When I first started food blogging I felt like an island. My blog was this tiny little thing in the middle of the sea and no one even knew I was there.
Part of me was operating on a build it and they will come mentality (probably out of self preservation) and part of me was wondering what the heck I was doing wrong. Looking back I don’t necessarily thing I was doing anything wrong, I just wasn’t doing enough right.
‘Built it and they will come’ is only part of the equation when it comes to building a blog (or business of any kind). When applied to business the saying should really be built it, promote the heck out of it, and then they will come. If you’re not doing everything you can do get people to stop and look then why would anyone bother?
It’s not that I didn’t know that I needed to share my blog everywhere, I just didn’t know where to go. Other than Pinterest I was completely clueless. It was months before I even realized that Food Gawker was a thing, but at that point my photography was so bad I didn’t have an icebergs’ chance in hell of getting anything accepted.
Eventually I found myself creeping around The Food Blogger Pro (<—affiliate link!) community forums which opened my eyes to all of the different places that I could share recipes. Little by little my photography improved, my list of submission sites grew, and people started to come to my blog.
photograzing sites: what are they?
Think Pinterest but for food and smaller photos! Food Submission sites  are websites that rely on community contribution from bloggers. They share a thumbnail sized picture of your recipe, the name, and a link back to your blog. Sites like Buzz Feed and the Huffington Post are also known to visit these sites when looking for recipes to include in their recipe roundups.
submission sites for food bloggers
This is my ever growing list of food grazing sites that I submit to on a regular basis. Each site has different requirements, but in general they are all going to ask for:
- an email adress
- link to your recipe
- a cropped photo
- name/short description of the recipe
- Food Gawker (now shut down)
- World Recipes (you can submit recipes in six different languages)
- Yum Goggle
- Recipe PleaserÂ
- My Foodies
- FoodGoggle
SPECIALTY FOOD
7. Finding Vegan <—must be vegan
8. Oh My Veggies Potluck <—must be vegetarian
9. Healthy Aperture <—healthy recipes
10. Jalapeno Mania <—recipes with peppers
Foodista is another great site that you should check out. They have daily features for “Food Blogger of the Day” & “Drink Blogger of the Day”. You can submit your own blog to be considered through the contact form for a chance to be featured which means that your blog will be shared on their Facebook page (over 260,000 likes so far) and a link on their blog which is always helpful for SEO.
summing it up
As a rule of thumb I don’t submit to sites that include my entire recipe instructions and all, but that is a decision that is entire up to you
I recommend keeping an eye on your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from so that you can focus on submitting to those sites. When I was only getting a few thousand page views a month I submitted to as many as I could for a few extra page views – back then 10 clicks from Food Spreading meant a lot. Now that I’m getting significantly more traffic I have narrowed down my list to submitting to the sites that send me the most traffic so that I can focus more time on creating content that is worth sharing.
On average it takes me about 30-45 minutes to submit my photos. It’s incredibly tedious work, but it’s easy. I’d recommend sitting down with a cup or coffee/tea, putting on some music and just powering through.
Also, don’t forget sites likes Pinterest, Yummly, Flipboard, and Facebook are great for sharing content! If you’re anything like me self promotion doesn’t come naturally, but it’s necessary if you want to grow your blog and spread your message.
What about you? Where are your favorite places to share blog posts and connect with other bloggers? Leave me a comment below if you have anything you’d like added to the list!Â
ishi nora says
Hey Sarah, thank you for this wonderfully helpful post.
Sarah Nevins says
Glad you’ve found it helpful!
Zainab Dokrat says
Needed this info, been trying to grow my food blog for a while now without losing traffic because some sites take your pictures and recipes when you sign up. (www.spicyfusionkitchen.com)
Sarah Nevins says
Totally understand that! One the plus side – even if they post the recipe or ingredient list the link back to your site should be helpful to you in the long run as it helps build up your blog authority. It can be frustrating though!
hanna says
This is something I needed to hear! It is so hard! I am new to this for like 4 months and when I see constant up and down between 1600 to 1900 views is so discouraging! You want to share your recipes with others to excite people about food but I feel so invisible ! When you read about Pinterest strategy, Instagram strategy etc is sooo overwhelming! This is a hopefull post…. Thank you 🙂
http://www.pronounced.ie
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Hanna! So glad this has been helpful to hear! Just take solace knowing that pretty much everyone (with a few rare exceptions) go through quite a long period of feeling totally invisible.
