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In this post you will find out how I made $6 426 from food blogging and what I'm doing to grow my traffic even further. I hope you will get as much value from these, as I have from other bloggers' income reports! Find all the income reports here.
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Why I share my income reports
I decided to start sharing my income reports for four reasons:
- Keep myself accountable! What better way to make sure I reach my goals, than to share them with you?
- Give back! I've found so much value from other bloggers' income reports over the years, it's time I started sharing what's working for me as well!
- De-mystify blogging! Food blogging is a marathon, not a sprint - and entirely possible to succeed with.
- I love sharing my journey! And I hope you enjoy following along.
April 2023 Recap
April saw some great momentum for the blog. I feel like I am finally at a place where I know what to do to grow my traffic, socials and e-mail list - and it's starting to move a bit by itself.
I put a lot of effort into creating slideshows for MSN, and my MSN page views increased a lot - as did the refererral traffic I got from MSN. Loving this new way to boost my traffic and income!
More specifically, this is what I did this month:
Published 5 new recipes:
- Garlic Parmesan Sauce
- Leftover French Fries Casserole
- Air Fryer Toast
- S'mores Casserole
- Air Fryer Bone In Pork Chops
Published 4 new resources and roundups:
- March Income Report
- 50 Best Potato Recipes for Dinner
- 90 Leftover Shredded Chicken Recipes
- How to Cook Ore Ida Fries in the Air Fryer
Other things I did:
- Updated 8 recipes
- Created 30+ new slideshows for MSN
- Republished 30+ slideshows on MSN
April 2023 Traffic
| April 2023 | April 2022 | Growth | |
| Page views | 291 970 | 110 027 | 165% |
| Sessions | 237 855 | 95 001 | 150% |
| Users | 193 641 | 76 623 | 153% |
April was my best month yet. I can't believe I reached a higher number of visitors than in December - I thought I'd have to wait to end of Q3 or beginning of Q4 to surpass those numbers. Yet here we are!
As you can see my page views grew more than my sessions. This is great! It means that every time a person clicks over to my site, they visit more pages than before. Users clicking over from MSN are especially good at this!
Traffic Sources
Organic search: 71%
Direct: 16%
Referral: 11%
Socials: 3%
Demographics
US: 58%
UK: 18%
Canada: 7%
Australia: 5%
Other: 12%
April 2023 P&L
Let's see what this traffic brought me in terms of monetary results!
April 2023 Income
| April 2023 | April 2022 | Growth | |
| RPM | $26.77 | $19.64 | 36% |
| Page RPM | $21.76 | $17.17 | 27% |
| Total Ad Income | $6 383 | $1 821 | 251% |
The increase in RPM goes against the trend in the market - most bloggers see lower RPMs this year. My increase is a lot thanks to my MSN traffic. It's mainly US based, on desktop, and they visit more pages once they arrive on my site.
Amazon: $43.22
Total income: $6 426
April 2023 Expenses
I run my own business full time and divide my time between food blogging and business consulting. Here I only include the expenses that are directly related to my food blog - other shared expenses like cell phone costs, company car, new computer, etc. are not included here.
Groceries: $433
Nerdpress: $379 (these guys are my lifesavers!!)
The Insiders Mastermind: $395 (this is how I can publish to MSN!)
Keysearch: $14
RankIQ*: $29 (RankIQ has really helped me grow my traffic!)
Lightroom & Premiere Pro: $45
Feast Plug-in*: $8
Big Scoots hosting*: $48
ConvertKit: $41
Canva* (for making collages & printables): $10
Akismet (site security): $7.50
Jetpack: $2.50
VAs: $520
Total expenses: $2 056
April 2023 Profit
| Income: | $6 426 |
| Expenses: | -$2 056 |
| Profit: | = $4 370 |
The profit above does not take into account taxes.
We're starting to get there! Even in Sweden I could actually live on this money. It wouldn't be fun, but it would work.
Goals and Plans for May
With how my traffic has been going so far this year I am upping my expectations for the rest of the year.
May Goals
Pageviews: 325 000
Total income: $7 500
May Action Plan
- Post at least 4 new recipes
- Post at least 4 new resources & roundups
- Publish 1 new slideshow per day to MSN
- Republish 2-3 slideshows per day on MSN
- BE SMART! MSN is giving great traffic and who knows how long this will be the case. It also gives great RPMs! So doubling down on that for now.
- Start working a bit ahead so I can take a nice long vacation in July
I hope you got some value out of this income report. If you did - please leave a comment below and let me know what was most valuable to you! And if you have any questions, please reach out through commenting or by sending an e-mail to emmeline@alwaysusebutter.com
All the best luck for May!
Emmeline
imsen
Hi, congratulations on your achievement on this food blog! one question please. could you elaborate more on how you did to acquire a mass amount of backlinks ? is there any service that you recommend us to use ? I see a lot of food bloggers have amassed huge amounts of backlinks in a matter of a few months (Thousands). thanks and congrats 🙂
Emmeline Kemperyd
Hi, and thank you! I actually have NOT acquired lots and lots of backlinks in a short time, I've built this up over almost five years. What I do to acquire backlinks though is to contribute to roundups in different roundup groups on Facebook as well as participate in the Insiders mastermind (https://gumroad.com/a/480360659). The latter gives you the opportunity for guest posts and syndicating content for extra backlinks, as well as opens the door to posting on MSN and to AP. If you're looking to build backlinks I would definitely recommend you look into that! /Emmeline