Thyme & JOY

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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. 

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.

Blog Income Report May 2020

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. 

Blog Income Report May | Metrics

Food/Recipe posts that were created in May: 7

Amazon Affiliate Income: $74.56

AdThrive Income: $849.54

 Mediavine Income: $460.44

Virtual Assistant Work: $50

Sponsored Work: $0

Affiliate Income: $96

 

Hours spent working on the blog: 15-20 hours per week

Blog Income Report May 2020 Total: $1480.54

Valerie Skinner is a Whole30 approved personal chef & recipe developer that bridges the gap between healthy eating and busy lives by providing simple healthy meals and recipes for you and your family.Charleston Personal Chef Thyme and JOY

Lets Connect!

Check out my Podcast: Food Conversations

Email me: thymeandjoy@gmail.com

Follow me on Instagram

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Blog Income Report April 2020

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Blog Income Report April 2020 : Find out how I made $1574.94 through my blog with various strategies. 

Well, the world is still somewhat in shambles but things really are getting better as businesses slowly start to open. I really hope that the later part of the year is going to be booming with business in all areas including blog traffic!

In April, I was once again reminded of how volatile this business is. The ups are amazing but the downs are depressing. It made me realize that I need to set aside some time to really think about how I want to approach this blog not just immediately but in the future long term. 

Blog Income Report April 2020

Here are some noteworthy things that happened in April:

  • Traffic and mental health trending down: I’ll admit, I fell into the comparison trap again HARD. Because of the state of the world, most food bloggers are seeing insane amounts of traffic uptick. I am not one of those bloggers and this was a huge blow to my mental health. When I compare the bloggers that have more traffic than I do to myself it seems that they are just more cohesive with their content. They also have a LOT more. Even though I have ramped up content production, there is only so much I can do with such little time with an almost 8 month old and while were about to embark on a huge life change and yet another move. All of this has got me thinking again that I was much happier when my blog was a side hustle while I was doing other secure work on the side. Right now, the blog is all I have as an income source. I can’t take a job right now for the reasons stated above. I am SO incredibly grateful for the blog and I want to and will continue it, but I won’t deny that constantly feeling like I am hanging by a thread is a happy place to be with it. 
  • RPMS Way Down: When those Q2 pandemic RPM’s hit at first it was very scary! Things still haven’t really recovered but they have gone up since. For scale, RPM’s dropped to about $9 for me and then climbed back up to an average of $13. As great as that is, they were close to $22-25 from November-January so a lot of bloggers are taking a huge hit. I’m confident I will get back there just as everyone will, but right now is just a really hard time!
  • Inconsistent Instagram & Lifestyle Brand: I inadvertently became a “food only” account after James was born. This stemmed from 2 things. One, I just didn’t have the time to put much effort into sharing anything else and I’m not really comfortable sharing most of my motherhood journey so naturally, food prevailed. As this was happening I also saw many successful food bloggers and looked at what they were doing. Sure they shared some personal things on stories but for the most part, their feed was only food with a very cohesive aesthetic. It’s clear that food is the BUSINESS. I’ve always done well sharing many aspects of life and lately I have held back which I feel was necessary but now I am ready to start sharing again. I want to share wellness, travel, motivational quotes and blog posts that are more than just food. I started losing gobs of followers each week, so I decided if I’m going to lose them anyway I might as well start being more of myself again and have fun with it. Thyme and JOY is food focused but there is also so much more than that. We will see what happens!
  • I Hopped On a Viral Trend: In my last blog income report I explained how I made a post for Dalgona Whipped Coffee right as the trend started to hit IG. The first week my traffic blew up and I have a good $200 of this months income to thank for that. Then, the inevitable happened. More bloggers with greater authority started making blog posts about it and mine fell in the rankings. At this point the traffic from it is barely notable. However it does go to show that you never know what could happen with a post and how it could impact you. 
  • The BIG Switch: I’ve decided to save the biggest news for last. Last month, I have decided to switch from Mediavine to AdThrive as my advertising network. This was a very HARD decision and I went back and fourth about it a lot. I spent so much time on FB groups looking at others who have done the same and long story short, I would regret it if I didn’t try it and see if it works better for my blog. I absolutely LOVE Mediavine and I feel like I am leaving behind some groundbreaking things they have in the works. However, there is a higher threshold for AdThrive and for a few reasons, they seem to be able to pay out more income per ad for bloggers in my niche. I really hope this is true and I didn’t want to keep wondering so in May I will make the switch and see. This is a strange time to switch ad networks because its Q2, the pandemic has RPM’s already low AND it takes a few weeks for advertisers to understand your site and get your income up. Essentially, I will be taking all the income hits now while everything is in rock bottom places. My hope is that things will be established enough in time for Q3-Q4 so I can maximize my earnings beyond what I made with Mediavine at the time. I’m excited to make the jump albeit sad to leave Mediavine. 

