OpenPlate

Gumroad and Patreon are great general platforms, however they aren’t geared specifically toward chefs and recipes. So up front, Openplate is the better option between the two – specifically for home chefs and those wanting to step into a culture and experience it, one meal at a time.

Patreon

Patreon is a great platform and if you’ve ever been on YouTube, you’ve probably heard your favourite YouTuber suggest joining their subscription on Patreon for bonus and exclusive content. It’s a great way to get a little closer to your fave creator.

However, as a home chef, you can get lost in the mix. Patreon is open to anyone, so you’ll be competing against a political podcast, or a music creator and good lukc being discovered on that platform.

Also, it’s solely subscription based. So your fans have to pay a monthly fee for exclusive content. The pressure is on the home chefs to create regular content in order to keep their subscribers.

• Recurring revenue via subscriptions (“patrons”) who support you monthly.
• You can combine this with selling digital products (ebook/recipe collections) on the platform.
• Community features: patrons expect more exclusive content.
• Reliable income (if you can build a sufficiently engaged base).
• Multiple tiers possible (e.g. free-content followers + paying patrons get extra recipes).
• Transparent fee structure: Patreon takes 5% for digital-product sales, plus payment-processing fees.

Gumroad

Gumroad is sort of like a marketplace for anyone to sell almost anything. When it comes to recipes, the majority of it are in the form of an eBook or some sort of physical copy. So if you just want to sell eBooks or recipe books, then Gumroad might be great.

• Very simple to set up a storefront/digital product shop.
• Flexible pricing (you can do discounts, bundles, pay-what-you-want). 
• Handles payment processing, file delivery.
• No subscription required; you pay via transaction fees.
• Well suited for selling ebooks, recipe collections, meal-plans, etc.
• You keep more control over branding and product presentation than many marketplaces.

Openplate

Openplate is a marketplace built for home chefs to connect with and grow their audience. I absolutely believe that food is one of the intimate things in life. Cooking and eating is more than just following a recipe or downloading an ebook.

Trying a new recipe is like stepping into a portal and experiencing the culture for a moment. At Openplate we help home chefs share that experience with their consumers. Share the recipe, teach it, share the culture, even recommend the right music – to complete the environment.

So if you are a home chef and you have a passion to cook, tell stories with your food, share your culture and experience with the culturally curious, then Openplate is the place.

1. Openplate is 100% free for creators to publish their recipes
2. Openplate takes a commission off of every purchase. Rates may vary.
3. Buyers own the recipe for life
4. Buyers can chat with the home chef or book consultations
5. Coming soon: If in the same zip code, buyers can request the chef to just cook it for them or a personal lesson.

So, chef. Sign up today. And, what are you going to cook today?

Platform	Best For	Pros	Cons
OpenPlate	Home chefs and recipe creators who want an easy, recipe-first way to earn money.	• Free to publish recipes • Designed specifically for recipes • Marketplace discovery brings in new buyers • Extra revenue streams (tips, bookings, “cook it for me”) • No tech skills needed; mobile-friendly layouts	• Commission per sale (can be ~20%) • Less control over branding and customer data
Patreon	Creators with a loyal following who want predictable monthly income from fans.	• Recurring subscription revenue • Community features (tiers, comments, Q&A) • Great for deepening fan engagement	• Requires steady stream of exclusive content • Harder to attract casual followers who prefer one-time purchases
Gumroad	Creators selling recipe eBooks, bundles, or digital products beyond recipes.	• Flexible pricing (bundles, discounts, pay-what-you-want) • Simple storefront setup • You own your products and shop	• Little to no built-in discovery • Transaction fees eat into small-ticket sales • Packaging and promotion required for each product

Food bloggers are not that different from other content creators, in a monetisation sense. From the big guys like All Recipes to the home chefs on Blogger, it’s all about paid ads.

If a recipe was free, then most likely you saw some ad preroll in the video or ads within the text of the recipe. I mean, recipe creators have to eat, right? Apart from the most straightforward and commonly known options, there are a few other ways that are a bit more advanced.

Here are some ways food bloggers can make money off of their recipes.

Openplate

Recipe creators work hard to share their recipes on Instagram or YouTube, and all of this is great, and must be done. However, when you want to earn off a recipe, Openplate helps recipe creators sell individual recipes while building a personal connection between the creator and consumer.

Openplate was built for home chefs to expose their recipes and cultures to the culturally curious. Upload your recipe video, instructions, and ingredient and set a price. Build your personal profile page which lists all your recipes. You can then share this page with your followers to go purchase individual or all recipes.

Coming soon, followers can request you to make it for them – if you are in the same zipcode and if you offer that. Also, consumers can book consultations with you. We hope to foster a relationship between food, creators, and consumers.

Paid ads

Like we mentioned already, paid ads is one of the most common way to do this. If you’re a beginner, then creating a Google AdSense account is probably the easiest way to get started. Configuring it is super easy and all you’d need to do is paste a snippet of code on your website.

