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You are here: Home / Food Blog Income Reports / Blog Journey (with a fun hobby topic)

January 22, 2022 ·

Blog Journey (with a fun hobby topic)

Food Blog Income Reports

I wanted to outline my journey of starting a 6th blog around a fun hobby that I’m excited about learning about. Now that I have two established blogs that are monetized, I wanted to try my hand at one more topic (even though I have four others that are awaiting full ramp up). I wanted to share with you my mindset and strategies for each month during this journey.

If I can get this to monetize, it will allow me to do a comparison across three completely different niches so that I can compare seasonality of blog topics against each other.

Goals for the New Blog

Niche Inspiration

I was teaching my kids how to do something one day, and it dawned on me that there wasn’t a lot of topics on it. My goal for this blog is a niche blog that talks only about those topics. Unlike my lifestyle blog where I share DIY home decor projects I do around the house and motherhood tips, this niche blog would be very specific to a topic I was teaching my kids.

Goals

My goal of this blog is three fold:

  1. I really have an interest in this space and learning about it, so having a blog like this will force me to learn about it.
  2. It will be additional passive income.
  3. It will give me another blog to compare performance against my other two monetized blogs.

The Difference with This Blog Compared to Existing Blogs

I wanted to share with you a few different approaches that I am taking with this blog compared to my lifestyle and food blog.

More Content Published Earlier

With the food blog, I had dripped out content over a long period of time, which meant that it took a while for Google to start indexing my content. It took about 8 months for me to start seeing hocky stick growth with the food blog.

Hiring Writers for Majority of Content

I know that with a full-time career, kids that are in extracurriculars, and having other online platforms (already monetized), I wouldn’t have a lot of time dedicated to this blog. So I decided to hire out the content on this blog after writing 1-2 blog posts. I was able to use Upwork to hire some people to write content on my blog. I also used a writing service recommended to me by a blogger friend:

  • TextGoods – 10 Blog Posts: $717.18
  • Upwork – VA1: $40/post
  • Upwork – VA2: $15/post

I’m making a pretty decent income from the two monetized blog (three if you consider $3 monetization), so I’m investing a small chunk of that money into additional content for this new blog.

Hypothesis in December 2021

If I continue to hire people to write content, this means I’ll consistently have around 8 blog posts published per month. Using a competitor I found that has only ~65 blog posts, if I keep this up, I believe I’ll see 50,000 pageviews by August (by starting the blog content publishing in January). I believe that I could potentially be monetized with Mediavine by next January. I’ll continue to leave this hypothesis here so you can hold me accountable.

Niche Research in December 2021

Before I share the monthly updates with you, I wanted to give you an overview of the the analysis and data I did prior to starting the blog. If you don’t start with analyzing your niche, then I think you’d be doing yourself a disservice. I wanted to share with you everything I honestly did before I even purchased the domain name.

  1. I searched for key terms that someone learning about the topic would look up. I jotted down who the competitors were.
  2. I went to SEMRush and looked up the competitors using the string “semrush.com/info/XXXX.com” with XXXX being the name of the domain. I took note of their rankings, keywords, and competitors.
  3. I went to Feedly (an RSS reader) and plugged in those competitors to look through their blog content and jotted down ideas of what I wanted to write about.
  4. I looked at the blog post ideas I had, and went back to Google. I look at the predictive search dropdown for more ideas, the Chrome plugin for KeywordEverywhere, and the common searches at the bottom of the SERP.
  5. I wrote down my ideas in Notion and categorized them by topic/subject in order to plan for the categories I would create on the wordpress site.
  6. In Notion, I outlined 10 blog posts.
  7. I created my standard operating procedure for my writers to follow for writing content for the blog.

Initial Blog Setup

Once I felt confident that there was room for me in the niche, here are the steps that I followed (tried and true from my previous blogs).

I want to be clear about something: I did not spend a lick of time on design of the blog when I was publishing my first ten blog posts. Literally I published, then I spent time on the design. Having content out there that Google can crawl vs having a pretty design that no one is going to care about was where I invested my time.

  1. Registered a domain on Dreamhost.
  2. Used BigScoots for my hosting. Had them setup Dreamhost for pointing the domain from Dreamhost and whatever they. had to do.
  3. Installed Themes: Genesis with Foodie Pro
  4. Configured settings in WordPress to have URL to be named as blost posts and setup other reading settings
  5. Added the following plugins:
    1. Add Widget After Content
    2. Akismet Anti-Spam
    3. Feast Plugin
    4. Insert Headers and Footers
    5. Redirection
    6. Regenerate Thumbnails
    7. Simple Social Icons
    8. Web Stories
    9. Yoast SEO
  6. Published 10 blog posts.
  7. Redesigned the menu, home page, and footer with Feast Plugin.

