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)
Thank you Nami!
Thank you for reading, Nozomi-san! 🙂
I’m still learning and drinking up all the good advice! Thank you!
Hi Vickie! Thank you so much for reading this post! 🙂
I went to a restaurant the other day and had sushi style salmon with green onion in a sauce. I am trying to find the name of the sauce it was like a sweet n sour
HELP
and it was delicious
Hi Dana! I wish I know, but it seems like fusion dish and I’m not familiar with it. If you have a picture of it, maybe I can guess. 🙂
Great advice for not only beginners, but intermediate and advanced bloggers.
Thank you Emma! 🙂
Thank you Shen and Nami for this informative article. I love your blog, it is full of delicious Japanese recipes with amazing food pictures and easy instructions! I have a question about choosing the name for my food blog. Do you think it is a bad idea to use my own name for the foodblog? For example, something like: KatiesKitchen or KatiesCookbook?
Hi Katie! I’m so glad to hear you enjoyed reading this post. Time flies… as we just celebrated our 3rd year this month and we learned more during the past year (wanted to do another about blogging tips, but we’ve been too busy to write a post…).
Name for your food blog. It’s very important as most likely you won’t change it, and if you do, it’s a lot of work… I’d say keeping it simple is very important. Even “just one cookbook” is a bit too long and some people don’t remember the name. I didn’t think too much about it in the begging and sort of stuck with this name. Not that I don’t like, but I should have named something Asian or Japanese in the name, so most people can recognize it’s a website about Japanese food, especially I’m more specialized. When you search on Facebook, for example… like Japanese or Japanese food, my blog name won’t come up. I kind of wished that I included “Japanese” so people searching related topics can find me. We’ve been working on SEO so when you google Japanese food/recipes, my blog posts start to show up, but it took some time… So, if you’re doing special diet, I’d say it’s nice to include it – like “Paleo” or “Gluten Free” etc. Also, people know how to spell it. Katy or Katie can be tricky as some people may type katyskitchen.com… and I just googled and there were some Katy’s and Katie’s Kitchen already. Should be unique, but at the same time easy to remember and spell, and related to topic you blog about… I have seen blog’s names that are identical and I think it’s very difficult to stand out and differentiate from the other blog… so being unique sort of helps (but easy to remember). Don’t make a long name….URL is going to be too long. Keep it simple. Good luck!
Dear Nami,
Thank you so much for your reply and co gratulations on the 3 year anniversary for your amazing blog ! 🙂
I like your blog name alot, i find it easy to remember especially when you have a story behind it. And you are doing an incredible job on the SEO, I actually found your blog by googling “Japanese food blog” and your blog came up to be the very first one !
I agree with picking an easy to remember, short, unique and relevant blog name. I am still struggling to come up with a name that fits all categories. For example if I want to start a blog on singaporean/ east asian food and as soon as I include “singaporean/ east asian” in my blog name (url) the name will become quite long and I probably will have to name it along with words related to food or cooking too.
I will take my time to choose the blog name carefully and I cannot wait to try making the matcha chocolate and many other great recipes on your blog!
Katie
Hi Katie! Thank you for your response, and for your kind words. 🙂
Yes! I’m glad you found my blog through google search! Three years ago my blog was almost invisible on Internet. We’ve been working really hard to create good contents and it’s nice to see it’s working.
Agree. Blog names like “Steamy Kitchen” and “Rasa Malaysia” suggests Asian theme, and it’s nice and short. Yeah take your time. You can change a blog design but very hard to change name, so you should be very happy with the name you choose. 🙂 Good luck!
Thank you so much for your great tips Nami ^_^
Shen,
This was such a useful and helpful post. My blog is still a baby at a few days old, I can’t wait to use some of these tips to improve it. Thank you,
Kate
What an informative post.Thanks, Nami! This is so helpful!
WOW! What an amazingly well put together and useful post. Thank you for the wealth of helpful information. I’ve already ordered some of the books you recommended, looking into upgrading equipment, and researching different hosting options. Many thanks. Wishing you both ALL the best in your future blogging pursuits!
I remember when you were a newbie, Nami! Your were a pro from the start! Thanks for all your tips…I will read a few sections now and return later. Thanks to Shen, too, for all his behind the scenes work to make your blog so superb!
Thank you for the very useful information. You and Nami are a great team. Congratulations on being a successful blogger.
Hello. Shen and Nami san, and it’s very nice meeting you through blogs.
I have always been so admired and inspired by what you two share with readers and how you make everything so neat. I, as usual, am so happy to read this post and am thankful to your generosity!!!
I have tried food blogging (still have one but I am thinking about making it little different with other contents besides food or in addition to food). I have learned so much through your sharing tips here:-) thanks so much!
I haven’t been able to sit and write blogs lately, but will come by here to learn more about authentic Japanese food although I am Japanese!
Take care,
Congratulations Nami, and Shen, on your two years of blogging. This is such a great series and so packed of information. No matter how long we’ve been blogging, tips and information is always welcomed. Thanks so much for the mention. 🙂
Thank you for putting something like this together, I think so many good blogs get discouraged and then quickly disappear!
I’ll read it bit by bit but what a great resource to offer. Great job Shen!
Thanks for sharing the tips for your successful blog, definitely this will be useful for a lot of bloggers like me 🙂