Hello! It’s Jason again. I am Jessica’s husband, taste tester, helpful tech guy, and now proud father to our new son James!
Last month we started an experiment on JessicaGavin.com which would feature monthly income reports. Think of these as Profit & Loss statements that will shed some light on the inner workings of this website. Hopefully the information here is helpful to you in some way, whether you are considering starting your own food blog or maybe just curious to compare your blog income with someone else.
Ok, ready? Here we go for the month of July.
= NET PROFIT: $36.86
Income:
Adsense – $24.58
Blogher – $16.60
Sovrn – $11.31
Amazon – $10.09
YouTube – $3.27
ZipList – $3.34
Total Income: $69.19
Expenses:
Synthesis (Hosting) – $32.33
RPM
As mentioned last month, revenue per thousand impressions or RPM is a helpful metric to determine what the revenue is per 1,000 pageviews. It is calculated like this: RPM = (Revenue / Pageviews) x 1,000. The goal for each month is to make minor or major improvements to the website that could incrementally increase this number. If we did something right, the number will go up, if not then the opposite. Either way, its an interesting stat to keep track of for Jessica’s food blog.
AFFILIATE LINKS
Websites like Amazon sell almost everything so its easy to find a product to promote, but because they sell everything the commission rate is considered low at around 4%-6% depending on the quantity of sales. Jessica’s website referred 20 sales for Amazon in July and thus her commission was $10.09. This was down compared to $34.36 last month.
Last month we set out to join more affiliate programs that will allow us to refer visitors to third-party websites in hopes of receiving a portion of the sale as a commission. We choose programs that are geared towards food bloggers, eventually we’d like to see one (or all) of the items displayed under the Income list above. Here are the programs:
Bluehost (Hosting) – One of the most popular hosting companies for food blogs, Bluehost has great rates and gives you your domain name for free if you decide to host with them. If you’re interested, Jessica created a page where we show a step-by-step guide on how to start a food blog using Bluehost along with a few helpful tips.
Genesis Framework – This blog is built on the Genesis framework. Themes offered by Studiopress are what we believe to be the nicest and functional themes available. Most of their newest themes also have built in responsive design which means they will work with mobile devices.
Foodie Themes - Designed by Shay Bocks, we currently have this food blog theme installed on the JessicaGavin.com website. There are a few custom modifications, but it is a very clean design. The price includes the framework above and theme.
Elegant Themes - We think Elegant Themes look pretty and the feedback we’ve read said they are easy to use, as well they have several custom options. Browse around and see if you like their designs.
How to monetize your food blog - Kiersten of Oh My Veggies has written a very informative book called, “How to Monetize Your Food Blog” that covers everything from Ad networks to affiliate links.
VIEWABILITY
This is a relatively new term that is gaining serious traction in the online advertising world. When Jessica finally got accepted to join the Blogher Publishing Network, she was elated. Blogher said they had limited space in their network so Jessica was on a 6 month wait list. They were a tough ad network to get into, they have specific requirements such as traffic and posting thresholds your blog needs to meet in order to be approved. I know being a part of BPN and getting to place the Blogher badge on her website was a huge victory in her quest to establish a legitimate food blog.
However, it wasn’t even one month after being approved that Blogher announced a formal shift into Viewability. Basically an ad is counted as “viewable” if 50% of the ad unit is fully loaded and visible for at least 1 second with no scrolling. I took a screenshot from our Blogher revenue report dashboard. As you can see the In-View Rate for our main 160×600 advertisement is pretty low at 38% percent.
We need to increase our main ad percentage in order to see an uptick in Blogher revenue. Previously, we were directed to place Blogher ads “Above the Fold” which means a user shouldn’t have to scroll down the website in order to see the advertisement. Now we are encouraged to simply find a way to increase the viewability rate.
With large vertical photos on all the recipe pages, we have noticed people tend to browse very quickly over the large photos but pause when the article text starts, so we have been testing moving the Blogher Ads lower down the page. We will report back next month to see if our viewability rate increases (fingers crossed!).
Another idea I am considering is removing the main Blogher ad when someone is viewing the website on a mobile device. I believe this would help to increase the percentage because when viewing the website on a phone or tablet, the Blogher Ad is waaayy at the bottom of the page and I guarantee not very many people make it down that far. I will table this idea for now as it requires some additional coding that I’m not familiar with yet.
TRAFFIC:
Traffic Overview
Top Traffic Sources
Jumping into third place for traffic this month is Feedburner, a free Google based management service that allows blog owners and podcasters to share and track their RSS feeds.
On the upper right side bar you will see the following form:
We use Feedburner to handle the email newsletter for JessicaGavin.com. The newsletter is setup so that once a user has subscribed, they will receive an email when a new piece of delicious content is created. While we have had the Feedburner service setup for several months, the only thing Jessica has done differently lately is increase her frequency of new articles.
As I mentioned last month, Jessica started using a Blog calendar to schedule out her recipes, this has helped her get into a nice routine. Jessica is trying to create 2 to 3 new recipes or blog posts each week. We assume that this has had a positive impact and thus Feedburner has increased our website traffic.
If you enjoy the content you see here, I encourage you to subscribe via email using the form above (right side bar). The service is free and we don’t spam or sell your information, so you are safe with us!
OVERVIEW:
There were 10 blog posts for the month of July. While revenue is down this month because of Amazon, the good news is that the display advertising revenue sources have remained consistent. We were hoping to see a slight increase as we had roughly 2,000 more website sessions this month compared to last, but we understand there is a fluctuation in display ad rates from month to month which is based on the seasons.
Our work-life balance is sure to be tested now that James is here. Jessica made a smart decision to queue up several recipes before James arrived so that she can have undivided baby-bonding time for at least 6 weeks. Do you have kids and blog? We’d love to hear how you do it. Using the comments below, any pointers or tips are gratefully appreciated.
My goal for the month of August is to continue to learn and test out small tweaks in hopes the numbers change in a positive direction. Let me know if you have any questions or recommendations for things to include in next months food blog income report.
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