Food Blog Income Report March 2021
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New Blog Perspective: A look at realistic Food Blog Income Report and Food Blog Traffic Report numbers
Welcome to Cooking with Carbs’ very first (hopefully of many!) monthly Food Blog Income Reports. Today’s post will be the Food Blog Income and Blog Traffic Report for Q1 2021 (with a focus on March 2021). While the majority of the posts on this site are written by Cooking with Carbs chef/recipe creator Anneke Silva, the posts in the blogging section will be written by me: her husband Isuru.
I can imagine many of you are wondering why we would publicly post our food blog income and traffic reports. There are a number of reasons why we have chosen to publish this content:
- Setting Realistic Expectations – When my wife and I started this blog journey I searched the internet for blogging and food blogging income reports. I found many, unfortunately they were all from 2-10+ years ago when Google SEO, Pinterest, Ad agency cutoffs were all different and, for the most part, easier. This means that their success may be harder to replicate, and their paths to success may no longer apply
- Accountability – By posting this update monthly it will force me to check all of the analytics on a monthly basis. It will also encourage me to find ways to improve and keep growing/progressing.
- Goal setting – This monthly post will provide an outlet to track short and long term goals, and provide accountability for meeting those goals.
- Inspiration – I don’t expect our Q1 losses to inspire many, but the hope is that one day we’ll get to the point where we can show that consistent effort in blogging (even in a competitive industry like food) will pay off.
- Lessons learned – If WE make the mistakes, then YOU don’t have to! I hope to share all of the lessons learned from each month, and what I think could have been avoided.
Continue reading to learn why we spent over $2,100 in our first few months blogging and what we would change if we did this over again.
Blog Traffic Report – Google Analytics Data Analysis
In this section I will dive deeper into Google Analytics. As I get more data I hope to explore more areas of the Google Analytics dashboard, but in today’s post I will focus on the Audience Overview, Users Overview, and Traffic Source/Medium.
One of the most important figures to note is the number of blog posts on our site, as all of our traffic figures are tied to the amount of content on the site. We finished March with a total of 28 blog posts that we started writing since before launch in January. We will aim to write at least 12 posts a month moving forward for at least the first year.
Users Overview for March 2021
The Users Overview section can be found under Acquisition -> Overview in Google Analytics. This is a good place to get a good snapshot of where the traffic to your website is coming from at a high level.
Social Traffic – As the name suggests, this is traffic coming to the website from a social network or social media platform (ie: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest)
Direct Traffic – This traffic includes (but is not limited to) traffic when a user types the web address into their browser or uses a bookmark. It also includes other sessions when google cannot determine the referring source.
Referral Traffic – This traffic includes visitors to the website from sources other than the search engine itself, for example when someone clicks on a hyperlink from Site A to go to Site B, that counts as a Site A referral.
Organic Traffic – This traffic includes visitors that arrived to the website through a search engine result.
Over the first few months almost half of our traffic came from Social Traffic, with over a quarter from Direct Traffic. Organic search traffic was fairly low this month as google has yet to rank many of our pages.
The image below compares our Feb 2021 and March 2021 User Overview numbers. March experienced a significant gain in users compared to February (54% gain, up to 313 users). This overall gain is in large part due to March being our first full month (blog launched ~ Feb 12th 2021).
When we take a closer look at the traffic gains we can see that Referral and Organic traffic had huge increases in March, as these were both near 0 in February. Direct Traffic declined in March as many family and friends were directly accessing our website post launch in February.
Blog Traffic Report: Audience Overview for March 2021
The Audience Overview section of Google Analytics (Audience-> Overview), gives a high level view of traffic by day, as well as total users, sessions, page views and bounce rate.
Session – Google support describes a session as all of the possible interactions with your website that a single user performs in a given timeframe.
Our site experienced a significant increase in sessions in March, up 43%. As mentioned previously, this may be attributed to being the first full month in operation, and comparing April to March will be a better apples to apples comparison. The few peaks in users are due to posting our blog on various FB groups seeking feedback or sharing with others.
Despite sessions going up our page views per session decreased. This is likely because many visitors in February were visiting our brand new website and were likely checking multiple pages.
The majority of our users to the website are still very new (94%) and I suspect this will continue for a few months until we grow the email list and get more returning users.
