Disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links to products I highly recommend. If you click on a link and choose to purchase the product, it won’t cost more for you but will help support Bowl of Delicious!
**This income report was written years ago, and the blogging industry has changed significantly since I wrote it. Please use this as a resource, but understand that many of the ad companies mentioned here may not be viable anymore, and that there are many more current options for monetization!**
I have a secret. I started this blog in January of 2014 with two intentions.
The first (and most important): to help busy people cook at home more. Since I started consistently cooking whole, healthy foods at home I’ve learned so much and feel amazing. I haven’t been sick as frequently, and I have way more energy. I wanted to spread the knowledge. It’s the teacher in me.
The second: Hey, if I’m putting all of these hours of work into the blog… why not try making a little bit of money from it? And while I’m spreading the knowledge about healthy eating and cooking, why not spread the knowledge of how I’m making a bit of extra cash doing something I love?
So here it is: Bowl of Delicious’s first quarterly income report: How I made $1000.06 in three months. Guys! That’s over ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS! That’s a lot of extra money, especially for doing something that I absolutely love- cooking things and eating things and talking about cooking and eating things!
So if you’re here purely for the recipes, that’s OK! Head over to my recipe index and browse my archives. Or, if you are interested in starting your own blog, head over to my How to Start a Blog page! But if you’d like to hear more about how I’m making money from this blog, read on.
So… what’s in this report?
I’ll break down how I made over one thousand dollars in the first quarter (January, February, and March) of 2015. In addition, you’ll need a bit of background information. I’m writing this report a full year after starting my blog, so I’ll also break down how much money I made in the first year of blogging (spoiler alert: it’s not very much). I’ll also explain how and why I am making money with a breakdown of my sources of revenue.
My goal is to provide a realistic scenario of how much money you can make from a small, beginning blog. Even if you don’t really know what you’re doing, and when you start trying to monetize right off the bat.
You’ve likely heard of blogs making $10K, $30K, or even $100K a month (like Pinch of Yum or Smart Passive Income). This is all very inspiring, and I can only hope to someday achieve such success! But for your average beginning blogger, the process is very slow-going and no where near as lucrative.
So here’s what I hope is a realistic monetization report for a beginning blogger. A thousand dollars over the course of three months is certainly no full-time salary, but it’s nothing to sneeze at, either! Plus, I’ll explain what I’m going to try over the next three months to increase my income, and I’ll report back to you next quarter with how successful I’ve been.
Read on, or feel free to skip to the following sections of the post:
-
- First Quarterly Income Report (how I made $1000.06 in three months)
- Revenue Sources (a breakdown of who pays me money and why)
- Bowl of Delicious’s First Year (total income: $617.93)
- What’s Next for Bowl of Delicious! (how I am going to drive more traffic to my blog to increase my income)
First Quarterly Income Report
Whenever I tell anyone that I make money from my blog, they usually seem a bit confused. “But… how? Why?” they ask. I make my money from a mix of different sources- some advertisers, some affiliate partnerships, and some sponsored opportunities.
Here’s a breakdown of how much money I made from each source for the months of January, February, and March of 2015 for a total of $1000.06. Boy, was I excited to get that extra six cents to push me over the edge!! And don’t worry if this seems confusing- I’ll explain more about what the sources are in just a little bit.
Google AdSense: 197.74
Amazon Affiliates: 61.78
BlogHer: 306.27
Swoop: 74.98
Sovrn: 32.94
Gourmet Ads: 165.87
Sponsored Posts (via BlogHer): 50.00
Bluehost: 65.00
Studiopress (via Shareasale): 45.48
Total Income: $1,000.06
Total Views: 210,392
RPM (revenue per thousand visitors): $4.75
And if you’re interested in a monthly breakdown, here it is:
Revenue Sources
Here’s a list of the programs that pay me money, and why they pay me money.
Google Adsense: An advertising network by (you guessed it) Google. Easy to set up and create an account, this was the first thing I did to try and passively monetize my blog. Google pays both for impressions (meaning, how many people see the ad, also called CPM) and clicks (meaning, how many people click on the ad, also called CPC). Once you install the ad on your site, there’s no more work for you to do, except for write awesome posts and drive traffic to your blog!