Sponsored posts

When creators gain some traction, the next step would be to get sponsored posts. If you use a specific pan in your recipes, then you could reach out to that company and have them sponsor the video.

YouTube

If you monetise your YouTube channel – which can take a long time as there are specific requirements with the number of videos you must have, then number of subscribers, and also the number of comments or views.

Once you get over that threshold, monetisation depends on the number of views. A lot of people ask me, why anyone would post on Openplate when they can post on YouTube? Well, before you make your first dollar, you have to create a bunch of recipes, grow your channel subscribers, engagement, and views.

With Openplate, you can make money from even just one video. Just share it with your followers. But do ensure your recipe is done well. High quality, make it personal.

Affiliate marketing

This is also relatively easy to set up. You can sign up for various affiliate programs like Amazon Associates, ShareASale etc. When you do this, you’d get a specific link. So when you mention your favourite knife for example, and you link to this knife on Amazon with your special link.

When someone buys it, you get a commission. Just a quick FYI, affiliate links will be an option soon in Openplate – so you can earn even more.

Products

As a food blogger grows up in their career, a recipe book or products are most likely in the path of that growth. However these require significant brand recognition or trust for users to buy a product from a food blogger. It takes a while to build that relationship.

The best way, I really think, is social media + Openplate

If you are building your followers on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or even Facebook, then you should continue to do that. Give away free quick recipes and guide your users to your Openplate profile to purchase the more intricate or personal recipes.

Here’s how you can get started.

1. Go to https://www.openplate.co/ and create an account. It is 100% free to create and sell.
2. Upload an intro video, so your consumers can buy “you” before they buy your recipes.
3. Then upload your recipes. You should get your profile page at openplate.co/your-username
4. Share this or share specific recipes in your newsletter, social media channels or what not
5. One recipe can make repeating sales over time

So food blogger, ready to cook up some business?

As a child, I remember waking up from a deep sleep, early in the morning. There’d be a light in the kitchen and my mum would be busy cooking for the day. Breakfast for three school kids, lunches packed, and ready for the day.

My dad traveled quite a bit. When he was home, he’d be up at 4AM, take a cold shower, then he’d cook for us all, from-scratch, fantastic breakfasts, lunches, and yes, plenty of coffee. By the time we’d wake up – by 7AM, my dad would have been done with is day, he’d be reading the papers while sipping on his black coffee.

It was a safe environment. We grow up with parents who loved to cook. It was never a chore.

Fast forward, now I’m the dad. And I find myself becoming my dad. Up at 4AM, “cooking up a storm” as my wife would say. Hot breakfasts, and yes. Plenty of coffee. All done by 7AM.

Then, we’d cook dinner in the evenings. This is a big deal. We can get carried away sometimes, biting off more than we can chew, but that’s the fun.

I see my father’s love of cooking for others in my daughter. She and I have taken over the kitchen in our home. It’s our thing. We plan, we shop, we try new foods, and we present it to my wife and son. Sometimes it’s great, some times it needs some work.

However, when we cook, we try to look for various regions in the world, to try something new. We try to find authentic recipes from that region and research it a bit. As we cook, we find music from that region. If it’s some sort of refined Italian, then it’s Italian jazz.

If it’s Mexican street food, then we’d find some Mariachi music. To make it extra fun, Mariachi covers of pop songs. If it’s something more refined, then we tweak our music and the ambience to enhance the food.

OpenPlate was birthed from this love of trying different foods. But also helping sustain the home chefs that are just doing life. Eating a good meal and enjoying a cultural experience feels a little better when you know you’ve directly helped the creator.

I hope you get to try new foods from various regions. Listen to new music, see, smell, taste, and listen. Most importantly, cook for your friends and family. Laugh, bond, talk. Eating is a powerful bonding experience.

What will you cook today?

I’ve created an umpteen number of WordPress websites and as most people do, I delete the Hello World default post. However, in this case, I’m keeping it.

August 26th was when we first pushed OpenPlate out into the world and I bought the first recipe. Everything worked. So far, so good. It’s an important day.

OpenPlate has been on the back burner for a while. It was an idea I had while chatting with my daughter about her plans for the Summer. We were ideating various Summer projects and since we both share a passion for cooking – handed down from my dad, we came up with the concept.

It did not have a name. It did not require one. We were just excited about creating an experience for other like-minded, and soon to be like-minded, folks. A place where they could try a new recipe – not from the glamorous chefs, nothing wrong with them, but our focus was on the unsung heroes of the kitchen.

The grandmas, the aunts, the uncles, the mums, the dads, brothers, and sisters who take on the kitchen in their household. They cook the every day meals. This is what we were interested in. A taste of every day life.

This idea sat on the back burner for about a year. On a whim, I decided to pick it up and play around with it. On our family vacation to Amelia Island in the Summer of ’25, I’d wake up early and tinker with the idea. Suddenly, it had legs.

Long story short, OpenPlate is out in the wild and now the fun journey continues. I hope you will all enjoy experiencing the taste of every day life that would otherwise not be captured. Taste it, try new things. You don’t have to like it all.

So, what are you cooking today?