New Food Blog Income Report

This is a Blog income report for month 8 of a food blog. I’m sharing with you the strategies I used this month as well as the income, pageviews, and our future strategies so you can be inspired and getting started on your own platform.

My mom and I are on month 8 of our food blog, and if you’ve been following along since our seventh month food blog milestone, I’m excited to share all the tips and strategies I’ve used this month.

Before I begin, if you are new to my income reports, this might be the first report you may be reading from me. Let me tell you the reason why I have decided to share my traffic and income reports.

I share these reports to inspire you. As a part-time side hustler, and also having a full-time career, I wanted to show you how possible it was to manage both and to show you the struggles of managing both.

By day, I manage a team of engineers in three different countries creating an enterprise level chatbot. You know how I even got that job two years ago? It was because of my passion for BLOGGING and what I learned about SEO. I’m not even kidding. I went into my future boss’s office and said, “I love technology and digital marketing and the data that comes along with it. Here’s my current career, but on the side, I have an entrepreneurial spirit and love seeing data from implementing SEO….”

You guys, blogging can do just more than create an income stream. It can open up doors you never thought you could. I literally can say I am in the artificial intelligence field because of what blogging has done for me. I hope that’s inspiring to some of you out there. (Just so you guys can relate, I have a four year Marketing Degree. No data scientist here, no PhD, no masters, just my bachelor’s and a lot of time spent in the trenches of consulting).

Planned Work and New Strategies

Planned Work and Implementations

In this section, I talk about the things I set out to do, and if I did them. I also share any pitfalls so that you can learn from them.

Consistent Content Creation

I managed to get 10 blog posts out this month even with a 9 day family vacation planned at the end of the month. It is a far cry from my 20 back in month 7. I knew I had a crazy February with a family vacation and craziness at work. So I halved it so that I could manage expectations. I also have a family of six (yes, I have four kids and work outside of the home, and blog), so I knew I needed to cutback this month.

Adding in Pinterest

I really didn’t want to pay $119 per month for Tailwind for this blog just yet, so I just used my current Tailwind account to pin and automate publishing. I also added 30 pins to each board that I created. I use Pingroupie to find open group boards, and I’ve been invited to three specific to the Asian food niche so far! Once I make about $500, I’ll invest in Tailwind for this blog. I’m not consistent in this space at all.

Cookbook

I managed to create a template for the cookbook, but I don’t have recipes in it. I honestly spent way too long using Adobe Indesign to try to (a) figure out Adobe Indesign and (b) mess with the formatting.

New Strategies Outside of Planned Work

Creating Smaller Content Around a Single Topic

I actually have a long list of ideas from Airtable that I was supposed to write about, but based on reading what people are looking for using Google Search Console, I ended up writing variations of a recipe because people were looking for them. I was writing on how to steam, microwave, pressure cook/Instant Pot, and stove top a single recipe. I’ve heard on one of the Theory of Content podcasts that when they did this for their “parboil” topic, they wrote about “parboiling” for every vegetable, it seemed to have an impact on driving traffic. The other recipes are still on my list with photos, that just means I have more in backlog on my Airtable kanban board.

Carving Out Lunch Time

I’ve been working out in the morning at 4:30, even though my best thinking time is in the morning. I’ve been able to slip away from work over lunch, put in my favorite headphones, and just go to town outlining my blog post ideas at lunch time. I’m going to try to continue this as often as I can.

Reorganized My Office

I’m really weird and I’ve reorganized my office about twenty times in the last five years. I’ve moved it upstairs, downstairs, and even to the basement. However, I’m loving my new setup. I now have a standing desk and it’s amazing. All of my crafting supplies, electronic gadgets, and equipment for the blog is all in one place super organized. The only thing wrong with it is that the walls have playroom decals because this space used to be for my kids playroom which has moved upstairs near their bedrooms. I can’t bring myself to take them down because I still have a two year old and the day that I take them down will be the day I start bawling my eyes out because they just grow up so darn fast.

Check out my new office setup on my highlight reel on Instagram.

