Heyya! Bjork here. I’m checking in for my monthly traffic and income report on Pinch of Yum. If you’re new to Pinch of Yum I wanted to fill you in on what these posts are all about.
Here’s the dealio – back in 2011 I read an article online that said it was practically impossible to make money with a food blog. I had trouble believing that. I asked Lindsay if I could experiment with Pinch of Yum to see if we could create an income from it. On September 5th, 2011 I published a post titled The Food Blog Money Making Experiment.
Total income? $21.97.
I was a little embarrassed to publish the post. I started to think that the article might have been right. Twenty dollars is technically an income, but it’s nothing to write home about (or write a blog post about). I questioned whether it would be worth it to move forward with publishing the posts, but Lindsay and I decided we’d stick with it even if we didn’t earn much. Our hope was that it might help people that were just getting started, even if it was telling people what wasn’t working well.
“We thought it would be fun and maybe even helpful if we gave everyone a sneak peek into the earnings coming from Pinch of Yum. The plan is to post total earnings once a month.”
the first ever post in the food blog money making experiment
As mentioned in that very first post, the plan was to publish an update every month. We’ve stuck with that plan, and every month since September 2011 I’ve published a behind-the-scenes Pinch of Yum post. This is post #23 in The Food Blog Money Making Experiment. Thus ends our short Pinch of Yum history lesson. 🙂
Let’s jump into the numbers.
Income
- BlogHer (now SheKnows) – $5,885.66
- Tasty Food Photography – $1,434.00
- Bluehost – $1,170
- Lijit – Federated Media – $664.26
- Amazon Affiliate Program – $288.94
- Thesis Theme – $223.74
- Elegant Themes – $186.50
- Freelancing Work – $150
- Google AdSense – $98.64
- Ziplist Recipe Box – $74.38
- Genesis Theme – $49.69
- CPM Only – $13.07
Total Income:: $10,238.88
Expenses
- Media Temple (Hosting) – $350
- Tasty Food Photography Affiliates – $299
- Food Expenses- $261.43
- Amazon S3 and Cloudfront – $202.54
- Accounting/Bookkeeping – $200
- Props/Utensils – $76.50
- PayPal Transaction Percentage – $75.01
- PayPal Website Payments Pro – $30
- Adobe Creative Cloud – $32.13
- VaultPress – $15
- E-Junkie – $15
- Rafflecopter – $9
Total Expenses:: $1,565.61
Net Profit: $8,673.27
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!
Thoughts On Income
Enjoyable, but not easy
One of the things that Lindsay and I want to make sure to communicate in these posts is that creating an income from a blog is not an easy thing. We both work hard on Pinch of Yum and put lots of time into it. We don’t want to create the illusion of quick success or pretend to know any secrets of blogging. Lindsay has put in over three years of daily work – cooking, baking, photographing, editing and writing. I’ve spent the past 4-5 years learning about web design, web development, online business, and the psychology of buying online. We both love doing it, but it’s been a long road of repeated daily effort.
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
Robert Collier
Income streams
Pinch of Yum creates income from three primary revenue streams: traditional advertising, affiliate marketing, and selling our own products. One thing that has become apparent over time is the fact that an increasing percentage of our revenue comes from traditional advertising.
Here’s what the percentages of those revenue streams look like in a pie chart:
The yellow section, which represents freelancing and creating your products, is the type of income that I believe holds the most potential for bloggers. This also happens to be the smallest percentage of the income that we create from Pinch of Yum. The largest section, traditional advertising, is the most volatile area and the one that we have the least control over. My hope is to even out the graph percentages by building up income that is created from selling our own products.
Here’s my challenge to you – this week, take the first step in picking yourself and creating something that you can sell (or give) to others. Maybe it’s writing a book, creating a cooking course online, hosting a live blog-talk event, or seeking out work as a freelancer for developing recipes. Whatever it is, take the first step this week, even if it’s small.
Remember…
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
Robert Collier
Traffic Breakdown
Below are some screenshots from Google Analytics. You can click on these screenshots to view a larger image.
