How to Start a FOOD Blog In India and Make Money – The Most Complete Guide for 2023?

If you are looking for information on how to start a food blog in India and make money from it, then this is the only guide you will ever need.

I update this guide regularly to benefit regular readers and so I would recommend coming back often if you have any doubts or, questions. You can also reach out to me using the “contact” button if you have any questions.

But before we start, a quick backstory.

It was a casual conversation over a cup of tea, that made me a food blogger.

I was an absolute non-techie and I had no clue about blogs, blogging, or, marketing. So forget about food blogging, I had no thoughts of even starting a food blog at any point in time.

After pregnancy, I quit working and I was looking for something I could do from home so that I don’t compromise on the time I give to my baby. That was when my husband started off with this discussion of blogging.

I instantly asked him. Can cooking and food be a blog niche?

His reply was instant, “Anything that you are passionate about can be a blog niche” (I would want you to remember this point)

My next question was, “How to start a food blog?”

He told me a few steps which were all jargon for me and I am sure some of it will be for you as well.

Anyways, I quickly moved on to my next question, “Does food blogging work in India?”

It is now 14 years that I have been doing this and it is very much working. In fact, there is something also that is working which I will keep for the later part of this discussion.

So, that’s how my journey with The Tastes of India started.

So, before we even start talking about a system to start food blogging, let me ask you a couple of questions.

1. Are you passionate about food and cooking or, for that matter, anything?
2. Do you want to put that passion of yours into a blog?

Then, you need to just go do it.

And to do it.. we will help you.

While this mini-course will teach you how to start a food blog in India, this is more than just a food blogging guide focused on India as a market.

You can use this information to start a blog in whatever niche you want to and in whichever country you want to. The basic principles work the same and the resources that we will be discussing here will all remain the same.

Okay. So if you are ready, then let’s start off and learn how to start a food blog.

Links Disclaimer: Some of the links in this article are affiliate links. If you decide to buy from those links, I will earn a commission. Over the last 8 years, I have used most of these products and I am standing by them because I trust them and their quality.

This course has a lot of videos because videos tend to explain things better and in detail and I am sure you will love watching over the shoulder as it is done. Dilip, my husband is the one who manages the backend of my blog, and hence I got him to record these videos because who better than him to explain the entire process?

Things to Keep in Mind Before Starting

I am assuming that your interest in starting a food blog stemmed from either of the 2 below reasons –

1. You are very much interested in food and cooking. You want to share your love with the rest of the community and would love if you could make some money with it
2. You saw a few food blogs that were earning like crazy and hence felt that this is the best niche to make some decent money in.

In either case, you need to understand that, money will not start flowing in from the night after you start your food blog.

Blogging and especially food blogging requires a lot of perseverance and consistency to become a profitable business. You might have to invest some time of yours into building it, without thinking about the returns and getting frustrated.

Also, keep in mind that “food” is a very competitive niche. How and where you are able to place yourselves in this broad niche called “food”, will decide how successful you are.

So start with that frame of mind.

Start food blogging as if you are doing it just for fun.

Provide value to your readers and you will slowly find your blog making it big in the niche.

I have had some of my students ask me, “How long before I start making money with a food blog?”.

That’s a good question. But, you might not like the answer though.

This question is similar to asking me, “How long before my stomach is full”?

Only you are the person who will be able to answer it and it entirely depends upon your appetite and how much you can eat.

Similarly, in blogging, your success entirely depends upon how much time you can invest and whether you are really taking action or, just bench warming.

While some bloggers taste success in less than 6 months, it might necessarily not be the case with everyone.

Resources Required – How to Start a Food Blog

Okay! First things first. If you are planning to start a food blog, then bear in mind that there is some investment required to get started.

While there will be people who might tell you that you can begin for FREE, the truth is that there is nothing in the world that is free!

Also, if something is being offered to you for FREE, then remember that you are the product.

Another thing that you need to understand is that at some point later, you might want to move to a paid option because of the limitations you will find with the FREE options.

And when you want to do that, you will find yourself in a lot of problems.

At this point, I should also mention that, while the term “Investment” might sound as if you have to invest a lot of capital into starting a food blog, it actually isn’t that complicated.

You might want to keep aside about $100-$150 as an investment. That is the most that you will need. And then you need to invest some time of yours, as I said earlier in this article.

So with that said, let us look at some of the most important resources that you might want to invest in to get started.

There are some absolutely essential resources that you will need to get started with a food blog. What more you add to your arsenal will depend upon your systems, simplification methodology etc.

