Blog Income Report May 2020

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Blog Income Report May 2020 : Find out how I made $1480.54 through my blog with various strategies.

Food Blog, Income Report May 2020, $1480.54

It’s been about 2.5 months since the world turned upside down and things seem to SLIGHTLY be getting better. Either way, in the blog world things are moving into their all time low traffic wise which is the good ole’ summer slump. Maybe I am just wishfully thinking, but for once I feel that I am going to blow it out of the park by the end of the year and reach my income goals by having $3-$5k months.

Past Blog Income Reports

Check out: Blog Income Report | February & March 2018 | $18.34
Check out: Blog Income Report | April 2018 | $203.17
Check out: Blog Income Report | May 2018 | $50.93
Check out: Blog Income Report | June 2018 | $213.50
Check out: Blog Income Report | July 2018 | $213.50
Check out: Blog Income Report | August 2018 | $174.52
Check out: Blog Income Report | September 2018 | $177.52
Check out: Blog Income Report | October 2018 | $563.78
Check out: Blog Income Report | November 2018 | $345.42
Check out: Blog Income Report | December 2018 | $919.76
Check out: Blog Income Report | January 2019 | $1334.94
Check out: Blog Income Report | February 2019 | $1156.02
Check out: Blog Income Report | March 2019 | $1120.24
Check out: Blog Income Report | April 2019 | $1231.17
Check out: Blog Income Report | May 2019 | $1465.15
Check out: Blog Income Report | June 2019 | $1898.35
Check out: Blog Income Report | July 2019 | $1754.04
Check out: Blog Income Report | August 2019 | $1729.33
Check out: Blog Income Report | September 2019 | $1626.35
Check out: Blog Income Report | October 2019 | $1880.46
Check out: Blog Income Report | November 2019 | $5064.21
Check out: Blog Income Report | December 2019 | $2583.00
Check out: Blog Income Report |January 2020 |$2008.63
Check out: Blog Income Report |February 2020 |$1411.15
Check out: Blog Income Report |March 2020 |$1415.15
Check out: Blog Income Report |April 2020 |$1574.94

Here are some noteworthy things that happened in May:

Traffic Holding Steady Albeit Low: Traffic has made a little bit of improvement only to be taken away slightly with the May 5th google core algorithm update. Even though I am ranking for more keywords, the keywords are low traffic ones so its not really a winning situation. The good news is that I have started to see little bits of my SEO work pay off in terms of tracking rankings. This will hopefully mean that all of the seasonal recipes I have done in the beginning of the year will get some good traffic as we progress into the year.
RPMS Slowly Increasing: Q2 RPM’s have slowly seen an upward trend. This is due to the fact that advertisers are beginning to spend in their advertising budgets again which is good news for bloggers! The bad news is that it is still 30-50% down from what it was last year and that coupled with the summer slump just makes for a grim income earning season. The only thing to do is give up or keep trying hoping it will go back up eventually. I choose the latter.
Photography Is Improving: This is something that makes me SO happy. I’ve been working really hard to find my “style” and figuring out how and where to shoot at what settings and I think that I have really started to bring everything together. I wish I could tell someone that there was a magic course you could take or some solid advice, but you really do have to just practice and mess up constantly to figure it out. Along the way I have had others give me advice that really clicked for me and all together it’s starting to go in a positive direction.
The Blog Is Getting A Makeover: I’ve decided to invest in the aesthetic of this blog which is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. I bootstrapped this entire website and changed it so many times over that the UX (user experience) has left a lot to be desired. Because of this, I am missing out on traffic and also missing out on how seriously I am taken as a blogger for brands and readers. I’ve hired Layer Cake to make some changes to my theme to make everything more streamlined and I am so excited to see how it turns out. I look at it like I look at my office. If it’s messy and cluttered I can barely get any good work done in it. If it’s nice, clean and organized I take my work more seriously and actually WANT to put in the time. This needed to happen and I’m glad I pulled the trigger.
The BIG Switch Update: In my last update post, I told you that I was switching from Mediavine to Adthrive in the middle of May. This was a hard decision but ultimately I didn’t want to keep wondering if the grass was greener. At the time of writing this, it’s been 16 days that I’ve been with Adthrive and I can confidently say that I made the right decision from a purely financial aspect. Even though this income report doesn’t reflect it so much because I was only with them for half the month, my income went up about 40-50% so far. That is just CRAZY amazing to me. Don’t get me wrong, things are still shaky income-wise but I feel really good about how things will progress through the end of the year and beyond if I just hold steady and keep doing whatever work I can.
Pinterest Strategy: In the past few income reports I talk about how I got a professional Pinterest audit done in March. A lot of people were asking me if it was worth the money and I will go ahead and say yes. It’s hard to see the progress sometimes because of the pandemic and it moving into summer but the main thing is that I have a solid strategy down that is working and will continue to work if I put the time in.

The plan for June is to continue to pump out at least 2 new recipes per week. Some of them may be seasonal but I also want to focus on evergreen content as well as old posts that are still bringing in traffic that need to be updated. My weekly process is not linear in any way, shape or form. Juggling this kind of work around the schedule of a 9 month old hasn’t really been easy and by the time nap #2 hits, I am way to exhausted to put my eyeballs in front of a laptop so I just do what I can.

Another aspect to life that is stressful right now is that my husband is leaving the military in August. This means we are in full job search mode and we’re not sure whether we are leaving Charleston or staying here. It’s likely that we are leaving but not knowing WHERE has been giving us a lot of anxiety as a family.

It’s also giving me time to think about my career and how I want to work for the next couple years. Ideally, it would be great to continue to work from home and blog so I can be James’ main care provider and get the gift of watching him grow up. At the same time, I really miss being out in the world working and maybe even being part of a team.

The best of both worlds for me would be to have a part-time job or even clients outside of the hope while also working on my blog part time. As of right now, that reality is at a standstill until this next chapter begins here or somewhere else so the blog is really all I have to focus on and that’s not a bad thing! Sometimes, I really want to throw in the towel when I see income and traffic fluctuate, but the reality is that I am truly lucky to be making an income and to be contributing to my family financially in this way and hopefully it will keep getting better.