Resources

Ever wanted to start a Blog? Here’s everything you need to know about how to start one, how to get people to read it, and what equipment to use! 

First of all, you’ll need a domain name. Choose something that sums up what you do, and what you are. If you have a food niche, or a travel niche, then choose something that represents that. Choose something that you LOVE! If you can, choose a domain with .com on the end. We’re from Australia, but most of our traffic comes from the USA and we didn’t want to limit our website by having a .com.au on the end. Also it’s better for SEO purposes. Choose something simple, not too long winded, and easy to spell! Nothing too complicated. Simple and straightforward is the way to go. The other thing you can do instead of a niche, is market YOU as the niche. See if there is a domain name available for your name.

Now you’ll need a company to host your website. This is where your website sits within the internet. Hosting can be a complicated world – there are so many hosting sites out there. We started out with a different hosting company, and our site was down A LOT. Which affected our traffic. Eventually we transferred over to Bluehost. There can be a migration fee for transferring hosts, but if you’re starting out, set it up with a trusted site straight away. For us, this was Bluehost. We’ve had no problems at all since transferring our site to them. We usually pay up for a few years because you can get a considerable discount doing it that way. It usually costs around $3.95 (USD) per month. You can get a domain and hosting through Bluehost.

Then you will need a content management system. This is where your creations come to life and where your content will be. WordPress is one of the best on the market. Be careful – because there is WordPress.com and WordPress.org, and there is a massive difference between the two! Long story short, if you want to monetise your blog (who wouldn’t!?), then go with WordPress.org. They are more professional too. Here is a great video that explains the difference between the two. 

This is all getting a little complicated, isn’t it? Bear with us here! 

Next, you’ll need a Theme – this is like the candy wrapper on the chocolate. If your content (what you write on your blog) is the chocolate, then your theme is the wrapper. It adds eye candy and presentation to your content. Basically, this is how your website will be laid out. There are tons of themes to choose from, and there one’s specifically for food bloggers. For example – foodie pro, etc. We use one called Odier and find that it has all we need for now.

After you have some content on your website for people to read, you’ll need to get the word out there! The best way to do this for foodies, is with Food Sharing Sites. You can gain a lot of traffic through sharing these sites! Here are some of our faves:

Food Gawker

Finding Vegan

YumGoggle

Healthy Aperture 

Social Media is also one of the best ways to share your blog. It’s important to build up a following of like minded people around you. Social media is a crucial part of setting up a blog – it’s one of the main ways to drive traffic to your website and get people to read the content that you are putting up!

Pinterest – Create boards and share pins through Pinterest.

Facebook – Create a Facebook page in the name of your blog and invite your friends to like it.

Instagram – Start an Instagram with the same name as your blog and start posting photos on there!

Twitter – Set up a twitter account and start tweeting!

To make things easier, we use ViralTag. This is a great marketing tool that regularly posts our recipes on Pinterest and Facebook, so we don’t have to spend time everyday sharing our content.

Another note – consistency is key! If people see you are posting regularly, then they will be more than likely to follow you. If you are just posting sporadically – once every couple of months, when you feel like it – then people will not take you seriously. 

Equipment we use:

Camera: Canon 600D

Lens: 

Tripod:

Lights:

Reflectors:

We have also spent countless hours watching food photography tutorials to get better at food photography. Here are two that we recommend:

Minimalist Baker Food Photography School

We eat together (not vegan)

We try and get our photos as close as possible to how we want them, but sometimes there is a bit of post production involved. We use the following software for this:

Capture one 10

Photoshop CC

 

(Please note that this post contains affiliate links – it doesn’t cost you any more for the services, but we gain a little commission which helps us keep our website running. Please note we currently use all the services we recommend – so we know they are trusted and they do a good job!)