This is a sponsored post.
If you’re a UK recipe blogger or food blogger, you may already have considered monetising your blog in various ways. But have you heard of Verdify Food Brand Promotions? Discover how this innovative new recipe integration tool can help you to generate a passive income, by promoting healthy ingredients and sustainable products in your existing recipe content.
In the world of blogging, there are generally two major ways bloggers tend to make money – sponsored content (be it on a blog or website, or social media platforms), and affiliate advertising. While sponsored content can generate a lucrative income, it’s also an active income; you need to work in order to earn it. In contrast, affiliate advertising is a passive form of income; once you’ve got quality blog content in place and you’re attracting a steady flow of website traffic, you can add affiliate links to your blog posts and earn commission on any sales you generate.
Recently, I’ve been seeking to increase my passive blog income and spend less time focusing on sponsored content. As I age, I’m conscious that I may not always have so much spare time available to spend on writing blog posts (as much of a help – or a hindrance – AI for recipes can be) or creating social media content. If I choose to start a family in future, for example, it might benefit me to have a passive income I can use to support myself, rather than having to rely upon sponsored content to make ends meet. Plus, I’d love to have more freedom to focus on the topics I’m genuinely passionate about, rather than having to tailor my content to a specific brief.
So, when Verdify reached out and asked if I’d be keen to partner up with them to trial their new recipe integration tool as a UK recipe blogger, it couldn’t have been better timing.
What is Verdify Food Brand Promotions?
Developed in the Netherlands, Verdify Food Brand Promotions’ intelligent software takes the form of a recipe integration tool that works alongside existing content on UK recipe blogs, food blogs and recipe platforms. Once installed, the system automatically inserts relevant sponsored ingredient links into both ingredient lists, and instructions.
So, a generic ingredient like “wholemeal rye flour” would automatically change to a branded product or ingredient, like “Dove’s Farm Wholemeal Rye Flour”, for example.
Take a look at the diagram below to see what I mean.
As Verdify only promotes healthy, sustainable products and partners, you can be confident that – not only will the ingredients you’re linking to be relevant to your audience – but they’ll also make for healthier choices. This could help to encourage your audience to choose healthier recipes and develop healthy eating habits, while also encouraging your audience to choose more sustainable foods.
At present, Verdify has run pilot trials with a number of UK and European food and drink brands including Doves Farm, Bragg, Schar and Arla.
My Verdify experience as a UK recipe blogger
In November last year, I began working with Verdify Food Brand Promotions on a two-month pilot study to trial Verdify’s healthy food brand promotion feature.
Not only did this partnership benefit me financially, but it enabled me to access exclusive data and insights into how my audience accesses and interacts with my recipe content, helping me to plan what kind of strategic recipe content to create next, in order to maximise both traffic and earnings.
While this pilot trial is now over, I’m still keen to continue working with Verdify. As the scheme expands, more food brands come on-board, there will be more opportunities for monetisation; the sponsored ingredient links will start populating throughout more of my blog posts, increasing my passive income earning potential.
You can see Verdify’s ingredient links in action on my blog in my toad-in-the-hole recipe, as well as in my sugar-free banana cake and Italian pasticciotto recipes.
What I liked about Verdify Food Brand Promotions
- As the links are added automatically, it saves you the time of adding them yourself. When using similar affiliate platforms, I usually have to add each link manually and this can be rather tedious and time-consuming.
- As Verdify excludes unhealthy or unsustainable food and drink products – including meat, ultra processed snacks and desserts, sugar rich drinksm and alcohol – it’s a fairly ethical way of marketing quality food to consumers, encouraging healthy eating and sustainable dining habits.
- Verdify spends time building valuable relationships with various trusted food and drink brands, so you don’t need to develop the connection yourself.
- Verdify provides – and can also install – the software for you, freeing you up to focus on creating recipes or writing new blog posts.
- You can easily exclude a given food brand partner or ingredient if you don’t wish to promote it for whatever reason.
- Similarly, you can exclude particular blog posts from Verdify, so you won’t see any ingredient links appearing on these pages. This is really handy if you’ve teamed up with a food brand partner on a sponsored recipe blog post and don’t want to frustrate them by promoting other brands on the same page, for example.
- The healthy food brands listed on the platform are well-known, reputable names which I’m happy to promote.
- Verdify enables me to work towards my goal of earning a bigger passive income, and reducing my focus on sponsored content. Bloggers earn a CPM (“cost per mille”) for each branded ingredient, with up to three brands promoted per recipe.
- It feels like a subtle way to promote both brands and products, while also ensuring any recommendations are a natural fit
- At the end of each month, you can access a report on impressions by product and impressions by recipe in your Verdify dashboard. Not only can this enable you to predict your earnings, but it can also help you to see which recipes are most popular, and which ingredients are most profitable (which may help you to plan future content).
How to add Verdify Food Brand Promotions to your UK recipe blog
To add Verdify to your blog, you’ll need to sign-up with Verdify and insert a personalised HTML/Javascript code (or, if you’re having any technical difficulty, the friendly team will take care of it for you)! Your account manager will give you your own unique code once you’ve successfully signed up to the programme. Once the code is in place, the process of adding ingredient links to your recipe content couldn’t be easier. Simply write your blog posts and recipes, and Verdify populates the links for you automatically. Using precise keyword matching, the system links each recipe ingredient to the most relevant product and food brand partner with consideration of taste, texture, nutritional value and sustainability.
Are you a UK recipe blogger or food blogger? Join Verdify’s partner program and start generating a passive income from your existing recipe blog posts today, without affecting any existing advertising or monetisation schemes you may have in place.
Do you think Verdify will help UK recipe bloggers to generate a passive sustainable income? Are you going to try it out for yourself? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box below.
This is a sponsored post.