Honestly, my best advice is to try to be as consistent as possible and just keep at it. The more you work on your blog, the more you’ll learn and be able to apply new skills and eventually you’ll start picking up more and more views. It sounds a bit cliche, but it’s totally true!
Also – make sure to start learning about SEO asap if you haven’t already!
Paolo says
Dear Sarah, thank you for this wonderfully helpful post. I have just started my food blog, and would love that the effort spent to create and share my passion for cooking be seen by a bigger audience. If you have a minute or two, please drop by my website (TiongBahruKitchen.com) and any feedback what can be done better will be greatly appreciated!
Thank you and warm regards
P
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Paolo! Just had a look through your website and I’m looking forward to trying out more of your recipes! I really like how you’re organising the recipes by region! I think that’s a really fun way to learn a little bit about the dish and try something new. I think it could be a good idea to add a little more information about each recipe. You can talk about it’s origin and how/why it’s traditionally made. Since Mediterranean food can be quite a competitive niche, educating your potential readers could be a way to draw them in and get them invested in what you have to offer.
I also think it would be a great idea for you to look into using a recipe card to display your recipes. Something like this: https://www.mediavine.com/products/create/ I might be wrong here, but I’m almost certain that you’re going to need to be using a recipe card with the proper schema in order for your recipes to start showing up in google. A recipe card will also make viewing the recipe a lot more accessible for your readers. You’ve got a really great background on your website, but it might make reading a little tricky for people – especially if they’re viewing things on a phone (which most people do these days).
Other than that – I think you just need to keep at it and share more recipes as and when you can! The more content you produce, the more you’ll learn and the more chance you have to attract new readers!
Paromita Mandal says
I’ve started my own food blog and I’m looking for ways to attract more visitors. The advice in this article seems very helpful, and I am looking forward to apply the tips. Thank for this great article.
If you have any spare time, I would really appreciate it if you had a look and tell me if there are any things you think I should improve in my blog.
Here is the link to my blog: https://happilycooking4u.blogspot.com/
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Paromita! Lovely recipes – I’ve just been browsing your site and there are so many tasty looking things to try!
I think one important thing to consider is: what’s your ultimate goal? Is it to make an earning from your blog or is it simply a way to share recipes with people? Or both?
If you’re end goal is to make money sharing recipes you might want to consider switching your blog to a wordpress or square space platform over blogspot. I do think that blog growth is usually capped to certain level when using platforms like blogspot. It’s not impossible to have a hugely successful food blog there, but there’s definitely a reason why you don’t see too many top level bloggers using it. In general it’s just not a great user experience
I actually started my site on a blogspot platform first. Once I got serious about turning it into a job I switched over to wordpress (the version you have to pay for) and my traffic started improving within the first month. I think investing in myself made me more serious about what I was doing which partially explains why I saw an improvement in my traffic so quickly.
Even though wordpress was a lot more confusing in some ways, in the end it made things a lot easier for me. When I was using blogspot, if I ever ran into a problem I never knew how to fix it. On wordpress – if I have a problem and google it there are thousands of other people with the same issue who have already figured out a solution.
Just something to consider! Above all else when it comes to growing a food blog it all comes down to being consistent – keep building and eventually people will show up for it!
Julia says
Hi Sarah!
That’s a really nice and helpful post! Thank you so much for that. I’ve just recently started my own food blog and I’m looking for ways to attract more visitors. So I will be definitely following some of your advice here.
If you have any spare time, I would really appreciate it if you had a look and tell me if there are any things you think I should change or improve in my blog.
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Julia! Welcome to the journey of food blogging! Looking through your new blog I think you’re off to a really solid start! I really like how clean and clear your site it – everything is clearly labeled, explained and the photos look great! I think if you keep doing what you’re currently doing (making videos, demonstrating recipe process and keeping things informative and helpful) your blog will grow over time.
