Submitting recipes to food aggregate sites are one of the more tedious tasks food bloggers face with each new post but any blogger serious about their blog’s growth will tell you it is an invaluable resource. I accept that every morning as I enjoy the few quiet moments I have before the kids wake up I spend them submitting my recipes to these sites. So I’ve managed to cut down my time managing and submitting to these sites while maintaining high acceptance rates. So I’ve written out step by step directions on how to get through your daily chores as quickly as you can to get you back in the kitchen or marketing so you can grow your blog even more!
First things first, have you pinned and yummed your recipe yet? Go do that and I’ll wait here. Ok, done? Awesome. Pinterest and Yummly are two of my absolute top referrers, so before I sit down to mess with these submissions, I immediately take care of those first. Now let’s get these recipes in front of the eyes of people looking for gorgeous food!
foodgawker: The king of the submission sites, the picky, stickler for the rules of photography who will keep you on your toes and have you watching your inbox with baited breath before the next round of pictures go live (usually at 1:00pm and 10pm PST). They are without a doubt one of my favorite resources as a food blogger and they also have pushed me to QUICKLY improve my photography skills. In fact here is a post I put up on my personal Facebook page the first time I got a photo accepted with the caption:
“Excuse me as my head explodes….this just happened! First time being accepted on Foodgawker! I actually shook my husband awake to show him!”
That eggs benedict crabcake dish was my first acceptance out of 14 tries! You would have thought I won the lottery I was so excited. Since then I have upgraded lenses, lighting, backgrounds, props… well basically everything that goes into photography and now I have a much better acceptance rate. I started 0/13 and after this acceptance I’ve gone 65/80. So needless to say with views like this: I do my best each day to not only get accepted, but to get accepted near the top of the pack. For a brand new blog, there is really no better way to get your recipes in front of thousand of interested eyes every day. These are people who love food and are looking to find something new without searching for anything specific. They are just looking for things that look GOOD. Your job is to make the pictures look so good they can’t help but look at your page.
Those five ingredient noodles you see were on the second row of the first page in their respective batch. That translated to great views immediately which pushed me up into the “most gawked” section and that has kept the views rolling in.
Okay so down to business.
To submit my post from that day to foodgawker. Here are a couple of things to note:
- They do not like photos where the food takes up the whole frame. Make sure you see at least one edge of the plate. Side views and top views seem to be the most popular accepted photos.
- I almost ALWAYS resize my photo I submit to them to 550×550. This square size will help you later too with other sites.
- Make sure your photos are BRIGHT. Of my rejections they are almost always due to “underexposure.” Look at how bright the Sour Patch Grapes below are as an example.
- Contrast. Make sure those colors are vibrant.
- Make sure you utilize the 140 characters in the description as well as you possibly can. Replace “and” with “&” and other similar substitutions. You get a very small amount of space to convince that user to click on your photo!
- I give them 3 looks to the same recipe. I know some superstars who will submit one version and get in the top row every time, but I am not nearly so good. In a Facebook conversation with a foodgawker employee one day I was told they don’t mind if you submit 3 of the same recipe one bit. SOLD! Now I give them 3 versions and let them choose what they like best. Often times it wouldn’t have even been what I chose, but I am not a professional photographer like the people approving photos, so I defer to them until I have a better grasp on my photography.
Okay, so now that we have input all the fields we have done the hard part. It is a simple copy/paste game now.
- Since foodgawker allows 3 submissions at once, I copy-paste into three additional duplicated tabbed windows (I know that makes 4, just wait…). If your page is filled in, when you duplicate the tabs and click on the submit option in the dropdown menu, you should have a form that is already filled in.
- Add photos to each tab, and submit one at a time. Once the three are submitted close those windows out.
- I don’t like complicating my submission here because it is my #1 priority each morning so I make sure it is done before I move on to the other sites. I don’t want to risk my computer freezing and losing my description or keywords, etc.
- Keeping the fourth one open with all the submission info I open Tastespotting, Yumgoggle, Foodspreading, Tasteologie, Dishfolio and (if applicable) Finding Vegan in new tabs. Log-in to each of those sites and then… (I promise this is the easiest method):
Copy each field, then (in Chrome) press Ctrl-Tab to quickly switch tabs and paste in each subsequent page.
- Copy the link field. Input it on each of the pages.