The majority of our website visitors are mobile (53%), however I expected this to be significantly higher from comments of other bloggers on social media. Nonetheless, this number seems in line with the latest mobile vs desktop internet usage data.
Food Blog Traffic Report: All Traffic Source/Medium for March 2021
The Acquisition -> All Traffic -> Source/Medium takes a deeper look into where the traffic to your website is coming from.
This table shows a more detailed breakdown of the Users Overview chart. It provides a more granular view of what social networks make up the social category, which websites provided referral traffic and which provided organic traffic.
Although many of the above sources include “/ referral”, those originating from a social networking site are categorized as social, whereas the others (foodgawker, foodyub) are categorized as referral.
The chart above aims to give a clearer picture of the traffic distribution by grouping all sources for the various social networks together (ie: m.facebook, i.facebook and facebook all grouped as All Facebook). The largest segment of our traffic (37%) was generated from Facebook. This is largely due to our participation in various Food and Blogging related Facebook Groups which helps boost engagement and traffic on our site.
Other important notes are that Pinterest and Google all saw significant increases in March, as they contributed very little traffic in February. Hopefully this trend continues moving forward as Google and Pinterest could/should be very large traffic drivers moving forward.
Blog Social Media Report: Social Media Breakdown for March 2021
Social media presence is of course crucial in building a brand and driving traffic to a website. We got an early start on some social media platforms as we started posting on Instagram in January even before the website had launched.
March saw a huge increase in Instagram followers (up 1418) as we were invited to a number of food blogger groups and were able to network with many others in the food blogger niche. As a result Instagram makes up 93% of our total social media presence at the moment. The value of Instagram will likely come from driving sponsored posts, but Instagram is unfortunately poor at directing traffic to a website.
Moving forward we will try to build up more of a following on Pinterest since Pinterest, unlike IG, is known to be a very good driver of traffic to websites. In the past Pinterest was seen as a quick driver of traffic, compared to Google SEO which often takes a number of months to ramp up. However, many recent Pinterest algorithm changes have made this more challenging for new Pinterest users and more bloggers tend to agree that Pinterest SEO is now also a longer term plan for gaining website traffic.
Although email lists are not technically social media I am grouping our subscribers into the graph of total followers. Unfortunately the list is very small at the moment and converting traffic into subscribers has been difficult. We will aim to provide a Free Digital Cookbook freebie for new subscribers in the future to gain more subscribers.
Food Blog Income Report for March 2021 – Expenses and Revenues
In this section I will outline the numbers behind our Food Blog Income Report. However, calling it a blog income report is perhaps misleading as there is no income to report as of yet.
For this first Blog Income Report I have grouped all of the expenses for the first Quarter of 2021, as these expenses represent those I felt we needed to get started with our food blog.
I have grouped the expenses into one-time expenses and recurring expenses, as can be seen in the graphs below. (All Expenses listed in USD)
One-Time Expenses: $1,065
Camera/Flash Gear – When people think food blog they think food photography! Fortunately I had a good camera already (Canon 6D), and a decent external flash already (Canon 430 EX II). Many food photographers take their photos using natural light, however due to our job schedules we knew this wouldn’t be feasible. As a result we had to buy a number of items to allow for food photography using a flash (umbrella, stands, triggers/receivers, reflectors).
Food styling/props – We also had to purchase a number of food props/styling items (plates, bowls, cutlery, napkins, backgrounds).
Education – Our one time education expenses for this quarter included a Pinterest course, as neither of us had used Pinterest before!
Recurring Expenses: $1,172
Keyword Software – This may seem surprising to some, but our biggest recurring expense is Mangools Keyword Search tool (KWFinder) at $322.92 per year. We’re still in early days, so it is hard to comment on its effectiveness at this point, but it has been useful thus far in helping prioritize various blog posts based on search volumes and ease.
PO Box – Another expense that new bloggers likely don’t think about is the need for a PO Box ($242.81). If you have an email list, you need to provide an physical mailing address per the CAN-SPAM ACT.
Tailwind – I’m using the Tailwind App to facilitate my Pinterest Pin scheduling. It has definitely been a time saver and worth the $119 per year.
MonsterInsights – This one I am torn about. The annual fee is $99.50 and at this point i’m not sure if I’m using it to its fullest ability, or if it is redundant compared to Google Analytics.