Using Toggl to Track Time

I’ve been using Airtable for a long time in Calendar view to track my time. However, I wasn’t consistent and the mobile view of Airtable wasn’t that great. I love Toggle’s mobile app that also transcends to the full browser version. It’s been more accurate for me to log my time using it. You should definitely check it out if you want to see where your time is spent.

Without further ado, here are the metrics.

The Blog Metrics and Numbers

Traffic & SEO Report:

Blog Posts Published: 10
Number of Hours Writing Blog Posts: average around 2.5 hours per post
Number of Newsletter Subscribers: 45
Sessions: 6.522
Pageviews: 8.324
SEM Rush Keywords (for United States): 774

January Expenses:

Big Scoots Hosting: $33 per month
Drip Email Management: $25 per month
Shutterstock: $15 per month*

I am not counting the food costs for recipes because my mom was going to make the food if I came over anyway! If there is an asterisk next to the cost, it’s because it is being cost-shared with my other blogs that I manage.

January Income:

Affiliate Income: $0.94

Strategies for Next Month

Strategies That I Plan On Continuing

Continue Consistent Content Creation

I have a ton of content on my vacation for my other blog which is actually making me money. Therefore, I might bring this one down to 5 posts for the month of March. We also have kids early spring activities that are starting up, so I know I won’t have that much time to devote to this blog. I have about 3 recipes and 2 ingredient posts I plan on doing.

Going to Mom’s House and Cooking

I have a list of things that she needs to cook based on keyword research that I’ve been doing. So I just need some time to go over and have her cook the delicious foods. We typically cook about three different meals, which means they can turn up about 6 different content pieces because of the variations in recipes. Even if I can’t make it to her house, I’ve got a ton of content that I’m preparing to write about to explain certain unique Asian ingredients and pantry items as a backup.

New Strategies That I Plan on Implementing

New Group Boards

I’m going to try to get at least two more group board invites to specific niche Asian recipe groups. This requires me figuring out the best email “copy” to send to these people to get them to bite and add me to their group. I might start by asking the boards I’m already apart of on my other blog.

Finding More Zero Keyword Opportunities

One of my mastermind friends told me about this amazing post. I was already doing some of this via the Income School, but this post said it so succinctly. So my goal is to go after more zero keyword posts!

My Favorite Online Blogging Resources or Things I Learned This Month

Authority Hacker – These guys get more technical than the Income School guys. They used to run an SEO agency, and now they run an info product business. Part of their marketing for that is their podcast which I absolutely love. I like how they talk with other SEOs and share their thoughts as well as predictions for 2020 on what happens to Google search.
Google Webmaster Central Blog – I’ve added their blog to my RSS Reader (Feedly) per the advice from Theory of Content so I can hear from the horse’s mouth what’s going on with SEO.
Airmail – I’m using this to manage my email because I use Gmail for most of my accounts. I use a lot of labels (and when I say a lot, I mean a freaking ton). I needed a way to “move” emails to certain folders. The only way I could do a “search” for my folders is using Airmail – the other apps including the Gmail native app forced me to scroll through my labels.
Airpods – I’m a tech geek kind of girl, and I absolutely love my Airpods over my Beats Wireless headphones. I think it’s because of the minimalism of it as well as how easy it is to hookup to all my devices.
MX Master 3 Mouse – I LOVE my new mouse. I know it’s a lot to spend on one, but I use it every day at work, for the blog, and at home. It’s so ergonomic and their is a scroll wheel to go left and right. I had the MX Master 2 and still love that one as well.
Mediavine Create Plugin – I started the food blog using this plugin and absolutely love it – especially the calorie counter that counts the calories based on the ingredients I add automagically.

Summary

There’s smaller traction this month. Based on what the Income School guys are saying, I’m probably going to hit a plateau for a few months. That’s okay though. Remember that I’m targeting keywords that have less than 500 search volume so that I can build authority and start ranking on broader terms with higher volume keywords.

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New Food Blog Income Report – Month 8 (February)