Welcome to the inner workings of Pinch of Yum.
Before we begin, let me introduce myself – my name is Bjork. I am proud to say I am the primary eater on the Pinch of Yum team.
A few months ago, Lindsay and I talked about experimenting with turning some of the Pinch of Yum traffic into dollars. I thought we could use the extra money to buy cool things like vintage beanie babies with perfect tags or really cool retro yin-yang pogs and slammers. Lindsay, being the centered and kind soul she is, thought the money would be better spent elsewhere. I agreed.
We thought it would be fun and maybe even helpful if we gave everyone a sneak peak into the earnings coming from Pinch of Yum. The plan is to post total earnings once a month.
The total for month #1 in the “Food Blog Money Making Experiment”? $21.97.
The only stream of income in August came from Foodie Blogroll. Here’s a closer look.
Foodie Blogroll
August was the first full month of having an ad service on Pinch of Yum. So what did we think of Foodie Blogroll as an ad service?
The Good:
- Set it and forget it – It’s great to be able to drop in some HTML code and then forget about it. Your blog almost immediately starts generating an income without having to make any other changes.
- No contract - You can sign up to earn revenue without locking yourself into a monthly or yearly contract.
The Bad:
- Low CPM – With about 50,000 impressions in August, Pinch of Yum earned about $20.00. That boils down to $.40 (that’s 40 cents) per 1,000 impressions. This was a bit disappointing considering Foodie Blogroll advertises $4.00 per 1,000 impressions. But since there is no contract when you sign up, there is no way to be completely sure of how much you will be paid.
- Loss of design/branding decisions- It’s a little bit of a bummer to not have any control of the ads that are shown. It’s not that big of a deal when it’s a similar genre to Pinch of Yum, like this Activia ad.
However, sometimes the ads will be a bit different then the usual content one might find on Pinch of Yum. For instance, this Spanish ad for a Nissan Optima.
So what can $21.97 buy? For starters, it can by three pairs of these:
More importantly, (and more seriously) it is almost enough to be a foster friend to a child without a family in the Philippines.
Thanks for taking a peek at the inner workings of Pinch of Yum. We’re excited to learn more about creating an income from a food blog. Every month we’ll check back in and share what we’ve learned, and in the meantime, please let us know if there is any information (traffic, specific analytics, additional resources) we can share that would be helpful or interesting for you to know. For now, please accept our invitation to join us in this venture!
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More from Pinch of Yum
Hot Dog Bar
Hey, $21.97 will buy a lot of hotdogs for the bar!!
hahaha! Yes!
We’ve been talking a lot lately about how to turn our blog into some kind of money maker as well. Thanks for this post. I will send it along to my husband so that we can set expectations accordingly.
I guess we just need to be discovered by Oprah or something, eh? 
Exactly!
Very cool idea, guys.
I like it lots.
Thanks Krissy.
What a great post! Hilarious and informative. I just barely signed up for the same ad service after pressure from my husband. (“Honey, why don’t you put ads on there if you’re going to ignore me and spend all that time taking pictures of food?”) I set my expectations pretty low, so it’s good to see what kind of actual return they give. I like the idea of no contract, so that’s why I went with them instead of Foodbuzz. It would be interesting to see the same kind of numbers from someone with foodbuzz, but I think non-disclosure is part of their contract so they probably can’t share.
Hey Nicole! Thanks for the comment – I’m going to respond to your email in more detail later tonight.
You two are pretty amazing. Thanks for using your creative juices to help orphans. Good work!
Very interesting! I always wonder about the payoff for adding ads onto your blog and everything.
Now you know!
Well, sort of. I’m just a beginner so hopefully I can shed more light on it as I get further down the road.
I came tonight in search of a delicious dessert recipe…goodbye allrecipes.com and hello amazing Team Lindsay and Bjork! Seeing that Bjork posted awhile back, of course I had to click and read…
All I have to say, is that I have decided that I adore you both. Great blog, keep it up!
You are too sweet! I have to say, though, don’t give up on allrecipes. I have found some darn good cookie recipes on there!
Bjork, thanks for posting your thoughts on the Foodieblogroll program. I have been a publisher with them for about a month. My blog is young (11/11 launch) so I do not have the kind of traffic your blog generates. Since being a publisher with Foodieblogroll I have earned a whopping .24. I still do not understand what “impressions” mean.
Great blog, keep up the good work.
Sincerely,
Jay
Wisconsin U.S.
Hey Jay! Thanks for saying hi and congrats on starting up your blog. I just dropped by and checked it out. It looks greats! An impression is anytime an advertisement loads onto a visitor’s screen.
I absolutely love what you guys are doing. I started smartcookingoodlookin just over a month ago with the ultimate goal of writing my own cookbook someday…(hopefully someday not too far away!) If you have any other advice or tips for me please let me know!!
xox
Kristen Smart
http://smartcookingoodlookin.wordpress.com
Nice resource, I’m sure things have changed slightly since then, but I can say there are other networks out there including the one I use for my Cocktail blog. It offers decent cpm rates and I have slightly less impressions then you had at the time of this experiment. Good Luck, and stop on by for a drink sometime.
Thanks for this, it’s really helpful for me as I start up my own blog too. Good luck with the foster support you are providing in the Phillipines and thank you for doing that.
Shamini