Welcome to the inner workings of Pinch of Yum.
Before we begin, let me introduce myself – my name is Bjork. I am proud to say I am the primary eater on the Pinch of Yum team.
A few months ago, Lindsay and I talked about experimenting with turning some of the Pinch of Yum traffic into dollars. I thought we could use the extra money to buy cool things like vintage beanie babies with perfect tags or really cool retro yin-yang pogs and slammers. Lindsay, being the centered and kind soul she is, thought the money would be better spent elsewhere. I agreed.
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 total for month #1 in the “Food Blog Money Making Experiment”? $21.97.
The only stream of income in August came from Foodie Blogroll. Here’s a closer look.
Foodie Blogroll
August was the first full month of having an ad service on Pinch of Yum. So what did we think of Foodie Blogroll as an ad service?
The Good:
- Set it and forget it – It’s great to be able to drop in some HTML code and then forget about it. Your blog almost immediately starts generating an income without having to make any other changes.
- No contract – You can sign up to earn revenue without locking yourself into a monthly or yearly contract.
The Bad:
- Low CPM – With about 50,000 impressions in August, Pinch of Yum earned about $20.00. That boils down to $.40 (that’s 40 cents) per 1,000 impressions. This was a bit disappointing considering Foodie Blogroll advertises $4.00 per 1,000 impressions. But since there is no contract when you sign up, there is no way to be completely sure of how much you will be paid.
- Loss of design/branding decisions– It’s a little bit of a bummer to not have any control of the ads that are shown. It’s not that big of a deal when it’s a similar genre to Pinch of Yum, like this Activia ad.
However, sometimes the ads will be a bit different then the usual content one might find on Pinch of Yum. For instance, this Spanish ad for a Nissan Optima.
So what can $21.97 buy? For starters, it can by three pairs of these:
More importantly, (and more seriously) it is almost enough to be a foster friend to a child without a family in the Philippines.
Thanks for taking a peek at the inner workings of Pinch of Yum. We’re excited to learn more about creating an income from a food blog. Every month we’ll check back in and share what we’ve learned, and in the meantime, please let us know if there is any information (traffic, specific analytics, additional resources) we can share that would be helpful or interesting for you to know. For now, please accept our invitation to join us in this venture!
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!
Hey, $21.97 will buy a lot of hotdogs for the bar!! 🙂
hahaha! Yes!
We’ve been talking a lot lately about how to turn our blog into some kind of money maker as well. Thanks for this post. I will send it along to my husband so that we can set expectations accordingly. 🙂 I guess we just need to be discovered by Oprah or something, eh? 🙂
Exactly! 🙂
Very cool idea, guys. 🙂 I like it lots.
Thanks Krissy.
What a great post! Hilarious and informative. I just barely signed up for the same ad service after pressure from my husband. (“Honey, why don’t you put ads on there if you’re going to ignore me and spend all that time taking pictures of food?”) I set my expectations pretty low, so it’s good to see what kind of actual return they give. I like the idea of no contract, so that’s why I went with them instead of Foodbuzz. It would be interesting to see the same kind of numbers from someone with foodbuzz, but I think non-disclosure is part of their contract so they probably can’t share.
Hey Nicole! Thanks for the comment – I’m going to respond to your email in more detail later tonight. 🙂
You two are pretty amazing. Thanks for using your creative juices to help orphans. Good work!
Very interesting! I always wonder about the payoff for adding ads onto your blog and everything.
Now you know! 🙂 Well, sort of. I’m just a beginner so hopefully I can shed more light on it as I get further down the road.
I came tonight in search of a delicious dessert recipe…goodbye allrecipes.com and hello amazing Team Lindsay and Bjork! Seeing that Bjork posted awhile back, of course I had to click and read…
All I have to say, is that I have decided that I adore you both. Great blog, keep it up!
You are too sweet! I have to say, though, don’t give up on allrecipes. I have found some darn good cookie recipes on there! 🙂
Bjork, thanks for posting your thoughts on the Foodieblogroll program. I have been a publisher with them for about a month. My blog is young (11/11 launch) so I do not have the kind of traffic your blog generates. Since being a publisher with Foodieblogroll I have earned a whopping .24. I still do not understand what “impressions” mean.
Great blog, keep up the good work.