Amazon Affiliates: An affiliate network is one that pays a commission for sending customers their way. Throughout my blog, I have links to various items on amazon.com, such as on my recommended cookbooks page or integrated in my posts with links to cast iron skillets
or immersion blenders
. Whenever someone clicks on a link that takes them to Amazon, and they purchase ANYTHING (even items that weren’t linked to on my blog), I get a percentage of the sale. So if you click on this link for a nonstick skillet
, but purchase something else like oh, I don’t know, a feather boa, I will get a commission for the boa. It’s easy to set up and easy to integrate the links into posts. I don’t make much money from it, but it’s something!
BlogHer: A blogging/advertising network specifically for female bloggers or for bloggers who cater toward a female audience. BlogHer is different than Google Adsense in a few different ways. First, they pay based on impression (CPM) only, meaning how many people visit your site and see the ad, rather than click on it. Second, they provide a lot more support in driving traffic to your blog, meaning they will sometimes promote your website for you (since if you get more traffic, they make more money, too!). They also provide opportunities for sponsored posts (I wrote one for ebay, which accounts for my sponsored post income from the above report). You have to apply to be part of BlogHer- I was rejected when I first applied when my blog was three months old (boooo), but after 7 months of blogging they accepted me (yay!).
Swoop: Another advertising network that pays per click. You can see Swoop ads on my recipe cards at the bottom of my posts- they are small, usually bright red or green, and are fairly noninvasive. You can also probably see one or more Swoop ads somewhere embedded into this post. You apply, they give you a code, you add it to your website, and you’re done! It’s the easiest, most passive ad network I use.
Sovrn: I have this to say about Sovrn: meh. Pinch of Yum and other large blogs/websites have a lot of success with this advertising network (which is similar to Google Adsense, but it’s CPM so it pays per impression). I’m no expert, but I think it’s not the best network to use for small blogs, which is why I stopped using it after February. If/when Bowl of Delicious gets bigger, I’ll try it again and report back to you! (UPDATE 9/25/15: In response to a reader’s comment below, I decided to give Sovrn another try. I’ve figured out a few things about it and am extremely happy I did! Stay tuned for the next income report to find out how!)
Gourmet Ads: I love using Gourmet Ads! As you probably guessed by their name, they are an advertising network that caters to food bloggers. Their ads are mostly food products, with occasional other content thrown in there. They pay per impression (CPM) like BlogHer and Sovrn, and they have a 100% fill rate. (This means there is always an advertisement on your site. Some other companies leave the space blank if there is nothing to put there- Gourmet Ads always finds something to advertise so you make more money!). Again, it’s very easy to set up and absolutely no work once you add the code to your site.
Bluehost
Bluehost is the company that I use to host my website (I LOVE IT). I have a page called How to start a (food) blog, in which I refer people to Bluehost. For every referral I send that signs up for a hosting package with Bluehost, I receive $65. I only had one sign-up in this quarter, BUT I am hoping for more sign-ups in the near future! I am focusing on growing Bowl of Delicious’s traffic (see what’s next for Bowl of Delicious), and with more traffic comes more chances for visitors to be referred to Bluehost.
Studiopress (via Shareasale): This is similar to how I make money from
Bluehost, but a little more complicated. My website design theme is called the Foodie Pro theme, which is put out by a company called Studiopress. To run the Foodie Pro theme, you also must have something called the Genesis Framework to make your website run smoothly (also put out by Studiopress). On my How to start a (food) blog page, I refer people to Studiopress and my theme pages, and if someone purchases the Genesis Framework or a website theme from their company, I receive 35% for my referral! Unlike Bluehost, Studiopress uses a third party called Shareasale to track and pay their affiliates. This is actually very simple to set up and maintain- there are just a few more steps you have to go through to sign up for (and understand) the program.
Bowl of Delicious’s First Year- Total Income: $617.93
So now you know how and why I make money from my blog, and how much I made in the first quarter of my second year of blogging. But what about the first year? How did it all get started?
I started off knowing nothing about blogging. I knew three things: I love to cook, I love to teach, and I love a good project. And so, I started this blog.
But any knowledge about internet marketing? Nope. Advertising and affiliate programs? Nope. CSS and HTML and other computer techy acronyms? Uh…. no.