Plan for May is different than last month. With limited time left before we probably move, I need to spend my work time wisely. I’ve decided to make 1-2 new posts per week but I have also pulled up last years seasonal posts that did well and will spend some time updating those so they are as optimized as possible for the holidays. 

To be honest though, April just has me burnt out from it all. Not being able to refresh or go anywhere or have any trips to look forward to has squashed my motivation big time along with the traffic hits. In my soul I feel like I maybe need to take a bit of a break for a week or so to refresh, get re-inspired and continue on. 

Blog Income Report April | Metrics

Food/Recipe posts that were created in April: 18

Amazon Affiliate Income: $127.66

 Mediavine Income: $1447.48

Virtual Assistant Work: $50

Sponsored Work: $0

Hours spent working on the blog: 15-20 hours per week

Blog Income Report April 2020 Total: $1574.94

Valerie Skinner is a Whole30 approved personal chef & recipe developer that bridges the gap between healthy eating and busy lives by providing simple healthy meals and recipes for you and your family.Charleston Personal Chef Thyme and JOY

Lets Connect!

Check out my Podcast: Food Conversations

Email me: thymeandjoy@gmail.com

Follow me on Instagram

Join my community on Facebook

See what I’m pinning on Pinterest

 

Blog Income Report March 2020

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Blog Income Report March 2020 : Find out how I made $1415.00 through my blog with various strategies. 

At the time of writing this, the world is going through a very scary time with an invisible enemy that shall remain nameless. My thoughts are all over the place just as anyone’s would be in a situation with such high uncertainty. 

A couple months ago, I had a session with my acupuncturist and I told her that for some reason personal chef clients weren’t working out for me post maternity leave. The old ones didn’t come back and the new ones were hard to find and/or didn’t work out. The whole time, I kept fighting to have my old life back and thinking I was doing something wrong or that I was a bad chef and my service was terrible.

She said it could be that something is going to happen where you need to be home. Not sure what it is, but it’s something. I found peace in this and while blogging and recipe development is now my only gig, I am SO incredibly grateful for sticking through it. Even though income is dropping, having a source of income I can work on from home is a huge blessing right now. 

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!

Blog Income Report March | Metrics

Food/Recipe posts that were created in February: 11

Amazon Affiliate Income: $69.25

 Mediavine Income: $1295.75

Virtual Assistant Work: $50

Sponsored Work: $0

Hours spent working on the blog: 15 hours per week

Blog Income Report March 2020 Total: $1415.00

 

Valerie Skinner is a Whole30 approved personal chef & recipe developer that bridges the gap between healthy eating and busy lives by providing simple healthy meals and recipes for you and your family.Charleston Personal Chef Thyme and JOY

Lets Connect!

Check out my Podcast: Food Conversations

Email me: thymeandjoy@gmail.com

Follow me on Instagram

Join my community on Facebook

See what I’m pinning on Pinterest