Welcome to the inner workings of Pinch of Yum.
Before we begin, let me introduce myself – my name is Bjork. I am proud to say I am the primary eater on the Pinch of Yum team.
A few months ago, Lindsay and I talked about experimenting with turning some of the Pinch of Yum traffic into dollars. I thought we could use the extra money to buy cool things like vintage beanie babies with perfect tags or really cool retro yin-yang pogs and slammers. Lindsay, being the centered and kind soul she is, thought the money would be better spent elsewhere. I agreed.
We thought it would be fun and maybe even helpful if we gave everyone a sneak peek into the earnings coming from Pinch of Yum. The plan is to post total earnings once a month.
The total for month #1 in the “Food Blog Money Making Experiment”? $21.97.
The only stream of income in August came from Foodie Blogroll. Here’s a closer look.
Foodie Blogroll
August was the first full month of having an ad service on Pinch of Yum. So what did we think of Foodie Blogroll as an ad service?
The Good:
- Set it and forget it – It’s great to be able to drop in some HTML code and then forget about it. Your blog almost immediately starts generating an income without having to make any other changes.
- No contract – You can sign up to earn revenue without locking yourself into a monthly or yearly contract.
The Bad:
- Low CPM – With about 50,000 impressions in August, Pinch of Yum earned about $20.00. That boils down to $.40 (that’s 40 cents) per 1,000 impressions. This was a bit disappointing considering Foodie Blogroll advertises $4.00 per 1,000 impressions. But since there is no contract when you sign up, there is no way to be completely sure of how much you will be paid.
- Loss of design/branding decisions– It’s a little bit of a bummer to not have any control of the ads that are shown. It’s not that big of a deal when it’s a similar genre to Pinch of Yum, like this Activia ad.
However, sometimes the ads will be a bit different then the usual content one might find on Pinch of Yum. For instance, this Spanish ad for a Nissan Optima.
So what can $21.97 buy? For starters, it can by three pairs of these:
More importantly, (and more seriously) it is almost enough to be a foster friend to a child without a family in the Philippines.
Thanks for taking a peek at the inner workings of Pinch of Yum. We’re excited to learn more about creating an income from a food blog. Every month we’ll check back in and share what we’ve learned, and in the meantime, please let us know if there is any information (traffic, specific analytics, additional resources) we can share that would be helpful or interesting for you to know. For now, please accept our invitation to join us in this venture!
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!
