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!
Hello beautiful people. Me and my girlfriend are trying to have a food website with recipes. I searched on google and I discovered Pinch of Yum witch is super. It is commendable your courage to share with us monthly income. I’m curious how many recipes did you have on September 2011, when you start to monetizing the website?
Reading this in 2019. Can not wait to read all reports this weekend. While the rest of the world will be busy watching netflix, I know my weekend plans 😀
You guys are so kind to share this!!! No wonder this is my fav blog.
Lindsay,
Love all the information you put out for fellow bloggers. I know this is a super old blog post of yours but it’s definitely been helpful for me as I navigate the craziness of starting my own food blog.
Mallory @gradualperfection
like your article and appreciated your work
Hi,Nice blog. Thanks for giving such a useful information.Be it fruits or fresh vegetables, just place an order and experience a swift delivery from India’s prominent venture Bigbasket.
Bigbasket Offers
Just started reading these income reports to know more about food blogging and how to convert it into a full-time career. Hope it doesn’t feel like I am spamming if I comment on multiple posts. 😀
I recently started a blog and have gotten to the stage where I am considering trying to monetize it. This site is so helpful, thank you so much for sharing your experiences!!
Love this site. Just starting to get into Food Photography and plan to write a detail blog post on it.
I am a cook by nature I do all the cooking in my house so when I came across your site I thought this is how I would want my site. All I can say is job well done.
21 $ for 50,000 impressions is very low, Try using Adsense, i am getting around 150 $ for 50,000 impression.
checkout my blog http://www.dontgetserious.com
I love reading this income report to see where you guys have come! Gives an aspiring blogger like me some inspiration!!
Great post – It’s nice to now how the first month of earnings went for the blog.
Thanks alot for these posts! It’s amazing to see how you improved and got better,and it really inspires me and gives me hope,so thanks alot 🙂
http://www.sweetima.wordpress.com
This is great info to start off quickly
So lovely! You inspire me a lot.
Hello, I happened upon your blog by way of the chicken thighs w/bacon pan sauce recipe (fail on this end, most like due to my less than stellar apartment oven – wasn’t all bad, but not even close to looking as good as your photos) I’m very interested in learning more about blogging & actually making money with it – not sure if I’m overstepping boundaries by asking -but my current blog/website isn’t really a food blog – though I work as a bar manager/head bartender & love food & drink. I’m also an avid juicer and I’m also very into my Vitamix. I’m wondering if you’d perhaps be willing to offer a bit of advice/help in pointing me in the right direction? Thank you!
Hey Chris! I would encourage you to check out membership website called Food Blogger Pro – we have over 300 videos about growing a food blog and there’s a community forum with over 900 members who can ask and answer questions there – that would be a great place to look for more in-depth support!
https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/
Wow, you have certainly come a long way since this post!
Hey Lindsay and Bjork!
I just found your blog the other day and am interested in starting up my own/ monetizing it. I was wondering how much money you spent upfront (or how much you would recommend spending upfront based on what you know now) to begin making money off of your blog? Thanks for being willing to share what you have learned!
Hey Whitney! We spent next to nothing to get started. We set up shop on Tumblr, so that was free – we just bought the domain name pinchofyum.com and paid something like $20/year to keep that URL. But other than groceries, start up cost was really low and I’m glad we did it that way! As you make more money or even just try it for a while see if you like it, you can make a decision at that point if it’s a good idea to spend more moving forward.
What stands our for me is that you are consistently blogging but you are consistently blogging great posts. I am very new to this and I love what I’m doing. It is a pleasure and I’m trying to learn all the ends and outs of it. It is wonderful that you are posting something like a what to expect. I love the stories of the “overnight successes” it took them ten years to get there. I ordered your photo tips – I think that’s my weakest point. Your tips have been helping already.
I am addicted to reading your income reports. How did you grow such a following and was it a long time frame?
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 😉
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 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!
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’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!
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.