Blog Income Report March 2020

Here are some noteworthy things that happened in March:

Email Subscribers: I worked really hard on an opt in that I think people would really find value from and it’s paying off! My email subscribers are growing every week. Funny thing though, I haven’t sent out a single email yet. My plan was to make a monster newsletter to send out at the end of March, but the world imploded and I felt that the content I planned for it was a bit off. I’ll try again when it feels right.
Traffic climbing up: Although I took a 34% hit on traffic last month, I was able to climb up and recover some of it give or take 10%. There were a lot of google updates still going on and I think that a few of them were finally in my favor in rankings. Paying for SEMrush continues to be a valuable tool for me to see this first hand and to also see that the work I am putting in is slowly paying off and will continue to in the future.
Pinterest Audit: As I’ve stated before, I paid a pretty penny for a deep dive into my Pinterest account. When I got the results back, I honestly needed 5 days to soak in the information without being overwhelmed. Once I wrapped my head around it I was able to start following my customized plan and immediately started seeing positive results. My traffic from Pinterest started growing quick and is continuing to trend up that way. I will say that it is a LOT of work to create pins and schedule them strategically but I am sure it will continue to be worth it. One day I would love to hire someone to manage my account and now that I know what to do, I feel confident hiring someone. I just need that income to go up! Also I know this sounds crazy, but I also thought about managing the accounts for others as a VA if I needed the work because the analytics are fascinating!
RPMS Way Down: The amount of money I make per thousand pageviews is called an RPM. Because of what is going on in the world, this month it dropped a whole $10. TEN DOLLARS. That’s like making $20/hr and getting your pay cut in half. This started trending down mid month and we have been warned (by Mediavine) that it’s going to get worse in Q2 before it gets better. As nervous as I am about this being my only income source right now, I also know deep down that the bounce back from all of it will be big too. My strategy is to continue to create the same exact way, focusing on evergreen, seasonal and Q4 recipes so I have a lot of content that could do well when things normal out. It’s HARD though, I can barely concentrate with everything going on not to mention my limited time available to work.
Turning Down Sponsored Work: I had a post in the works with a big company for a solid rate. I was excited about it and then I started feeling very uneasy. It was for a product that was a bit more for the fancy foodie and honestly it didn’t seem right for me to promote a product to people who weren’t even able to find a can of green beans at the time. As hard as it was to turn down that money, they were understanding and willing to get a post in the works once things pick back up again.
New Camera Lens: For the last 10 years, all I’ve ever wanted was a macro lens to take pretty food pictures. Last month I bit the bullet and bought my dream lens. At first I thought it was going to be a magic bullet for all of my food photos. In some ways it is! But I also realized that I still have work to do on lighting and composition. I’m excited to keep playing around with it.
Inconsistent Instagram: with everything going on, I found it hard for me to be consistent on social media. Some days I was positive and other days I would be depressed and crying. It made me realize that I haven’t grown a lot over the last 2 years. I don’t treat my IG as a business. Sometimes that bothers me and drives me to want more followers and then sometimes I am perfectly happy with that. My adopted philosophy for this year is to be so good at what you do that you can’t be ignored. I really want to let my WORK speak for me and not so much my ability to hook people into following me in odd ways. With all that said, I would really like to be a bit more consistent and provide quality info with the help of an editorial calendar.
I Hopped On a Viral Trend: For the first time EVER I have made a recipe for something that has gone viral. I saw a bunch of people making whipped coffee and decided to try my hand at it. Since I was doing it anyway, I decided to write it all down and take pretty pictures of it for a blog post. The first day it got a lot of traction and since then it has been doing fairly well but I do expect it to drop off soon. The coffee was delicious, but not something I would make every day. Very interesting from a data standpoint though!

Plan for April is to continue on with my goals despite the outside world. I am lucky that I can still create delicious food to share and that our babysitter is still coming 2x a week so I can get solid stretches of work done. I’m not sure what the future holds for income, but I am making plans to bounce back higher than ever and finish out 2020 on a strong note!