Thyme & JOY

simple real food recipes & cooking tips for the home chef

food blog income report

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

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Blog Income Report February 2020

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Blog Income Report February 2020 : Find out how I made $1411.15 through my blog with various strategies. 

So obviously, we made a turn for the worse income wise. Honestly, I feel very frustrated and disappointed and even more worried about the future. I actually have been working VERY hard making content over this last month and have exceeded my goals, so it’s only natural to be feeling a bit tense about the downward trend. 

Blog Income Report February 2020

Here are some noteworthy things that happened in February:

  • Goal Setting: For 2 months in a row, a good friend of mine and I have been meeting in person once per month to create business goals for ourselves. This month in particular, I exceeded my goals! This makes me happy because it means I now have a standard for what I can accomplish for the blog that can be compared to. This simple act will help me grow with the tides. 
  • Traffic down 34%: The official numbers are in, and my blog took a 34% hit in traffic this month. This stings REALLY bad. When you are busting your ass cranking out posts (with videos) and see that everything is going DOWN, it can get really frustrating. I suspect the reason for my traffic drop is for a few different reasons. One being seasonal, less people care about food in February because most have abandoned their healthy eating strategy. There also has been insane amounts of google algorithm updates. Because I have SEMrush, I am able to see what I lost rankings for and I lost a lot! This is something that is out of my control in a lot of ways. Another reason I could have lost traffic is because I have been a bit radio silent on Pinterest. They have made MAJOR updates over the last month and I am waiting on some personalized information on what to do so I can move forward. 
  • No Extra Work: For the month of February, I did not have any sponsored work or recipe development projects for any companies. I almost did, but the timeline on a few were too short for me to handle and be able to do my best so I had to turn them down. 
  • Ebook: One of my goals for the month was to start creating a better opt-in. Well, not only did I start it, I finished it! When you sign up for my email list, you will get an ebook that has 15 Meal Prep Hacks that I’ve learned through the years. It’s not as perfect and pretty as I would like it to be, but the information inside is very valuable. I was surprised to see so many already signing up for my list immediately after I put it out there. 
  • Newsletter: I’ve decided to change up things on the email list front a bit. Instead of sending a weekly email with my latest posts, I will be crafting a monthly newsletter to my subscribers that will be more personal. It will have a life update, seasonal recipes, product recommendations and more. If you want to sign up, CLICK HERE. 
  • Pinterest Audit: One investment I made in my business was to get a full blown Pinterest audit. Right now, I can’t afford someone to run my account for me so I figured this was the next best thing. I was very lucky to have it worked on while these changes were going on so that I wouldn’t be working off of old information. I actually should be receiving my audit today and am excited to work on it even though I know I have been doing so many things wrong!
  • I don’t Actually Work Full-Time: I caught myself in the comparison trap a lot recently. What I fail to realize sometimes is that this really is a part time gig right now. I only have 10-15 hours a week to work on this blog because I am blessed enough to be able to stay home with our son AND pay a babysitter to come over 2x a week so I can work. The amount I can do is not as much as others who get a full 40+ hours. 
  • Carnivore Diet Experiment: I came out of the diet closet this month and announced I was going on diet in order to heal after pregnancy and birth. If you want to know a full list of why I am doing it, you can read this post. I mention this here because it put a bit of a damper on recipe creation for the last half of the month. Since I am only eating from the animal kingdom, I really couldn’t experiment with much. I am over halfway through this experiment and I am excited to continue to create from a place where I have more variety in my eating. However, I will say that going forward most of my post will be keto and low carb based as I truly do believe that way of eating for the most part is best for me.
  • Blog Re-Design: One of the missing pieces of my whole blog as a business is the fluidity of my design. I bootstrapped my way into this as a personal chef and it took on it’s own world. Because of that, I have mismatched logos, color schemes and branding. One thing I hope to accomplish this year is to make enough money to hire a designer or branding expert so I can get everything looking clean, smooth and minimalistic.
  • Seasonal Recipes: A while back in Q2 and Q3, I remember how many people were basically dropping everything for Q4. Now I understand! That truly is when you make the bulk of your money that will carry you through the rough months. This year I am going to try and be smart and look ahead. Since we have a big family transition coming up with my husband getting out of the military, it seems like a good idea for me to start working on seasonal content now. This for me means researching recipes for the holidays and making and photographing them during spring and summer so I have a bank of content to work with for that time period. This actually excites me a bit because sometimes I have trouble making summer type recipes. 

