Hiya! Bjork here.
I’m checking in for the monthly Pinch of Yum income report.
Just over a year ago Lindsay and I decided to start tracking the income that came from this blog. Our hope is that these posts are inspirational and educational.
Inspirational in that you can see that’s it’s possible to create an income from a food blog (not always easy, but possible).
Educational in that you can see exactly how we’re doing it.
Here are the numbers for September:
The Breakdown:
- BlogHer – $1,489.54
- Freelance Food Photography – $1,200
- Bluehost – $910
- Tasty Food Photography – $700.5
- Google AdSense – $492.30
- Thesis Theme – $315.81
- VigLink – $279
- BuySell Ads – $54.41
- Elegant Themes – $19.50
- Amazon – $5.63
Income As Percentages
Income Notes:
You’ll notice that this month, Freelance Food Photography is #2 on the income list. This type of work happens when clients contact Lindsay by sending an email asking her to take some food photos for their project/product. It’s a great way to make extra money, and it’s also a lot of work.
Traffic
Here are the screenshots of the Pinch of Yum Google Analytics for the month of August.
Traffic Notes:
A big thank you needs to go out to Iowa Girl Eats for sending 2,300+ visitors to Pinch of Yum last month. Thanks Kristin!
Tips and Takeaways
Pinterest Tracking
Awhile back we tested out having text in photos (see example below).
We wanted to see if having text in a photo would make it more “pinnable”.
It was really hard to test the effectiveness of this though, because all that we could see was the total amount of pins that a post would get. It wasn’t possible to see how many pins an image was getting.
Guess what? A simple little URL came to the rescue:
This URL is a Pinterest tool you can use to see what images from your website are being pinned.
Copy the URL above and replace pinchofyum.com with your own domain name. Paste this URL into your browser and it will take you to a page that contains a chronological list of all of your blog’s pinned images!
Here’s how I used this URL to do research: a day or so after a post went live, I would go to the URL above and browse through the images to see which ones were pinned most frequently.
We found that the non-text images were being pinned just as much as the text images, leaving us to believe that the work that goes into adding the text to the image wasn’t quite with the trouble it took to create them.
Website Tracking
I have good news for you – chances are that people are talking about you online.
The news gets even better – I’m guessing that they’re saying good things about you.
It gets better yet – Google has a handy tool that will email you anytime you’re mentioned online.
It’s called Google Alerts. It’s really simple and really powerful.
You enter in the term that you want Google to search the web for and then pick how often you want Google to notify you when results are found.
Here’s an example of one of the Google Alerts that I have setup:
You might be asking: “So what should I do when I get an alert from Google?”
Good question, my friend.
It depends.
If the Google Alert shows that you were mentioned in a blog post, you can stop by and leave a comment for that person and say “Thanks for the link!”
If the Google Alert shows that you were mentioned on some type of news site you can use that article as content for Facebook or Twitter. This recently happened with Pinch of Yum when I received a Google Alert that one of Lindsay’s recipes was featured in on the Huffington Post. I was able to grab that link and post it Facebook. #proudhusband 🙂
Lastly, you can use it as a way to stay tuned to what’s happening online with your primary area of interest or focus. Let’s say you are building a blog that focuses on the Paleo Diet. You could enter a Google Alert for “Paleo Diet News” or something similar. For instance, I have a Google Alert setup for “Food Blog Income”, because it’s an area that I’m interested in.
Big News, Coming Soon
I’m really excited to announce something food blog related in next month’s income report. It’s not ready to be released to the world quite yet, but I’m really pumped about it.
Be sure to check back in the first week of November to get the complete scoop!
As always, thanks for reading! We really appreciate it. 🙂
P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about some of the ways that you can monetize a food blog, we encourage you to download this free ebook, “16 Ways to Monetize Your Food Blog,” from our sister site, Food Blogger Pro!
Thanks for writing these posts. They’ve been a great resource and inspiration. Setting up a healthy blog takes a lot of work and patience, and I hope to take a cue from the analytic focus you present on Pinch of Yum!
That’s really the biggest thing I gain from these days: is that I can really look back and see all that I’ve accomplished and get a sense of pride. Naturally, it will just get you pumped up for the rest of your week.
Thanks for the great info as always! Your site has been extremely helpful with getting ours up and running. Can’t wait to continue implementing your useful advice! We just launched our site this past Monday, so we’ve got a long way to go!
Thanks for the great info as always! Your site has been extremely helpful with getting ours up and running. Can’t wait to continue implementing your useful advice! We just launched our site this past Monday, so we’ve got a long way to go!
Thanks for the info! I am still learning a lot about the world of blogging 🙂
Thank you so much for these reports, they’re so helpful! Really good tip about the pinterest tracker – photos take so much time and energy, it’s nice to know if it’s worth it.
Your series posts about making money from blogging is so helpful. I especially like those tips along with the monthly report. I only started my blog for 8 months and I tried to put ad on just a few days ago. I earned very tiny amount of money, but I was glad that my hard work can actually generate income now. I didn’t realize there’s so many things that I can do until I read your posts. I always skip monetizing tips from those “how to’s” post, since the day I set up the blog. Because people talk about that it takes extremely long way to go before you can even start to think about it. Your post totally changed my way of thinking.
I’m reading every monthly report now and I have to stop to write this comment.
