The holidays are upon us and we’re celebrating with all the Easy Gingerbread French Toast Bake, (opens in a new tab) Maple Pecan Pie Latte, (opens in a new tab) and Healthy Gingerbread Cookies (opens in a new tab) our hearts can handle! Today, however, we’re taking a little break from the holiday recipes for November 2017’s monthly blog income report.
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Today we’re talking food blog income! If you’ve ever wondered how a food blogger makes money, are wanting to grow your traffic, or maybe even start a blog, (opens in a new tab) these monthly blog income reports have tons of resources and tips. You can check out why we started these income reports in our first one (Monthly Blog Income Report – April 2017 (opens in a new tab))! As a reminder, these monthly blog income reports are NOT about the money, but are instead a way for us to share how we’re reaching our goals as a business and what we’re doing to grow. They’re a way for us to be transparent with you guys in order to (hopefully) help you achieve your blogging goals!
If you have any questions or thoughts, be sure to let us know in the comments below (or email us over on the contact page). We want these reports to be helpful to you guys!
Here’s November’s Monthly Blog Income Report:
Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links. These are products that I’ve used before and stand behind!
INCOME:
- A Month Of Healthy Eats Paperback (opens in a new tab) – $82.66
- Sponsored Posts (Ahalogy, Sway, Linqia, and brands) – $828.20
- A Month Of Healthy Eats Ebook – $72.56
- Amazon Affiliate – $140.66
- Mediavine Ads (opens in a new tab) – $1,404.88
Total Income: $2,529
EXPENSES:
- Food – $109.44
- 1&1 Internet – $10.99
- Food Blogger Pro (paid yearly) – $0
- Active Campaign (paid yearly) – $0
- Tailwind (paid yearly) – $0
- CoSchedule (paid yearly) – $0
- Miscellaneous – $215.43
Total Expenses: $336
NET REVENUE: $2,193
This month was a great month financially! Income was higher than it’s ever been, and expenses were fairly low. Ad revenue was better than ever this month. This could be due to higher CPMs during the holidays!
Our miscellaneous expenses, like last month, (opens in a new tab) included a few props for food photography.
Traffic
Tis’ the season for non-healthy eating, friends! And that’s being reflected in this month’s traffic. We had a whopping 23% drop in traffic this month in comparison to last month! (opens in a new tab) Not our most fave thing in the world, but hey, at least we were prepared for this 😉 Understandably, readers would prefer to save the healthy recipes for the beginning of the year. It makes total sense! And based on data from previous years, we can predict that December traffic will drop down even lower.
Goals & Takeaways
Since traffic was lower than usual this month, it was a great opportunity to catch up on things we’ve been waiting to do. These included:
- Organizing emails and cleaning out inboxes
- Planning out the beginning of 2018
- Focusing on finishing the new branding/website
- Improving photography
What are somethings you could improve, organize, or plan while your blog is in a “down time” season? Do you have goals set for 2018?
Photography Tools
As mentioned above, something I’m (Christine) really focusing on for the next couple of months is photography. Since several of you have asked me about what I use for photography, I thought I’d go ahead and layout all of my resources here!
What I Currently Use/Have:
- Canon 7D (opens in a new tab)
- Canon 50mm 1.8 (opens in a new tab) (selling)
- Canon 50mm 1.4 (opens in a new tab)
- Manfrotto Tripod (opens in a new tab) (for video only)
- Erickson Woodworks backdrops
- Linens (opens in a new tab)
What I Plan On Purchasing Soon:
How I Plan To Grow/Have Grown:
- First We Eat Online Course
- First We Eat Workshop
- Food Blogger Pro Photography Course (opens in a new tab)
- Food Blogger Pro Photography Workshop (opens in a new tab)
- Local Milk Online Course
As far as courses go, I’ve only done the Food Blogger Pro Photography Workshop & Online Course (opens in a new tab) (both were LIFE CHANGING, y’all!). I recently purchased the First We Eat Online Course and am hoping to attend the workshop and take the local milk online course in the future.
For me, food photography is one of my favorite things about being a food blogger. I love sharing a story through a photo! So this is something I really want to invest more in over the next few months.
That’s it for this month’s income report! If you’re interested in getting these income reports sent to your inbox every month, be sure to subscribe!
Have questions or thoughts about this month’s report (or suggestions for next month’s report)? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!
I had not heard of the First We Eat courses, thank you for sharing! Putting them on my wishlist 🙂
I just started it the other day and it’s pretty amazing! Definitely perfect for the wishlist 😉 Thanks for stopping by, Kelly!