Hey there!
Bjork here checking in for the monthly traffic and income report. If you’re not familiar with these reports be sure to check out last month’s report where I explain what these are and why we do them.
I’m keeping this month’s report short and sweet because we’re focusing on some exciting projects behind the scenes here at POY & FBP HQ.
Let’s take a look at the numbers from last month.
A quick note: Some of the links below are affiliate links. All of the products listed below are products and services we’ve used before. If you have any questions about any of the income or expenses you can leave a comment and I’ll do my best to reply.
Income
- Sponsored Posts/Speaking – $9,500.00
- AdThrive – $7,568.44
- Bluehost – $6,785 –> this income comes from a page where we show people how to start a food blog in three easy steps.
- Yellow Hammer Media – $4,223.51
- sovrn – $3,219.46
- Tasty Food Photography – $3,204.50
- Food Innovation Group – $2,834.66
- Federated Media – $2,598.47*
- Swoop – $2,511.74
- Gourmet Ads – $1,299.00
- Amazon Associates – $1,265.32
- How to Monetize Your Food Blog eBook – $660.00
- Genesis Theme – $531.50
- Food Innovation Group – $125.38
- Elegant Themes – $123.50
- Everyday Healthy eCookbook – $95.00
- Thesis Theme – $65.01
- The Creamy Cauliflower Sauce eCookbook – $63.00
- AWeber – $28.80
- YouTube Earnings – $14.80
- Google AdSense – $6.34
- Martha’s Circle – $2.86
*Federated Media is always delayed with releasing earnings reports, which means we don’t have hard numbers when we publish these reports. We estimate earnings by using CPM earnings from last month and multiplying that by the traffic we experienced this month.
Expenses
- Theme Design and Development – $4,250.00
- Support Staff – $2,944.00
- Workshop Expenses – $1,383.71
- Travel – $1,005.75
- eBook Affiliates – $797.85
- ActiveCampaign – $563.00
- Media Temple (Hosting) – $429.00
- PayPal Transaction Percentage – $418.87
- Office and Photography Supplies – $326.77
- Food Expenses – $314.81
- MailChimp – $216.00
- iPhone Tripod – $192.78
- Amazon S3 and Cloudfront – $99.48
- Overwhelmingly – $79.00
- LeadPages – $67.00
- Adobe Creative Cloud – $53.55
- Zapier – $50.00
- PayPal Website Payments Pro – $30.00
- Shoeboxed – $29.95
- E-Junkie – $28.00
- QuickBooks – $26.95
- SumoMe – $20.00
- VaultPress – $20.00
- Buffer – $10.00
- Backupify – $9.00
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!
Traffic Totals
Below are some screenshots from Google Analytics. You can click on these images to view a larger size.
Traffic Overview
Top Ten Traffic Sources
Mobile Vs. Desktop Vs. Tablet
That’s a Wrap
That’s it for this month’s income report! Thanks for checking it out.
Bjork and Lindsay!
I cannot find enough kind words to thank you for all you do! You inspire me each and every day! I have learned SO MUCH from you over the last 4 months. I have read all the income reports, Tasty Food Photography book, (which is awesome and worth every penny), watched all the classes on FBP… And now this Ebook… WOW and THANK YOU!
You guys are unstoppable!
Have a great and productive week!
Woohoo! Makes me so happy to hear that Tania. Keep up the good work.
This is really fascinating. It’s cool that you guys are willing to post this stuff. I never really know what people mean when they say they blog for a living, but this illuminates things quite a bit.
The one question I do have is: since your sites are obviously super popular, how much of your advertising has been a direct RESULT of that popularity? In other words, how much is advertising that you actively signed up for, and how much is advertising where a company approached you because your sites have a lot of traffic?
Thanks!
Great question Sarah. All of the advertising income we list on the site comes from ad networks. The only revenue category where we partner with companies directly is sponsored content, which is a bit different than traditional display advertising.
Hi Lindsay and Bjork, thank you so much for the e-book. Very inspiring practical advice!
I have been blogging for a little over 1 year and a half. I am a Holistic Nutritionist and I teach parents help their children poop every day and learn to enjoy a wide variety of nutritious and delicious foods (www.orgali.ca).
I love what I do and thanks to you and your advice my business has been growing slowly, but surely. Thank you!
Niche! 🙂
Thanks for the kind words Alina.
Thanks once again for sharing this awesome info. My night time reading will be the e-book!
Enjoy!
Great ebook with lots of good food for thought! I think I’m definitely going to have to sit down and work on my focus for next year!
Thanks Claire!
Good stuff as always! and congrats on pumping out an eBook on top of all your other tasks for the month.
I noticed that your Amazon S3/Cloudfront costs are down almost $200 but your traffic is up from last month. Did the prices go down?
Keep up the great work
Good catch Jason! We had a snafu with our cdn.pinchofyum.com –> AWS setup which caused images to be served from Media Temple instead of AWS, so we had a huge spike in server usage from our Media Temple server and a huge dip in AWS cost. All fixed now, so you’ll see that AWS number jump back up next month.
thanks for the income reports! theyre so helpful. also, can’t wait to look at the ebook! behind the scenes/blogger tips always fascinate me.
