Monthly Income Report – July 2013

 

Welcome to our Monthly Income Report – July 2013!  For those of you new to our site or new to this monthly series, I launched these monthly income reports in March of this year to share the growth of our blog with our readership!  Inspired by Bjork Olstrom’s monthly reports on the food blog, Pinch of Yum (created by his wife, Lindsay), these monthly reports are meant to educate those interested in how blogs make money and hopefully, inspire other bloggers out there that are just getting started!

Blogging is hard work and takes commitment.  But, if you enjoy the creative process, it is rewarding – and not just monetarily.  I can’t tell you how many awesome people we have met because of this blog and we have learned so much on many, many levels!  I want to take a moment and give a big “shout-out” to a couple of people who have been instrumental in our quest to learn and grow:

Chelsea from Someday I’ll Learn – we consider Chelsea our mentor.  She has opened doors previously closed to us PLUS shared her expertise freely.  Whenever we have a question, no matter how small, she answers it.  Thank you, Chelsea; we are grateful.  I have written about Chelsea in our Your Story Matters section of our blog.  You can read that post here:  Someday I’ll Learn.  Chelsea is a neighbor of ours in San Diego County and attended our recent Blog-o-versary Party with her darling boys.

Vanessa from The Teensy, Tiny Insignificant Details – she’s an inspiration on many levels and she’s an excellent, effortless cook.  She teaches and inspires me all the time.  Thanks, Vanessa; you are awesome.  And, thanks, too for the very funny post about our trip to Tom’s Farm!  Readers: click on the link to her blog and you’ll see what I mean.  Vanessa has the distinct honor of being the first post in Your Story Matters.  You can read about Vanessa here:  Bloggy Bootcamp Revealed.  BTW – Vanessa lives in Australia and flew all the way from Australia to attend our Blog-o-versary Party (post in the works; stay tuned…)!  That’s how awesome she is!  Her passport is proof that this girl doesn’t sit still!

Bjork and Lindsay from Pinch of Yum – their site is truly a thing of beauty!  Plus, they strive to create new ways of earning money from a blog all the time.  Lindsay is writing her first eCookbook and hopes to launch it on August 19th.  Check out their site for amazing food photography and deliciously inspiring recipes!  Bjork and Lindsay have also been featured in Your Story Matters.  You can read about them here:  Salted Maple Pecan Pie Bars from Pinch of Yum.

Tana from Your Marketing BFF – our blog designer, Tana has been a great resource AND she’s invited us to join her Blogging Alliance.  You can read her post about her Blogging Alliance here (she featured us!!!):    Blogging Alliance Tips.  Thanks, Tana; you are “the bomb” and we so appreciate the unexpected honor!  You can read about how awesome she made our blog here:  10 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Design.  Tana lives in Phoenix and while not able to make the party, she and her husband visited San Diego the week before and treated us to dinner!

Patrick, our Geek (see below) – he doesn’t have a website, but his wife, Tawnia does.  Here’s a link to her site:  The Chic Studios.  She’s featured us on her site! (thanks, Tawnia!).  Without Patrick, we’d still have continuous unresolved memory issues.  Patrick, thank you for identifying our site’s back-end issues, fixing them and your patience in “talking down” to us so that we understand (as best we can at this stage of the game) what changes will improve performance and enhance the readers’ experience when visiting our blog.  BTW – Tawnia worked with Tana on our blog redesign that was launched on February 10th of this year.  They did an awesome job; we love our blog!

Pat from Smart Passive Income – if you think some of my posts are long, just read his My June 2013 Monthly Income Report!  He writes very detailed reports and people read them, like me {grin}!  Because, we want to know and he is open and transparent about how he makes money, thus he is inspiring and extremely successful!  I’ve never met Pat (although he, too, lives in San Diego County), but I’m so inspired by his blog, I wanted to share.  A lot of what he writes I still don’t understand, but I hope by this time next year, it will all make sense to me.  I plan to continue to read his blog and learn and grow!

Okay, now for the Monthly Income Report – July 2013:  you can tell by the picture above, we made $545.97 in the month of July.  So, since launching our blog on July 28, 2012, we have made a total of $1,092.01.  Believe me, we are not yet operating “in the black” because it costs money to create a blog and run a blog.  At some point in the future, I’ll include our actual expenses so that our readers will know our net income.  But, since we are still “in the red” financially, posting our expenses every month will always show a negative balance!  And, I want these posts to be positive!

