Hiya! Bjork here. I’m checking in for my monthly income and traffic report. If this is your first time reading one of the reports I want to give you a quick overview of what these posts are all about.
In August of 2011, Lindsay and I decided to start “The Food Blog Money Making Experiment.” We made a total of $21.97 that first month. Every month since then we’ve put together a post detailing the things we’re doing to increase Pinch of Yum’s traffic and income.
So, without further adieu, here’s our 18th income report.
The Income Breakdown:
- Tasty Food Photography – $1,663.25
- Bluehost – $1,560
- Google AdSense – $867.13
- BlogHer – $754.40
- Thesis Theme – $636.99
- Elegant Themes – $175.50
- Amazon – $29.63
Grand Total: $5,686.90
Income As Percentages
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!
The Traffic Breakdown
Thoughts On Income and Traffic
This is the most we’ve ever made from Pinch of Yum. It’s also the most traffic we’ve ever seen in a month. But I noticed something interesting when comparing December’s income report to this month’s income report.
Even though pageviews increased by over 200,000 from December to January, earnings from BlogHer and AdSense decreased! So how did Pinch of Yum manage to have its most profitable month ever when earnings from our two major advertisers decreased? Through affiliate sales (primarily from the How to Start a Food Blog page) and the product that Lindsay created (Tasty Food Photography).
It’s a great example of why you need to have multiple streams of income on your blog. To put it simply, if you’re interested in creating an income as a food blogger you need to (1) implement affiliate marketing throughout your blog and (2) create your own product that you can sell. BlogHer and AdSense are awesome companies, but the reality is there will be times when BlogHer and AdSense don’t have high paying advertisers, which means you’ll have lower income.
Tips and Takeaways
An Email List, Finally
I’ve been wanting to put together an email drip campaign for Pinch of Yum for the past year or so but wasn’t able to do it until after the launch of Food Blogger Pro.
With an email drip campaign, you create your emails ahead of time and then when someone signs up for the list the emails “drip” into the person’s inbox at certain intervals that you set. The purpose is to build a list of subscribers and then deliver targeted, useful content to them. For Pinch of Yum, the significance of this list is less about selling something and more about maintaining contact and building trust.
I decided to use AWeber to build our list. The process isn’t too complicated, but it takes an hour or two to get things setup and tweaked. This doesn’t include the time it takes to create the content that you’ll be sending people. We started by creating 10 different emails with quick tips for food bloggers. Here’s a sneak peek at what content is covered:
A/B Testing
For the first time ever we ran an A/B test on the Tasty Food Photography sales page.
An A/B test is when you create two different pages and then see which one leads to more conversations. In our case, we used Google Analytics to test two different pages to see which one resulted in more sales of Tasty Food Photography.
Here’s the original version: https://pinchofyum.com/tasty-food-photography
Here’s the test version: https://pinchofyum.com/tasty-food-photography
The results were really fascinating:
The original version had a 2.93% conversation rate, while the test version had a .80% conversation rate. Whoa! That’s a huge difference. If used the test version instead of the original version this month we would have only earned around $500 from Tasty Food Photography!
The best thing about A/B testing is that you can continually improve the sales pages on your blog. The pattern looks something like this: Adjust, test, implement. Adjust, test, implement…
Here’s a video from Google that explains how content experiments work:
If you have something that you’re selling on your blog I’d encourage you to setup an A/B test using Google Analytics. This will get you started on the path to improving your conversation rate. Just a quarter of a percentage can have a big impact in the long run.
Thanks
Lindsay and I are both extremely thankful that you take the time to visit the blog and read the content that we create. More than anything we are constantly amazed at the kind, generous, and thoughtful people that we get to interact with on a daily basis through this little corner of the internet.
Income reports keeps “side hustle millionaire” minded entrepreneurs inspired to achieve more than “side hustle millionaire status.” By reading about the humble beginnings and monthly income reports from reputable bloggers such as yourself, who in their right mind wouldn’t want to take “blogging and side hustling” seriously to the point of wanting to be a future [side hustle millionaire]? 🙂
Thanks for keeping everyone motivated! 🙂
Thanks for sharing all of your tips along the way! You inspired me to get started blogging. Thanks, Lindsay, for helping me out a little when I was trying to get started!
Yay! I’m so excited that you are up and running with your blog Karen. 🙂
Thanks for putting these together each month! I am going back and reading through some of the old ones, and learning so much!
Yet another great income report!
Just writing my January round up to be published later, good work!
Hi!
It would be really helpful if you could also tell us how you manage to increase your pageviews? Besides having good content, what else can we do to increase traffic to our blogs?
Thanks a lot!
You need to know which media networks to buy into.
I love these reports! I’m learning things I never know otherwise….I feel so clueless. Now to start implementing changes:)
Congratulations on so much success!
Bjork & Lindsay,
I want to say thank you for your openness and enthusiasm. Your success has inspired me! I’ve signed up for the newsletter so I can get all the bits of advice you have to share.
Congrats! All the Best! Keep it Up!
Noel
This is very interesting. I also had a drop in my advertising income and I do have a list but it’s a free one and I haven’t got around to putting any newsletters together just yet. I’ve just signed up for yours though, it looks great.
I loved the info on your A/B testing. What was it about the original page that you think encouraged a higher return?
Thanks for sharing, always an interesting post.
Lori
Whoneedsacape.com
Not Your Average Super Moms!
You are SO awesome for putting together these reports. Definitely puts things in perspective and makes me realize where I’m lacking and how I can improve. Not many bloggers would put it all out there like this, so I so appreciate it!! And you must be so proud of yourselves 🙂
hey guys i just got this blog post in my inbox, and i am so happy for you guys, and to see you launched the food blooger pro! you guys are the nicest bloggers i met online!,Lindsey thank you for answering my email a while back about food blogging, its my dream to start one, and onces things go well i will totally signed into your program and buy all the stuff i need from your resource page, i wish you more success in life!
love you both
rima
You guys are great. Thanks for sharing. I showed your blog to a friend. He was in awe.
Bjork, I finally got brave enough to publish. I am pretty self conscience about my photography, but my friend said the same thing you said, so I jumped. Thanks.
Great job this month! I also use aweber for my email list and love it. I enjoy having the emails scheduled out for my subscribers – it’s a great way to engage with my readers and build a list as well. Thank you for sharing this information every month. I look forward to it and really feel inspired by it.
Remarkable. 🙂
Hi Guys,
Love your blog 🙂
Just wondering how many post you have in total now?
Thanks for sharing.
Jen
Hi Jen! A total of 350 posts. 🙂
Wow congratulations guys that’s fantastic! I look forward to these posts each month and love the tips you give. Thanks!
Bravo! Well done! 🙂
Bjork & Lindsay – thank you again for another fabulous post on blog income! You two are both such an incredible resource for the food blog community and I am loving being part of your Food Blogger Pro program! I have a question regarding the “More from Pinch of Yum” section at the bottom of your posts. I’ve looked at adding some sort of widget (like LinkWithin or nrelate) for related content at the bottom of my posts. Do you use a widget or is this coding within your template? Thank you so much!