I made myself a goal for the year of 2014. That by December at the end of one year of blogging, I would be making at least $100 a month from my blog monetizing experiment. A humble goal, yes, but achievable. And I am happy to announce that I met (and surpassed- actually, more than doubled!) that goal!
Boom. $100 a month! That’s like, a whole grocery trip. Or a fancy dinner date. Or a night at a bed and breakfast. Or just another sum of money to bring us that much closer to our house down payment.
Here’s a breakdown of the entire year. You will see that as the year progressed, I added more revenue streams, and my traffic increased, causing my monthly income AND RPM (revenue per 1000 visitors) to increase pretty consistently throughout the year:
What’s next for Bowl of Delicious!
My conclusions at the end of the first year of blogging were this: the more traffic you get, the more money you make. And the more revenue sources you have, the higher your RPM is. So at the start of 2015, I focused on getting even more traffic to my blog (by marketing it more on social media and other websites), and by adding more revenue sources (Bluehost and Studiopress affiliate links from my How to Start a Blog page).
My goal for the end of the first year of blogging was to make $100/month by the end of the year, which I surpassed- actually, MORE THAN DOUBLED!
My new goal is: By the end of my second year of blogging (December 2015) I will be making at least $1000 a month from my blog. Whoa. Saying that out loud (or, actually, typing that silently) is kind of scary. That’s a significant amount of money!
So now I’m all, “what if it doesn’t work?” and “OooOOo I am so excited” and “that sounds almost impossible” and “wow, I could totally start shopping at Whole Foods again if I made that kind of money! Bring it on, free cheese samples!!”
It’s going to be a challenge, and it might not work, but I’m going to give it the old college try and see what happens. And I’m hoping that you, my readers, can benefit from what I try and my successes/failures, and also give me feedback/advice along the way to help me out :-) Because it turns out, having a blog is like owning your own business. Actually, it’s EXACTLY like owning your own business. And this girl here has no official business experience besides this blog. Everything I learn, I’m learning from people like you.
OK. So here’s my plan for the next few months.
First, I’m going to focus a LOT on driving more traffic to my blog. During the first year, traffic increased dramatically from month to month. Now, in my second year, traffic growth is more stagnant. Here’s what I’m going to do to increase traffic:
- Write a new post 2-3 times a week. I had previously been writing 1-2 times per week. The more frequently you post, the more chances there are for people to visit your website.
- Take more pictures in natural light. This may sound trite, but in reality, this is very important for my traffic. I get a lot of visitors from websites like Foodgawker and Pinterest, and my traffic conversion from these sites is only as good as my photographs. Photographs of food taken in natural light are far superior to those taken with artificial light. During the winter, this was a challenge because of the short days, but now that the days are longer, it will be easier!
- Boost my facebook page and get more fans. If you have more followers on facebook, then every time you post a link to your website the higher your traffic rate will be. Here’s a great article on how Giustina from Domestically Blissful tripled her facebook followers in two months. I’ll be following her advice, as well as advice from other bloggers, on how to boost facebook engagement!
- Write quarterly income reports. Like this one! There are two main kinds of people that read food blogs: people who want recipes (most of you), and other bloggers. I’d love to reach a broader audience by writing these income reports to help my fellow bloggers out, and to increase the amount of traffic on my site. Wondering why I am doing quarterly reports, rather than monthly? For one thing, I want my blog to be mostly about cooking and eating healthy things, and I don’t want to deviate too much from that. For another thing, this post has taken quite a lot time and energy! I don’t think I would be able to maintain it on a monthly basis, so I’m focusing on something I know I can achieve for right now.
Second, I’m going to add an additional source of revenue. I’m going to make an e-book to sell on my website! I have an idea, I just haven’t started it yet. It’s a daunting task, but I’m excited about it, and I’m hoping that adding it will increase my RPM. Keep an eye out for it :-)
There are so many other things I could be doing. I could FINALLY figure out how to actually use Twitter (#IStillDon’tKnowHowToUseHashtagsProperly). I could be more active within the blogging community and network better. Sometimes, blogging can feel overwhelming.
