How to Start a Food Blog: A Beginner’s Guide

I am excited to share with you how to start a food blog and some food photography tips and tricks! To begin, I am an open book when it comes to my job as a full-time food blogger and helping others in this space. I have a variety of blog posts on social media growth. You can check them out here.

Since I share many tips and tricks about social media as a business, I started to receive many questions about how to even start a food blog. I wrote this post to go over the basics of creating a food blog as well as some food photography tips for quality content.

This post contains affiliate links. Please read our Privacy policy HERE.

If you are asking yourself the questions below, read this post!

1. "How to create a food blog?"

2. "How do you set up a food blog?"

How to Start a Food Blog:

Name your Food Blog and Purchase a Domain:

Firstly, ensure your name is simple and matches your other social channels. This way, your followers can easily find you. I understand this can be difficult depending on your name. For example, frozenbananas.com was not an option for me unless I wanted to purchase it for thousands of dollars. I resorted to hellofrozenbananas because it was fun, still tied in with my Instagram handle and was MUCH cheaper (about $16 per year). You can purchase your domain from GoDaddy.

Make a WordPress Website!

I highly recommend going with WordPress. Previously, I did have a SquareSpace website and transferred over to WordPress. SquareSpace/Wix are extremely limiting. If you are serious about blogging, create a WordPress website. Also, you will be able to rank for SEO searches and make money through ads on a WordPress website. Lastly, I wish someone told me this when I first started!

Go with WordPress.org NOT WordPress.com

Don't forget to go with WordPress.org NOT WordPress.com because you want to self-host your blog. I use BigScoots to host my site and I cannot recommend them enough! I changed my SquareSpace website over to WordPress during the summertime. BigScoots was absolutely amazing throughout the process. I was nervous, yet the entire transfer was seamless. When I was ready to go live, it was done within minutes. Even now, whenever I have a question, I receive a response right away.

Install a WordPress Theme:

I personally have the Foodie Pro Theme which I purchased from Feast Design Co. Just buy the Feast Plugin.

Now.. Let's talk about Food Photography:

If you are going to have a successful blog, it's important to have beautiful photos. I will share a few food photography tips for beginners. I am not recommending any courses in this blog post, just a couple of easy tips you can implement.

1. Food Photography Tips and Tricks

A few items I purchased from Amazon that work wonders for food photography are my photo backdrops, a tripod and small bowls for food videos and ingredient shots. See links below to purchase.

2. Best Lighting for Food Photography

I do not use many props, I love a simple and clean look. In my opinion, the key to a beautiful food photo is good lighting. The best lighting for food photography is natural light. I always take my photos near a window or outside during the day.

3. Food Photography Editing

The best apps for food bloggers are Lightroom, Snapseed and InShot. I use Lightroom to edit my pictures. I normally brighten up my photos this way. If there is a crumb or piece of food out of place, I use Snapseed to edit it out. As far as video editing, I use InShot to edit all of my food videos. These are my top 3 photo editing apps for food photography.

This post will guide you through important steps on how to start a food blog as well as food photography tips to create quality content.