Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Some are not. We recommend the products and services listed here because we believe them to be of high quality. We believe these are the products and services that will be useful to you during month one of your food blog. Affiliate status does not influence our recommendations.
Month one of a food blog is a busy time. Here’s a detailed to-do list for month one of your food blog. From deciding your niche and finding a web host to writing your first pieces of content and creating social media materials, it’s all here.
We’ve listed these tasks in the order in which you should complete them. For example, you want to get your domain name before you register for your social media accounts. That way, you know what name to use when you register. (Your first choice for a domain name might not be available.)
Table of Contents
STEP ONE: YOUR DOMAIN
Decide On Your Niche
Let’s start with your niche. That is your topic, your approach, and your audience.
Food is your general topic. We need to narrow that down. What kind of food are you going to write about? You can focus on one of several things. You can focus on an ingredient or a cooking method.
Or a dish, setting, or a nutritional aspect.
It’s helpful to have an approach to your topic, such as easy, quick, or traditional.
Your audience is a critical element of your niche. Who are you writing for? That will determine what you’ll write, to a large degree.
For more help, get our free download, Find Your Best Food Writing Niche.
Register Your Domain Name
Your brand name will be the name of your website. And the name on your social media accounts. So it’s one of the most important decisions you’ll make in establishing your food blog.
Once you decide on your name, your next step is to register your domain name. There are several companies you can do this with.
We recommend BlueHost. They offer free domain registration when you buy hosting from them.
Your first choice for a domain name might not be available. So you might have to look for an alternative. That can be disappointing. But you can find a usable domain.
For more information, read our post Get Your Best Domain Name.
STEP TWO: BUILD YOUR WEBSITE
Find a Web Hosting Company
Our web hosting company is BlueHost. It’s excellent for beginning bloggers. They have superior customer service.
BlueHost offers a free domain name when you buy hosting. Monthly hosting fees start at $2.95 (less than $36 a year).
There are lots of other hosting companies. Many offer adequate service but BlueHost is our first choice. The free domain name, low fees, and above-average customer service make it irresistible.
Whatever company you choose, the set-up should be easy. Follow the company’s step-by-step directions to establish your website.
WordPress vs The Rest of the World
WordPress is our choice for a website builder and content management system (CMS). More than 30% of all the websites in the world use WordPress.
If you want to monetize and customize your website, use WordPress.org. (WordPress.com is a hosting company. We don’t recommend it.)
WordPress is free and easy to customize with plugins.
There is a learning curve to WordPress. Thankfully, there are lots of websites with free WordPress tutorials, like WPBeginner. It has a blog and YouTube channel.
You can also use a paid support service like Blue Sky. (Blue Sky starts at $29 a month; $24 a month if paid by the year.)
Install a WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme is a collection of files that determine the look and function of your website.
Many themes are free. These themes offer fewer features but are more than usable.
It’s helpful to use a free theme before you pay for a theme. This allows you to learn how themes work and what extra features you want and need. You’ll be a more educated consumer when you go to buy a paid theme.
Paid themes cost from $15 to $130 on average.
Install WordPress Plugins
Plugins add functionality to the website and you’ll want to add a few at the start. Many plugins offer one added functionality; some offer a host of them.
Plugins can slow your website so add only the ones you need. If there are any plugins preloaded to your website, delete any you don’t need.
General Plugins
All bloggers need to optimize their posts. This makes the post most readable by Google and other search engines. A Search Engine Optimization plugin is vital to the health of your website. And it’s important to install it during month one.
We use YOAST. There’s a free and paid version. The free version is more than enough for most websites.
YOAST analyzes the technical elements of your post. The length of your text, for example. And the number of internal and external links and the use of your keyphrase.
The plugin also analyzes the readability of your post. It notes the use of passive voice and subheadings, along with sentence length.
The plugin generates a list of elements that need improvement and those that are adequate.
Another vital plugin is a sitemap; a sitemap is a way of organizing a website. A sitemap identifies the URLs and the information under each section. Creating a sitemap helps Google and other search engines to index your website. It also helps website visitors navigate your site and generates a plain list of all your pages. We like XML Sitemap.
Recipe Plugins
There are several plugins that format recipes. We like Tasty Recipes.
It offers formatting, nutritional information, and unit conversion. Scaling, language translation, step-by-step video integration, and lots more are included.
Tasty Recipes costs $79 a year.
Social Media Plugins
There are several plugins to help with social media. We use Tasty Pins to incorporate Pinterest pins in our posts.
The plugin adds a hover button to all the images in a post. It also disables the pinning of unsuitable images and forces the pinning of a chosen pin. And allows bloggers to create pins, with a complete description, while in WordPress.
Tasty Pins costs $29 a year.
Set Up Google Tools
Google Analytics is a way to collect data about your website.
Go to google.com/analytics and create an account. You’ll get directions on how to activate your account.
The data collected includes the search queries visitors use to find your website. Along with pageviews, which websites refer to your blog, and visit length. It collects lots of other useful information.
There’s a free version, which is perfect for small and medium businesses. Large corporations use a paid version, $150,000 a year (that’s not a typo).
