Last Updated on January 4, 2024 by Toya
This is my November 2023 income and traffic report for my food blog. I try to share income reports each month to keep myself accountable and to help motivate others on their blogging journeys.
The last few months weren’t all that great, with the Google updates resulting in my blog losing about 50% of its income.
This month, though, things improved a bit with the help of Pinterest traffic. In fact, I’m pleased to say that all the hard work I’ve been putting in (starting May 2023) is finally starting to pay off!
In my October 2023 income report, I shared how I was affected by the Google update. I’m not going to lie; I was devastated by the loss of income, but that pushed me to get really serious about Pinterest.
What did I do?
Pinterest is still a gold mine for free traffic!
I had been posting 5 pins per day. But I decided to post 10 pins every single day of November, without fail.
Many bloggers and Pinterest gurus advise that you should shy away from pinning too many pins. However, I really wanted to test this out after reading this article. The blogger pins approximately 40 pins per day (this is wayyyy more than I’m capable of doing at the moment) and he gets over 200,000 sessions per month from Pinterest! This intrigued me because back in 2020 and 2021, when I myself used to get hundreds of thousands of clicks from Pinterest every month, I was posting about 20 – 40 pins per day myself. But, I shied away from it when Pinterest started to crack down on spam for fear of being seen as a spammer.
But, still, I fully understand the value of pinning more because I got real results when I was doing this. But I also know that making that many pins can be a very time consuming practice – at least for me.
I think I suffered with a lot of overwhelm from the pressure to make all those pins everyday!
Therefore, for a good balance, I settled on 10 pins per day…at least for now.
I tested out pinning 10 pins every day in November, and I think the bloggers who recommend pinning more may be on to something.
Pinning more every day seems to have taken my Pinterest impressions from 205,000 monthly views and 6000+ outbound clicks as of November 2nd (for the last 30 days) to 302,000 monthly views and 10,000 outbound clicks as of December 1st 2023 in the last 30 days!
I’m not back to where I was way back in 2020 and 2021 (I used to get over 10,000, 000 monthly views and 200,000+ outbound clicks per month from Pinterest back then). However, I am slowly but surely starting to see a continuous uptick in traffic.
If you have read my May 2023 income report (and you should read it), I explained how and why I started using Pinterest again after neglecting the platform and its potential for about 2 years.
Since then, I’ve been able to grow my Pinterest traffic from 1054 sessions monthly in May 2023 to 9043 sessions in November 2023. And my Pinterest RPMS is double that of Google!
If you’re interested in growing your Pinterest traffic, I highly recommend getting Carly’s Pinteresting Strategies Course. I used the tips and tricks in this course back in 2019, 2020, and 2021 to grow my blog’s traffic.
Learn all the tips and strategies you need to know to get thousands of monthly page views to your blog from a free traffic source like Pinterest.
Now, let’s talk about how much money I earned from blogging in November 2023!
The Income Breakdown For November: $1592.85
Mediavine ads: $1022.18
Amazon Associates: $$213.95
Other affiliates: $356.72
Total: $1592.85
Now for the expense
Canva: $12.95
Bigscoots hosting: $49.95
Short-pixel image optimizer: $4.99
Groceries: $71.32
Adobe Lightroom: $9.99
Total: $149.20
Blog Profit: $1443.65
Overall traffic stats
My traffic increased slightly in November. This was mainly due to more time invested in Pin creation.
Before the Google update affected my blog on September 19, 2023, close to 80% of my overall traffic was from Google.
As such, as of November 2023, only about 50% of my traffic comes from Google, and the rest is distributed between Pinterest, Direct, and Referral traffic.
Blog goals for the upcoming month
Here’s what I want to accomplish in December.
- Publish 10 – 20 articles.
- Create and publish 300 pins on Pinterest. It’s hard for me to stay consistent with work in December. I just want to unwind, cozy up and watch my favorite shows during that time of the year. But, I’ve made up my mind to keep working throughout December to keep my momentum going.
- Increase my traffic by 20%.
Looking forward
Blogging isn’t always a cake walk, but there is always a way to pivot when things don’t work out as planned and this is what I am determined to do with this blog and the revival I hope to get from Pinterest and facebook traffic (I’ve been reading about other bloggers getting millions of page views from Facbook and this is a big goal of mine for 2024.)
I started this blog almost 4 years ago and in that time I have been able to earn more than $250,000 from it (via ads, affiliates and ebook sales)
I’ve wanted to give up at times when things weren’t going as I wanted them too go… and I actually did for a while during and after COVID. But every month, without fail, I’m able to earn some extra income from this blog.
So, even during times like these when traffic and income aren’t where I want them to be, or I feel like I’m not getting ahead, I still try to be grateful for my little blog. And I try to keep steadfast in the knowledge that I can get it back to earning $5000+ monthly as long as I keep studying and working towards that goal.
So, if you’ve been thinking of starting a blog yourself, you can start now with my free start a blog guide. There are thousands of bloggers who are still making a killing with their blogs by growing their traffic from Pinterest or other sources other than Google.
I won’t let these slower periods put a damper on my blogging dreams, and neither should you.
How To Start A Blog In 2024
I’ve earned more than $250,000 from my food blog, with mostly part-time hours. If you want to learn how to start your own blog, plus a few tips and resources I highly recommend, then you can click this link to learn how to become a food blogger right now!
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Previous Food Blog Income Reports:
- Blog income report: I made $1007.05 in October 2023
- Blog Income Report: I made $2338.07 in August 2023
- Blog Income Report: I made $2175.93 in June 2023
- Blog Income Report: I made $2045.92 in May 2023
- Blog Income Report: I made $2712.94 in April 2023
- Blog Income Report: I made $3221.12 in December 2022
That’s it for the November 2023 food blog income report! See you next month, hopefully with even better numbers!