The Food Blog Money Making Experiment – October – $104.48 - Pinch of Yum
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The Food Blog Money Making Experiment – October – $104.48

Food Blog Income - October with a cupcake.

Greetings! Bjork here. I am Lindsay’s husband and the proud sous chef tomato slicer in the Pinch of Yum kitchen.

Three months ago Lindsay and I decided to experiment with making money from her blog. We thought it would be fun (and maybe helpful to others) to write a monthly post detailing the money we made from the blog and passing along any information we learned along the way. Here’s the update from October.

           The Breakdown:

  • Foodie Blogroll – $39.48
  • Bluehost – $65.00

            Grand Total: $104.48.

#1:  Foodie Blogroll: $39.48

Foodieblogroll.com income has continued to increase month over month, which is great! It’s not anything drastic, but up is better is better than down!  September’s total was $27.68, which means an increase of $11.80.

It’s been exciting to see Pinch of Yum’s traffic increase over the last few months.  In case you’re curious, here’s a look at where Pinch of Yum visitors came from in October!

Traffic source chart.
List of URLs and number of visits.

If you’re interested in learning about more sites that can drive traffic, be sure to check out this list of other food photo submission sites.  These sites have the potential to drive a lot of traffic to your blog.  Plus, they have tons of delicious looking food.  Win-win!

#2:  Bluehost: $65

Bluehost is the company we use to host Pinch of Yum.

       Quick Tip:

For those unfamiliar with website hosting, here is the basic idea: When you purchase a domain name (like pinchofyum.com) you need a place to “host” that domain. You pay a company a monthly or yearly fee to make sure your website is up and running. It’s possible to have your site hosted for free, but oftentimes you’ll find that you can’t have a unique domain name with free hosting. Sites with free hosting are often setup as a subdomain. Like blogname.wordpress.com or blogname.blogspot.com. This isn’t a bad thing, but many people prefer to have their own unique domain. For those of you that are interested in the process of setting up a blog you can read more about it here.

Bluehost is a user-friendly hosting company with a great affiliate program. For every referral we send to Bluehost, we get paid $65. You can see a short little video showing how affiliate tracking works in September’s income report post.

Thoughts on October

We’re still trying to figure out ways to find products or services that are (1) really good and (2) directed towards the correct market. In the case of Pinch of Yum, the correct market would be people who would consider themselves general food enthusiasts. We love the products and services that we are affiliates for right now, but the reality is that many Pinch of Yum readers aren’t going to be too interested in WordPress Themes or website hosting.  We’ll continue our search for more services and products, and we’ll be sure to keep posting about what’s working and what’s not! (A sneak peek of something we’re testing… Check out the bottom of this post. We’re testing out the use of a relevant banner at the end of each post. We’ll let you know how this goes in next month’s report.)

What will we be doing with the money?

Great question.

Some of you might remember from August’s report that I was contemplating the purchase of some squirrel underwear. Well, seeing as to the fact that monthly income has quadrupled since then, I figured it was time to upgrade:

Man in a squirrel costume.

Yes, I did take 10 minutes to Photoshop my face into that picture.

Seriously though, as fun as a squirrel suit would be, Lindsay and I are honored to send the humble Pinch of Yum blog earnings to an organization that we think the world of. You can read more about it here.

Thanks for letting me have my monthly cameo on Pinch of Yum.   It’s so cool to me that Lindsay and I get to share a little sliver of our lives with you.  And bonus that we can share pictures of ourselves in squirrel suits.

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!

a picture of the 16 Ways to Monetize Your Food Blog ebook from Food Blogger Pro and a note that says, 'free download from our friends at Food Blogger Pro'

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31 Comments

  1. Pinch of Yum Logo

    I’m always really interested to see where other people’s traffic comes from – I get so many more referrals from tastespotting than food gawker so I’m interested to see that it’s the other way round for your guys.

    I love these posts – thanks for sharing them (plus the squirrel picture…)

    1. Pinch of Yum Logo

      Oh, dear. The squirrel picture is… special. That is so interesting about tastespotting/foodgawker! I think generally I get more things published to foodgawker and more of them are ranked as “top favorites”, and that’s what drives a lot of my foodgawker traffic.

  2. Pinch of Yum Logo

    First. It was worth the 10 minutes, that squirrel pic is priceless.
    Second, I should have known that foodgawker is that huge of a traffic driver because that’s something I’m not on. Haven’t quite figured out how to make an extra pretty pic into such a small square. Do you rec’d the Plate to Pixel book to help w/that…thoughts?
    Third. Appreciate this experiment. Newbie to this, & I continue to keep learning from all you pros out here. Much thanks!

    1. Pinch of Yum Logo

      I honestly don’t know much about Plate to Pixel, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to look through it! I have perused a few food photography books, but mostly I just play around on my camera and Photoshop until it comes out how I like it. I am going to a food photography class this weekend and will certainly post any great tips that I pick up from that!

  3. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Those are amazing hits, I have to learn more about these photo submission sites. I just started my blog early this year and your post is really inspiring.

  4. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Thanks so much for the post. I just started a food blog since things have been slow in the work world. Darn economy! Any way I can make a few extra bucks is appreciated!

  5. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Thank you both so much for these posts! They’re so helpful. I have yet to see one of my photos accepted at Food Gawker 🙁 I need to try one of the other sites, and just keep trying to improve my pics!!

    1. Pinch of Yum Logo

      It took tons of submissions before I ever got accepted to either site. And even now, some of my favorite photos don’t get accepted. Keep trying!! You can have a party on the day when your first photo gets accepted. 🙂

  6. Pinch of Yum Logo

    I found another food photo submission site called Kitchen Artistry which displays horizontal format images instead of the usual square format of the other sites. I often get rejected because of “composition” issues on these sites, the horizontal format (at least 600 pix width) somehow maintains the original look of my submissions. You may want to check it out. And again, thanks for the great post!

  7. Pinch of Yum Logo

    I may have missed this…but how long have you had pinchofyum?
    Meaning..how long has it taken to build traffick to 64,000 visits?
    Thanks!

  8. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Thanks for the information. I am a teacher and I have a music teaching/parenting site and I have started including my own recipes as a way to (well… have fun) and make it more of a family oriented site. I wasn’t sure how I can get more readers to see the recipes so this is very very helpful. Thank you! Off to check out the sites and submit recipes now!
    Maria

  9. Pinch of Yum Logo

    This is the most helpful blogging advice I have EVER read. I have been scouring the internet for this kind of information and you guys have laid it out so nicely. I really appreciate this – you guys are the best!

  10. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Love that you did this on your blog, we have fumbled so much working on getting our blog off the ground this is refreshing.

  11. Pinch of Yum Logo

    I started blogging about 3 months ago and have had 500 sessions in the last 28 days. I usually post twice a week, but not always. Learned basics of SEO and keyword search, and also post my blogs on social media. Wondering if this is normal number, or if there is something else could be doing..thanks for any thoughts!

  12. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Thanks for sharing this information. I really like your blog post very much. You have really shared an informative and interesting blog post with people.