takeout.  Others, however, and whenever they have the chance, will cook at home for family or guests.  For the perfect meal, they need to look up and take advantage of  a recipe at some point or another.  And when someone Googles a recipe to impress others with that perfect meal, they almost always wind up on someone’s recipe blog, using a recipe created by a blogger!

A blogger in the Food & Recipe Blog Business creates recipe content for the internet that is designed to answer the questions that people are asking on the web and a lot of people are making a lot of money with food & recipe blogs.  But this type of blog or space is crowded, and to be successful it takes more than just great recipe content. You’ll need to answers the questions that people are asking, but to really succeed in food blogging, you’ll need a great niche.

Making Money in the Food and Recipe

Like almost all bloggers, Food and Recipe Bloggers make money from visitors who first visit your website and consume your content.  They may also subscribe through to your email to learn more from you or may follow you on social media.  And if successful, your website traffic and audience will provide you with income and that will come from…

  • information product sales
  • advertisements on your blogsite
  • affiliate marketing sales

Food & Recipe Blogging can be either an enjoyable and rewarding part-time side hustle or an exceptional full time home-business.  It can entail working on just a few recipes a week combined with a little social media and you can have a nice side hustle making some extra money doing something you love or you can put the pedal to the metal, create lots of daily content including social media, and you can make a full-time income as a food blogger.

Getting Started as a Food Blogger

One of the best ways to get started is to launch a “personal food blog”.  It’s easy, fun, and almost without cost.  Setting up your personal food blog is like constructing your own prized recipe cards, except you will detail all your recipes online rather than indexing them on 4×6 cards stored somewhere in your kitchen.  Build your content at your own pace and learn the ropes of this business.  To get started…

  • Develop some basic web skills.  One of the best methods is to purchase a WordPress blogging template (available through DataMax) constructed using Elementor drag and drop editor.  Its not only very easy…its very inexpensive.
  • Start learning the blogging business.  DataMax provides many highly rated titles and authors available here.