We are back with another inspiring Foodie Story here. We met this very warm person Donna George online sometime last year for an e-contest which Recipe Dabba had hosted with Simran Oberoi , founder Ovenderful. Her approach towards introducing herself and also participating with equal enthusiasm portrayed someone who knew her job well. Since then she has been quite regularly sharing her recipes with a hint of its own nutrition mantra on our group FoodKiChat and Recipe Dabba. Just like her recipes she truly seems to be quite an easy going person and we are glad to finally have Donna share her story and also some interesting tips for running a successful foodblog . Here it is in her very own words.
I am Donna and I blog at ‘The Culinary Trail’. I specially want to thank Rakshita and the whole team at Recipe Dabba for this interview. You guys are doing a fantastic job with the website. Kudos. You have provided loads of food bloggers and culinary experts an excellent platform to share their work and share knowledge.
When, How & Why did this food blogging started for you?
I grew up in a family that loved food and my mom was a super cook. But it was only post marriage I started to love cooking. Cooking became my creative outlet. It was my wonderful husband’s idea to start off a blog and hence I began blogging and discussing food at every given opportunity.
I started my blog five years ago, purely as something to keep myself busy and never expected anything to come of it. But it started getting recognition, publicity, and traffic pretty early on, so I began to take it seriously. In my current role, I am a Freelance Recipe Developer and Food Content Developer.
What kind of recipes does your blog have and how do you plan to work around it?
I blog about mostly healthy, mainstream, easy recipes that are accessible for any level of cook. I blog about the food I love and cook for my loved ones. Most of the dishes on my culinary blog are tweaked versions of recipes handed over to me by my family!
When I started off, the posts were impromptu and infrequent, just based on what was available in my refrigerator. Now since I have started doing freelance work for brands, products and other websites, I have to plan my recipes for the month. I have begun to realize that a definite goal around content planning really helps. It could either be to create recipes around an event, or to develop recipes highlighting a specific ingredient or simply to have the right balance in the kind of content that is put out.
Tell us something about the lows and highs of this foodie journey. Please share your experiences and learnings with our audience.
Yes there have been some recipes that haven’t turned out well which I have learnt from, [I still have major cooking disasters in my kitchen] but one guarantee that I can give is that the recipes that don’t work out will never find their way to my blog.
The reason I have repeat visitors is because my recipes usually turn out well for them.
And that is the most important thing I have learnt on my blogging journey up until now, give out only genuine recipes; recipes that are perfect and work well. Don’t focus on creating a large number of posts but put in more effort to share content that is fool-proof.
Please share some tips around food blogging in terms of keywords, SEO and monetizing one’s food blog?
It’s not new information that some of us earn a living through our food blogs. But it is not an easy task and certainly not one of the things you should think about while starting a food blog. It may take a few months or in some cases a few years to build your blog to a point where you start making money out of it. And I will advise you to not rush into it. A few ways of monetizing your food blog are:
- Ads on your blog (through google Adsense, direct brands etc.)
- Adding Affiliate Products on your blog (via Amazon, Flipkart etc)
- Product reviews
- Brand Reviews
- Recipe Development for brands etc.
If you are consistent with content creation and promotion there is no reason why you can’t build a successful food blog over time.
One important advice for all food bloggers who want to do this as a business, and make money, would be to make sure that you focus on good photography right from the beginning. Because, at the end of the day, your pictures go a long way in making your food blog successful. So, even if you can’t invest in photography equipment right from the beginning, try to take well lit, clean images of your food.
Focusing on SEO, adding the right keywords etc is also another important part of food blogging. SEO in itself is a huge topic to delve into and there are a lot of nuances we need to take care of while doing this. Do read up and gain knowledge about this while planning content for your blog.
Being a mom how do you manage to keep up with the pace of food-blogging world?
As someone who has a firm conviction that being home with my daughter and keeping my home is the best thing that I could possibly do in this season of life, I never really considered any sort of career or business or work. Becoming a work-at-home mom was not part of my original plan. When blogging turned from hobby to a small income-earning opportunity, it surprised me, at times overwhelmed me, but ultimately thrilled me and became something wonderful that I didn’t know I wanted (but am so glad that I have). After doing this for over four years, one of the best pieces of advice that I can give is to keep things separate. By working hard to keep my computer time contained within certain hours and days, and keeping the laptop shut the rest of the time, I have so much more peace and productivity than I did when I was less strict about when I tackled work tasks.
How do you want the world to know Donna George?
Oh Gosh! I’m not so sure whether the world will know me! But I promise to share with my readers good food. I believe in constant experimentation. I have been experimenting a lot with healthy ingredients. So a lot of surprises coming your way in the future. Will keep you posted.