- While you are doing this upload your photo (Tastespotting takes the photo and has you size it before you input keywords, so I upload photos in this step so I can copy-paste more quickly at the end and not have to go back for tastespotting’s keywords.) Also, your 550×550 will come in handy here because unlike foodgawker and Tastespotting, the other sites will not give you an option to resize or crop your photos.
- Copy the title field into the pages (some sites don’t need titles, like Tastespotting for example, they only need the description).
- Copy the description.
- Lastly, copy your keywords. I input keywords in my posts on my page anyway, so I usually just copy and paste this from my post and edit if I need to.
- Double check each page quickly and submit.
Congratulations you’ve just submitted your recipe to: Pinterest, Yummly, foodgawker, Tastespotting, YumGoggle, Tasteologie, Foodspreading, Dishfolio and Finding Vegan! Do this with EVERY SINGLE RECIPE. I’m not kidding. It may seem like it is tedious (and I’m not going to lie, taking 30 minutes each morning to do this is not my favorite half hour of the day) but you are giving yourself NINE chances to get lucky. That is nine FREE places for you to market yourself in a half an hour. As a food blogger you are pretty fortunate, there are resources to get your blog promoted for free. When I’ve finished with these sites I move on to more unique forms of marketing (which I will cover in subsequent tutorials).
If you are wondering about other social media sharing, I have WordPress auto share for me on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumbler and Bloglovin. I am currently researching if this hurts my reach on the respective networks to have them auto post for me. If it does, I will add them to my list of morning tasks, but for now I wake up after my post has been published according to my scheduling and has been emailed out to subscribers.
Finally, if you are looking for a more in depth tutorial for how to get accepted on foodgawker, you can review this information published via foodgawker themselves. I read it so many times I have most of it committed to memory. I think making the changes in it has made a huge impact on my blog’s growth. In fact here is a Facebook post of mine from two days ago about foodgawker:
Tune back in tomorrow for a new recipe and next weekend when we go over July’s Traffic & Income Report and another tutorial in my “Grow Your Blog” series.
Thanks so much for stopping by, I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend! And if you are still looking for a delicious breakfast or brunch idea check these recipes out!
hey, I tried your way of duplicating windows, but it accepted only first window where i hit submit. For other windows it showed, you have submitted 6 sec earlier,so could not submit three options. As a new blogger, learning new ways and was happy to find your blog. But things not easy. Not able to yum also my blog.
It looks like there have been updates to the sights since this was posted. Foodgawker only allows you to submit one post link at a time now. Good luck with your blog!
Such a lovely post Sabrina, but can you tell me how to create a yummly page like yours because I have created my account on yummly but there is no option there to create a page.
Plz let me know how you created your page thier
I’m so sorry but I haven’t used it in over a year or so. I’m not sure what new updates have been made.
You’re welcome! Glad you found it useful!
Thank you so much for the useful information
Thank you for this useful post Sabrina. I followed your steps — which were quite clear — and submitted my photos, and it was all a breeze after the multiple tabs and the copy-pasting.
So glad you found it helpful!
Thanks for sharing this awesome article! Submitting can be so tedious. I am starting this today! Thank you thank you!
Hi Sabrina,
I was introduced to your blog via Restored 316. Glad to find you!
Have you found that Tastespotting seems to be inactive and inconsistent with updating submissions? I gave up on submitting a while ago and kind of forgot about it. Have you had better luck lately?
Cheers, Karen
I don’t use Tastespotting anymore.
Sabrina,
I’m sitting here reading all of your how-to posts, and I keep thinking I should be more like you, but instead of doing, I just keep seeing. ?
I have a puzzle, and I hope you haven’t covered it in one of your blog support posts because I can’t seem to find it.
You recommend that you pin and yum your directions first. I ever add my pins to different Pinterest group boards and my blog board first, but I never yum my recipes. Would you mind giving me know what you mean by that?
Thanks!!
Of course! The reason I like to Yum it first myself is at times it will input improperly and I want the opportunity to correct it before anyone else Yums it. If it’s not caught initially and corrected later, it will adjust your counts back to zero (as if no one has yum-d it). I just like to stay ahead of the game and ensure that everything is correct from the start so my numbers stay accurate.
Hi Sabrina,
Thanks for all the hard work putting this thorough post together. Although I have been a professional (event and portrait) photographer for many years, I just started my food blog and only recently began researching where to submit my work. I am very grateful that the food blogging community has such generous folks, like yourself, who put so much time and effort into helping others. Thanks so much!
