Dear Readers and Bloggers,
It’s Shen here, the handyman, assistant photographer, and recipe taster behind Just One Cookbook. As of January 2013, Nami and I have been food blogging for 2 years. Even though the concept of food blogging itself is pretty simple…
- Make the food.
- Take photos.
- Write the recipe.
- Share the recipe on blog.
- Repeat.
…being very non-technical, we went through our fair share of challenges when we first started Just One Cookbook.
Since we didn’t know a thing about blogging, we definitely made a few mistakes along the way. As a result of making these mistakes and facing challenges, we actually learned quite a bit of new skills over the past 2 years.
In this post, we’ll break down our thoughts into the following categories, which we think will be the most helpful for new bloggers.
The content is divided into the following sections:
Platform
We’ll tell the story of how we ended up choosing self-hosted WordPress instead of a Blogger, Movable Type or free WordPress.org account.
Hosting
We are with our third hosting company and so far it’s a happy marriage – but it hasn’t always gone so smoothly.
Blogging Technology Tips
We’ll review technology like CDN, theme and other helpful tools that we use ourselves.
Food Photography
We’ve learned that it’s not always easy to take a good photo. We’ll give you a quick recap of how our photography skills are improving.
Growing Visitors to Your Site
You have a food blog – now what? We’ll give you some tried and tested tips to help you grow your visitor base.
Best wishes for your blogging adventure and we hope these tips are helpful.
– Mr. JOC (February, 2013)
Shen and Nami – Congratulations on 2 years of blogging!!!! What a great post – so much useful information. You guys are phenomenal. I know I always enjoy visiting and the dishes that we’ve made from your recipes have been delicious! Keep up the good work. 🙂
Nami and Shen, you certainly put together an extremly helpful and informative post! Thanks for sharimg all the important information, tips and techniques – I know that after having blogged for one year, I have still a lot to learn and could improve on a number of different issues!
Have a great weekend! And many many more wonderful blogging years ahead!
Loved reading these! Thank you both so much. 🙂
This is terrific stuff. I read the entire thing, and think you have some really smart advice to offer all of us. And it’s always fun to see photo setups (although usually I can figure out what you’re doing just by looking at the photos – all of which are exceptionally good, BTW). Wonderful set of posts – thanks.
Taking food pictures is not easy for me.
Hi Shen/Nami, I call it this is an awesome post ever! very useful and informative.
I cant stop to coming back here over and over again 🙂 luv it!
Nami and Shen, Thanks for sharing the tips…It is always good to learn from others experience too. Love how you have classified the topic into different categories. Love your blog
Your frequent visitor!!!
One of the best posts I’ve read ever! Congratulations!
very informative and definitely very helpful article! Thanks for mentioning my blog Shen. I am a fan of Nami’s blog and glad to find a friend in her.
Fantastic post and you covered pretty much everything which it will be extremely helpful to a new blogger and to us oldies too:)
You two make wonderful team and I enjoyed posts from both! Keep up the great work!
As I have already said: fantastic idea! I will have all my weekend filled with attentive and detailed reading of all the links. Thank you so much!
Awesome sharing! I’ve been blogging for 4yrs & still learning everyday; just too much to learn. Just made a salad dish for CNY using the Inari Age. It turned out really good & we’ve enjoyed this fusion dish 🙂
Thank you SO much for compiling this information, Nami & Shen! Your origami swan “pointers” are a lovely touch, too. 🙂 Congratulations on 2 years of blogging and here’s to many more successful years! Off to read the rest of your tips…
Great tips guys, all very useful to keep in mind!
This is so helpful Nami and Shen! I know a lot of new bloggers and if they need help, I’ll point them this way! 😀