Hi there friends. Bjork here, checking in for my monthly traffic and income report.
Every month I put together a report that includes a behind-the-scenes look at Pinch of Yum. I focus on two things (1) the income and expenses and (2) the traffic. I also include any tips or tricks that we’re learning as we continue to find ways to grow the blog. Our hope with these reports is that they provide insight and inspiration as you start and grow your own blog (or business or non-profit).
Before I jump into the numbers I wanted to share a video Lindsay and I watched last night. It’s from a YouTuber named Devin Graham. Devin creates breathtaking videos that usually involve extreme sports and locations. Some examples are World’s Largest Rope Swing, Trike Drifting, and World’s Most Insane Rope Swing Ever.
His videos project a carefree, relaxed, party-with-your-beautiful-friends kind of vibe. The “good life,” right? Well, yes and no…
Good life? Yes. Carefree, relaxed, party-with-your-beautiful-friends? Not so much. Check out his recent behind the scenes video called Fighting for your passion – Inside Look at what I do for a living to get a little glimpse into the insane amount of time and work that goes into each one of his videos.
As you can see, the good life that Devin refers to is the focus, get up early, work-incredibly-hard-at-something-you-love “good life.” Or, as he says it:
“It’s a crazy amount of work. I absolutely love it…I’ll keep on doing it ’til the day I die, but the things I do, and the reason why I’m able to do it, is because no one else is willing to do it.”
Devin Graham
I love that last part: the reason why I’m able to do it…is because no one else is willing to do it. The video does an incredible job of painting a realistic picture of what it takes to build a business around your passion. Kudos Devin, and thanks for the inspiring video!
Let’s take a look at the numbers for September.
Income
- BlogHer (now SheKnows) – $7,347.75
- Lijit – Federated Media – $1,849.33
- Tasty Food Photography – $1,794.00
- Bluehost – $1,690
- The Creamy Cauliflower Sauce eCookbook – $588.60
- Swoop (BlogHer) – $586.20
- Genesis Theme – $300.74
- Ziplist Recipe Box – $223.01
- Elegant Themes – $220.00
- Food Blogger Pro – $130.00
- Thesis Theme – $82.83
- Google AdSense – $74.15
- CPM Only – $32.89
Total Income:: $14,919.50
Expenses
- Media Temple (Hosting) – $749.99
- Amazon S3 and Cloudfront – $356.86
- Travel Expenses – $308.50
- Support Staff – $301.42
- eBook Affiliates – $277.00
- PayPal Transaction Percentage – $177.63
- Food Expenses- $153.82
- Adobe Creative Cloud – $53.55
- PayPal Website Payments Pro – $30.00
- QuickBooks – $26.95
- Props/Utensils – $15.77
- VaultPress – $15.00
- E-Junkie – $15.00
- Time Doctor – $9.99
- Rafflecopter – $9.00
Total Expenses: $2,500.48
Net Profit: $12,419.02
If you’re interested in learning more about the kind of content on Food Blogger Pro, we encourage you to download this free ebook, “16 Ways to Monetize Your Food Blog.”
Thoughts On Income
Embedded Recipe Ads
September was the first month that we had embedded recipe ads in our posts. These are listed as “Swoop (BlogHer)” in the numbers above. The total income from the in-recipe ads was $588.60. It’s a little less than I had hoped for considering the fact that the ads are pretty invasive for the reader. The program is still in beta, so we’ll let these ads run a couple more months to see how things play out.
Time Doctor
In last month’s post I talked briefly about some friends that have joined on with Pinch of Yum to help out with things like Pinterest, submitting food photos to food sharing sites, and searching other websites for images that have been stolen from Pinch of Yum (and not properly credited). We’re using a software called Time Doctor to easily track and submit time worked. This way they can work when and where they want but still easily communicate back to us how much time they’ve worked.
Food Blogger Pro
Food Blogger Pro continues to chug along. It’s been really fun to walk alongside food bloggers that are starting up (or polishing up) their blogs. We’re currently working through a series called 6 Essential Plugins for Food Blogs.
We’ve been intentional not to include the income from FBP on our monthly reports because we want these reports to focus on income that comes directly from Pinch of Yum. For those that are curious, FBP averages about $2,500 in revenue per month. A lot of that will eventually go back into the website as we continue to look for ways to build tools and resources for the members.
Traffic
Below are some screenshots from Google Analytics. You can click on these screenshots to view a larger image.
Traffic Overview
Top Ten Traffic Sources
Revenue Streams as Percentages
Thoughts On Traffic
Elizabeth left a great comment about Pinterest on last month’s income report.
Here’s the part I wanted to address:
“Are you at all worried that so much of your traffic comes from Pinterest?”