Disclaimer – Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. If you choose to buy a product or, service from any of our recommendations by clicking on one of those links, we stand to earn a small commission at NO EXTRA COST TO YOU.

1. A Domain Name – Order from Stores4Domains
2. A Web Hosting service – We host on Hostinger and also recommend them because they are the best when it comes to services and customer support. They will make you feel like a king, every time you reach out to them with a problem. And they go out of their way to help you as well. Other hosting providers that we recommend are GreenGeek Hosting and Hostgator
3. A Good Theme for your Blog – Generatepress (the one we use on our blog and the most economical as well), Genesis (Foodie Theme), or, Themeforest (Theme-x). We use Thrive Suite which is a complete package that includes an excellent theme, a landing page builder, an opt-in form builder, etc. These are tools you will need in due course. If you have the budget then I would recommend investing in Thrive Suite or, at least their theme and essential plugins.
4. A good plugin to publish your recipes. This is usually called a recipe card plugin and we recommend using Wp Recipe Maker Pro.
5. An Autoresponder Service – Aweber
6. Some Photography tools (Begin with a simple point-and-shoot camera. Even a good Phone camera will do). Check out the resources section for more on that.
7. A Complete Plan

We will discuss each of these in detail in a while.

I will be using videos where ever possible because that is a medium most of my students recommended for training, and I too like using videos for all my training. Videos provide a clear and detailed view of each step and is easier to understand.

If you still find something difficult, feel free to write to us and we will help you with it.

DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION

Every blog starts with a name and so will your food blog. A domain name is the name of the website or, blog that you know it with. The domain name of my food blog here is thetastesofindia.com.

A domain has 2 parts to it. The first is the name, which in my case is “thetastesofindia”. The second is the part after the DOT, which is called as the TLD or, top level domain. You can decide as to what you want that to be. The most common TLD is the .com and that is what I will recommend. In most of the instances the decision on what TLD to go with depends upon what is available. You might want a name XYZ. But XYZ.com might not be available. Instead XPZ.net might be available and you might just decide on going with it.

But I will recommend that you choose a name that has a .com available. This is because it is the most used TLD and is also the easiest to remember.

You can go to Godaddy.com which is the largest domain registrar and search for the domain availability. If you are looking for low cost domain names, you could also try out http://stores4domains.com.

Once you have registered your domain name, we can go straight to one of the hosting companies and buy a Web Hosting.

Note: If you do not want to spend on a domain name, then get a free domain with your purchase of Hosting from Bluehost.

WHERE TO BUY A WEB HOSTING

Web hosting is one of the most important aspects of a successful website. If your hosting server is not fast and doesn’t provide you some of the basic features like regular backup, spam protection and an easy to use interface, then the hosting server is of no use. Hence it is important that you choose your web hosting wisely. We at thetastesofindia.com use Bluehost as our web hosting because of a lot of unique features and benefits that we get from Bluehost. It is hence that we recommend them as well.

You can read our guide on choosing a web hosting server to learn about some of the important things that you need to keep in mind when you buy a hosting server.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of hosting your website with Bluehost –

1. Bluehost is very economical and you can get an unlimited plan for as low as $3.99/month
2. Their support is exceptionally good. You can use their ticketing system, chat or even telephone customer support to get instant response to your  queries.
3. They have one of the best cPanel interfaces and is hence easy to use.
4. You can get a free domain name when you purchase a hosting server from Bluehost
5. Bluehost also has some very handy add-ons  to their hosting service

Okay, now that we have seen how to choose your website hosting service let’s move on to a detailed tutorial on how to host your domain name.

HOSTING YOUR DOMAIN NAME

The first thing to do in order to host your domain name with Bluehost, if you have registered it with a different registrar is to change the nameservers for your domain name. If you picked your domain name while ordering your hosting service with Bluehost, then your domain is directly hosted with them and you don’t have to go through this process.

Here is how to change the nameservers for your domain name –

Now that you have seen how to change the nameservers for your domain name, let’s move on to see how to install WordPress on your hosting and complete the setup of your blog.

INSTALLING WORDPRESS

Most of the hosting services comes with a one click install feature for WordPress. But I don’t recommend using this one click install primarily because of the fact that this kind of installation has a security vulnerability. Such installations have an un-secure database structure and are easy prey to hackers. So here I will be showing you the detailed step-by-step instructions on how to do a custom WordPress install.

For custom WordPress install, we will start with creating a database.

Now head over to WordPress.org to download a fresh copy of WordPress. Click here to go to the download page.

Once you have downloaded the WordPress files, you need to upload them to the domain root directory on your hosting server. Let’s see how it is done.

