Food Blogging – Does it make money?

Let’s acknowledge. Food blogging doesn’t make money on its own. As a food blogger, one spends on transportation, pays for more than required portions of dishes so that one can ‘taste’ and give a confident judgement with further investments on fancy cameras, reading books, journals and managing a website, which if not on free space like blogger, may cost a bomb. Expenses also include renewing the site domain every year, without taking into account the time and cost of health while eating out big-oily meals.

There are perks too. One gets invited to the new launches, city events and may be offered discounts while visiting with family or friends. At times a cab is also offered for invited reviews. Some bloggers may accept advertisement which at best can offset the cost of managing the website, but no way helps commercially to sustain a lifestyle.

Given such constraints, I see few bloggers making restaurants as clients in guise of social marketing. They start managing their facebook pages, organise small events to promote clients, and start spreading positive words in what-ever forum possible. Though I understand that everyone has full right to earn for himself, but it is an absolute conflict of interest.

Can that blogger ever write a true account? Is he not cheating his readers? Should there not be a disclaimer that the write-up is an advertorial?

But then why single out bloggers, everyone in food business everyone seems to be doing the same. Newspaper wants advertisements, websites have to earn revenue and TV show needs sponsors. Still they write about restaurants, publish food guide and gives awards to the best restaurants. If there are enough reasons for these awards to be rigged, then why should an individual looking for candid feedback believe them? Probably, not many of us take them seriously and hence word-of-mouth still remains the most trustworthy source.

Indianfoodfreak.com came as a website providing an alternate to word of mouth with a much wider reach. We are group of professionals with sufficient alternate source of income. Though we are also struggling to find out a revenue stream but we will not compromise on the basic premise of this site to exist.

Hope you enjoy and appreciate the work gone behind. If you want to contribute or just want to send your views, suggestions and thoughts, write to us at editor@indianfoodfreak.com

-          Pawan Soni

Pawan Soni

An ardent foodie and an amateur mixologist, who loves to eat anything under the sun. His profession helps him to travel the length and breadth of the globe, feeding his hobbies including traveling. It helped him appreciate different cuisines and their cooking methods. His first thought when visiting a new location is to find out the best places to eat and hunting down the local delicacies of the area. Besides writing restaurant reviews for Suburb magazine, Gurgaon and various food blogs, he is the founder member of Indian Food Freak. Pawan is a Post Graduate in Management and works with a MNC. Pawan reviews restaurants in Delhi-NCR

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