My Story: Becoming a Food Blogger

I started this blog, Whipped It Up, in 2018 as a "hobby blog" but it quickly became much more than that. It has become a passion of mine and I pour every ounce of extra time I can find into this blog and I absolutely LOVE it. I have gotten a lot of questions about diving in and becoming a food blogger, so today I am sharing my story of how that happened.

I have learnt SO MUCH in such a short period of time, it is insane. But I have also become a little bit obsessed with learning whatever I can.

Before I go any further, I need to tell you that I am 100% self taught. I have never taken a formal course on anything to do with online businesses, marketing, or even computers (!!). So starting a blog is possible for anyone, you just have to be willing to put in the time to learn it all!

I love reading about how other individuals began their blogging journeys and I have received a couple of questions recently about how and why I started, so here we are! 

How Whipped It Up was Born, FINALLY

Starting a food and recipe blog had been on my brain for ten years. TEN. 

At the very beginning, I knew absolutely nothing about blogging; it wasn't even really a known thing yet. I mean I had followed a few people here and there but I still felt that starting something myself was impossible. (The blogging world is damn intimidating when you have no idea what you are doing!!)

But, I did know two things; that I loved to cook, and that I LOVED creating new recipes. 

So I journeyed along for a few more years, cooking my heart out, learning all about different techniques, tastes and cuisines. 

Oh, and I also wrote down EVERYTHING. 

Every dish I made, every technique, literally everything. If it was good, it stayed, if it was bad it got giant "X" through it. This has resulted in me having about 10 notebooks full of recipes. I still reference back to these for inspiration all of the time and I am so happy that I did this right off the bat. 

This is when I started to really pay attention. I started to follow a handful of food bloggers and read a bunch of content by the bloggers that I looked up to. 

Fast forward another couple of years, then I really started to think, maybe starting my own blog wasn't such an impossible dream after all! So I found an article about finding the perfect name, grabbed a notebook and started writing down pages and pages of possible names and ideas.

The Name… in 2014...

The name was the part that caused me the most stress. 

Finally after a year, yes a year… I landed on what I thought would be my blog name. 

Then I researched how to buy the domain and how to get things going. 

So I took 3 days off of work and I worked my tail off. I bought a domain name, paid for a hosting plan, started to get my blog set up on WordPress, settled on a theme, and watched hours upon hours of YouTube videos.

After those 3 days I hit a wall, hard.

I had no idea what I needed to do next. I was so confused and learning so much, so fast, I was so overwhelmed. 

Not to mention at this time we were building our second home and selling our condo, the stress from that alone is enough to make a person go crazy. 

So I stopped. I let go of the dream, let my domain and website expire, I never even posted one post to that website.

The Dream

Fast forward another couple of years. The dream of starting my own blog still hadn't completely died. 

I was still closely following along with the bloggers that I loved. Cooking and baking had become some of my biggest passions, and I realized that I wanted to share this passion with as many people as possible! 

At this point I started to really look into blogging successfully. I read books, articles, watched videos, listened to hours upon hours of podcasts. I had no idea what I was getting myself into and I had so much to learn. 

So, I revisited my original name (the one back from 2014) and I decided that it wasn't the right name for me. 

So here I went again, on the hunt for a name. The second time, it took me a few months to come up with one that I didn't mind. So I bought that one… without looking on Google first... (ALWAYS LOOK ON GOOGLE FIRST!)

It turned out someone else had that exact same name but they were a .uk blog. 

So I checked with a friend (that is a lawyer) and I was advised to change my name, just in case. Knowing fully well I didn't want to have to deal with rebranding down the road, I let that name go. 

Back to a No Name Blog...

Here I was again, stuck with no name, and now I had wasted money twice on buying domains and hosting plans…

This time I had myself, my husband, and my mom searching for possible names for my blog.

This went on for a few weeks then sitting on the couch, I was flipping through the glossary in a cookbook and I saw the word "whipped". I liked the word, so I started jotting down possible combinations. 

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks; Whipped It Up. I loved it. It was catchy, fun to say, and at this time I almost didn't even care what the name was, I just wanted to get started!

So I grabbed my computer and bought the domain right away (of course I checked before I bought this one…). 

That was the day Whipped It Up was born, sometime in the middle of August in 2018.

Making it perfect...

Fast forward another couple of months (because who starts a blog in the middle of summer…). I had fully set up my website; I wanted it to be PERFECT before I revealed it to the world. 

This was the perfectionist in me taking over… even though I thought it was perfect then, if I look back to what my site looked like in November of 2018 I would cringe now. 

There is no such thing as "perfect" especially in the online world. Things change by the minute and there is no keeping up. I have learnt to evolve slowly, and that is OK. 

I am grateful that this is how my journey started, I had already read and learnt so much about blogging before I ever clicked the publish button on my first post. 

This journey has been incredible so far. Everyday I learn something new and everyday I am amazed at what is possible in this space. This makes me so happy and excited to see what is to come!

Finding your passion is what it is all about, because life really is too short to be unhappy. 

Blogging

I have been asked a ton of questions about blogging so far and I love to answer those questions. So in the coming weeks, I will be writing a bunch of new articles about blogging!

I am SO excited to launch this new area on my blog and share my little tips and tricks with all of you!

Also, I am happy to answer any question that you might have about blogging. To get a hold of me please leave a comment down below or you can send me an email. I promise that I will get back to all of your questions!

I can also be found on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.