The Instagram platform allows for monetization in diverse ways and many often ask about how to become a food blogger on Instagram and get paid. According to recent Instagram statistics, the platform has 1.704 billion users worldwide making it important to know how to implement Instagram monetization.
The platform began as a photo-sharing app and quickly transformed into a business platform. It now boasts of having thousands of its users leveraging the platform’s diverse audience to market and sell food-related products.
In this article, I will be considering how to become a food blogger on Instagram and get paid. Food blogging on Instagram is one of the most popular means of earning money on the platform. The industry is large enough and players can often niche-down to specifics.
FOOD BLOGGING
Food blogging represents a market niche of complex interweaving relationships or interest in cooking. It is mostly combined with those of blog writing and photography as well as reviews. The major focus of most food blogs is food photography, by using pictures taken by the authors. They then proceed to develop content or review those images.
The food blogging niche is a broad one but is often categorized into four major different types. These include:
- Food or Restaurant Review
- Recipes
- Food and Travel (Ethics and Culture)
- Food Photography
How to Become a Food Blogger on Instagram and Get Paid
Any user on Instagram can focus on any of the four broad divisions of food blogging. Another method is to further niche down in other to beat down the completion and increase your chance of success. That said here are some tips on how to become a food blogger on Instagram and get paid:
Pick Your Food Niche
As with most Instagram monetization techniques, you need to first find your niche. As previously stated, the Food blogging industry is a vast one and if you intend to succeed with it, you need focus.
The niche you focus on will determine the contents you post on your Instagram page. For instance, should you decide to go into a recipe, you still need to further trim down your pick to a particular place of interest. A further breakdown of the recipe niche shows more diverse sub-niches to pick from:
- Vegetarian or vegan food
- Food on a budget
- All things baking
- Healthy meals for families
- Gluten, carb, or sugar-free dishes
- Pre-workout snacks
Once you have decided on your niche and made content research and are ready to share, then you are ready to create your food blog.
Pick a Good, Catchy Name for Your Blog
Picking the right name for your blog can make your blog unique, stand out and quickly pick the interest of your target audience. The right name for your food blog also communicates what your food blog is all about instantly to your readers. It also indicates your know-how of the industry as well as those for who your recipes, pictures, and contents are.
A good food blog name should be descriptive enough to attract potential readers almost immediately. Also, include words like cooking, food, recipes, and meals to let the audience know that your blog is about food.
Here are a few tips to note when looking for a blog name:
- Mix and match to find name ideas
- Choose a theme Instagram food blog.
- Get inspiration from cookbooks.
- Look at the competitions’ food blog names.
- Utilize food puns and humor e.g. CrazyCuisine
- Use your own name in your food blog name.
After picking a name the next thing on the list is to create your Instagram food blog account created.
Customize your Instagram profile
Customizing your profile on Instagram is an aspect of branding your food blogging business and making it unique. Thankfully, the Instagram platform makes it easy to customize pages. Simply click on the “Edit Profile” button on your account page.
In order to better distinguish your Instagram account and make your blog stand out, you have to customize your account’s details to create a unique presence. Below are a few customizations that can be added to your profile to create uniqueness:
- Add a profile picture; having a display picture is a good idea and it is the easiest way to tell your readers what your blog is about.
- You can include your name as Instagram allows for both first and last names. Users can as well use the blog’s name as their preferred choice for the username section. This makes for easy recognition.
- Add a website URL if you have one.
- Maximize the bio section of the account; this can be information related to your account’s content, and you can even use hashtags, this will make your content much easier to find for viewers.
Start posting on Instagram
Now that your blog has been created, customized, and is up and running it’s time to start the actual job of creating food-related content. This is where you get to post content to attract an audience and increase awareness on your blog.
The content you post must be relevant to your niche. Posting to Instagram regularly and consistently can help increase your reach and grow your followers. But doing this right is the most important aspect of it all-important. Below is a step-by-step guide to maximize your posts on Instagram.
- Tap the “+” icon at the bottom of your screen to post a picture of foods.
- You can choose pictures or videos from your gallery or you can take or shoot one with the application.
- Crop the image or edit the picture or video.
- Pick a filter (optional): Instagram has a range of filter options you can pick from to beautify your picture.
- Type in a caption: caption helps your viewers understand what the video or content is all about. For example, a recipe blog will require a caption on the ingredients needed to make the food and how to prepare the dish, likewise, a food photo blog will require a caption that gives the name of the dish and other information. This is the most important part.
