The cost of running a a food blog

January 3, 2012 by Naomi Robinson / 92 comments »

The Cost of Food Blogging

I’m going to take a bit of an untraditional route and instead of counting down my top post and top flops, like I did last year. I’m going to go through 2011 by the numbers, since I periodically receive emails asking about how I find time to blog between having a family and working a full-time job. Along with that I thought it might be fun to share the cost of running a food blog. Keep in mind; I’m strictly speaking about my cost. I have no idea what the average of cost of running a food blog is.

Photo use courtesy of Sylvie Shirazi of gourmandeinthekitchen.com

Photo by Sylvie Shirazi

Below is an outline of my day. Again, keep in mind, of course there are days when things don’t go according to schedule and one thing bleeds into the next. In addition to the hourly schedule you see below, but to spare you the minutiae, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of time wasted with internal profanity (some times external) and monologue about things I forgot to do, things I need to do, and thing I don’t have time to do. One last note on the “outline” below, the weekends are vastly different, but I do carve out at least four hours on Saturday to bake and then another two on Sunday to photograph and edit. The weekend hours aside, I still bake and photograph during the week.

Photo use courtesy of Sylvie Shirazi of gourmandeinthekitchen.com

Photo by Sylvie Shirazi

A day in blogging:

5:30am Out of bed, blog reading, photographing and/or photo editing
6:30am Cole (my son) is up. Breakfast, hang out, get ready for the day.
7:45am Take Cole to the sitter
8:05am Drive to work
8:30-5:30pm (most of the time 6:00pm) Work
6:00-9:00pm Dinner, general family time, put Cole to bed
9:00-11:00pm Bake, watch DVR’d programs with computer on lap surfing the internet
11:00-12:00pm Write post. More internet surfing and Pinning. Like many of you, I’m addicted to Pinterest-completely addicted.
12:00-1:00pm In bed on my Google Reader. Sleep. Repeat.

Now time for blogging by the numbers-please no judging. Yes, I took a lot of frames and spent a lot of time photographing and editing. Photography is new to me, so I’m still in the crawling stage-hoping this year with practice I can become better and faster at it. I also added a few lines about where and how I spend money to maintain my blog. Eek! to my cost for food props. Anyone care to comment if that is an obscene amount or not?

Blogging by numbers:

Posts: 163
Kitchen hours: 285
Posting Hours:285 (writing, posting, submitting to food porn sites)
Photography hours: 245 (set-up, shooting, post editing)
Frames taken: 8,150
Cost of food props: $5500 (Top shopping destinations: Ebay, Amazon, Etsy, Home Depot)
Cost of tools and ingredients: $2900 (kitchen tools, food)
Blog maintenance: $3500 (Includes: Canon 60D camera, 65mm lens, 100mm lens, site re-design (pending), hosting for the year, domain)

For any bloggers reading this post, I would love to hear how much time you spend on your blog a week. For those thinking of starting a blog, it takes time to find your stride and pacing. This February will mark my blog’s two year anniversary and in that time, over the last six months, I have finally found my pacing. Along the way, I’ve been fortunate enough to be a member of a wonderful food community, found friendships that have helped me through difficult times and grow a readership that has so generously supported methrough reading my posts and making my sweet treats.

Thank you to everyone for all your support and kindness and for helping to make 2011 so great! Here’s to making 2012 even better!