But since I do have a full-time job (I’m a high school art teacher in real life- this blog is just a hobby for now), and life is generally busy (this IS a blog about cooking for busy people, after all!), I’m taking baby steps. Next quarter, I’ll report back to you on how this all went, whether or not I was successful, and the different things I’m going to do for the following quarter to boost my blog traffic and revenue (#MaybeI’llFinallyFigureOutTwitter).
So I hope you’ll follow along as I try to continue to make some extra money from Bowl of Delicious! Questions, comments, suggestions, and feedback are welcome- just leave a comment below or contact me :-)
George
I love this post! Its very relatable and inspiring. Cant help but feel excited. All the best for your journey :)
kerri mcgrail
Thanks for sharing all of your tips! I just got approved for Gourmet Ads and hope to start making some cash!!
Elizabeth
You’re welcome, Kerri! Hope you start to make money soon and let me know if I can help in any way! :-)
Nelson Cardoso
Hi Elizabeth, thanks so much for sharing your information. My wife and I have been blogging for 10 months now. It’s been a lot of fun, a lot of work and the odd cold meal (to get the right shot) :-)
I love reading these income reports. Not because I’m nosy, but because it gives us something to aim for, and lots of great info on the how-tos of reaching our goals.
I took a look at your first year. You had a fantastic jump by month 6. We’re about there right now in terms of views. Although a bit slower to grow, we’re excited and focused. We keep working hard at improving our photography, stories and site/seo/social optimization. Did you have any high profile mentions at any point that dramatically boosted your traffic in a short period of time? Or was it just a steady growth while building up your list of recipes?
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge. This is so inspiring and helpful to us. Happy cooking!
Elizabeth
Hi, Nelson!
Glad you are liking blogging, and glad I’m not the only one sitting down to cold meals after taking photos :-) That’s a great question. I did have a few bumps that caused a traffic increase around that time. For one thing, I started being accepted to foodgawker more regularly because I got a DSLR. I was featured on a website called favehealthyrecipes.com and got some traffic from stumbleupon. A couple months later, in September, I got featured on Buzzfeed for the first time, which was HUGE. I have to say: I think foodgawker was the catalyst for a lot of these features. I know that when I do roundup posts, I go to foodgawker in search of great recipes to include, and I think the writers at Buzzfeed and other websites do the same thing. Are you already posting/getting photos accepted on foodgawker? Wholeyum.com, tastespotting, findingvegan, and tasteologie are some other food photo link sites that help drive traffic as well!
One other thing: I think it was around this time I started actually paying attention to SEO. I downloaded the all-in-one SEO plugin and made sure to start adding keywords and good descriptions to all my posts. Now, organic searches are my highest driver of traffic! Not that I have any idea what I’m doing with SEO… still. But if you get yourself a good plugin like all in one SEO or Yoast, that may be helpful as well!
Hope that helps :-)
Nelson Cardoso
Hi again Elizabeth, thanks for the quick reply. You’ve shared some very useful advice. You are so right about SEO. We’ve been using Yoast and I can already see the organic visits going up. I didn’t know about WholeYum.com. I’ll have to check them out. Thanks again for getting back to me. Take care.
Jason
Hi, thanks a lot for sharing this info. But, I have to tell you that you’re making a huge mistake by taking Sovrn out your ad network pool, and you shouldn’t advise others not to use. I only get a fraction of the traffic you get – less than 1/5 – but I make more money from Sovrn in less than a month than what you did for a full quarter. Are you using CPM floors and passback tags? If not, that’s why you don’t see good earnings from them.
Elizabeth
Jason- Thank you for leaving this comment! I was definitely wondering why Sovrn wasn’t performing like it promised to, and I see now that I probably wasn’t using it properly (with a full-time job AND a blog, I tend to pick and choose what to spend my time learning and what not to) :-)
Quick question though: I know what CPM floors are, but what in tarnation are passback tags?! And, if you adjust your CPM floor, does that affect your fill rate negatively? I found with sovrn that my fill rate was pretty low already compared with my other ad networks.
Any insight you could provide would be MUCH appreciated- I’d love to experiment with putting it back on and reporting the results in my next income report!