Traffic Overview
Top Ten Traffic Sources
Browsers
Thoughts On Traffic
This month I included a screenshot of the different types of browsers that people are using when reading Pinch of Yum. See what’s in the #1 spot? Safari (in-app).
What does that mean? It means that people are reading the blog from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. It’s an important reminder to bloggers that the majority of their visitors are probably reading from a mobile device.
Food Blogger Pro Affiliate Program
The Food Blogger Pro affiliate program is one of our bigger updates from June, so I’ll give you a little bit of the back story on the whole thing.
No matter where you are as a blogger chances are that you get people that ask you for advice on certain things. Sometimes people ask simple questions that can be answered in an email, while other times people ask more complicated questions that require more thorough answers. Lindsay and I have found that quite a few of the questions we were trying to answer via email were things that required a lot of explaining. They were questions like…
- How do I setup my WordPress blog?
- How do I get traffic to my blog?
- How can I create an income?
This gave us the idea to create Food Blogger Pro as a place to point people when their questions required more than a simple answer. After launching the site on February 1st we received some great feedback from people that were using the videos and tutorials. We even noticed a few bloggers like Jad, Emily, Min, and Lori linking to Food Blogger Pro as a resource for their readers. We wanted to figure out a way to provide a benefit to the bloggers that linked to Food Blogger Pro, so in June we launched the Food Blogger Pro affiliate program. I’m really excited about it. Here’s why:
The affiliate program is setup to allow other bloggers to essentially have their own little membership site. This is because the FBP affiliate program is a recurring payment program. This means that as long as the person you referred to FBP is a member then you’ll get a percentage (20%) of the membership payment. We’re really happy to be able to offer this to other bloggers and are really thankful for the bloggers that have already signed up to be a part of it.
Simplified Sales Page
This month I also made a small but important change to the Tasty Food Photography sales page by removing the footer.
Here’s what the bottom of the page looked like before:
And here’s what it looks like now:
Although it’s a small change I think it’ll have a big impact on the conversation rate, as the last thing on the page that people now see is the Add to Cart button. It’s incredible the impact that such a seemingly small change can have on the way that people interact with a page.
If you have any pages on your blog that are selling a product I’d encourage you to simplify the page by removing the sidebar and footer. Be careful about removing the header navigation though, as this will negatively impact your page’s SEO.
Thanks
Those are the updates we have from Pinch of Yum for the month of June, in addition to moving back to the country and trying to get settled back in without going crazy. 🙂 Thanks as always for checking in on this thing we started two years ago called the Food Blog Money Making Experiment.
I used to be suggested this web site via my cousin. I am not certain whether this
post is written through him as no one else realize such specific about my
problem. You’re incredible! Thanks!
I’m right behind you Lindsay and Bjork and achieving near future status of “side hustle millionaire.” Just wanted to leave a quick comment to say thank you for having me here on your beautiful food blog and being a part of your beautiful online community. It’s a pleasure and an honor to be a part of your success and connecting with you. I hope to work with you possibly in the future, and “I don’t mind you giving Drewry news network a shout out on your future food blogs.” (smile)!
Thanks again and much love. 🙂
Good to know blogging is here to stay and so is affiliate marketing.
Having read this I believed it was really informative.
I appreciate you spending some time and energy to put this article together.
I once again find myself personally spending a lot of time both
reading and commenting. But so what, it was still worthwhile!
Hi, loving your posts and am reading them all again!
My question is why removing yiur header on sales pages negatively impacts the SEO?
Most sales pages now are standalone on a site, so I’d love to know reasons why yours have header there still, thanks!
I will pass your question along to Lindsay and Bjork!
I would love it if you moved away from traditional advertising! I’m not sure how many people have mentioned it but the video ads are not so great. They slow down everything while they’re loading and playing making me hesitant to stick around on your site :/
*sigh* I know. We are working on it and planning on dropping the ad network if it’s not resolved very very soon. Sorry for the annoyance – they are driving me nuts too!
That is amazing how much pinterest traffic you have got!