WPRM (WordPress Recipe Maker – PRO upgrade) – I’m very happy with this plugin so far. It is easy to use and I’m happy with how our recipe cards turn out.
Wix – This was our biggest failure thus far. We made our entire food blog on Wix, only to later realize that it was missing a ton of functionality of WordPress due to the thousands of plugins it offers. We started over on WordPress and are SO happy we did. This was an $84 lesson.
Education – We subscribed to MasterClass due to the number of both cooking and photography courses. The courses are great. The only obstacle at this point is finding the time to watch them!
Hosting – We are using Bluehost thus far and are very happy with this choice.
Lessons Learned Regarding Expenses/Spending
After having spent over $2,100 in our first 3 months there are a few expenses we would re-visit:
- Use WordPress (not Wix): Save $84.
- Forego or delay MonsterInsights until more data analysis is needed: Save $99.50.
- Purchase less backgrounds and coloured napkins: Save ~$100.
Total potential savings: ~$280-300.
Revenues from Q1 2021 (How do food blogs make money?!)
TOTAL REVENUES: $0.41 (It’s NOT $0! We have one amazon affiliate sale and need 2 more in the upcoming few months to remain in the amazon associate program)
In the future we hope this section will outline revenue from various streams including sponsored posts, potential freelance food photography, digital product sales, affiliate revenue and Ad revenue.
Food Blog Short Term and Long Term Goals
Below is a list of all of our Short and Long Term Goals that we will be monitoring from month to month.
The highest priority items are to update our Legal Pages (Privacy Page, Disclaimer and Terms & Conditions) from our templates purchased from Amira at ASelfGuru).
The second highest priority is to finish our Digital Cookbook Freebie to convert site visitors to email subscribers.
Our main long term priority is to improve on page SEO and our backlinking strategies to improve our Google ranking potential.
We will continue posting these Food Blog Income Reports monthly. Check out how we did in April at the link below:
Month 2: April 2021 Food Blog Income Report and Traffic Report – Sessions 1,101 / Profit -$1,077
Thank you for this post! I am in pretty much the same position as you so this is very helpful information. There is so much that goes into logging, I don’t think a lot of people really understand what it takes. I love that this post clearly states the expectations for new bloggers. Great job!
Thanks so much! Hopefully the report helps us both continue to grow our blogs!
This breakdown was really helpful to see all laid out. Thank you for going through each section with such detail. It helped answer some questions I had stored in the back of my head!
I love to read others blog income reports. Its so helpful for someone in the same situation 🙂 Learned a ton! Thanks!
I love that you seem so organized and don’t hold anything back. I think this sets realistic expectations for potential bloggers that come after you.
I also love that you aren’t afraid to share a low Revenue. I applaud you, and congrats on the $0.41. It can only go up from here, right?
I specifically wanted to show a low revenue. When all you see are people making $4k a month or $10k a month, but don’t see anyone running losses it skews the perception. Hopefully this will encourage more people to start posting right from the start!
thanks for sharing every details of what you have done with your food blog and all those expenses and things needed to improve. That is very transparent and inspiring!
Thank you for the kind words Jeannie. Please come back in a month for the next update!
Time and patience are so important when starting a blog. Thank you for sharing your income and expenses. One thing I love to use for keyword research is the Ubersuggest Chrome extension. It’s free and very helpful. Good luck to you as you continue to grow your excellent food blog!
Thanks for the great suggestion. I agree, I do use Ubersuggest sometimes, often to check to see how much difference exists from one platform to the next!
As a blogger, I appreciate your insight on blog traffic and expenses. It’s difficult to get a grasp of all the details that go into running a successful blog. I love that you’re sharing your journey and lessons learned. Thank you for a great read.
Thank you Ana, I appreciate you reading!
I really appreciate you sharing all this information. Seeing the breakdown of traffic, expenses and revenue are really helpful to new and more established bloggers to see what can happen with blogging. Your blog income report really does do a good job of showing the benefits of paying for certain services and hey you even made a little revenue too and that can grow in the future.
Thank you so much! I’m glad you found it helpful. Please visit in the next few weeks for the next update.
Blogging takes time. Thanks for the report. I always like to see how others are doing this blogging journey.
You seem to be more advanced and better organized than I am. I particularly resonated with your goal list.
Thank you mihaela! I’m hoping the list keeps me accountable. Would love to hear what other people’s goals are!