Elizabeth
Nevermind! Figured out what passback tags are and am going to give it a shot. I would love to know what you use for a CPM floor, however, if you get a chance to respond! Regardless, I’ll be writing about this experiment in my next income post and will be sure to come back to this post and add an update about my findings. Thanks again! :-)
Sakeenah
Hi Elizabeth! I was looking at your blog and dishes and I have been thinking of starting my own food blog within the next few months. However, I do have a question for you about your quarterly income report, are you deducting the amount of money that you spend on buying the food and ingredients that you use to cook with from this report? On average per month, how much do you estimate that you spend on buying the food and supplies to cook with if you don’t mind sharing. Thanks!!!
Elizabeth
Hi Sakeenah! That is so exciting that you are thinking about starting your own food blog! It is super fun and I think you’ll love it :-) That is a GREAT question about deductions with spending. I know blogs like Pinch of Yum include theirs, and it’s probably something I will do in the future, but haven’t yet. The reason being: I don’t spend much on my blog right now!
There were some initial startup costs (hosting, camera, theme, etc.), but I don’t have anything that I spend consistently on a monthly basis besides food (and the occasional cute decorative dish or something for photos). And because I would be buying the food anyway, regardless of the blog, I haven’t put it on these reports.
But I do actually keep track of what I spend, for my own records, on food that I cook for the blog and any other supplies (for tax purposes). On average, I spend about $100-$150 on food that I use specifically for the blog. When I get back from grocery shopping, I grab a highlighter and highlight the things I’m going to use that week for the blog, tally up the total, file the receipt, and add the total to my income spreadsheet. Right now, my blog is a hobby. For taxes, you can still deduct things spent on a hobby if you make money from that hobby. Eventually (hopefully soon), I want to make my blog into a business, and tax deductions will become even more important.
Hope that helps, and please let me know if there is anything else I can help answer! And since you are thinking of starting your blog soon, I would surely appreciate it if you clicked through my bluehost referral links (and/or other referral links) when it’s time for you to get hosting and/or purchase a theme :-) Regardless, let me know when you have your blog up and running- I’d love to check it out!
Sakeenah
Thanks so much Elizabeth for getting back to me with the information! Yes, when I am ready to start the food blog I will definitely seek out your help. I know that I will definitely need to purchase a new camera first. I appreciate you sharing the details of how you are making money from your food blog it is eye opening and provides a realistic view of your growth! Thanks again and I will be in touch as soon as I get started!
Sakeenah
Elizabeth
If you need a camera recommendation, I have this camera– very affordable (in the grand scheme of things) and I LOVE it. And I got this lens to shoot photos with after a little while- it makes a shallow depth of field which is great for shooting food and making it look light and bright. Good luck!
Elizabeth
$100-150 per month. Forgot to include how frequently that was :-)
Cristina
Wow, this info is really helpful! I just started my blog and was looking for this kind of information. One question: how soon after starting your blog did you put the ads on it? How many recipes did you have online at that time?
Elizabeth
So glad you find it helpful, Cristina! I started putting ads up almost right away. I probably only had about 4 or 5 recipes up. I started with google adsense only and made only a couple of dollars each month for a few months. A lot of people wait to monetize, but I wanted to run ads just so I would become familiar with them before they actually “counted.” I added one more monetization strategy every month or two- amazon affiliates, other ads, etc. I recommend going an adding google adsense- it can’t hurt, and it’s super easy! Just don’t expect to make much money at first :-)
Cristina
Thank you so much for your fast reply! I will follow your advice! I really love everything about your blog, I hope mine will be at least half of how awesome your is one day!
Elizabeth
:-) Thank you so much!
Maria Konda
It is really inspiring to see your success and your recipes are wonderful. I’ve subscribed and would love to receive your recipes. Unfortunately, I did not get your freezable soups ebook in my email. Could you please send it to me? It sounds like a very convenient way for busy people to cook.
Congratulations!
Elizabeth
Absolutely, Maria! Sorry you did not receive it! Thanks for subscribing and glad you are finding all of this information helpful :-)
Maria Konda
Got it! Thanks a lot :)
Sandra @ Heavenly Deviled Eggs
What an inspirational post! I also found you via your comment on Pinch of Yum. I love that you set a goal for yourself and surpassed that goal. That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing!
