Truth about food bloggers

Truth about food bloggers is that food blogging is a labour of love. It is also hard work. It is work! It is business. And we deserve to be compensated. Let me tell you what actually goes into publishing and producing a recipe.

I write in small paragraphs. They are usually two or three sentences long.

Sometimes only once sentence.

This kind of writing goes against all I love and admire about literature and creative writing, yet I still do it. There are two reasons but they both in the end lead towards one thing: money!

Yes, I am going to talk about this “taboo” subject. I am going to tell you the truth about food bloggers and food blogging. I am going to explain in precise details what is going on behind all these recipes, FREE recipes I must add, that food bloggers produce.

The reasons behind my short paragraphs are as follows:

1. User experience. Most content is now consumed on mobile devices and writing paragraphs that are longer than three sentences results in almost full screens of unbroken text that is difficult to decipher. Shorter paragraphs visually look much better on mobile devices and provide better user experience. Google recognizes better user experience and rewards those kind of sites. More google love means more people visit my blog. More visits = more money.
2. Ads. Shorter paragraphs mean that there are more opportunities for my ad network to insert an ad. I do not use maximum number of ads allowed, I use a regular, average setting. More ads = more money.

How much money? Well, a fellow food blogger from Two Sleevers site actually did some rough calculations and it is a whooping $.005 to $.01 cents for one page view for an average blog. 

I read posts from people all over the internet who complain about ads on sites. Who write paragraphs upon paragraphs of accusations about food bloggers writing too much (yes, I see the irony). There are tweets, memes, posters, campaigns, subreddits, all criticizing how food bloggers present their recipes.

So, let me tell you the truth about food bloggers. Let me tell you what actually goes into publishing and producing a recipe. Free recipe. Recipe that readers don’t have to pay to get (unlike recipes in cookbooks and magazines). 

Side note: most food magazines have a lot of ads as well. Some magazines without ads cost a lot of money. And you can’t ask a quick question when you have concerns about recipes in printed editions.

Case study: how long it takes to produce a food blog recipe post

I am going to do a case study and show you exactly what went into creating my Instant Pot Shepherd’s Pie recipe post.

• I got the stackable Instant Pot insert pans and started thinking about what I could make in them. That took a few days actually but I’m not going to count that.
• Research about whether there were other Instant Pot Shepherd’s Pie recipes with stackable pans: 30 minutes
• Buying ingredients for the recipe (I made it 4 times before being happy with it, so I’ll count all 4 shopping trips): 1.5 hours including driving
• Total cooking time of each recipe is 75 minutes but the first time it took much longer because the recipe wasn’t cooked through and I had to adjust the timing a few times: 5.75 hours 
• Cleaning after 3 of those cooking times (4th was photo and video and cleaning will be added later): 45 minutes
• Photographing and doing a video shoot and cleaning: 3.5 hours
• Transferring files to computer: 30 minutes
• Editing photos: 1.5 hours
• Editing videos (short and long versions): 4 hours
• Doing research on whether to call this recipe Shepherd’s Pie or Cottage Pie, that included driving to 4 grocery stores and checking frozen dinners section and ingredients on the packages, as well as online research: 3 hours
• Creating pinterest graphics: 30 minutes
• Converting videos and photos to web-appropriate formats/sizes: 30 minutes
• Writing recipe, including tips, suggestions for substitutions, very specific instructions, keywording, adding media with correct alt descriptions: 3 hours
• Once the recipe is published, sharing it to various facebook groups and answering questions (including rants about why I called the recipe Shepherd’s Pie instead of Cottage Pie): 4 hours and counting

Total time that I so far spent on this recipe (if my math is correct): 29 hours!

Ok, this is a bit of an extreme example as research took me more time than most recipes. But on average, each recipe takes me about 16 hours to produce and another 3-4 hours to do social media. The social media doesn’t stop at those 3-4 hours, by the way, it is constant and comes in bursts for each particular recipe.

Behind the scenes photos

If you’d like to see more behind the scenes, then follow me on Instagram, I share a lot of behind the scenes photos on my Instagram Stories. I usually utilize #bts #btsfoodphotography and #truthaboutfoodbloggers hashtags if you’d like to follow them.

Truth about food bloggers: how many times recipes are tested

There are some recipes that are very easy and can be made only once, some salads, smoothies are like that. Or, perhaps, a variation of existing recipe, swapping one flavour for another. 

Some recipes that I post are made only twice. For me, making something 3 times is an average. However, there are many recipes that I’ve made 4-5-6 and more times before posting them.

Just to make sure that all the timings and directions really work. Or to test out different proportions and provide more options for my readers.

For example, my Pumpkin-Cranberry Fudge took 6 tries before I published the recipe. I made 3-ingredient Instant Pot Nutella Cake Bites 5 times to test out different variations of the recipe. 

Behind the scenes photos

What goes in the development of a recipe

For those food bloggers who treat blogging as a business, recipes that we publish aren’t what we eat. I mean, we do eat the food but we create recipes with purpose.

