This is my once a month, super-nerdy post for other bloggers. If you come here for the recipes, you might find this post boring. I’m sorry! This post is all numbers and blog geekery. This post also contains a number of affiliate links.
This is the third month I will be publicizing my blogging income and traffic report. You might be wondering why I am doing this. I was inspired by the awesome folks over at Pinch of Yum. Lindsay and Bjork have done an amazing job of growing their blog over the years. Instead of hoarding their secrets, they have generously shared their experiences. They are so dedicated to helping food bloggers that they created Food Blogger Pro. Food Blogger Pro saved me a lot of time when I was first setting up my blog. I learned how to make my blog SEO friendly and how to drive traffic to my blog. I even learned how to take better food pictures. If you are just starting out as a blogger, I highly recommend you join the community over there. It’s a very valuable resource. If you are looking for information on how to make money from a food blog, I also recommend the book “How to Monetize your Food Blog” .
I am so late posting this month. I have a bunch of excuses, but excuses are boring…so I’ll spare you the finer details but it involves an unexpected move. As I type this, there is a stack of boxes towering next to me and 99% of my kitchen is packed up. Blogging has been pushed on the back burner a bit. It’s frustrating as I’m chomping at the bit to get back to a normal schedule. Alas, life happens.
October was a great month for this newbie blogger. My traffic doubled from the previous month… 
It was really satisfying to hit that 20,000 pageviews. I did a little happy dance.
This is how my growth breaks down on a monthly basis (rounded to nearest 100)…
- March – 2,700 pageviews
- April – 10,200 pageviews
- May – 8,100 pageviews
- June – 7,200 pageviews
- July – 7,400 pageviews
- August – 16,200 pageviews
- September- 12,321 pageviews
- October – 24,216 pageviews
Not bad at all! Especially since I didn’t have any major media hits to help me out this month. I can take credit for the pageviews this month because I worked hard to get them. How, you are wondering? Well, I’ll get in to that in a moment. First, let’s look at the income!
This is my blog income and expense report for October…
Income:
| Google Adsense | $0.36 |
| Sovrn | $5.58 |
| Gourmet Ads | $57.74 |
| Swoop | $10.54 |
| BlogHer | $13.75 |
Total Income: $88
As you can see, my Gourmet Ads are rocking! I can’t say the same for BlogHer which is a letdown because I was so excited about joining the BlogHer network. I’ve heard a lot of rumblings among bloggers about the BlogHer payouts. It’s too early and I’m too green to have anything to compare it to, but compared to Gourmet Ads, I’m really not thrilled with the performance.
Expenses:
| Media Temple Hosting | $9.00 |
| CoSchedule | $10.00 |
Total Expenses: $19
I don’t currently include food costs in my expenses because I’m still working with my personal groceries. It’s not something I would claim on my taxes. Also, my hosting costs are low because I’m sharing the space with some other websites my partner and I operate.
Last month, I signed up for CoSchedule and I’m still really enjoying the service. It’s really great for scheduling blog posts and social media. If you like to see things all in one place, it’s worth checking out. They offer a free trial.
So, for the month of October…my income from blogging was…
$69!!!
Lucky number 69. Not too shabby.
Now, let’s take a look at where my blog traffic is coming from…
My Pinterest traffic increased significantly from last month. This is because I adopted an aggressive Pinterest strategy. Last month, I promised to talk a bit more about my Pinterest strategy. It really does deserve it’s own blog post and I promise to do a detailed post once I move and get settled. In the meantime, I will give you an abbreviated version.
My aggressive Pinterest strategy relies on group boards. I have found some group boards with loose rules. This means they don’t limit the number of posts you can submit per day. Every day, I make sure to pin my recipes to those boards. Even if I just posted it on the same board the day before. These boards have so many members that the content moves very quickly, so your posts do get buried in a matter of hours. Essentially, my strategy is aggressive, repetitive pinning.
You might think this would cause me to lose Pinterest followers. To my surprise I went from 150 Pinterest followers in September to 758 Pinterest followers as of today. I credit the exposure via group boards and re-pins.
This particular pin has been getting me a lot of traffic.
What I learned in October…
– Overall, repetition is a good strategy when it comes to Pinterest. As long as you respect the rules of the boards, don’t be afraid to post the same pin more than once on the big group boards.
– Sometimes the underdog (Gourmet Ads) surprise you!
– You don’t need outside media features to see a big boost in traffic if you are willing to do a little self-promo.
That is it for this months report. I hope you found something helpful in all my ramblings. You can always leave me a comment or send me a message if you have any questions!
