Greetings! Bjork here.
I’m the COO of Pinch of Yum. COO = Chief Overeating Officer.
Lest anyone be confused, in all reality I don’t really do much on Pinch of Yum other than these monthly income reports and the occasional line of HTML code. I also play the role of supporting Lindsay when she’s learning a new software. 🙂
Every month I put together a post outlining where we’re earning income from Pinch of Yum. Our hope is that you can learn from any successes or mistakes we have along the way, both of which I’ll be writing about today. But for now, the numbers:
The Breakdown:
Foodie Blogroll – $32.17
Amazon – $3.29
Bluehost Affiliate Program – $65.00
The Thesis Theme Affiliate Program– $28.71
VigLink – $67.93
Elegant Themes Affiliate Program – $19.50
Grand Total: $216.60
If you’re interested in reading a little bit about each source of income listed above you can check out December’s income report. I want to take the rest of the time to tell you about some things that are going well for Pinch of Yum and some things we’re looking to improve.
Things That Are Working Well
Pinterest is the new Facebook. Overstatement? Yes. But in terms of traffic to Pinch of Yum Pinterest sent ten times as many visitors in January then Facebook did.
What does this mean for you? It means you need to be sure to make your content is really easy to pin.
If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out this helpful Goodies page on Pinterest that outlines how you can add a Pin It button to your posts. I’d highly recommend it. As a last example of just how important it can be, I’ll jump onto Google Analytics right now and take a screen shot of the live analytics for referral sites.
I’ll be right back…
I’m back. 🙂 Here is the screen shot:
Of the 45 people that are on Pinch of Yum right now (right now = Thursday night at 6:40PM), 15 are visitors that came from Pinterest. Pretty incredible! Increased traffic from Pinterest could especially be helpful if you have an advertising relationship that is based on number of total website impressions. Speaking of traffic…
Mystery Power Readers – A Challenge for Awesome Content
Lindsay has been contacted a few times in the past couple months from people that I consider mystery power readers. People that are in the food publishing or photography business. The reality is, 99% percent of the time you won’t know who is reading your blog.
I love to think about all the different people that could have stopped by to check out Pinch of Yum without us ever knowing. Tim Tebow? Madonna? Charlie? Okay, probably not. My point is this: It doesn’t matter how many people are coming to your blog. It could be 50, 15, or 5. Keep putting out awesome content, because you never know who is coming to your blog. Tomorrow could be the day that a magazine editor, cook book publisher, or really-nice-person-that-loves-to-give-food-bloggers-diamond-rings visits your blog. Keep with it. If they haven’t already, opportunities will eventually come.
Things We’re Looking To Improve
Foodie Blogroll
We’re trying to figure out next steps with Foodie Blogroll. For those that aren’t familiar, Foodie Blogroll is an advertising partner for people with food blogs. At the time of this posting Foodie Blogroll is the one serving the ads in the top right corner of the blog. The total (estimated) income from Foodie Blogroll for January was $32.17. Total pageviews for January was just over 200,000. $32.17 just doesn’t quite seem to justify giving up such important website real estate. We haven’t decided what we’re going to do yet, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated if we decide to experiment with other advertising partners. Let us know if you have any suggestions!
As always, we appreciate you guys taking the time to read through our posts. We hope you’re able to take a little nugget away from the things we’re learning.
We love to hear from you guys, if you ever have any questions feel free to drop us an email.
P.S. We are donating this month’s affiliate and advertising income from Pinch of Yum to an orphanage in the Philippines called Children’s Shelter of Cebu. It’s an amazing organization that is changing lives. You should check it out!
P.S.S. Lindsay has parent teacher conferences tonight, so I’m off to Chipotle. The job of a Chief Overeating Officer never ends.
Bjork
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!
Conclusion = I now want Chipotle
Guess who had Chipotle AGAIN for lunch today? Not me.
Can you add the “LIKE” button to your page or does FB have that one all to itself? 🙂
What do you mean? There is a like button on the side. Or was that a joke and I just don’t get it?
I’m new to google analytics, and didn’t know that option was there to see who is viewing right at the current moment. Cool! Where on analytics can you check the total page views for the entire month? That does seem like a small amount of money for all of those hits. I always appreciate these breakdowns you do. Thanks!
Hey Emily! It’s under the “Home” tab in Google Analytics. Here is some more info on it from Google’s blog: https://analytics.googleblog.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-right-now.html
awesome! thanks 🙂
Thanks for doing such amazing work to support CSC!! We are so excited by this and very proud of both of you. It also means a lot to the CSC kids not only in our house and community – but those around the world and the kids who are still there in the Philippines.