There are cheaper ways to run a blog, but we haven’t found them yet!  In fact, this past month, we hired a consultant (Patrick – mentioned above) to review our blog’s operational issues because we’ve been sucking memory bigtime!  Since neither Tiffany nor I are technically proficient on the back-end of blog management and performance, this is all Greek to us, so we hired a geek!  He was immensely helpful and helped us to understand what was going on behind the scenes and made some minor changes that have had a positive impact on our blog’s performance.  But, if I told you what we paid him, plus added in our other expenses, this report would probably be meaningless!  But, that said, Patrick is very reasonably priced and worth the money!

Here are the numbers:

• $524.84  Sponsored Post opportunities
• $21.13  Amazon Affiliate earnings

If you want to know more about Sponsored Post opportunities and Amazon Affiliate earnings, read our past Monthly Income reports here:

• Monthly Income Report – February 2013
• Monthly Income Report – March 2013
• Monthly Income Report – April 2013
• Monthly Income Report – May 2013
• Monthly Income Report – June 2013

So, what’s new this month?  We broke our previous records with more Page Views (12,444), more Visits (7,863) and more Unique Visitors (6,682).  Here’s our Google Analytics Report Overview for July 2013:

 

Pinterest continues to be the major driver of traffic to our blog, outpacing all other social media and traffic sources.

 

 

Please note Lovelyish.com above.  They are a beauty and fashion blog based in New York City.  A big thank you to the girls at Lovelyish for featuring our Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie in their Amazing Summer Smoothie Recipes post and linking back to us!  You girls rock!

If you haven’t visited us on Pinterest, you have 3 opportunities to engage us there (we are Pinterest piggies!):

• Toot Sweet 4 Two’s Pinterest Boards
• Carole’s Pinterest Boards
• Tiffany’s Pinterest Boards

 

Recipes continue to be the main source of traffic from Pinterest.  Here’s the line-up according to the number of Pins registered on our site:

 

Tiffany’s Peach Pineapple Dump Cake has jumped to the leader of the pack with 561 Pins.  NOTE:  this was posted in November 2012.

 

 

My Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie is right behind her at 519 Pins (hmmm…that sound’s like a good breakfast:  Peach Pineapple Dump Cake AND Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie!{grin}).

 

 

Creamy Mashed Potatoes has 467 Pins.  NOTE:  this recipe was posted November 2012 and is still being pinned regularly.  BTW – this is really a creamy and delicious mashed potato recipe – full of fat and NOT diet friendly {grin}!

 

 

Charlie’s Layered Mexican Casserole follows with 435 Pins.  NOTE:  this was posted in September 2012.

 

 

Rounding out the top five – Fresh Strawberry Pie with 418 Pins.  NOTE:  this was posted in October 2012.

With the exception of the Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie post, all the other 4 posts’ pictures were taken with an iPhone.  My point?  You don’t have to have a fancy dancy camera and take great photographs to drive traffic from Pinterest, although it helps!

Here’s an interesting page from TS4T’s July 2013 Google Analytics:

 

This page shows that 2,013 people visited our site and specifically looked at the Creamy Mashed Potatoes recipe.  Notice that our Pinterest Pins do not add up to this amount of traffic.  The Pinterest Pins are the “all time” pins, not just the July pins.  So, people are visiting our site from Pins, but not necessarily pinning the pin!  Interesting!

And, notice the Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie…937 people visited our site and specifically viewed that post.

The other interesting thing about this chart is that average time on our site is 7:04 minutes for these Top 10, while overall the average time on our site has dropped to 4:12 minutes (see Google Analytics graphic with pie chart).  And, the people who viewed my Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie stayed an average of 10:32 minutes.  That makes me really, really happy.  NOTE:  the Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie’s photos were taken with my fancy dancy Nikon DLSR 3200 camera, as was the Grilled London Broil, but all others were taken with an iPhone.  So, maybe the conclusion is that while you don’t have to have a fancy dancy camera to drive traffic to your site, maybe you have to have one to KEEP traffic on your site?

Anyway, thanks for reading and…

Tootles,

 

Related Posts:

(other Monthly Income Reports)

• Monthly Income Report – Februar 2013
• Monthly Income Report – March 2013
• Monthly Income Report – April 2013
• Monthly Income Report – May 2013
• Monthly Income Report – June 2013

(other Recipes)

• A Box of Yellow Cake Mix:  5 Cookie Bar Recipes You’ll Love
• Charlie’s Layered Mexican Casserole
• Coffee Banana Protein Smoothie
• Creamy Mashed Potatoes
• Easy Appetizer Party for a Crowd
• Fresh Strawberry Pie
• Grilled London Broil
• Peach Pineapple Dump Cake 

(other posts mentioned):

• 10 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Design
• Bloggy Bootcamp Revealed
• Salted Maple Pecan Pie Bars from Pinch of Yum
• Someday I’ll Learn