The Google Search Console provides tools and insights to help bloggers optimize for search engines.
It overlaps with Google Analytics, but they do have a different focus. You should have both.
You’ll have to sign up for it. It’s free.
Establish a Dedicated Email
There are lots of expenses related to launching a blog. To keep costs low some people wait to start a dedicated email for the website.
Our advice? You should get a dedicated email as soon as you can. The reason? Because you can use it to register for your social media accounts. As well as all the products and services related to your blog.
Of course, you can use a personal email to register for those accounts. But at some point, you’ll want to have a dedicated email. You need it to send out newsletters. And you’ll want to answer questions from readers from an official-sounding email.
We recommend Google Workspace. It costs $6 a month for the basic plan.
Establish an Email Marketing Program
One of the most important keys to a successful food blog is an email marketing program. We use ConvertKit. It’s an easy way to collect email addresses from your readers. You should start collecting email addresses on day one of your food blog launch. Your email list is crucial and you shouldn’t launch until you have a system in place to collect those essential addresses.
Why is your email list so important? Because it’s one of the few things you actually own when it comes to your blog.
All of your social medial accounts are on someone else’s platform. Your blog is on someone else’s platform. Those platforms can go away. (Anybody remember MySpace?) Platform algorithms can limit your distribution.
Your social media accounts and, yes, even your blog can be shut down. (Comply with the terms of service and that’s unlikely, but it is possible.)
Even your content can be copied and stolen. But your email list is private and it ensures that you have a way to communicate directly with your readers, no matter what the algorithm gods decide to do.
Convertkit is free to start. Once your email list grows over 1,000 addresses or you want more features, you’ll be charged according to the number of subscribers you have (starting at $29 a month).
STEP THREE: WRITE!
Before you start writing, it’s a good idea to create a Style Guide. A style guide is a document that lists all your choices for the visual elements of your website. It can also include your choices about writing tone and voice, brand basics, punctuation, and other do’s and don’ts for writers, editors, and graphic artists.
To begin with, it can be a simple, one-page guide.
Decide on your brand color palette. What colors will your background and text be? What colors will your website links be? Keep the number of colors to four or less. Write down all the names and HTML codes (numerical names) of the colors you choose.
Decide on your typography. What fonts will you use for headlines, for subheads, and your text? Consider fonts for photo captions.
Make sure that your fonts are easy to read. While script fonts are okay, stay away from fancy script fonts.
Again, write down all the names of the fonts.
Decide on the alignment of your text (align left, align center, or align right).
Write all your choices down and keep them handy while you write.
Get our free download How to Create A Style Guide.
Create Your Static Pages
Most websites have several static pages. A static page is a page that remains the same, unlike a blog page which is regularly updated. Almost every website has a Home page, an About Me page, and a Contact page.
Some websites also have a FAQ page and a Product or Services page. You can write all of these pages.
There are legal pages every website should have. You shouldn’t write these pages yourself. These pages include a Privacy Policy page, a Terms and Conditions page, and a Copyright page. You should also consider a Comments Policy page and a Refund page.
We use Termly. It’s a service that creates those legal pages for you. You enter your information into a form online and Termly generates the appropriate form. One form is free; unlimited forms cost $15 a month with unlimited updates.
Write Your First Pieces of Content
When your first readers visit your website, they’ll want more than one or two blog posts to read. Five posts is a good number to have when you first go live.
Take some time to brainstorm ideas. Write down a list of topics, as many topics as you can. Pick ten topics or more. These should be the topics that would be easy for you to write about.
Of these, choose at least five. Research them if needed. Create outlines or bullet points based on the research. (Hold on to the list of topics. You’ll use it for planning more content later.)
Write the blog posts. Be sure to use subheadings and external/internal links when you post them. Use clear, focused photographs with alt text.
If you’ve installed the YOAST plugin, use it to optimize your posts. (Optimization means making the posts readable by Google and other search engines.)
Create dynamic headlines for each post. Consider using a free headline analyzer such as Capitalize My Title or a headline generator such as Content Wonk.
Don’t write a post introducing yourself or the reasons you started a blog. Use the About Me page on your website for that.
These first five blog posts are what you need before your website goes live. But you’ll need to keep writing. Plan to add at least one more blog post each week to your website. That means that at the end of month one of your blog, you’ll have nine or ten blog posts minimum.
One blog post a week is the minimum. Two posts a week is even better. The point here is to be consistent.
Three or more blog posts a week will quickly lead to burnout for most bloggers. That’s a lot to write, especially if you’re writing long, high-quality posts. And remember, you have to create and schedule social media materials for each post.
Publish Your Website
Hit publish on your website!
You likely won’t get any visitors the first few days.
Remember you haven’t made any social media marketing materials to attract readers. The reason to go live before making your social media materials is that you need the posts’ URLs.
Social media materials link to posts. To do that, the posts need to be live.
STEP FOUR: SOCIAL MEDIA
Pinterest is an excellent social media platform for food bloggers. It’s the platform we recommend you start during month one of your blog.
There have been some significant changes at Pinterest lately which have reduced the reach of many users, yes. But it’s still an excellent platform for food. It does allow visitors to go from Pinterest to your website.
