Why Do Food Bloggers Hire Photographers?

Food blogging full time offers many incredible perks – being able to create a life you love, working from home, being accessible to your family, flexibility and many income opportunities. 

It can also be a juggling act as well – there is an endless list of tasks to do and not enough time in the day to do them in.

While tons of bloggers in other niches hire photographers or buy stock art for their sites, it's been relatively rare in the food blogging world until the past couple of years.

(I do think Pretty Focused has been a big part of the shift as food bloggers are able to find reliable, TRAINED people to work for them.)

It's pretty simple why more and more food bloggers are finding that hiring content creators and photographers just makes sense.

Help Updating Old Content

Take my site, for instance, after 10 years of blogging, I have thousands of posts on my site and a vast majority of them need photos updated.

There is no possible way in the world that I could find the time to update all of those older posts and still put out new recipes on my site every day.

Hiring out the photography on the old posts allows me to be able to do twice the amount of work – putting out new content and refreshing old content at the same time!

There Really, Really, Really Isn't Enough Time to Do Everything Yourself

Blogging as changed a lot in the past decade. When a lot of bloggers started around 2009-2010, with the exception of the early years of Facebook, social media really wasn't even a thing. In fact, blogs were the social media for many at the time.

Today, it's incredibly hard to manage all of the tasks that are involved in running and promoting a food blog on a professional level.

Hiring out photography was a no-brainer for me. I am able to create an editorial calendar that works well for my site and have creative direction over the content without spending hours taking and editing photos.

While the photographers are working their magic, I am able to focus on the other million things that go into running a blog and social media channels including Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook (as well as everything new that pops up).

One of the best decisions I ever made for my business was to outsource photography. It's a simple way to have beautiful content created under my direction and it frees up time in a big way. 

For those bloggers who love the photography aspect of their site, outsourcing photography means they can focus a lot of time on photographing their personal favorite recipes because they outsource other recipes.

One of my friends has used outsourcing photography to create more content while holding onto her passion projects that bring her personal joy. It's a win-win! 

Hire Someone Who Can Do It Better Than You

As I said previously, blogging is so different now. Pictures snapped in your dark kitchen do not cut it. Beautiful content matters and is a major driving force behind success. 

The fact is, some bloggers LOVE taking photos and others just don't have that natural ability.

I am in the latter category. When I made the decision to hire out photography, it was because outdated photography was impacting the quality of the site and the experience readers were having. It was also impacting contracts I could get with sponsors. 

Now, I hire photographers who can execute my vision for specific recipes.

It's been a great partnership and the result has been exponential growth. I'm also able to get consistent, stunning content that has helped attract more sponsorships and opportunities. 

The bottom line is that you cannot physically do everything and do it well – as your blog grows there will be parts of the work that need to be outsourced to take it to the next level.

Outsourcing photography is an excellent option to grow your blog, create amazing content, and save your sanity.  And I'm certainly not the only one to agree. The reason I know: our Pretty Focused Buyer's Club is has 800+ members who are buying content from Pretty Focused grads!

Think you'd love to create a career and life you love working as a content creator for food bloggers? Sign up for our free training!