Food Blog Income Report | January 2020

Last Updated on July 27, 2023 by Toya

This is my January 2020 blog income report in my ninth month of blogging.

This month was a truly exciting month for my food blog! My traffic exploded and I finally got accepted into Mediavine!

If you’ve been keeping up with the income reports you’ll know what my biggest goal has been thus far. It was to join Mediavine and earn $1000 from the blog via ads within a year!

Why I’m sharing my income & traffic reports

There are three main reasons why I want to keep sharing these reports:

I want to inspire other new bloggers to keep working on their websites even though things may seem stagnant at the moment. I also want to motivate aspiring bloggers to finally start their blogging journey if they’ve been on the fence.
I want to keep myself accountable and see this blog through to massive success. In the past, I’ve started a few other blogs that I abandoned once the first thing went wrong.
I want to share the strategies and resources that are currently working for my blog with other bloggers who need that information.

I’m basically sharing these to keep us both motivated

I often see new/newer bloggers quit. It’s hard work being a blogger. Especially in those first few months of blogging (months 1 to 9) when traffic and income tend to be low or sometimes non-existent. Many people feel like they’ve failed at this point not realizing that they’re actually setting up a solid foundation for their blog.

This is why I think it is a smart idea to read income reports to learn what is working for other bloggers. Especially during these early months. Trying out what works for others is what’s helping me see some success right now.

Another thing you may consider is joining a blogging program/course to help you manage your expectations. Once you’ve purchased a course, most course creators will tell you upfront that their strategies will take you anywhere from 8 months to a year to see real results. For me, this is very important in helping to manage people’s expectations as this shows them that blogging is not usually an overnight success story.

As a bonus, most e-courses usually have a great community of new/new bloggers going through the course too. This helps many people stay on track.

All the courses I currently use and recommend are linked below for you to check out.

However, if you’re not yet interested in getting any of them, I suggest you keep reading my income reports as I hope my progress will keep you motivated to stay consistent with your blog.

Food blog highlights For January

Pinterest traffic exploded this month! So did my income!

Overall, January was a positive month for the blog

As you may know, this blog was launched in May 2019 and this is my 9th blog income and traffic report. I finally made close to $1000 from the blog from Mediavine! Yay!!!!

If you would like to see my progress over the last eight months, you should have a look at my previous food blog income and traffic reports below:

May 2019 food blog traffic and income report ($0.00)
June 2019 food blog traffic and income report ($16.87)
July 2019 food blog traffic and income report ($41.54)
August 2019 food blog traffic and income report ($19.73)
September 2019 food blog traffic and income report ($51.80)
October 2019 food blog traffic and income report ($111.96)
November 2019 food blog traffic and income report ($131.26)
December 2019 food blog traffic and income report ($226.27)

Food blog income and traffic report for January 2020– did I achieve my goals?

GOAL #1: Get 18,000 page views

I far surpassed this goal. In a shocking turn of events, I was able to get over 100,000 pageviews to my food blog in January!

GOAL #2: Make $150.00 from the blog

Successful! I officially joined Mediavine as an ad partner on January 13th!

Joining Mediavine was one of my main goals when I started this food blog. Therefore, I applied to join this ad network the minute I received enough sessions in the last 30 days.

It usually takes 2 weeks to get approved and for the ads to start showing on your blog. Therefore, while I had a total of 90,982 sessions in January, I only earned ad income for about 66,562 of these sessions as you see in the screenshot.

Here is my earnings breakdown:

INCOME

Mediavine Ads: $969.39

Amazon associates: $312.35

Other affiliates (including healthful pursuits): $150.90

TOTAL INCOME: $1432.64

EXPENSES

Web Hosting: $0.00 (I paid for web hosting via Siteground for a whole year upfront.)

Tailwind: $15.00

Canva- $12.95

Groceries – $54.18

TOTAL EXPENSES: $82.13

Net Income: $1350.51

GOAL #3: Publish 8 blog posts

Successful!

I published 9 new posts/recipes in January!

I really wanted to keep the momentum of December 2019, but January was quite busy for me.

Takeaways from January 2020

I saw massive growth on Pinterest in January.

Throughout my food blogging journey, I’ve continued to use the strategies taught in Pinteresting Strategies to grow my blog. The results I’ve gotten are proof that the tips shared in this e-course actually work.

If you’re interested in starting a food blog, or you already have one and want to get more free traffic from Pinterest, I highly recommend the course. You can grab Pinteresting Strategies here and thank me later.

I also kept using Tailwind to schedule my pins. It is such a time saver for me. You can check out Tailwind here.

If you want to start your own food blog, check out my beginners guide tutorial linked here.

What I did to grow in January

I scheduled and pinned approximately 300+ pins for the month.
I published 9 recipes.

Organic Traffic Update

Another win this month! I was able to quadruple my SEO traffic in January.

Now that I’m getting more traffic from Pinterest, I want to dedicate some more time to growing my search engine traffic as a way to diversify.

I must admit, I did not spend a ton of time optimizing my posts for SEO this month. In fact, I was only able to dedicate 16 hours to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the month of January.

SEO doesn’t provide quick traffic like Pinterest. In fact, what I’ve learned from other bloggers who focus mainly on SEO traffic, that it usually takes between 6 to 12 months for SEO efforts to translate to real traffic to your blog. Therefore, I am not expecting results similar to what I’m getting from Pinterest in the short term.

If you want to improve your own SEO and search traffic, I suggest using the strategies from Stupid Simple SEO. I bought this SEO e-course and have never regretted the purchase. I plan to use it to help improve my Search Engine traffic in the coming months.

Blog Goals For February 2020!

1. Maintain 100,000+ page views.

2. Earn $1500+ from the blog

3. Publish 10 new recipes.

4. Get 6000 sessions from SEO

Will I achieve these goals at the end of February? Stick around to find out how I’m doing!!

Also, if you have any questions at all, leave a comment and I will help out to the best of my ability.

I would love to know your plans for your blog this month! Share with me in the comments below!