Last Updated on July 27, 2023 by Toya
This is my August 2019 food blog income report for my fourth month as a food blogger.
This fourth month was quite interesting and not entirely as I hoped it would be.
In this income and traffic report, I share the blog’s progress as well as other important things that happened during the month of August.
As I always do, I’ll explain why I’m sharing my food blog’s income reports each month below:
Why I’m sharing the journey of my food blog via my income & traffic reports
Many people often wonder if food blogs are profitable or how much money can you make on a food blog. Obviously, not all of them are, but with the right strategies and information, you can make any food blog…or any blog for that matter successful and profitable.
Therefore, I’m sharing my journey so anyone who wishes to can see the progress of the food blog right from the start. My goal is to make this food blog profitable and to make at least $1000 from it via Mediavine ads within 1 year.
I think consistency and hard work can help me achieve this goal in that time frame. If you want to see this journey, come back here at the beginning of every month to see if I’ve managed to make my food blog profitable.
Hopefully, my journey inspires you to start your own food blog too. Because if I can do it, believe me, you can too. Especially if you have a willingness to learn new things!
So, if you’re someone who would like to start, I show you how to set up a food blog in 30 minutes or less so you can start earning money online from the comfort of your home.
Why I think it’s important to share those reports
I suspect that many people who start blogging quit before really giving it a chance because they don’t seem to see much progress in terms of traffic and income in the first few months of blogging. Therefore, blogging seems useless and it is very easy to quit something that isn’t ‘working’.
Also, many people don’t see bloggers ‘like themselves’ who aren’t making much money and getting much traffic as yet. After all, most income and traffic reports from bloggers seem to be from bloggers making $5000 – $100,000 per month.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. But I hope my income reports can help inspire the average person who sees that they can start from nothing and make their food blog profitable!
To see the progress of the blog thus far, check out:
Food blog income and traffic report month 4
This month my traffic decreased. I was not expecting this at all but I’m still happy with how far I’ve come overall.
Like in previous months, I focused heavily on making pins and sharing them on Pinterest or for free traffic. This continues to work.
Pinterest is a great source of free traffic for food bloggers (or any other blogger for that matter) so if you’re interested in getting traffic to your food blog for free there, I highly suggest using the strategies in this e-course to help you learn and get started with Pinterest.
Income for the fourth month
My goal was to earn $100 from the blog in August, but I did not achieve this. Here’s a breakdown of what happened.
Ads: $0.00 – I am not interested in joining Ezoic or Google Adsense. I prefer to wait until I’m getting 25,000 monthly sessions (roughly 35,000 page views monthly) so I can apply for Mediavine instead. They’re a great ad network for food bloggers.
Amazon associates: $19:73
Total income:$19:73
How I earn money from the blog:
I simply link to ingredients on Amazon within my recipe posts. Any time someone clicks on one of my affiliate links and purchases something from Amazon within 24 hours, I get paid a small commission at no cost to them for that purchase. No matter what is purchased!
Blog Expenses
Web hosting: $0.00 (I paid for Siteground for a full year upfront back in May. You can check Siteground web hosting out if you need affordable hosting to start a blog)
Canva: $12.95
Groceries: $26.12
Total expenses: $39.07
Traffic
This is the traffic for my fourth month of food blogging. As you can see, I got 11,296 page views in August 2019.
None of my pins went viral this month. I’m a little bummed by this especially since I spent most of my time making pins, joining boards, and sharing my pins on Pinterest.
However, I’m grateful that I was finally able to start seeing consistent traffic every day.
If you take a look at the screenshot above, you can see that I averaged about 400 page views every single day for the month of August. Compare that to the previous months where I averaged 50-100 views daily, then got a huge spike from a viral pin that died off in a few days.
As such, I achieve my goal of getting more consistent daily traffic but I did not achieve my ultimate goal which was to get 25,000 page views in the month of August.
How I’m able to get free traffic to my food blog every day:
I used the strategies in Carly Campbell’s Pinterest e-Course to grow my Pinterest traffic.
You can check out the course yourself and I highly recommend this as she’s super knowledgeable about Pinterest Marketing for bloggers.
Or you can follow some of my simple tips below:
- I continued to create eye-catching Pinterest graphics on Canva with text overlay.
- I publish multiple properly keyworded pins linking to my recipes every day – My aim remains 10 pins daily
- I’m sharing popular pins from other food bloggers on Pinterest – I aim for 3 of those.
- I’m still trying to join a few popular niche-specific group boards.
Publish posts for August 2019
I was only able to publish 3 posts in August! This is a huge fail on my part since my goal was 10.
I spent most of my time this month joining group boards, making pins, and sharing them on Pinterest.
I’ve noticed that I am not very good at balancing my time properly. I either spend all my time promoting the blog on Pinterest or all my time making and publishing new recipes. I really need to find a happy medium between the two moving forward.
Food blog goals for September 2019
- Get 13,000 page views by the last day of September.
- Make $45.00 from the blog. I think I can achieve this by adding more affiliate links to my existing blog posts.
- Publish 10 blog posts/recipes.
- Find the right balance between creating and publishing new recipes and promoting the recipes/blog on Pinterest.
Will I achieve these food blog goals at the end of September? Stick around to find out if I achieve my goals next month!!
Also, share your own blogging wins with me in the comments below!