Thanks for following along Heather!
Hi Lindsay and Bjork! I’m always looking to read your income report. Thanks so much for sharing it. I noticed that you bought an iPhone Tripod for $192.78, Can you share with us which tripod you bought.
Thanks,
Rachida
It was a used one from our local photo shop. 🙂 I’m not even sure what the brand is. We just needed a basic one to test some things out.
Okay…you guys must seriously sit around thinking of more awesome ways to make other blogger’s days! Good grief 🙂 so awesome!! Racing home to download this ebook now!! thanks again
You’re the best Brittany. 🙂
thanks so much guys. What you offer is amazing for aspiring bloggers like myself. I am only very new to this (website not even up and running yet, but baking like crazy 🙂 ). Your income reports and other blogging tips are giving me so much to research. thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thanks Marie!
I was listening to an entrepreneurial radio program a couple weekends ago (you wouldn’t believe the weird things that are on the radio early Saturday mornings) and a (very) successful 20- something woman was talking about how her number one media/ source for moving her product was Instagram. Have you guys thought about how Instagram might be used as a revenue building resource?
Not really – I’ve seen fashion bloggers be pretty successful through programs like Reward Style, Like to Know it, that kind of thing, but we haven’t really experimented much with how that might translate over to food and blogging products.
Bjork,
Do you receive increasing commissions from vendors (ex. Bluehost) after a certain number of sales?
Thanks,
Tom
Hi Tom, yes – there are few vendors we work with who will pay their top performing affiliates higher percentages than average. This can often be negotiated.
Hope that helps!
Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving your post emails! I gave you feedback last month when I was having trouble with getting them late, and found out that you were having technical difficulties with your email service, so I just wanted to let you know that I am having no problems with it now! Thanks guys! You rock no matter what though! <3
Woohoo! Thanks Abbie. 🙂
Thanks so much for the download….looking forward to reading it. And as always, thanks for your insight into the on goings at Savory Sojourn!
Only $6 from Adsense for a million visitors traffic!!? I think I am missing something here.
Nope! That’s right. It’s just **really** low in our ad waterfall. 🙂
Thanks for what you do. I’m not a food blogger but a mental health counselor. Our industry is decades behind when it comes to blogging or doing anything online. What is out there isn’t great. I want my online presence to help others but be beautiful and profitable at the same time. I had been dabbling the past few years with blogging and social media while focusing on my brick and mortar practice. Come January 2016, I plan on focusing online. This information you provide helped me write my business plan and marketing strategy. I’m excited because my husband and I will also provide e-therapy and other wellness resources. Your podcasts and this type of information gave me ideas of how to diversify. Again, Thanks!
Awesome, Carissa! Best of luck to you. 🙂
Wow! What an awesome month Lindsay! I love reading these every month and being inspired to keep at it. Thanks for sharing with us!
This is awesome, i started a blog recently about hindi song lyrics, can you please help me to get traffic and income
There are lots of tips in these income reports! Check out the reports from previous months as well. 🙂
Hello!! These income reports are soooo helpful!! Adthrive is currently monitoring my site and will start optimizing my ads soon! Is the amount you listed under AdThrive, the amount of money they have been able to get you from your current networks because of their work? Also, will you be sharing how your experience has been like working with them? Thanks so much for all of this info, hoping to make my blog a career someday!!
Hey Kelsey – I’m not sure how AdThrive’s different levels work with but the amount we list in the reports is from AdThrive’s internal ad network. The optimize our ad stack and include in that stack their own. In short – we love working with them!
Oh awesome!! Thanks!!
Thanks, these reports are awesome. And the #1 thing was great too. Any update on the studio? I’m can’t wait to see how you set it up.
They are moving in today, and I’m sure there will be pictures of the final set-up! 🙂
Thanks for these reports! They’re why I’ve followed you all these years
A comment from a devoted reader – I’d love to see the NUMBERS (net and gross) back – I have no idea how much TOTAL you’re earning and the expenses (unless I bust out a calculator), which I feel makes the whole series important. What was the reason for taking out the income in the income report, if you don’t mind me asking?
Thanks for your inspiration 😀 Keep it up!
I second this!
We’re intentionally pulling back from posting totals. It felt like there was too much of an emphasis on the number when that’s not really what we want these reports to be about. It’s all there for you to add up though! 🙂
Hi Bjork and Lindsay! I can’t even start to thank you enough for these reports. They have been extremely helpful for me and opened my mind in many ways. I have been searching for something like your reports for some time now. And I’ve spent last three (or four?) days reading them. You’ve done incredible job, thank you!
Anyway, I wanted to ask you, whether you plan to talk more about your experience with Amazon Associates program. Some time ago you said you are going to experiment about it and then let us know. I am really courious about it. Or have you been talking about this on FBP? Or maybe I just misunderstood what you said? (english not my native tongue…)
xo & ty!
I’ll pass your question along to Lindsay and Bjork!
Still working on it (I’m working through an experiment that is still in process) but we will address it in a future report when we have more data to share! Thanks for asking!
I love the Ebook guys. Free content and an Ebook is such amazing. Thank you!
Woohoo! Thanks Jay!
thanks for share .
thanks