Elizabeth
Thanks so much, Sandra! I’m glad you found it helpful :-)
Kirsty W
Hi Elizabeth, I cam across this post via your comment on Pinch of Yum’s income report and have found it so helpful! I’m still working on increasing my traffic but am hoping to begin making a bit of money from my blog within the next year or so and this gives me some great ideas on how to go about it. Thanks for sharing such an open and honet post :)
Elizabeth
Hi Kirsty! I’m so glad this post was helpful for you! Good luck on your blog, and if any questions come up feel free to contact me or ask via these comments :-)
Ohmydish
Hi Elizabeth, thank you so much for this insightful income report. We thought of making a monthly report for our blog too, but we are still hesistant. We’d like our website to focus mainly on recipes, not making money off it.
Also, how many times a week do you share a recipe these days? We publish one a day, maybe two if it’s something smaller like a drink, how-to, stock or sauce. Do you notice a bump in traffic ?
Elizabeth
I was very hesitant to write this as well. I was nervous I would drive away readers who only wanted recipes and that it wouldn’t get much attention for the amount of work I put into it. But after I posted it, I only had one person unsubscribe from my email list (which happens from time to time, anyway!) and by the comments here, it looks like a lot of people are getting use out of it! I’m going to stick with quarterly instead of monthly for now so that my blog is much more focused on recipes, but I may move to monthly eventually.
For recipes, I am aiming for 3 times a week. Sometimes if I have a very busy week, I’ll do 2. Unfortunately, I haven’t noticed a significant bump in traffic due to posting frequency- I get a small bump from foodgawker and social media, but that’s it. So in addition to posting frequency, I’m also trying to boost my facebook fans so when I DO post recipes, I get more of a bump from my FB page.
I’ll do more updates on traffic on my next report for sure. Hope this is helpful! And if you discover anything awesome for bumping traffic, feel free to come back and share it here! :-)
Aimee
This is very relevant to me! I work a full time job and my blog is a hobby that I’m passionate about and I’d like to monetize it more. I love reading income reports like this one because I find them super helpful!
Elizabeth
So glad this was helpful for you Aimee!
Natalie @ Obsessive Cooking Disorder
Thanks for the detailed report and income breakdown- people like you and Pinch of Yum are SO helpful.
I’m also a part of blogher but I generate very little income from them relative from google ads, any experiences with that? Congrats on makin 1k in 3 months – I dream of making that even over 1 year! Is it simply a direct relationship of traffic to income you think?
Elizabeth
Glad you found this helpful, Natalie! I think the reason why I make more money on BlogHer is because I use two ads on my blog- the main ad, plus a 970×66 one in my footer (if you scroll to the bottom of my page, you will see it). Also, I made sure to include the mobile footer. If you currently only run one ad on BlogHer, maybe try out adding one to your header or footer? I think that for food blogs, income really depends a lot on traffic. It’s HARD to increase traffic! But I’m trying my hardest. I’ll do an update on that on the next report :-)
Oana
Thank you for sharing. I just saw your post on Blogher Facebook group and thought I’d leave a comment :D
Seeing realistic blog income reports is amazing. Yes, we all look up to Pinchofyum or other big blogs, but that’s a really long way down the road of blogging. My own blog is quite young as well – about 10 months, traffic is slowly increasing but even though I have similar numbers in terms of monthly visitors, my revenue is much smaller. I believe part of that is due to the fact that about 40% of my readers come from Romania and the ad networks I use don’t cover Romania or if they do, the price is much lower. For instance, I gave up on Google Adsense as it was barely making 5$ per month and I had about 3 ads from them so I thought keeping the space filled with ads that don’t worth the money is pointless. Sovrn was another huge disappointment which I removed, might give it a try again at some point when I have more traffic. Gourmet Ads seems to be paying off a bit more, as well as Blogher, although not as much as I’ve seen on other blogs. I just started using https://progrids.com/ and I think it might pay more on your blog if you’re interested in it.
Elizabeth
I’m glad you found this post useful, Oana! Thank you so much for the suggestion. And I’m glad to hear I wasn’t the only one who found Sovrn disappointing- I may have been configuring it wrong, but regardless, it’s not for me at this point in my blog either :-)
Tedi
Hi Elizabeth! Omg this post was SO helpful to me!! I have been researching this topic for so long and most of the articles I read are catered to already huge blogs (which mine is not…it’s just a year, too!) so yours was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much for sharing this valuable information.