December – Month 1

My blog was set up and I posted a single blog post.

Content

  • Total Blog Posts: 1

Performance

  • New Users: 0
  • Sessions: 0
  • Pageviews: 0

January – Month 2

Content

  • Total Blog Posts: 16

Performance

  • New Users: 63
  • Sessions: 100
  • Pageviews: 304

February – Month 3

New plugins added:

  • AAWP – A plugin that allows me to add well-formatted affiliate links from Aamazon
  • Create by Mediavine – Allows me to add formatted tutorial blog posts
  • Thrive Leads – Allows me to add a way to add email subscriptions

Content

  • Total Blog Posts: 25

Performance

  • New Users: 69
  • Sessions: 81
  • Pageviews: 138

Analysis: Last month’s pageviews were probably from just me!

March – Month 4

New plugins added:

  • None

Content

  • Total Blog Posts: 39

Performance

  • New Users: 184
  • Sessions: 218
  • Pageviews: 362

Analysis: Last month’s pageviews were probably from just me!

April – Month 5

New plugins added:

  • Upgraded to Google GA4 Analytics since Google Analytics will be sunsetted this year

Content

  • Total Blog Posts: 50

Performance

  • New Users: 451
  • Sessions: 514
  • Pageviews: 673

May – Month 6

Current State of Plugins:

  • AAWP
  • Add Widget After Content
  • Akismet Anti-Spam
  • Create by Mediavine
  • Feast Plugin
  • Insert Headers and Footers
  • Redirection
  • Regenerate Thumbnails
  • Simple Social Icons
  • Thrive Leads
  • Web Stories
  • Yoast SEO

Content

  • Total Blog Post: 58

Performance:

  • New Users: 695
  • Sessions: 789
  • Pageviews: 936

June – Month 7

No changes made to the blog except for additional blog posts.

Content:

  • Total Blog Posts: 59 (I got side tracked from career and personal life goals)

Performance:

  • New Users: 904
  • Sessions: 1,032
  • Pageviews: 1,248

July – Month 8

No changes made to the blog except for additional blog posts.

Content:

  • Total Blog Posts: 67

Performance:

  • New Users: 1,161
  • Sessions: 1,355
  • Pageviews: 1,722

August – Month 9

No changes made to the blog except for additional blog posts.

Content:

  • Total Blog Posts: 86 Blog Posts

Performance:

  • New Users: 2,307
  • Sessions: 2,627
  • Pageviews: 3,411

September – Month 10

Started having VAs create web stories from existing content.

Content

  • Total Blog Posts: 92

Performance:

  • New Users: 2,250
  • Sessions: 2,652
  • Pageviews: 3,518

October – Month 11

Added more pinnable images into the blog posts based on what VAs created.

Content

  • Total Blog Posts: 92 (didn’t write a single blog post)

Performance:

  • New Users: 2,656
  • Sessions: 3,134
  • Pageviews: 4,038

November – Month 12

I was looking at my hypothesis before, and it looks like I am wrong. However, I am seeing more traffic. I just need to triple it to be able to apply for Mediavine.

Content

  • Total Blog Posts: 112

Performance:

  • New Users: 4,514
  • Sessions: 5,107
  • Pageviews: 6,729

December – Month 13

Posted all content from VAs and got caught up.

Content

  • Total Blog Posts:

Performance:

  • New Users:
  • Sessions:
  • Pageviews:

Total Expenses:

Here’s the expense break down:

  • TextGoods: $717.18
  • Upwork (at $40 an article with fees): $1,080
  • Upwork (at $15 an article with fees): $1,140
  • Upwork (at $20 for Pinterest images with fees): $620
  • Domain Registration 3 Years: $43.97
  • Domain Hosting: $9.99 per month (part of my overall Big Scoots plan that supports up to 10 blogs)
  • Thrive (divided because I use it on other blogs): $114.00
  • AAWP Plug-In: $49.00
  • Tailwind App: $119.40

At this point, I have weekly recurring costs of:

  • Article writing at $30 a week
  • Pinterest image creation at $20 a week
  • Pinterest syndication at $20 a week
  • Web

Total Profit

ZERO. It’s an “investment” right now. Hoping to turn it passive soon!

Other Blogging Ideas to Inspire You

  • Blog Post Title Headline Generators
  • Favorite Blogging Courses
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  • Tracking Affiliate Links in Google Analytics for Bloggers
Previous Post: « 11 Tips for Outsourcing Blogging Work
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