Sincerely,
Jay
Wisconsin U.S.
Hey Jay! Thanks for saying hi and congrats on starting up your blog. I just dropped by and checked it out. It looks greats! An impression is anytime an advertisement loads onto a visitor’s screen.
I absolutely love what you guys are doing. I started smartcookingoodlookin just over a month ago with the ultimate goal of writing my own cookbook someday…(hopefully someday not too far away!) If you have any other advice or tips for me please let me know!!
xox
Kristen Smart
https://smartcookingoodlookin.wordpress.com/
Nice resource, I’m sure things have changed slightly since then, but I can say there are other networks out there including the one I use for my Cocktail blog. It offers decent cpm rates and I have slightly less impressions then you had at the time of this experiment. Good Luck, and stop on by for a drink sometime.
Thanks for this, it’s really helpful for me as I start up my own blog too. Good luck with the foster support you are providing in the Phillipines and thank you for doing that.
Shamini
I just came across your site while doing a search for Foodie Blogroll trying to determine if it is worth signing up for. I look forward to reviewing your other blogging resources and great recipes. Thanks.
Thanks Leanne! We’re glad that it can be helpful to other bloggers. 🙂
Oh my, so excited to see this series. I’ll have to check it out more thoroughly. I, too, have a blog but have yet to delve into attempting to make any profit from it. I think it is very open and amazing of you to share your observations and ideas with your readers. Thank you!
Lindsay & Bjork,
Came across your blog when I was Googling about making the switch to full time blogging. Love this series. Have been reading up on every single post. Got a question though. When did you start blogging? Did you start the income report when you started the blog? I have a home decor /DIY blog that I started 20 months ago. The readership and traffic has grown slowly but steadily to what I would think a not bad level.I would love to hear you take on how to build traffic on the blog. I think that is what I need to focus on to take it to the next level.
Thanks
Hi Vidya! I started blogging in April of 2010, so the income reports didn’t start until I was about a year and a half into blogging.
obviously like your wweb site but you need to take a look at the
spelling on several of your posts. Several of
them are rfe with spelling issues and I find iit very troublesome to tell the reality on the other hand I will
surely come again again.
I’m so happy I came across your site and this incredibly cool series of posts. Thanks for sharing what works for the both of you…and for reminding us all that even a small amount of money can help change the world. 😉
🙂 Thanks so much!
Hi! I am a new food blogger and am really thankful for all of your food blogging resources that you guys offer, it truly is so helpful! I’m interested in hopefully someday being able to make a little bit of money off of my blog and having advertisements on it. I was wondering if you have any advice for someone who is just starting out, who only gets about 100 hits a day when they post a recipe on foodgawker, to reach more people and to grow their audience. I know that it doesn’t happen overnight and I still have a long way to go, but I was just wondering if there were any major changes that you made or things that you did to get noticed and grow your audience? Thanks so much!
I remember those days well! I would sit in front of the computer and refresh my Google analytics and check foodgawker obsessively. 🙂 My advice is to keep posting, keep posting, keep posting, and hopefully you love it, so it doesn’t feel like work, right? Obviously you have some great content that is getting the attention of the foodgawker crowd- keep doing that, for 3 more years. 🙂 Just kidding, sort of. But keep your focus on great content and consistent posting. I think when I starting thinking of the blog in YEARS more than days, then I started to be more patient with my own growth and was able to accept that this was a slow process – and that’s normal for blogs. We love this quote: make haste slowly. Stay busy posting but remember (like you mentioned) that building blogs takes time.
I was suspecting that “it takes time” was going to be the answer 🙂 Your blog is really an inspiration and thanks so much for the advice!
I don’t have a clue about ‘analytics’ etc. but I’ve come across your blog before and always enjoy my visit. I found my way here this time ’cause I’m looking into ‘The Foodie Blogroll’ – I had no idea you offered advice – what a lovely surprise ’cause I can use all the advice I can get!! Thanks for your great blog!
This is a great feature of the Pinch of Yum blog. Thanks for sharing! It’s great to see how successful bloggers began. Lots of people that share their income reports, don’t start from the beginning. It show how transparent you are about sharing this side of you online business. Congrats on your success!
I can’t believe you guys started like me… it’s so inspirational to see how far you have come! Keep going and hopefully one day I will be where you are now 😉