Hola! Salut! Chiào! Nǐ hǎo! Hello!
It's Kristen, stepping out from behind the camera and away from the kitchen to share with you this month's blog income report. Hi!
I first started sharing what The Endless Meal earned back in March 2012 (a whopping $15.37) then decided to take a little food-blog-income-report hiatus. At that time, I was quite new to blogging and super excited to share the tiny bits that I was learning. Since then I've learned a whole lot more about food blogging, and grown the blog a whole lot more too.
This is the second income report in the new series. I wanted to start these up again because:
- There's so much to learn about food blogging and if I can share with you something that I've learned that will help you and your blog; I'll be stoked.
- My goal is to grow The Endless Meal into a full-time job, and I'm hoping that these income reports will force me to look at the nitty gritty of what is working, and what isn't.
- I'd love to inspire you to start a food blog of your very own. Will you join me and become a fellow food blogger? 🙂
Let's hit the numbers.
Income
- Gourmet Ads – $323.10
- Conversant – 185.40
- Sovrn – $206.21
- SRAX – $9.17
- Adsense – $13.09
- Sponsored Posts/ Photography/ Recipe Licensing – $300
- Switch Ads – $4.38
- Triplelift – $0.31
Total Income: $1,041.66
Expenses
- Media Temple (web hosting) – 45.83
- Mailchimp – $25
- OptinMonster $21
- BoardBooster – $5
- Vaultpress – $5
Total Expenses: $101.83
TOTAL PROFIT: $939.83
Note: The income reported here is in USD. Although I am Canadian the majority of the income I earn through TEM is in American dollars.
Knowing your blog's RPM is essential to understanding how profitable your blog is. RPM is an acronym that stands for Revenue Per Mille, or revenue per thousand pageviews.
To calculate your blog's RPM you can use this simple formula:
Total Profit ÷ Total Pageviews x 1000 = RPM
To calculate The Endless Meal's RPM for June the formula looks like this:
939.83 ÷ 185,986 x 1000 = $5.05
If you read last month's blog income report, you might have noticed that The Endless Meal's RMP decreased by almost $1.00. Even though that's a significant number, it is not one I'm overly worried about. Most of that difference came from a decrease in the income from sponsored posts /photography/ recipe licensing. I'm currently looking at ways to increase this revenue stream, and will share what I learn along the way with you.
What's Working
Roughly halfway through July I started using OptinMonster‘s lead generation software to help increase email subscribers. I'm going to wait until I have a full month's worth of data before I tell you all about it. But for now I'll say this: it's working amazingly.
What's Not Working
AdSense. Google AdSense uses both CPM (Cost Per Mille, or the amount you earn per thousand pageviews) and CPC (Cost Per Click, or the amount you earn each time someone clicks on an ad). The Endless Meal used to get decent enough CPM and CPC from Google AdSense to keep them on as a third-tier network, but not anymore. They've been so low for me that I don't feel there's any benefit in continuing to work with them.
For now I have replaced Google Adsense with some in-house ads to both the How to Start a Food Blog page and the 10 Photography Tips for New Food Bloggers page.
June's Traffic Overview
Top 10 Traffic Sources
Top 10 Best Performing Pages
If you're like me, you're probably thinking, ” Holy spicy chicken fingers, Batman!” If you're way cooler than me (which I have no doubt you are) you're totally not thinking that, though.
All cheesy sayings aside the Sweet and Spicy Paleo Chicken Fingers post has gone viral. It consistently ranks as The Endless Meal's #1 top performing page.
The real question is: What causes a post to go viral? And the real answer is: That's a tough one to answer.
While there's no magic formula for creating viral posts, there are several steps you can take to increase your chances.
- Create quality content. This should go without saying but the better the content you create, the more likely it is that it will be shared. Before pressing ‘publish' on a post think to yourself, “Would I share this?”
- SEO, baby! All of the top 10 best-performing web pages show up high in Google rankings. I recommend installing Yoast SEO Plugin.
- Include at least one vertical image in your blog post. Vertical images stand out the best on Pinterest and are the most frequently repinned.
- Create new content on a regular basis. The more content you have more likely it is that one of your posts will go viral.
Thank you!
Thank you for sticking around to the end of this month's blog income report. If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear from you in the comments section below!
Kristen Stevens
Latest posts by Kristen Stevens (see all)
- Autumn Sweet Potato Pad Thai with Corn, Brussels, and Kale - September 18, 2017
- Peruvian Lomo Saltado - September 12, 2017
- Lightened Up Feta Tomato Spinach Strata - September 9, 2017
Kristen is the person working behind the scenes at The Endless Meal. She takes all the pics, creates all the recipes and eats all the leftovers. 
Really enjoyed the post Kristen. It was an added bonus after coming across your site. Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much, Steve!
great report! it’s always so interesting and useful to see what’s working for other bloggers. Thanks for all the great info.
Thank you, Susan!
Kristen, what a great report! I love seeing the growth in my blog traffic, but I have not forced myself to really calculate my income. Thank you for sharing what you are learning!
Hi Suzy,
It’s so exciting to see growth, isn’t it?!!
Learning to calculate my blog’s RPM has been an incredibly valuable tool for me. I definitely recommend it!
You rock, Kristen! Going to add a yum button asap 😉
Do for sure! It’s incredible how much extra traffic they send!!
I love this type of posts, its so nice to see that actually there is hope for profit lol 🙂 I blog as my passion, but we all know that blogging gets expensive and after investing so much I hope to make something, I am still new to blogging as I want to put it, I have more than 10k views a month, but each month I see my blog growing and growing so I keep putting the hard work.
10K/month views is great! I still remember when I had 100 … and I was stoked.
Absolutely there is hope for profit. It takes lots of hard work (as you know!) but with time and dedication it will happen.
Hi Kristen! I just love that you have picked up these income reports again and will be very interested to read about what is working and what is not. As a new blog, I know my most important task is to produce more quality content but I find these reports so interesting and give me bits of information to tuck away when I’m ready for them. It’s also nice to see what worked for people when they were just beginning like I am and how they progressed like I hopefully will. I just love bloggers who share their insights with others because it makes for such a nice community.
I’m so happy to hear you find the reports useful! I think there’s so much we can all learn from each other and if I can share a little knowledge that will help make your blog more successful then I feel like it’s all worth it. 🙂
Wow, Kristen! This is so interesting! I love seeing the inner workings of a successful blog. I’m still fairly new to blogging and mainly do it as a hobby, but who wouldn’t love to make some money doing what you love? Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences!
It really is pretty amazing to start earning an income and LOVE what I’m doing. It’s a big reason I wanted to share these reports again … so we can all earn money doing what we love. 🙂
Hi Kristen,
The monthly income report is one of the newsletter I look forward to see in my inbox. Thanks for sharing this, because it’s really inspiring.
I have a few suggestion however;
1. Have ever consider creating a product of your own? Like an eBook or premium video?
2. You should probably consider promoting affiliate products too.
Wishing you a better August. (Its my month)
Hi Augustus,
You’re bang on with your suggestions. I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a cookbook for some time now and I think it’s time I finally do it.
Have you had success with promoting affiliate products on your blog? I’ve done a little of this but haven’t yet made it a focus. I think it’s a great idea to branch out and incorporate other income streams besides ads, so it is something I plan on for the near future.
I so appreciate your suggestions!