A little over 40% of the people that visit Pinch of Yum are coming from Pinterest. That’s a really big slice of our traffic pie, and it’s scary to think about what would happen if, for whatever reason, that traffic vanished.
So, yeah, it does indeed worry me a bit. :/
Much like streams of income, it’s good to diversify your streams of traffic. This is something that’s on our radar, and we’re going to be focusing on building out some of Pinch of Yum’s other social media profiles, starting with Facebook. I’ll be talking more about specifics of how we’re doing this in next month’s report.
What Am I Doing Wrong?
Lindsay and I occasionally get emails from bloggers asking if we have any advice for ways that they can grow their blog. The emails usually end with some type of “What Am I Doing Wrong?” question.
Oftentimes the answer to that question is pretty simple: nothing.
It’s just that they haven’t been doing what they’re doing for long enough. So how long do you need to work before becoming successful? Until you get lucky.
Luck Is Half Luck and Half Hard Work.
We’ve gotten lucky with Pinch of Yum.
Several times, actually.
For instance, on March 8th, 2012 Jane Wang pinned a photo of Lindsay’s Healthy Sweet Potato Skins recipe. Whose Jane Wang? She’s the mother of the co-founder of Pinterest. At the time she was one of the most-followed Pinterest users. That pin was the primary factor in the post gaining almost 200,000 total pins.
Pretty lucky, huh? No sarcasm there. Genuine luck.
Devin Graham has also gotten lucky. His videos were picked up by huge sites like Mashable, CNN, and The Huffington Post, resulting in millions of additional views.
So why do some people get lucky while others do not?
One reason might be content. Newer bloggers’ pictures, videos, and written content are probably not as developed as people who have been doing it longer. Lindsay looks back at her early posts and laughs/cringes – her pictures, recipes and writing have all improved so much simply because of the amount of time she’s spent doing all three of those things. So keep at it. Read books, ask questions, enjoy the process of doing something you love simply for the joy of doing it.
The second, and more common, reason is that luck just hasn’t taken notice yet. And a big part of luck is putting on your overalls and work boots and giving 100% day after day. So keep putting on those work boots and feel good about doing something you’re passionate about. Luck will notice you soon enough. And once luck sees you it’s much easier to get noticed again.
Thanks
I can’t say it enough: Thanks! Without you this little slice of the web we call Pinch of Yum wouldn’t exist. We really appreciate you stopping by and joining in with what we’re doing here.
Until next time!
It’s a great inspiration to see monthly revenue reports. Nothing is free in this world except some coupons. Looking for free coupons for pet supplies, travel, beauty and other estores? Look no further than couponvps.com
I don’t even know the way I ended up here, but I assumed this
submit was once good. I don’t understand who you might be however definitely you’re going to a well-known blogger in the event you are
not already. Cheers!
I think that what you saod made a great deal oof
sense. However, what about this? supose you wrote a catchier post title?
I ain’t saying yur content is not good, however what if you added a post title that grabbed
folk’s attention? I mesn September Traffic and Income Report – $12,419.02 – Pinch of Yum is
kinda vanilla. You could glance at Yahoo’s home page and watch howw thy create ost headlines to get viewers interested.
You might try adding a video or a pic or two to get readers exfited about what you’ve written. In my opinion,
iit might bring your blog a little livelier.
you’re gorgeous.
I always enjoy your income reports. keep up the good work
Hello there, just became alert to your blog through Google, and found
that it is truly informative. I am going to watch out for
brussels. I’ll appreciate if you continue this in future.
Numerous people will be benefited from your writing.
Cheers!
Hi there, merely wanted to say, I enjoyed this blog post. This became practical. Keep going publishing!
I’m curious…and I understand if you’d rather not answer this… but you do seem very willing to share! Just wondering what % of your monthly traffic is from bloggers (and others) reading these income reports? Also – I receive your emails and read them faithfully, but because you put the entire post in the email, I usually don’t click through to your blog. Do you worry that you are losing out on page views by including the full post in your emails? Thanks! Marty B.
Hello! I am Juanma, an artist an begginer blogger from Spain. I have discovered your site very recently, and it is for me an example to follow! Very very congratulations for your success! Nice to meet you!
Quick question – I recently became a BlogHer publisher, and I emailed to ask them who their disallowed competitive providers are (because this was alluded to in the BlogHer Member Guide, but not actually listed in the contract). They told me that BlogHer publishers are banned from also publishing ads from Martha Stewart, FM and Glam.
Since Lijit is owned by FM, how do you guys run both that and BlogHer?
Congrats on all the success! I was curious if you had any advice on Blogher. I recently signed up after being on the waiting list for a few months. My website has similar pageviews numbers but I am seeing much less revenue. Any advice on how to maximize earrings? Y’all really seemed to have figured hat out 🙂
Hi Lindsay, you are the inspiration for me! This blog gives me lots of ideas!