Get your free download, The Ultimate Pinterest Guide for Food Bloggers.
Instagram is a little more difficult to grow as a platform than Pinterest. The focus on Instagram is to keep viewers on Instagram. The advantage to bloggers is exposure on Instagram. It doesn’t allow visitors to jump to your website. Start it as a second or third platform.
Facebook is the biggest social media platform in the world. It isn’t true that you have to buy ads for Facebook to reach an audience on the platform. It is true that, like Instagram, it’s a slow-growth platform.
There are three other platforms to consider.
TikTok, which allows for 15 seconds of video, is a great platform for food bloggers. You can show 15 seconds of cooking, knife skills, decorating a cake, anything you can demonstrate in a short time.
Twitter is excellent for announcing new blog posts. You can also show photos of completed dishes or link to videos on Twitter.
Most food bloggers use videos to show how to cook. YouTube is a great platform for food bloggers. It’s free. In fact, it will pay you for showing your videos once you get a large enough following. It’s easy to use and popular. It’s the second-largest search engine in the world, next to Google. It has an extraordinary reach.
YouTube requires videotaping and editing so it can be time-consuming.
Think about which platform your audience uses and which platform you’re most comfortable on. Start there.
Create a Social Media Calendar
A social media calendar is a schedule of what you’re posting, when, and where.
Keep in mind, you’ll have to spend time creating social media posts. If you don’t have any experience in graphic design, it will take longer. You’ll get faster as you go along but in the beginning, it will be slow to start.
After you create the posts, it will take some time to post them.
It’s easy to overschedule your social media posts. Be careful. That leads to burnout. It’s a good idea to start with one platform. Wait a month or two before you add another platform.
Choose a Social Media Scheduler
You can schedule your social media posts directly on the individual platforms. That’s free but it takes some time.
Many food bloggers use a scheduler like Tailwind and Zoho to save time. There are many others. They cost anywhere from $6 to $100 a month depending on how many platforms and posts you choose.
Many of the schedulers have a free 30-day trial. It’s a good idea to try the scheduler before you commit to paying for the service. (Schedulers often charge by the year so it can be a financial commitment.) Take advantage of all the free 30-day trials you can during month one of your food blog.
Create Social Media for Your First Blog Posts
There are several graphic design programs you can use to create social media materials. We like Canva.
There’s a free version and a paid version ($119.99 a year for up to five users).
The free version, which offers thousands of templates, stock photos, and fonts, is adequate to start. That allows you to learn the program before you invest in it.
The paid version allows you to schedule social media on eight platforms. It also has 100 GB storage, background remover, and resize features.
Canva has several online tutorials to teach you how to use the platform. Topics range from design to social media materials to branding.
While you should create social media for each post, please don’t feel you have to create something new for every platform. You can make one design, resize it and reuse it for each platform.
For information on the best time to post on social media, visit our post Best Time to Post on Social Media.
EXPECTATIONS FOR MONTH ONE
Expenses
The cost of launching a blog can be less than $200 for most food writers.
The only things we see as absolutely necessary are BlueHost hosting (lowest price is $96 for three years of hosting, includes free domain name), and Google Workspace email ($6 a month).
We suggest you start with a free WordPress theme unless you already know one that meets all your needs.
Yoast, Canva, Termly, and most of the rest of the products and services have forever-free versions or 30-day free trials. Take advantage of those in order to learn the product or service before you commit to a paid subscription.
Traffic and Income Goals
The harsh reality of starting a food blog is that in month one you likely won’t get any traffic or income. If you have 15 unique visitors or 25 pageviews from independent readers, you’re off to a good start. (By independent readers, we mean readers who don’t already know you from another platform.)
Production Goals
At the end of month one, your food blog should have between five and ten posts, several if not all of your static pages, a dedicated email address, and an email marketing platform.
You should have accounts registered for all of the social media platforms you might ever use (We consider Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, Tik Tok, and Instagram to be the minimum). Complete your profile, including artwork, on each account. Beyond your profile, these accounts can remain empty or you can publish a launch announcement.
You should also have at least one well-populated social media account. We suggest Pinterest to start, with ten boards and five pins for each post.
If you get more than 100 impressions per pin (impressions are the times your pins are shown to Pinterest users), or get any click-thru traffic to your website, that’s a good start.
Collect any email addresses, you’re a rock star. Get more than 10 addresses for your email list, you are a freaking unicorn!
CONCLUSION
Month one of a food blog can be a hectic time. Use this to-do list to get started in the best, most efficient way. Take advantage of the free downloads we offer to supplement this list. Use all the free trial versions of products and services to get to know them before you commit to paid subscriptions.
We know this is a lot of work for month one of your food blog. And yes, it’s disheartening that you’ll likely get little, if any, traffic. Launching your food blog is both exciting and critical. Do it right and over the next few months, you’ll see traffic starting to come in, your email list growing, and social media accounts expanding your reach.
Good luck!
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Some are not. We recommend the products and services listed here because we believe them to be of high quality. We believe these are the products and services that will be useful to you during month one of your food blog. Affiliate status does not influence our recommendations.
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