One more thing, it’s amazing that you two could work full time job and accomplished so many things within quite short time. I have a full time job and was trying to squeeze all my time blogging, but still be overwhelmed by the load of work…
Thank you again for the great tips and wish there’s more coming! 🙂
Love the tips portion this month. I checked my images pinned on pinterest…fascinating. My pics of your Thai salad recipe (recipe is how I found your blog) shows the most pins : ) I found your blog a couple months ago and am slowly moving my way toward monetizing my blog after 2 1/2 years of posting and watching my readership inching along. Can’t wait to implement the ideas but am taking it one step at a time. You two have totally inspired me to take the plunge.
i find it quite frustrating ranking on my keyword for my food blog, right now im on the 60th above google search results. im done tweaking the site maybe i did something wrong. help please.
Hello Bjork,
I found your site yesterday searching for some information about Foodiblogroll ! I think it is really amazing what you are doing here ! Thank you so much for sharing this useful information! I’ve been blogging for about five month with my wife Vera and I learn more in one day reading your posts about blogging then I’ve learned till now! I really admire to people you and Lindsey are! I also really like things you are doing with orphanage! I’m really happy to see that good people live on Earth :). All the best and big regard from Serbia!
Great info! Thanks for posting. What income do you make from Bluehost and These Theme? Just curious how that works?
I use bluehost to host my blog and wondered if there is a way in the future to make money off of it.
Thanks!
Julia
I really enjoy reading these monthly income reports. Thanks so much for sharing & being transparent. Us readers really appreciate it!
THANK YOU for taking the time to write all these posts!! It’s VERY inspiring for those of us who have hopes of ANY income from a food blog! 🙂 Thank you again and please keep posting!!!
Which pluggins do you use from wordpress? Are you using wp minify or anything to speed up your page load time? Also, what caching pluggin do you use? I also have thesis with wordpress. 🙂 Thank you for all your tips and being so willing to help other bloggers. We’ve improved our site so much based on your advice!
-Natasha
I would just like to thank you for posting these income reports. Although I’m not monetizing my blog, your blog and these posts were what really prompted me to start blogging at all. It’s been very rewarding and I’m looking at starting another blog with a friend that we want to monetize. We’ll be referring to these posts again and again because they’re so clear, well written, and plain useful. Your blog is awesome, you have amazing projects and food, thanks for being creative and inspiring.
That’s awesome. Thanks for the feedback, Graham!
Hi from yet another blogger. You share some great info here for beginner bloggers, and some for old vets like me. One of the things that is very difficult to find online is real information on earnings potential from advertising and it’s very refreshing that you choose to share yours. Blogging can be a very isolated experience and new bloggers often wonder how they are doing in terms of earnings performance; thanks for being one of the few willing to provide a yardstick.
A question if you don’t mind…I find your Adsense income to be quite low for your level of traffic. Are you serving 3 of their ad on your site? Are you serving mobile ads too? My traffic numbers are in the same ballpark as yours but my earnings are quite different.
When I lasted commented on one of your income reports you guys were at half of this income. So I’m happy to see it is still going well for you both.
I must say your food photos are amazing! I have to stop myself from grabbing my screen 🙂
Great work though! Keep it up!
Haha – thanks Samuel! I am glad the pictures are getting your attention! 🙂
hi .. happy to see the report .. fabulous .. can u please explain how to earn with BlogHer ?
thanks in advance ….
Sorry I’m comment-bombing you today! (If that’s not already a real thing, it should be) I love this article though. I just started a blog and it’s bloggers like you who are willing to share what they know that has made the process much easier. Thanks!
Hahahah! I love comment bombs. 🙂 Thanks Loretta!
..thank you so much, I just discovered your blog today and am hooked. All the info. you provide in your income report is so helpful. I had no idea it could be so rewarding financially as well. I’m still not quite understanding it all, but hope to get there soon. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on adding text or not and your findings, ..they definitely take a lot more work! Nancy @ Life in the Smelly Lane
I love your how to blog posts and your income break down. Its so generous of you two to share the hows and why’s of running a blog. I had a blog on blogger for a couple years, mostly cupcakes, just for fun. Now I got more serious about blogging in the hopes it would help supplement our family’s income. Even $100 a month wold help. My only thing I am kicking myself about is sticking with blogger and not switching to wordpress. I was/am very intimidated with wordpress as well as not being totally sure I can afford it. I found one designer who’s baseline fee was $900. I have also read that the free wordpress is very limited and self hosting is the way to go. I bought my domain name through blogger and am also worried that I can’t keep it if I switch. Do you know anything about migrating a blogger blog to wordpress? I feel like the kid that wants to play with the rest of the team but my uniform doesn’t match! ha ha
Thank you!!
Hi Bjork,
I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and really enjoy it. I have a similar roll at our blog, FirstTimeFoods, that you have here at Pinch of Yum. I can really relate to more of the technical aspects of maintaining a food blog and being the one that outputs and tracks it’s content. We are working our way up in the blog world as well, so as they are for other people, your posts are helpful and inspiring. Keep up the good work.
This is so very helpful, informative and reassuring. Thanks for sharing.
Wow, you guys! It is amazing to see how you have grown!! What a huge number – and it is awesome to know that it is going to benefit a worthy cause too 🙂 Excited to hear about your news, whatever it is! XO and thinking of you, Sonja (and Alex)
Congrats on your classy website!! We missed you at the marathon Sunday. Kristin ran really well, finished strong and finished at 3:23:43–good enough for a ticket to Boston. Love from chilly MN, John