Oh and I want to ask about Bluehost. I didn’t see the Bluehost ads in this website, or did I miss something?
Hi Lindsay and Bjork! I have been following your blog for a while now and have yet to comment. I enjoy your recipes, and your information on how to start a blog. Because of your willingness to share about your successes/failures I built up the courage to start a blog. It’s only been a couple of months now but, I really do enjoy blogging and sharing my passion. I just wanted to stop by and thank you for helping me get on my feet. My blog is not perfect yet but, I know it will take time…and luck!
Congratulations Jodie! I’m going to go check it out right now. 🙂 Take care!
Congrats on the BIG monthly earnings!
One question – what do you use to “fancy up” the images? There’s like a shadow border on each image and I’m guessing that’s a Photoshop action plugin? Can you please share?
Thanks and continued success!
Hi Pat! Not sure which you’re talking about but I’ll answer both. I use a Photoshop action on my food photos that includes a vignette and a center light (not always but sometimes). We also use Keynote or Pages (Mac softwares) to create that popping-off-the-page look for images like the ones in these posts. There is a tool in the Inspector of either of those programs that enables you to add a frame like that to your images.
This is seriously such a fantastic post!! Thank you so very much for sharing your knowledge and the breakdown of your income, it is incredibly helpful for a smaller blog to see what you use to grow and expand.
I’m THRILLED that I found this!!!
P.S. I did the switch from wordpress.com to wordpress.org and wrote a little blurb about it, if you’re curious: http://goodnotperfect.com/indexpg/learning-blog/
thanks Laura!
thanks for sharing this.. I’m begining to develop my food blog and I hope I’ll get lucky with it!
I did have a very basic question that I haven’t found a good response to – so if I may ask it here. Does having your own domain (vs a blogspot or wordpress blog) make a big difference in earnings? I am tempted to register my own domain and move over but I want to make a meaningful switch.
The biggest thing is that it is very hard to monetize on wordpress. You cannot do skimlinks, blogher, or any ads on wordpress.com sites – they put their own ads on your sites instead! You could do sponsored posts or sell a product, but very hard to get income!
This is a really incredible thing you have going here, and it really inspires me to start blogging and/or affiliate marketing. To be able to follow your passion and earn such a healthy income at the same time is truly amazing!
This article is absolutely incredible! Although I have a WordPress.com site and have been using the blog as a showcase of what I could do – write/cook/click etc, the increase in the amount of traffic has really led me to think of the next step – should I or should I not monetise my blog? What I really like about your post is that you have analysed and shared your income in a manner that will not only help other bloggers but also inspire them to choose it as a profession that could generate a lot of money.
Thanks very much for sharing:)
Greetings, Lindsay and Bjork! 🙂
First of all, many thanks for those very helpful posts. It’s so awesome to read those.
I find them very helpful, and even if I work in a very different industry.
Got a question for you thought:
Why don’t you use Clickbank?
I’m not trying to sell anything here… It’s just that I’m with clickbank right now and honestly I’m not sure if I’ll stay with them. Can I have your advice on this?
Do you feel you’re missing anything by not working with them?
Your reply will be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Maxence
Thank you so much for posting this income statement! I’m a new food blogger just getting started. I’ve been exploring your site and have really enjoyed your articles (like this one) and the ones on food photography. Thank you for all your hard work! Newbies like me REALLY appreciate it!
Thanks Kelli. Glad to hear the posts have been helpful. 🙂
Just want to say thank you, once again for this monthly update. It is so interesting and helpful. Loved your thoughts at the end as well. Bless you for your honest, real, updates.
Aloha,
Thanks for the comment Monica!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this inspiring and encouraging post, Bjork!
I like it.
Hi Bjork and Lindsay.
I have a question about food blogger pro.
Are you using a membership plugin like premise or otherwise to set something like that up? If so..does FBP have any member tutorials once inside about how to set something like that up?…I guess that was 2 questions:)
We’re using a different CMS called Expression Engine – along with some custom add ons. We don’t have any tutorials in FBP on creating a membership site. Great idea though!
I truly want to thank you for this valuable resource. I found your website via pinterest (apparently like a lot of others according to your analytics!) and fell in love with the yummy looking food. Then I saw the Income tab and in my head said “there is no way…”
I’m in the process of setting up my own lifestyle blog, and I found your monthly reports and encouragement to other bloggers to be admirable. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a blogger reveal “trade secrets” with no ulterior motives, and no immediate form of payment. I hope that this blog karma comes back to you ten fold!
I look forward to reading more recipes, and reports.
Thank you again.
Good Comment! Thank You
Thanks Tori! We always like hearing from people that find it helpful and encouraging!