Wow! These posts are so, so fun to read! Thanks for doing them.
I find it interesting that that you took the footer off of your page and found an increase in sales.
1. How did you know to try that?
2. Any idea why that would increase sales?
I guess I should’ve gone into marketing because to me, understanding things like this is very interesting.
Thanks so much for sharing this! I’ve been blogging for about a year now but just started to try to monetize last month. Trying to decide what programs to use and learning about affiliate marketing, publisher networks…it can be overwhelming! It’s so, so helpful to see what is actually working for other bloggers! Can I ask what your daily traffic is to bring in this much?
Best,
Caitlin
You bet! Right now it averages between 10,000-20,000 visits, with peak days around 30,000. The analytics screenshots show the exact numbers for the month.
Let us know if you have any questions as you start to figure out ways to monetize, Caitlin.
Thanks for another great income report. I agree with you – building your own products and freelancing is the more secure way of building income. I’ve played with advertising- it’s a lot of work! I’ve decided to go with products and affiliates as my long term plan. I think it will take longer to grow (income wise) at the beginning but pay off more in the long run. You guys are great- thanks for all you do for this food blogging community.
Agreed! Creating your own product is more work in the short run, but in the long run it’s a huge asset because you’ve created something that you no longer need to work on (or at least not as much).
Thanks Melissa!
Love this post and the idea to make the money buy selling your own product etc. I am so not into the traditional advertising from the big networks. I have had not had enough time to work on my blog since I picked up a contracting gig but am going to jump back in and get it going again. Thank you for the great affiliate stuff, going to check them out. I am up in Isanti 🙂
Thanks for the kind words April.
Sweet! We both grew up in Cambridge. Small world!
I’m always so thankful for you guys and impressed with who you share openly. It is a blessing to so many of us! Aloha!
Thanks Monica!
I think this is great Bjork–I just have one question. I know you are a member of BlogHer–and I see that it generates a significant amount of income for you, but can you tell me how that happens and what the benefit of joining BlogHer really is? That site is confusing to me. I know many of the best bloggers are members and I’m certainly interested, but I just don’t really get what the trade off is. Can you explain it? Thanks.
Great question Rachel. There are many different branches of BlogHer, but we earn income from what BlogHer calls their Publishing Network. Here’s more info on it – https://www.blogher.com/publishing-network/welcome
Thanks Bjork. One more thing…I see that it says WordPress does not allow advertising. What platform do you use for your site? I’m in WordPress now and I think my blog has lots of growing to do before I’m ready for BlogHer, but I’m curious if I should be considering moving to a different platform later. What do you think about that?
Great question Rachel. That’s for WordPress.COM. You’ll want to use the open source version of WordPress, WordPress.ORG. There’s more info about it here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/self-hosted-wordpress-org-vs-free-wordpress-com-infograph/
I realized that after I commented. I’m in good shape–I use the open source version. 🙂 There’s so much to learn! Thanks for your help!
Thank you for this! I’m not a blogger at all but I find this so interesting. And I always think how bloggers share so much about their lives and even make vague references to their financial situation but never give any info on how much money they actually make from their blog which I’m sure we are all curious about!
Thanks for checking it out Amy. I’m with you – I’m a fan of concrete numbers and data. 🙂
For your Blogher income.. is it only ad based or also sponsored posts?
Good question – this month it included a sponsored post, but that’s the first time I’ve done a sponsored BlogHer post so all the other income reports are strictly ads or editorial content units.
Hi! I found your blog through a random Pin, and am so glad i did! I have a DIY home design blog, and am LOVING your monthly updates. Super encouraging to see where you started from, to where you are now. I am wondering some specifics. I use BlogHer as well, and love it. I got kicked off GoogleAds {for NO known reason, and you cannot contact anyone, its super frustrating} but I just have to move on from it, since there seems to be nothing I can do to fix it and get them back. I currently am not running any backfill ads from my BlogHer. I was using Media.net because I heard it was comparable to GoogleAds, but their payout was terrible. I am curious about Lijit. Is BlogHer on board with us using them? And do you use them as your backfill ads, or do you have other specific spots for them as well? I would love any and all advice and tips from you guys. You are both incredible! Thank you so much for your time and expertise.