Thanks Dad. Love you!
I always appreciate these break downs for one reason or another, this month it’s finding out about that real time overview on GA. Just checked mine out…this could be addicting. ha!
It’s so dorky but so addicting. Lol… sometimes we check it and just watch it for a few minutes. It’s kinda fun. 🙂
I love hearing how things are going for you and based on what you just showed with the pinterest and FG stats, I can almost guarantee you that you’d do better with FoodBuzz than FoodieBlogroll. Just your first 5 referrals, that’s almost 70k views right there, and you only made 32 bucks? No, not right…
My .02 only, but you may want to look into other options…
🙂
I know. We’re really going back and forth… I’ve been sent a contract from FoodBuzz so I know what they pay per 1,000 and we would do a lot better with them in that sense. That being said, we’re both a little gun shy about a 2 year exclusive contract, especially considering we do affiliate advertising and will eventually advertise for my ebook.
All that to say – we’re thinking about it and working on it! 🙂 Thanks for your 2 cents – it’s helpful to get feedback from other food bloggers!
Just wanted to say that I’m in the same boat as far as Foodie Blogroll. Looking forward to hearing about what decisions Pinch of Yum makes in that regard.
Thanks for the feedback Becky! We’ll be sure to keep you posted!
I have to say, I love these posts. First, I had no idea about that GA feature, I’ll definitely be using that. And second, I know exactly what you mean about Foodie Blogroll. I was never really happy with them, I thought I was until I switched to a different ad network and now I’m so much happier. That being said, January was a VERY slow month in terms of how much I made in relation to how many hits I had and I’ve read that that’s pretty normal. Even so far this month has been so much better. I was never offered anything even worth thinking about from Foodbuzz and especially not for 2 years so maybe look into some different networks? I know the ad network I’m with works a little differently than the standard X$ per cpm which I’m really liking actually, and I haven’t even done all I can to maximize what I’m making. Although I’m still such a newbie, I’m sure there are a ton of other options out there too. That’s why I like reading this posts 😀
Which ad network are you with now?
Oh my goodness. What is that cake on the bottom left?! I need that in my life.
I find these posts so interesting! I’ve tried to add a Pin It button with all kinds of different tutorials but never managed to do it. I’ll try again tomorrow! Thanks for the reminder. 🙂
It’s worth the effort! People love to pin. 🙂
I went through about a dozen tutorials today and the only one that worked for me (although I still have to fiddle with the placement of the code; it won’t go where I want it to) was on Kevin & Amanda – Add a “Pin It” Button to Your Posts. I hope you don’t mind me sharing that link. I just want to save other people some time. 🙂
Not at all! Thanks for sharing it!
I think you should make the profits green if they are positive and red if they are negative.
Anna
I love these monthly updates. I just recently redesigned my food blog (also running the thesis theme which I LOVE) and I’m looking into advertising options. Seems like a lot of people are unhappy with foodie blogroll. Hope there are some better alternatives out there!
Y’all are awesome! I am making one of your dishes (Green Thai Coconut Lentils, thankyouverymuch), and saw the “income” tab. HOW COOL of you to share how you’re doing this – I had no idea. Love love love.
Cheers,
Nikki (from Minneapolis!) 🙂
Thanks Nikki! Yay MPLS!
Hello, Lindsay and Bjork. I just opened my blog this July and so far, I am having fun doing it. I have a blog in blogger and private domain in wordpress but I do not like maintaining the one in wordpress because it is so complicated but my blogspot is so easy and really user friendly. Do you think there is moneymaking potential with blogspot? Because I really want to stay in it. Currently, the site I post in tastespotting and foodgawker is the wordpress one and for the google plus, pinterest and facebook is my blogspot…I need to decide which one because I do not want to divide my future traffic. Thank you.
Hey! I just want to know how much of an inspiration you have been to me the past few months. I magically stumbled upon your blog and have since started my own food blog a little over a month ago. I have a lot of work to do with it but am so excited about it all. Thanks for everything you have shared on your blog. It has truly helped me more than I can say!
really good work. you guys inspired me to redo my site. and i joined bluehost via you guys – i hope you made some money off that. 🙂
very informative, very good information. thank you for sharing.
Every Sunday on my To-Do-List is reading one of your Income Reports. Thank you, Bjork!
Thank you very much for this detailed article!