Greetings! Bjork here.
I’m the proud husband of Lindsay girl. Isn’t she great?
Every month Lindsay lets me have a cameo on her blog. I use this post to report back to you, the readers, on the income that Pinch of Yum created from the previous month.
Our hope with these income reports is to be totally transparent as to what’s working and what’s not working when it comes to making money from a food blog.
I’m really excited about the information I’ll be sharing in this post. More on that later, but for the now, the numbers:
The Breakdown:
Foodie Blogroll – $82.40
Amazon – $33.58
Bluehost – $65.00
The Thesis Theme– $28.71
VigLink – $67.50
Grand Total: $277.19
#1 Foodie Blogroll: $82.40
Foodie Blogroll fixed their site! The last few months we had to estimate the total income from Foodie Blogroll. Not so anymore! They do all of the estimate for us. Check it out:
The nice thing about Foodie Blogroll is that the income is fairly consistent. This is because Foodie Blogroll pays based on the total number of times that the ads are seen, not on the number of clicks or sales generated by the ads.
#2 Amazon: $33.58
This is the first time that we’ve had any income from Amazon Affiliate links. I assume that the holiday shopping season had a lot to do with that. We don’t have too many Amazon Affiliate links on the site – just a few at the bottom of the Resources for Food Bloggers page for products that Lindsay uses.
#3 Bluehost: $65
Bluehost is the company we use to host the Pinch of Yum website.
Hosting is kind of like renting office space for your website files. If you’re interested in learning more, you can find out more about hosting by reading the How to Start a Food Blog.
Almost all of the Bluehost affiliate clicks come from people that have visited the Resources for Food Bloggers page and the How to Start a Food Blog. You can also read more about how affiliate programs work in this post.
#4 The Thesis Theme: $28.71
As mentioned in November’s Income Report, The Thesis Theme is the WordPress theme we use for Pinch of Yum.
We like it because once it’s setup it’s easy to navigate and make changes to your site.
“If you’re just starting out with your blog you probably don’t need to drop $87 for your first WordPress theme. Find a free theme you like (or at least can tolerate) and use it for a few months to see if you actually like blogging. If you’re having a blast and are interested in upgrading your theme then check out the premium themes that are available. There are lots of options out there. The Thesis Theme is just the one that works best for us!”
#5 VigLink: $67.50
I’m really excited to talk about VigLink. We signed up for VigLink a few months ago.
I did a lot of research before signing up and found out that Google had invested $800,000 into VigLink, which helped convince me that it was worth looking into.
I also love their website. Super clean and simple to use. Always a plus in my book.
VigLink is great because they automatically create affiliate links for you.
The $67.50 we earned from VigLink was essentially from someone coming to Pinch of Yum, clicking on a link, and purchasing a Bluehost hosting plan. But they came from a link on our site that wasn’t an official affiliate link. VigLink automatically “caught” this and made sure that we got paid a percentage of the sale since we had directed the customer to Bluehost.
Apparently the affiliate cut from VigLink is actually better than the one from Bluehost’s own affiliate program ($67.50 vs $65). I recently contacted VigLink to find out why this is but haven’t heard back yet.
A Few Tips To Improve Your Food Blog
Create a resources page
If you’re looking to create more income from your blog, I’d highly recommend creating a resources page. It’s a great place to offer a service to people that want to learn from you while also create some extra income.
A strong suggestion on a resources page: never suggest a program or product that you do not believe in. It’s easy to throw a bunch of links up and hope that someone clicks. It might work in the short run, but a more effective approach is to only advertise products that you truly believe in and gain the trust of your readers by consistently recommending high-quality products.
It Is Possible!
Creating extra income and getting traffic to your blog is possible. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it, but it is. We want to encourage you to keep with it! For us, this formula has been super helpful in being able to create income:
Consistently Post + Enjoy the Process + Take Good Pictures
Good pictures can create tons of traffic by leveraging traffic from sites like FoodGawker, Tastespotting and Pinterest. This has been the number one traffic generation tool for Pinch of Yum.
Here’s a really cool comparison of two different time periods in Pinch of Yum’s history.
The first is from May 1st, 2010 – Feb. 28th, 2011. This is before Lindsay started consistently submitting and getting accepted to certain food sharing sites.
The second is from Mar 1st, 2011 – December 31st, 2011. This is after Lindsay started consistently submitting to food sharing sites.
Using this formula, we were able to increase Pinch of Yum traffic by almost 275,000 visitors in less than one year! That’s quite a testament to the power of pictures!
Speaking of photography, there’s something that we’re really excited to share with you in tomorrow’s post! Stay tuned.
Thanks So Much For Reading!
Let us know if you have any questions, thoughts, or tips as we continue on our journey!
And we’re thrilled to donate this month’s income from Pinch of Yum to an orphanage in the Philippines called Children’s Shelter of Cebu.
You should check it out.
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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