Adri
Dream Book Design
Hi guys. I know you are so busy, but any way you could get back to me with some answers? I just want to make sure signing up with Lijit is a good idea/ok with BlogHer before I do. Thanks again!
Hey Adri. Isn’t that so frustrating with AdSense? I’ve heard countless stories of people getting cut off completely from AdSense without any explanation.
You’ll want to follow up with BlogHer on that to get approval, which you can do when you sign into your BlogHer account. We don’t use Lijit for backfill (we use our own in-house ads for Tasty Food Photography and Food Blogger Pro for the 160×600 ads). We use CPM Only for backfill on the below-the-post comment box and Lijit in the sidebar.
Lindsay & Bjork,
Thank you for sharing all this great content. I really appreciate the transparency and “how to” advice. My wife and I recently started a food blog focused on gluten free and other allergen free recipes, food, and lifestyle advice. We’ve got a very similar division of labor as you two. I’ll be signing us up for Food Blogger Pro soon. It sounds like a perfect fit.
Thanks again,
Jeremy Scheerer
That’s awesome. Thanks Jeremy!
Upon reading about it in your income report, I decided to give Lijit a try. What kind of CPM do you find you are getting? I have only had it running for a couple days, so it’s pretty early on. So far it seems like it be worth keeping around, although it’s not on pace with my other ad sources.
Hey – great info. You guys are knocking it out of the park. Curious if you’re seeing any changes in traffic or anything like that since you are back in the States.
Thanks Steve. Good question! Traffic in July has gone up, not I’m not sure if that’s related to being back in the states or not.
Hello Bjork and Lindsay! I have a quesiton I’m hoping you can touch on either here in the comments or in a future income report. I have been studying and educating myself on what it takes to actually make some income blogging. I’m wondering about sponsored give-aways, product partnerships, and freelance work. I see so many food blogs that are using a certain brand in a recipe because they were given the product or sponsored to. Maybe it’s a sponsored give away or they write a recipe for that company. Do you know if this sort of thing is sought out by the blogger or do the companies contact you? How do these companies even have some of these food blogs on their radar? Thank you, teachers!
It really depends. When you’re first starting out you’ll probably need to all of the contacting yourself. As your blog grows you’ll probably start to get contacted from companies that want to offer you free samples or products. Sometimes they’ll ask you to do a post about their product and other times it’ll just be sending a free sample without an ask for anything in exchange. As your blog grows you’ll start to have brands contact you about doing paid for posts or sponsorships, but this type of sponsored content takes awhile.
At this point, Pinch of Yum mostly gets inquires from companies about sending free product for us to try out, but we’re just starting to tip into the world of (decent) paying sponsorships.
Thank you, thank you!
The info you guys offer up on these posts is so inspiring! We just started our blog, and we’re trying to get our footing with the whole thing; poy is a definite source of motivation 🙂
Good for you for starting Angie. The first year of blogging is often times the hardest. Let us know if you have any questions.
Your transparency is refreshing!
Thanks for sharing your tips. It is really useful to start my foodblog!
This is the first time I’ve ever been to your blog and am very excited to have found it. The recipes look great, yes, but I also really appreciate that you talk about the functional aspects of blogging. I enjoy writing and taking pictures but none other of the business side of things, so I am always wondering how the making money part of blogs even works. I like that you’re just frank about it all. Very nice and informative! And, as others have said, great that you clearly say all this takes work. Outward appearances can be deceiving.
Thanks for stopping by Jill. Happy to hear that you’re happy you found it. 🙂
“Outward appearances can be deceiving.” So true!
This is incredible! I dream of making a full time income and someday having a cookbook/decorating book for year round holidays and this blog is totally inspiring to me. I have a feeling I will be spending a long time on your site, reading all of your information. Thanks for sharing it with other bloggers.
Thanks Jenna. Let us know if you have any questions as you look around.