- Use hashtags to optimize your posts on Instagram, here are a few tags to use #yummy, #food, #delicious, #dinner, #foodie, #foodgram, #instafood and others.
- Tag people on Instagram, for a food photo-blog you can tag the chef you made the dish, and so on.
- Add your location. A food blog of course you needs to add a location to its post for followers and viewers to know where the dish originates from.
Plan a regular publishing schedule
If you intend to learn about how to become a food blogger on Instagram and get paid, then you have to be consistent. The fastest way to grow your food blog and get paid on Instagram is to get viewers to always come back. To achieve this, you would need to have a plan to serve premium content on your blog to keep the audience interested.
Having a publishing schedule will help you in so many ways in that your viewers know when to expect posts from you. And through constant interactions, you will get to know what other things they want. This will ensure you keep serving content audiences eagerly want regularly. To recap,
- Set and meet audience expectations regarding content quality and availability.
- Have a posting plan and adhere strictly: you can choose to make a post 4 or 5 times a day all day during the week, it is easy to fall out of the plan if for any reason beyond your control you could post for a few days. However, learn to stick to your posting schedule.
- Developing a content strategy and publishing consistently helps you test and understand what types or forms of content works.
Promote your Instagram Food Blog
After developing a plan for posting content on your blog, you need to promote your Instagram. Creating an Instagram food blog and posting great content is just the beginning of all the work you will have to do.
To grow your blog you still need to spend some time promoting it. For one, promotion is a lifelong process and you can’t stop promoting. But most importantly, you will want to actively promote your food blog at the early stages to gain traction. Promotion could be paid or free depending on your spending capacity. Here are a few promotional antics to use:
- Social Media: you can promote your blog through your personal social media account, you post links to the blog on your account page and telling your friends and followers what the blog is about, by doing this you will be driving traffic towards your blog which will, in turn, promote your blog. The more viewers like your blog’s content, the more they share the link to the blog and your blog becomes famous.
- Website: If you have a website that already supports the food business, you can post a link to your Instagram blog on the site to drive attention towards your blog.
Getting Paid With Your Instagram Food Blog
Creating and running a food blog is the first half of how to become a food blogger on Instagram and get paid. The other half is the actual act of receiving payment. There are many ways to monetize your food blog Instagram page and we will consider a few of them:
Become an Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing is one method on how to become a food blogger on Instagram and get paid. It simply entails users selling other people’s products for a commission. It’s quite a popular monetization technique and many users of Instagram leverage it to make money. Users can tailor their food blog on Instagram to leverage affiliate marketing.
Using affiliate marketing to earn involves creating engaging posts to promote products in the food industry. And create a fun Instagram caption to make it sound not overly promotional. Affiliates earn through a track-able link or a promo code to track sales. This ensures that payment is credited to the right affiliate after each sale.
Also, you can only have one link on your Instagram bio; therefore, connecting to a landing page with your affiliate link is advisable. Simply ensure to state clearly on each post, that audiences can buy the product via the link in your bio.
Become a Brand Ambassador
Becoming a brand ambassador can be considered as an extension of the Sponsored posts or influencer method of how to become a food blogger on Instagram and get paid. Many businesses and brands would prefer to establish long-term relationships with established influencers. If you’ve built up a reputation with your food blog, you can consider this option to get paid from it.
Becoming a brand ambassador requires satisfying different conditions but in the end, you need to sign a contract with the brand. Most brands look for ambassadors with the right target audience, engagement number, and right values. In other words, they are more interested in getting influencers to act as brand ambassadors who can then promote the company on a regular basis.
While there is no fixed rate for being a brand ambassador, estimates show that they earn around $40-50,000.
Become an Influencer
An influencer is someone who has built a reputation and loyal following by sharing regularly on their social accounts. They have a good following and they’re able to convince their audiences to jump onto trends as well as purchase certain products. This influence is derived from the time spent building trust and relationships with their audience.
Businesses and Brands are always on the lookout to partner influencers. This is aimed at creating sponsored posts that can help boost awareness for such businesses and increase their reach. In return, top influencers make thousands of dollars per sponsored post. Earning money via influencing on Instagram is viable but potential influencers have to manage expectations.
To leverage influencing, it’s important to know your audience well enough. Learn who they are, and understand their interests, values, needs, and wants. This will help you know which brands best fit them. A quick tip is that Instagram business account users can learn more about their audience stats through the Instagram Insights feature.
Conclusion
On the topic of how to become a food blogger on Instagram and get paid, the truth is earning possibilities are limitless. If you find yourself in the food blogging niche, simply apply some of the methods of monetization to earn cash.