Elizabeth
Thanks, Tedi! So glad you found it helpful :-) I agree- there is very little “realistic” information out there. I hope more people find this post and benefit from it! I think it’s helpful to see how young blogs are making money, since the process is so slow-going, and it can be easy to feel very unsuccessful when you compare your young blog to already wildly successful blogs.
Matt @ Plating Pixels
Awesome job Elizabeth! That’s very inspiring. I’ve been blogging for a year too, and started to see an increase and therefore revenue. I’m not quite at yours but hope we can both grow it. I had a question, I’m in Blogher but my CPM is nowhere near your $4.75. How did you get it so high. Is each ad at that it is that your average? Is it based on visibility AND traffic and did you have to ask for a higher CPM or was it automatic? Ok that was actually a lot of questions in one. Your photos look great btw. Thanks!
Elizabeth
Thanks, Matt! For BlogHer, I am running two ads (the main ad on the right sidebar, and a 970×66 ad in my footer), plus the mobile footer. If you scroll to the bottom of my blog, you’ll see the larger horizontal ad. I actually get a higher revenue from the ad at the bottom of my page than I do from the main ad! And I will say that the CPM varies greatly from month to month. For instance, it seems very high right now for May, whereas during other months it seems very low for the amount of impressions that I have. I did not ask for a higher CPM (can you do that?) :-) Hope that was helpful- I’m definitely still learning about this stuff, but I would say experiment with multiple ads and locations of the ads and see if that makes a difference!
Debbie
I’m really impressed with your growth in just over a year! I only wish I could make that much from advertising alone. Most of my income from blogging is from sponsored posts, which is great but also a lot of work.
Elizabeth
Thanks, Debbie! I definitely have a LOT of ads going on my site- the maximum allowed by Gourmet Ads, which is 6. I think that helps with advertising revenue! I really want to get more into sponsored posts. I just joined Social Fabric, which I hope will help. I’ve found it challenging to find sponsored opportunities that match my niche (real, whole foods- many of the sponsored opportunities use processed ingredients, so I don’t apply for them). Can I ask- how do you find your sponsored opportunities? Do you use an influencer network, or do you reach out to companies directly? I’d love any advice you could give me for a sponsored post newbie! :-)
Debbie
Thanks for replying. I’m a member of Social Fabric too. Also Tap Influence, Linqia (they have a pay per click format, which takes a bit of time to figure out, but they pay quickly), Clever Network, and probably others I can’t think of right now. I also am a FitFluential ambassador and I get opportunities through them sometimes.
I don’t really have a limiting niche, my blog is a health, fitness and running blog, but I also have some recipes, talk about life in general, etc., but because I’m vegan I turn down a lot of opportunities that wouldn’t fit my lifestyle (plus I certainly don’t want to be all about sponsors all the time).
Here is a link to a blog post I read the other day that has a lot of information you might find useful: http://theantijunecleaver.com/2015/05/blogging-networks-monetize-blog/ You might also take a look at other food blogs and see who they’re working with. Most bloggers love to be helpful.
Thanks for this post. I’m going to take a look at some of the advertising opportunities you wrote about.
Elizabeth
I can’t wait to check out some of those other programs you are part of! Thanks so much for all of this valuable information :)
Melissa @ Bits of Umami
This is awesome! Especially with you having a full time job. Can’t wait to continue following this! Excited for you :)
Elizabeth
Thanks so much, Melissa! So glad you found it helpful! While I am very used to posting recipes by now, this is an entirely different animal. If you have any feedback or suggestions or questions, I’d love to hear them! :-)
Harold lindemann
I think what you have done is marvelous! Looking forward to having some of these wonderful dishes when you guys get here!
Elizabeth
Thanks, Harold! :-)
Dawn Vallejo
Very inspiring, Elizabeth! Love your blog!
Elizabeth
Thanks so much, Dawn! :-)
Lisa Lindemann
SO AWESOME!!!…and SO proud of you!!! Congratulations!!!
Elizabeth
Thanks, Lisa! <3