Greetings! Bjork here. I am Lindsay’s husband and the proud sous chef taste tester in the Pinch of Yum kitchen.
Four months ago Lindsay and I decided to experiment with making money from her blog. We thought it would be fun (and maybe helpful to others) to write a monthly post detailing the money we made from the blog and pass along any information we learned along the way.
After our first month (August) we reported back with a grand total of $21.97. We’re excited to say that November’s total was 10 times more than our first month of creating an income from the blog! Plus, we were the recipients of a little surprise package! More on that towards the end of this post. Here’s the update from November:
The Breakdown:
- Foodie Blogroll – $61.78
- Bluehost – $130.00
- The Thesis Theme – $28.71
Grand Total: $220.49
#1 Foodie Blogroll: $61.78
As a reminder, the Foodie Blogroll income is our best estimate based on previous payments (there is a two-month delay before Foodie Blogroll actually shows you what you earned). It’s been fun to see the Foodie Blogroll number rise as traffic to Pinch of Yum continually increases. Here’s the traffic overview for November:
Many thanks to Michelle from the Brown Eyed Baker for sending almost 600 visits to Pinch of Yum!
#2 Bluehost: $130
Bluehost is the company we use to host Pinch of Yum. We are part of the Bluehost Affiliate Program. If someone signs up for domain hosting after clicking on a link from Pinch of Yum then we get $65. Pretty sweet deal! This happened twice this month. For those that are interested here are the places we have Bluehost links.
- The Sidebar (125×125 ad image to the right)
- The Resources for Food Bloggers page
- The How to Start a Food Blog page
- These monthly money report posts
#3 The Thesis Theme: $28.71
The Thesis theme is the WordPress theme we use to power this site, and we’d highly recommend if for other bloggers. That’s why we have Thesis theme links throughout the site. If people happen to click on the Thesis theme links and eventually purchase the theme, we get paid a portion of the sale. The $28.71 was from these type of affiliate sales.
The Thesis theme also great for SEO (search engine optimization).
A great example of SEO in action is the Roasted Sweet Potato Salad post from this summer. Every month Pinch of Yum gets 100-150 people visiting the blog because they searched “Roasted Sweet Potato Salad” in Google. The post shows up on the first page of Google despite the fact that there are 2,000,000 other possible pages for this keyword (see pictures below). Thesis theme helps make that happen by allowing for each post to have custom titles and meta descriptions.
A fun surprise package!
A couple weeks ago someone representing a new product from a Food Network host contacted Pinch of Yum and asked if we’d be interested in testing out some new fresh food products. We get requests every once in a while, but this one seemed to be a good fit. We’re talking about possibilities for partnering with them because we really truly loved the product. We’ll keep you updated with what happens with this. For now, we’ll leave you with this picture of the first refrigerated UPS box we’ve ever received! #cool #literally
What will we be doing with the money?
All of the money we’re earning from Pinch of Yum this month will go to the Children’s Shelter of Cebu.
The reality is that we’re all super busy people, but if you have five minutes I’d encourage you to meet the kids at CSC and read their stories. If you’re feeling extra ambitious you can listen to this song while you browse through the CSC site.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to write yet another techno-finance post! I’m kind of into this stuff if you can’t tell. Back to the regularly scheduled programming on Monday! -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!