I can’t tell how often your share recipes on your blog, but I know for myself, I really started to see growth and improvement once I started sharing recipes on a more consistent schedule. I think it just comes down to regularly showing up for your growing audience/ building up a strong foundation of recipes for people to find.
Ultimately, I think it’s just important to remember that these things take time. While it’s true that some people see huge growth/traffic in a matter of months – that’s super rare. Most bloggers work on their blog for months/years before they feel like they’ve ‘made it’. It’s not fun to hear, but at some point there are just a lot of things that are out of your control.
The best advice I could give you is to just keep doing what your doing and to maybe try to share new recipes on a more consistent schedule. With time you’ll get a little bit better at everything and it will show. If you can just keep at it and trying to improve a little bit every day eventually your hard work will pay off. When you’re already doing so well with what your doing – it’s just comes down to creating more content.
I hope that helps! I know ‘be patient and keep it up’ doesn’t really like much, but you’re already doing so well with what you’ve got!
Julia says
Thank you so much for taking the time and for your nice words. I’ll give it time and keep on doing what I’m doing 🙂
Muhammad says
Thank you very much for the great information!
Sarah Nevins says
My pleasure!
Kari says
Hi Sarah,
Thanks so much for writing this post!
Jennifer says
Sarah,
I just want to thank you so much for writing this article. I just started my blog and really had no idea how to to even start trying to promote it or get traffic to my site. I have only gotten a handful of page views and haven’t gotten many likes on Instagram and Pinterest. The information you provided is incredibly helpful!
If you have a minute to check out my blog and let me know if you had any suggestions that would be very appreciated! I do not have many posts and I am still really trying to work on my photography skills.
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Jennifer! I think you have a really great food blog so far! I’m getting hungry just looking through all your recipes. You do a really good job of writing your posts – they’re informative and to the point and you’ve got great photos to go along with everything.
It looks like your blog is really new and I think that’s the main thing that is holding you back at this point. With how competitive this food blogging space is, many successful bloggers don’t really gain any traction on their site for months, possibly even year(s). I got pretty much zero traffic until about 6 months into blogging, and even then it wasn’t enough to really make a living off of. It can be frustrating to hear because it’s completely out of your control, but you might just need to give it more time. At this point it would be amazing if you did get any significant amount of traffic to your site.
In the mean time, if you haven’t already I would consider trying to post new recipes to your site on a consistent schedule. Once a week is good, two to three new recipes a week is better. This will also help your grow things like pinterest and instagram. The more your post on those platforms, the more you will grow. Pinterest in particular likes when content creators share new things.
Speaking of social media, you might also want to consider a way to highlight your social media handles on your site more clearly. I was able to find your instagram only by looking through your recipe posts. Try to make it easier for people to follow and keep tabs on your new content if you can. I see that you’re on the Foodie Pro theme so you should be able to find a plugin to display social icons.
I really just want to say again that I think you have a great site so far! If you just keep doing what you’re doing and post consistently the traffic will come – maybe not quickly, but it will be there!
Dean Jones says
Hi
Just wanted to say thank you – your post is still helping people out. My recipes are something I have added to my blog sort of for myself (a handy resource for me, as I always alter stuff and have forgotten what I’ve done in the past) but would absolutely love for other people to end up finding the recipes and possibly even trying them.
If you’re interested in seeing it, my site is https://djcube.co.uk/category/recipes/
It’s not much (my main job is a web designer, so I don’t want to spend too much time doing the same thing in my spare time), but I think I’ve managed an nice layout. The indexing is basic but better than nothing.
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Dean! Thank you so much – that’s really nice to hear. I’m thrilled I can help people out still even a little bit with this stuff because I know how frustrating it can be.
I also think your site it great! I love all the different topics you cover between video game reviews (you should totally write more of those), travel posts and food. Speaking of the food: ALL of your recipes so far sound amazing – I think I’m going to have to make your chicken & mushroom ASAP!