How My Friend Turned Her Cooking Blog Into A Source Of Income — And Not Just From Recipes

My friend Karen started her cooking blog back in late 2019. At the time, she was working at a university and cooking as a way to relax after work. At first, the blog was very modest: a free platform with recipes that were just notes, without even any photos. But within a few months, she had built up an audience — first hundreds, then thousands.

By the following year, she had a WordPress site and her domain. She posted simple home recipes using readily available ingredients and shared helpful tips. Within a year, her audience had grown to 15-20 thousand unique visitors, and around the same time, Karen began to think about how to monetize her hobby.

She started with Google AdSense and earned about $20-$ 30 a month, which was only enough to cover hosting costs. Then offers started coming in from stores that offered to pay for reviews of kitchen scales as part of their online marketing efforts, to insert a link to a product, or to discuss a product. This paid better — around $50 per post, and sometimes more, primarily if the mention worked well.

In 2022, a turning point occurred — Karen realized she was ready to work with affiliate programs beyond kitchen-related topics. She read other bloggers and found out that gaming platforms in the online entertainment segment were the most active with external platforms. Games weren’t exciting to her, but she decided to give it a try and at least test the format.

She immediately chose an extensive network and registered for an affiliate program, then wrote an article about relaxing at home. She discussed how to prepare dinner quickly, then turn on a TV series or play a mobile game—this helps her relax and relieve stress after a long week of work. Despite the few clicks, there were no negative comments or complaints from the audience.

But this was not yet real success — it came after Karen started combining recipes with emotional context in her posts. A great example is a post about easy desserts inspired by the aesthetics of the popular online game Aviatrix. She simply wrote that the game’s visuals caught her eye and showed how she made a mousse that resembled the clouds in the game. She also included a link to download the game’s mobile app in the article. Although she mentioned it in just one sentence, the response was overwhelming: she received three times as many comments and $180 in affiliate program revenue in a week.

Interestingly, today, virtually any reasonably popular blogger with an active audience can similarly earn additional income by promoting the Aviatrix mobile app. Moreover, the download link can be effectively incorporated into various contexts, such as cooking, home decor, and outdoor recreation. Information about Aviatrix is available on popular review sites, for example, it can be easily found here. Detailed information about the mobile game app is provided there.

Until the end of 2022, Karen published 5-6 articles per month, and about a third of them contained affiliate elements. On average, her income was around $400-50 per month, but could reach up to $700 during peak months. And that’s not for a team, but for one person — Karen only occasionally ordered food photography from a friend and worked alone otherwise.

In 2023, she was ready to organize her blog and separate recipe collections by mood into distinct sections. There was food for watching movies, food for evenings with friends, and food for lonely evenings. These collections naturally included references to books and TV series, but also featured digital entertainment. As a result, gaming affiliates became a stable source of income for Karen, including Aviatrix, which she frequently mentioned in her posts.

By the summer of 2025, Karen’s blog was generating an average of $1,000–$ 1,200 per month. About half of this amount comes from gaming affiliate programs. At the same time, active traffic is not that high — 60 to 70 thousand unique visitors per month — but high audience engagement and a well-designed structure do their job: people become interested not only in recipes, but also follow links and share posts.

This story is about how Karen built a sustainable income system based on her passion. Her main content is still cooking, and she earns not only a stable income but also an honest one.