If you love to cook and have some recipes you’re pretty proud of that you wouldn’t mind sharing, you can potentially earn a little money through a few different sources. I will be honest though — when I started researching for this article, I was really, really let down that there weren’t a lot of options out there for this. It seems like there should be a site somewhere that will pay you upfront for your recipes or something! But I couldn’t find one.
I was looking for a way you could possibly make a living just by writing and/or sharing recipes, but the options I found don’t guarantee that. Still, if cooking is a passion of yours, you may really want to consider some of these ideas:
Post Recipes For Revenue Share
There are several different writing sites that will accept recipe contributions. You won’t get paid upfront for these, but you will be able to earn ongoing revenue from the ads that are placed around your content. Usually the way this works is the site your recipe is hosted on will take a percentage of the revenue and then give the rest to you. Other sites might pay you a flat rate for every 1,000 unique page views your content receives. For most people, this is money that trickles in very slowly although there are some who are able to make a nice income from it.
Some revenue-share writing sites that do accept recipes are Hubpages, Squidoo, and Yahoo! Voices.
Start a Food Blog
I’ve never started a food blog but I would imagine that taking good pictures is key! Look at how popular recipes are on Pinterest 
If you can take high-quality photos of the things you make that are guaranteed to catch people’s attention, then you’ve got something special. I know that if I had a food blog, I’d be taking the best pictures I could and using Pinterest to try and help me get traffic.
Of course, there’s a lot more to blogging than just taking good pictures. How can you earn with a blog? There are tons of ways. Ad revenue, affiliate marketing, writing sponsored posts, in-text ads … the list goes on. I wrote a post recently with five ways you can earn money from your blog if you need some ideas. But I’ve said it before and will say it again: blogging is not fast income for most people, which is why making a living with a food blog is probably not going to happen overnight.
Self-Publish a Cookbook
Self-publishing is huge right now! I admit that I don’t know a ton about it other than that a lot of people are just completely bypassing the major publishing companies and using some of these self-publishing sites to get their work out there fast. And many are making good money. This is an area I need to look into further, and I’ve been meaning to. But for now if you’re interested in self-publishing your own cookbook, you can browse around some of these popular self-publishing sites to see how the process works. You might also want to read this blog post I found from someone who actually did self-publish her own cookbook. Apparently it is quite a process.
Enter Your Recipes Into Contests
This is for sure no guaranteed way to get paid for your recipes, but if you know you cook something amazing, it might be worth trying. There are recipe contests going on all the time! The Contest Cooking website has a list of ongoing contests you can enter. Online-Sweepstakes also has several recipe contests listed in their database. It never hurts to try it!
Sell Your Recipes
I read this article today where someone recommended trying to sell your recipes in the classifieds section of different newspapers (online or offline). Apparently the way that most people do this is take a picture of their own, original recipe for something, publish it in the paper or post it online and put a price on the recipe. I have no idea how successful you’d be trying to do this because I’ve never heard of anyone doing it before, but it might be something to think about.
There is a Work at Home Job for Cooking Experts!
When I need emergency recipe help, I usually call my mom or mother-in-law But not everyone can or even wants to do that, so Chef’s Line works as a substitute. It’s a service that people pay for in order to call and get in touch with a “cooking consultant” when they need fast cooking help from an expert. You can apply to be one of their paid cooking consultants, but you do need to have some knowledge and expertise. They say a culinary degree is actually preferred, though not required.
You have to be available at least eight hours a week to take calls during evening and afternoon hours. Pay is between $7.50 to $30 an hour depending on your expertise and knowledge. Their About page has more information on how to get started under the “Contact Us” heading.
Do you have any other ideas for making money from home with your recipes? Please share!