I post chocolate recipes before Valentine’s Day, pumpkin – in the fall, gingerbread – in December. 

There’s a lot of thought process that is happening even before we start developing recipes. This is how the process looks for me:

• Brainstorm ideas. For example, around late spring I was thinking about refreshing lemons and seasonal berries. Now that fall is in the air, I am brainstorming cozy, creamy recipes.
• Do extensive googling of the ideas I come up with to make sure that it is actually something readers would want to see.
• Start thinking about the recipe. Write down the ingredients. Figure out if ingredients can be changed to follow a certain diet (substitutions for vegan or gluten-free). Decide on the flavours.
• Start cooking, while writing all the quantities. Repeat until satisfied, making tweaks. Could be up to 6 times.
• Sometimes recipes don’t work, so I have to scrap after a few attempts.

Behind the scenes photos

Keyword research and writing

We, food bloggers, also don’t just randomly call a recipe something. There’s a lot of time and work that goes into naming a recipe, finding the proper keyword, something that readers would search for and something that google will like. Because yes, google is the all-mighty guiding hand.

Going back to my Shepherd’s Pie case study. Yes, I called my recipe Shepherd’s Pie even though technically it should have been Cottage Pie. That decision wasn’t done randomly or out of ignorance. It was a strategic choice that was done after hours of research.

We don’t just randomly decide to write 10 paragraphs of text before posting a recipe. There’s an order to that madness. We write tips, we write suggestions, we write variations, we write instructions. All of this is because google wants us to do that. 

Photography and videography

Before I start filming, I usually spend at a minimum 30 minutes visualizing various transitions and how the video is going to be filmed. I spend time scouring my props and deciding specifically which bowls to use. I spend time measuring and prepping everything just so that it would look well on camera.

Depending on a recipe I do videos and photos separately quite often. Some videos require a certain position of a camera, so that taking photos at the same time is impossible. Sometimes weather doesn’t work for videos.

I often have to do a separate shopping trip to buy ingredients for photos. For example, fresh herbs to put in the background, or pretty and colourful vegetables.

On occasion photos don’t work, so I have to cook something again to create better photos. All this adds to how many hours I spend producing content. 

Cost of publishing a food blog post

The truth about food bloggers is that it costs us not just time but also money to actually write blog posts. I am not going to list all the specific costs but here’s what I pay for in the background when I post that free recipe.

Yearly costs

• Domain name (that’s my imagelicious.com)
• Hosting (someone needs to actually host my site)
• Various plugins that make my site faster and also easier for readers to consume
• Tools to help me with social media
• Tools that help me do keyword research

Random costs

• Ads (yes, sometimes we have to pay to display our content on facebook or instagram)
• Photography and video equipment
• Props (all those things that help photos look pretty)
• Classes (for videos, photos, social media etc)
• Conferences (where we learn about trends and everything new in the world of blogging)

Daily/weekly costs

• Ingredients. I calculated and my 6 tests of Pumpkin-Cranberry Fudge cost me almost $100 as I was using a lot of white chocolate which is expensive.
• Gas/parking/travel costs to the stores.

Truth about food bloggers: what else goes into food blogging

I mostly wrote this post to explain what goes into posting one recipe but food blogging is not just recipe development and taking pretty photos. Food bloggers wear many different hats and our days are filled with many uninspiring activities:

• Optimizing our website to be better, faster and adhere to current blogging standards.
• Reading and doing research about new trends in blogging and google requirements.
• Answering comments and questions on social media and blog posts.
• Sharing old content (if it is not shared then how would people find it?) on various platforms.
• Revisiting older posts and optimizing them.
• Networking with other bloggers. It might seem like it’s a fun activity and it often is but it is still something that takes time and it is not something optional. Blogging tribes are necessary to succeed.
• Sending out inquiries to various brands because ad money is often not enough to support us. We need to work with brands to get extra income.
• Negotiating contracts and doing a lot of emailing with those brands.
• Writing newsletters to send out to readers.
• Practicing photography.

It’s a one man or woman show for many of us. Blogging takes a lot of time and the days are often scheduled to a minute and a wilted piece of lettuce or a rainy day can throw a wrench into a whole week.

Truth about food bloggers

So, next time you see a blog post that has a lot of content at the top before the actual recipe or ads, remember that bloggers aren’t doing it to spite you. They pour their heart, their soul into those blog posts. They spend their own money developing those recipes that people get for FREE. 

Don’t complain, just scroll! It takes a few seconds to scroll. Many sites, mine included, even have Jump to Recipe button that takes you directly to the recipe also.

The truth about food bloggers is that food blogging is a labour of love. It is hard work. It is work! It is business. And we deserve to be compensated.

If you’d like to read in more details about how blog posts are structured, why we write the way we do, and what it actually costs to run a food blog, read a Stop Complaining About Free Recipes blog post from Two Sleevers.

If you’d like to see more behind the scenes, then follow me on Instagram, I share a lot of behind the scenes photos on my Instagram Stories. I usually utilize #bts #btsfoodphotography and #truthaboutfoodbloggers hashtags if you’d like to follow them.