Now that we have uploaded the WordPress files to our hosting server, let us begin with the installation of our WordPress blog. The below video will show you how to install your WordPress blog using the five minutes WordPress installation method.

INSTALLING A THEME & OTHER CUSTOMIZATIONS

So that completes our WordPress installation. Now we need to beautify our WordPress blog by installing a beautiful theme and also install some plug-ins to customize the way our blog works.

It is entirely up to you, if you want to go for a premium WordPress theme or, you’re happy with a free one. We tried a lot of different themes for our recipe blog, but finally settled for this free theme that we are currently using on our recipe blog.

If you want a premium theme, then we recommend the Genesis theme along with the Foodie child theme which gives your blog a nice look and also has a lot of customization options.

Let me show you how to install a theme and customize it.

The above video is common for installing any WordPress theme and hence you can follow it irrespective of which theme you have decided to install.

Now let us see the plug-ins that we need to install in order for us to complete our WordPress installation. These are some of the basic plug-ins that will help you in SEO for your blog, SPAM Protection and some other basic things for our recipe blog to work. You can search for these plugins inside the WordPress dashboard because they are all available in the wordpress plugin repository.

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast
2. Jetpack
3. Easy Recipe
4. BackWPup
5. Thristy Affiliates
6. SUMOME

Most of the plug-ins above can be installed directly from your WordPress dashboard.

So that completes our WordPress installation and we are ready with our food blog.

All you need to do now is add a lot of content to your blog and do a little bit of social media and other promotions to generate traffic to it. Consider using tools like an online video editor, which can help create engaging visual content for your social media platforms, making your food blog more visually appealing and shareable.

You can download our guide on “generating traffic to your blogs” for more information.

EMAIL MARKETING AUTORESPONDER

An autoresponder is a service that sends out scheduled emails to your subscribers. If you are interested in marketing your blog and building an audience, then you definitely need an email marketing service. You need to capture the email addresses of people visiting your blog and store them somewhere. You will then, need to send them periodic emails so that they remain in touch with you and you can market your blog.

An autoresponder takes care off all the pains involved in storing, managing and running an email marketing campaign. Most autoresponders let your store about 1000 emails in their starter plans. You can schedule your email series in advance so that they go out on specific days, automatically. You even get a lot of analytics data for you to study about the performance of your email.

Even if you are not a hardcore marketer, you need the help of an email autoresponder, so that you can inform your readers when new recipes are published. Autoresponders, basically helps in maintaining the connect with your readers.

We recommend aweber, because of the their simplicity in usage and other factors like the features, pricing etc.

THE BUSINESS PLAN

Most people ask me, why do I need a business plan, if my objective of running a food blog doesn’t have anything to do with business. So here is the response that I give everyone.

When I started my blog here at thetastesofindia.com, I never thought it will go onto become a business for me. As I saw money rolling in and when I began getting advertisement offers, I felt like I could just run it as a complete business.

You too might just begin your food blog as a hobby. But, sometime down the line you will still need a definite plan on what you want to do with the blog. You will just not be adding recipes after recipes and spend a lot of time promoting your blog, just for fun. There will be something that you might be expecting in return. This business plan is for that day.

What should go into your business plan?

Here are 3 things that your plan must definitely have –

1. Your content calendar – when will you be posting to your blog and how frequently
2. Your promotion strategy – how do you plan on promoting your blog. What strategies are you planning to adopt to increase the circulation of your blog.
3. Your monetization strategy – How do you plan on monetizing your blog?

Your business plan can be in the form of a rough, hand-written document or, you might want to do it in the form of a PDF or, whichever other form you wish to have that in.

CONCLUSION:

That completes our “How to start a food blog” mini-course. I am sure you will have learned a lot of things in here. But if you still have any questions, don’t hesitate to write to me and I can help you.

Just in case you are finding all this a little overwhelming, you can checkout our blog installation and management packages, which are probably the most economical in the market today!

What Next?

Starting a food blog and running it successfully requires that you begin on the right foot with the right resources and the right plan. Blogging is not always easy and every new blogger is bound to make some mistakes which in turn means longer time to be successful.

In order to avoid this, it is recommended that you buddy up with somebody who has been-there-done-that so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes.

If you are serious about blogging and making money with blogging, then we would recommend the Food Blogger Pro, course from the “Pinch of Yum” guys.

It’s an amazing course with a lot of hand-holding and is probably the best course of food blogging on the internet.

Go ahead and join them so that you start the right way. Click here to check out the course!

Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

Additional Resource:

1. First Site Guide