Hi there! My name is Bjork.
I’m Lindsay’s husband. I play the role of the YLILAPPWY Officer here at Pinch of Yum (YLILAPPWY = Yes, Lindsay, I’ll look at Pug Pictures with You).
You think I’m joking…
Every month I put together a post outlining the income we earned from Pinch of Yum and the things we learned along the way.
Lindsay and I work full-time, so any income you see created from this blog is a result of time spent outside of the regular 9-5.
Here’s the breakdown of April’s income from Pinch of Yum:
The Breakdown:
Bluehost Affiliate Program – $195
The Thesis Theme Affiliate Program– $57.42
VigLink – $68
Google AdSense – $680.24
Amazon Affiliate Program – $1.14
Tasty Food Photography eBook – $1320.50
Grand Total: $2,322.30
NOTE: On March 28th, Lindsay released her Food Photography eBook (Tasty Food Photography). The above number includes sales of the eBook from March 28th-31st as well as eBook income from April.
Things We Learned In March
It’s okay to take a break.
Blogging is hard work. Posting two to three times a week (or more!), maintaining a job, taking care of energetic kids, staying involved in church, getting ready to move abroad, doing the 1,000 other things you have to do… it’s crazy sometimes to imagine all that you have on your plate. The hard thing with a blog is that it oftentimes seems like if you miss a few posts then everything will fall apart.
It’s true that you want to do your best to maintain a good stream of quality posts, but it doesn’t hurt to take a break. Especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Lindsay decided to take last week off to take some time to breathe and prepare for our year long trip to the Philippines. Here’s the thing: On Monday, when she didn’t post anything, Pinch of Yum saw it’s #2 highest traffic day in April (24,404 pageviews) and #1 most profitable income day in April ($229.22).
Imagine your blog is a coal powered train. Every post you do is putting coal into the fire that powers the train. The higher the quality the coal is, and the more often you put the coal in, the faster the train goes. If you stop putting coal in for a little bit, will the train suddenly stop? Not at all. It will keep chugging along at a pretty good pace. If you stop putting coal in all together, will the train stop? Yes. But it’s okay to take a break for a little bit and then start back with your regular routine. The train can keep going forward from the coal you’ve put into it in the past.
The best product is your own product.
Pinch of Yum officially has its own product! As you can tell from the numbers, we’ve learned that one of the best products is your own product.
It was a ton of work to create the eBook and video tutorials that make up Tasty Food Photography, but it’s been such a rewarding experience to finally put it into the world. The highlight of this whole process has been getting emails or messages from people who have gotten their first food photo accepted to Tastespotting or Foodgawker using the tips the learned in Tasty Food Photography. You can click here to see some of the comments that people have left about the book. Thanks for all the kind words for those of you that have dropped us an email. We really appreciate it.
We’ve also had our first handful of affiliate sales. We’re so excited that Tasty Food Photography has become a money maker for other people as well! Congrats to those of you that have sold some of the books. I’ve explained the affiliate sign up process here if you’re interested in checking it out. If you have questions about what all this affiliate mumbo jumbo means you can check out the Affiliate FAQ page.
Tips and Takeaways
Super Sidebar
We’ve been experimenting with the sidebar on Pinch of Yum.
I’m excited about the current setup that we have, and I think it will the most lucrative setup that we’ve ever had for the sidebar. Here’s the setup:
- A 600 x 300 BlogHer ad at the very top of the sidebar (we just added this May 1st).
- A 600 x 300 AdBrite ad that shows up with BlogHer doesn’t have any ads to show.
- 3 200 x 250 Google Adsense ads spaced throughout the sidebar.
One of advantages of this setup is that BlogHer pays based on total page views (CPM), while Google AdSense pays based on the number of clicks (CPC). There are times when Google AdSense will run a campaign that has a really high CPC, like last month when we earned over $100 dollars in a day with just AdSense. However, with a food blog, it’s more likely to get people that are just visiting to see a recipe and then leave. Food blogs aren’t going to get a lot of people clicking on ads. That’s why the BlogHer setup (that pays based on page views) is important to have.
The AdBrite ad is just a backup in case BlogHer doesn’t have any ad to show. The reason we are using an AdBrite ad for backup instead of another Google AdSense ad is because Google AdSense only allows you to use three image/media ads per page.
Analytics
This is a new section in the Blog Income Reports.
We’ve had lots of people ask about the type of traffic that Pinch of Yum gets. I’m going to start posting our Google Analytics information so you can browse through it if you’re interested. Click on the image to view the larger photo.
Data nerds rejoice!
Search Terms
In closing, I will leave you with my three favorite search phrases that led people to Pinch of Yum.
I sure hope we could help these people.
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!
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