Work at Home Freelance Writing About Cooking

If you know your way around the kitchen a lot better than a sports team or the Hollywood scene, then choosing to write about cooking can be a means to make money while working at home for you! For the new writer, the second most important step to get started freelance writing (after just starting to write), is to pick a niche that he or she is familiar with to some degree in order to write more efficiently…and see higher income in a faster time-frame.

Getting Started Writing About Cooking

The single-easiest way to get started writing about cooking is to focus on publishing your recipes. Before you try to start writing for online eZines, magazines, or even your own blog on cooking, the effort you put into building a portfolio and writing samples will be well worth it! The cooking niche is a tad different than most other niches for getting started. I usually recommend that the new writer who is interested in the cooking subject, start with both Associated Content and eHow. The eHow format is very conducive to recipe formats, and you can write two versions of the article to publish at each site to help you make a few more pennies.

Publishing Your First Recipe in eHow

Step 1: Decide what you’re going to write about.

If there’s a major holiday coming up like St. Patrick’s Day, Boxing Day, Thanksgiving, etc that has a particular theme of food associated with it, you may want to choose a recipe in this area. If not, that’s ok too. Recipes are typically “Ever Green” ones that stand the test of time.

Step 2: Choose a Title

Now, for St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to write an article on cooking corned beef. There were a ton of articles already on eHow for “How to Cook Corned Beef,” so I went with “How to Make St. Patrick’s Day Corned Beef and Cabbage” instead. Not a perfect way to determine a title, but the fewer articles on the site with the same one will mean more viewers and more money for yourself!

Step 3: List the Ingredients

eHow has a “Things You’ll Need” field to fill out for their articles. This is the appropriate place for you to list the ingredients for the recipe article. Be explicit since readers will be cooking based off of your article!

Step 4: Describe the Cooking Steps

The eHow format is a step-by-step process. Articles that do well on eHow generally have a minimum of four steps and a max of about 8-9. This is where you describe how to put everything together, pre-heating the oven, you name it!

Step 5: Write Your Introduction

The Introduction text field is actually first when you go to file an eHow article in their content management system. I normally write an eHow article in a word processor first and do the introduction last. I find this gives me a better idea of how to introduce the reader to the topic and stay on track. You should shoot for a introduction length of between 75 and 100 words.

Step 6: List Your References

For any eHow article, you will want to list one to three references for the reader to use to help find amplifying information on your topic. These should be as specific as possible and be an added benefit for the reader if they open the link.

Step 7: Add Pictures

Include as many applicable pictures as you can to each step of the recipe. eHow rewards you further for adding more pictures, and it will likely increase the number of page views (and money you get).

Step 8: Publish Your Article

Run the built-in spell checker at eHow and publish your recipe!

Next Steps for Your Article

Once you publish on eHow, there are some post-article tasks that you can conduct to help get additional page views and make more money before it becomes indexed by the search engines. First, be active on eHow and comment on other writer’s articles. Most will exchange the favor. They also have a few eHow groups that you can join and post your article for review in exchange for reading other’s work. Next, decide if your work is applicable to be submitted to a social networking site like Facebook, myspace, twitter, etc. There are literally hundreds to choose from, and you just may find some that are better suited for your niche!. Finally, decide if you can re-write the recipe and republish in a “Display-Only” context on Associated Content. You typically can do so by re-working your intro and the steps and add an additional income stream for the work with just a little more effort!

That’s about it. Once you’ve started to build a portfolio, you will want to look at doing more advanced cooking-related writing such as restaurant reviews, critiques, and working for nich-based sites. FreelanceWriting.Com, Food-Writing.com, and DianeMorganCooks.com are three places you can go for more ideas and potential work in the cooking niche!

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