You’re welcome! I think it’s so important for us to help each other be successful!
this article is very helpful. I don’t have any idea how o submit my recipes but after reading your article all my confusions cleared. Thanks a lot 🙂
You’re welcome!
Sabrina, you are a ball of energy! I’m sitting here reading all of your how-to posts and I keep thinking I should be more like you, but instead of doing, I just keep reading. 🙂
I have a question and I hope you haven’t covered it in one of your blog resources posts, because I can’t seem to find it.
You mention that you pin and yum your recipes first. I always add my pins to various pinterest group boards and my own blog board first, but I never yum my own recipes. Would you mind letting me know what you mean by that?
Thanks!!
I mean, sometimes when you yum the recipe it can read incorrectly. It will populate without the correct info and just act like a link rather than a page you can interact with, or the picture won’t populate. When that happens I always reach out to yummly’s support desk to make sure the glitch is fixed. Usually an ingredient they don’t recognize is the culprit from preventing the correct import. But since I yum the second after I publish I usually sort it out before others get to it 🙂
Oh and thank you for the kind words!
Thanks so much for this- I know this is a slightly older post, but it’s really helpful info! I’ve just started submitting to food gawker and have gotten 6 accepted so far, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason sometimes- It’s making me step up my game for better photos. I need to start submitting to these other sites you mention as well!
Glad this post was able to help!
Wow, this article was SO helpful! I’m a newbie and it’s been so stressful and down right depressing to get photos rejected. I’m still unsure what they mean by awkward angle… These tips are great and I will totally follow these each and every day :)!!!
Thank you for this post! I just submitted my first batch and I’m excited to see how it goes. I’ve done guest posts on other blogs and they’ve gotten my picture through, so I thought it was time I did it for myself!
Waiting for approval is a stressful process, but ultimately it’s very rewarding!
I’ve been reading over your posts on how to run a successful food blog this morning. They are so helpful and informative! Because of your posts, I feel like I have been able to make quick, easy improvements to my own blog without pulling my hair out (tech stuff freaks me out, to be honest–I much prefer the comfort and safety of a kitchen full of baking cookies). Thanks for sharing all of this information! 😀
I’m so glad you found my advice helpful! I’ve been working on a book on starting a food blog – you can keep an eye out for that if you’re interested. 😉
It’s so nice to find that I’m not the only one being rejected! I dread getting emails from them now lol. I did get some photos through so that’s a start. But today I got my nth rejection and was feeling really bad about it (which is why I was searching for alternatives) but I’m so happy I stumbled upon your post. I think I will carry on! Thanks for the tips 🙂
The rejections are hard, I used to just submit and wait for the rejection to come in. Now that I’ve got a handle on getting in, I look and see how I am usually in the middle of the pack. The rejection of not being on page 1 stings too, haha. Just keep going though! If not for a ton of traffic, then just so you build awareness of your blog. They are a huge help to get people introduced to you.
Thanks for the great tips, Sabrina! I appreciate the insight on Foodgawker’s multiple submissions as well. I was a geek and jumped for joy when I had my 1st acceptance onto Foodgawker.
Oh heck yes. I was as excited about that first acceptance as I was the day one of my recipes was on the front page of buzzfeed, haha.
Awesome recap! I was too excited when my mint chocolate chip ice cream was the first recipe to be accepted to Foodgawker!
Yes! I think I may have told everyone I know when it happened!
Hi Sabrina…Thanks for all the in-depth info!
this is probably a stupid question but does foodgawker only take your current post submissions, or is it best to go back and submit from older posts as well? Im just getting on the foodgawker bandwagon….. Thanks!
Totally go back! I even had a few from the VERY beginning of the blog… I am talking yellow kitchen lighting and all. I reshot once I knew more about what I was doing, updated the photos in the post and submitted. They approved with no issues 🙂
These are the number of sites where we can get the knowledge about the latest recipes.
Oh my goodness! You are a rockstar! Thanks for sharing this! Submitting can be so tedious. I am starting this today! Thank you thank you!
You’re totally welcome! Your photos are amazing and a huge hit on foodgawker, the more places you get them the bigger your marketing snowball will get 🙂
Great post! Keep up the good work!
Thanks Abbe!