As defeated as I feel right now, I also feel like deep down I am going to reach my goals by the end of this year. I know it takes about 6-8 months for posts to really start ranking and doing well and so I am hoping that all this work I am putting in now will eventually pay off soon. I just need to keep up the momentum even though I don’t see much growth!

Blog Income Report February 2020 | Metrics

Food/Recipe posts that were created in February: 12

Amazon Affiliate Income: $73.84

 Mediavine Income: $1337.31

Virtual Assistant Work: $0

Sponsored Work: $0

Hours spent working on the blog: 16-20

Blog Income Report February 2020 Total: $1411.15

 

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 January 2020

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Blog Income Report January 2020 : Find out how I made $2008.63 through my blog with various strategies. 

Well, it’s the first month of 2020 and we’re off to a weird start in the blogging world as expected. January is that cruel month for a health food blogger where traffic is high but RPM’s are down in the dumps.  This means although my traffic gets boosted, I get paid half as much which is not a great moral booster and a further reminder that this business is very cyclical!

Blog Income Report January 2020

Here are some noteworthy things that happened in January:

  • I went “back to work” after maternity leave: Even though I have pretty much been working since James was a few weeks old, this is the month where I really felt “back”. The reason why this was the month is because I started with a new client and also agreed to continue work developing recipes for a popular Paleo & Whole30 brand. In full transparency, the client just didn’t work out for reasons beyond my control.  I was kind of heartbroken because I was left questioning if the universe was trying to tell me something. I had no idea what to do next. With the help of some insightful friends, I decided that if the perfect client came my way, I would take the job but I wasn’t going to spend any extra time and money looking for one unless I really needed to.  That is definitely a luxury I am grateful for!
  • I actually set goals for blog posts and met them: A friend of mine and I sat down and mapped out our goals for the year. Within that time, we also decided to set monthly goals just so we had something to anchor to.  My goal was to put up 8 blog posts in the month of January and I met that goal!  This is significant to me because if we never chatted about it or wrote it down on paper, I never would have really pushed myself to get it done. Goal setting was the difference between putting out 8 posts this month vs. 6 posts this month and I am happy with that!
  • Crappy Videos: I know videos are a big deal in this land, but I really don’t have the time to make picture perfect videos for every (or any) recipe. I didn’t want to let perfect get in the way of done, so I decided to just post some cooking videos for my latest posts that are pretty scrappy and amateur but I’m letting myself be ok with that because I found that people actually enjoy seeing the behind the scenes type footage MORE than the professional fare.  Also, adding video definitely ramped up my income a bit and I’m pretty sure it’s helping some of my posts rank higher which are all good things. 
  • I lost my ranking for a high traffic post: This one hurt! One of my posts that was driving a lot of traffic got outranked in a recent update. I kind of knew this was going to happen, it’s just a matter of when. The post was actually a tag page, so there weren’t many ads on it and I slacked on turning it into an ACTUAL blog post so a lot of this is my fault.  This was a reminder to me that I constantly need to have good high ranking content up so that it catches the traffic of other posts that fall in rankings when they do.  It’s just the nature of the beast!
  • I am LOVING SEMRush: I finally bit the bullet and purchased a full year subscription to SEMrush which is a very powerful SEO tool that helps with keyword research but also shows you so many stats about your website including what your ranking for and when it drops or improves etc. I feel like I have hit a good groove with how to use it to write my posts and even though I won’t see the full benefit for a 4-6 months, some of the posts I’ve written are already climbing up the ranks. I split this with 2 people to drive the cost down but we are still looking for 1-2 people to join our group! Email me if you’re interested. (thymeandjoy@gmail.com)
  • I purchased a Sous Vide: I am a kitchen appliance whore . . . but I am allowed to be, right?! We used one of these machines in the restaurant but now they make fun home versions and I also bit the bullet on this. Since I have upped my fat intake and animal protein intake, I am excited to cook with this nifty tool and share my recipes which feels like a breath of fresh air when it comes to creating content. 

As of right now, I feel an equal mix of motivated and an equal mix of anxiety about this blog. I was hoping that my add income surpassed $2000 for January and it fell short. February is looking even worse! These are the times I panic and then go off and do something else because it’s hard to play the long game, but I feel like this time I will stick with it and keep creating great content, trying new things and I know in time I will reach my first long-term goal of making $5000 per month even though I have a seemingly long way to go! 

Blog Income Report January 2020 | Metrics

Food/Recipe posts that were created in January: 8

Amazon Affiliate Income: $121.97

 Mediavine Income: $1886.66

Virtual Assistant Work: $0

Sponsored Work: $0

Hours spent working on the blog: 16-20

Blog Income Report January 2020 Total: $2008.63

 

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