Greetings! Bjork here.
I’m the COO of Pinch of Yum. COO = Chief Overeating Officer.
Lest anyone be confused, in all reality I don’t really do much on Pinch of Yum other than these monthly income reports and the occasional line of HTML code. I also play the role of supporting Lindsay when she’s learning a new software. 🙂
Every month I put together a post outlining where we’re earning income from Pinch of Yum. Our hope is that you can learn from any successes or mistakes we have along the way, both of which I’ll be writing about today. But for now, the numbers:
The Breakdown:
Foodie Blogroll – $32.17
Amazon – $3.29
Bluehost Affiliate Program – $65.00
The Thesis Theme Affiliate Program– $28.71
VigLink – $67.93
Elegant Themes Affiliate Program – $19.50
Grand Total: $216.60
If you’re interested in reading a little bit about each source of income listed above you can check out December’s income report. I want to take the rest of the time to tell you about some things that are going well for Pinch of Yum and some things we’re looking to improve.
Things That Are Working Well
Pinterest is the new Facebook. Overstatement? Yes. But in terms of traffic to Pinch of Yum Pinterest sent ten times as many visitors in January then Facebook did.
What does this mean for you? It means you need to be sure to make your content is really easy to pin.
If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out this helpful Goodies page on Pinterest that outlines how you can add a Pin It button to your posts. I’d highly recommend it. As a last example of just how important it can be, I’ll jump onto Google Analytics right now and take a screen shot of the live analytics for referral sites.
I’ll be right back…
I’m back. 🙂 Here is the screen shot:
Of the 45 people that are on Pinch of Yum right now (right now = Thursday night at 6:40PM), 15 are visitors that came from Pinterest. Pretty incredible! Increased traffic from Pinterest could especially be helpful if you have an advertising relationship that is based on number of total website impressions. Speaking of traffic…
Mystery Power Readers – A Challenge for Awesome Content
Lindsay has been contacted a few times in the past couple months from people that I consider mystery power readers. People that are in the food publishing or photography business. The reality is, 99% percent of the time you won’t know who is reading your blog.
I love to think about all the different people that could have stopped by to check out Pinch of Yum without us ever knowing. Tim Tebow? Madonna? Charlie? Okay, probably not. My point is this: It doesn’t matter how many people are coming to your blog. It could be 50, 15, or 5. Keep putting out awesome content, because you never know who is coming to your blog. Tomorrow could be the day that a magazine editor, cook book publisher, or really-nice-person-that-loves-to-give-food-bloggers-diamond-rings visits your blog. Keep with it. If they haven’t already, opportunities will eventually come.
Things We’re Looking To Improve
Foodie Blogroll
We’re trying to figure out next steps with Foodie Blogroll. For those that aren’t familiar, Foodie Blogroll is an advertising partner for people with food blogs. At the time of this posting Foodie Blogroll is the one serving the ads in the top right corner of the blog. The total (estimated) income from Foodie Blogroll for January was $32.17. Total pageviews for January was just over 200,000. $32.17 just doesn’t quite seem to justify giving up such important website real estate. We haven’t decided what we’re going to do yet, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated if we decide to experiment with other advertising partners. Let us know if you have any suggestions!
As always, we appreciate you guys taking the time to read through our posts. We hope you’re able to take a little nugget away from the things we’re learning.
We love to hear from you guys, if you ever have any questions feel free to drop us an email.
P.S. We are donating this month’s affiliate and advertising income from Pinch of Yum to an orphanage in the Philippines called Children’s Shelter of Cebu. It’s an amazing organization that is changing lives. You should check it out!
P.S.S. Lindsay has parent teacher conferences tonight, so I’m off to Chipotle. The job of a Chief Overeating Officer never ends.
Bjork
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!
