Piping Pot Curry’s food blog Income Report at one year of full-time blogging in August 2018. This report shows what money we made, where it came from, the expenses to run the site, and some learnings we had along the way.
I know a lot of people wonder if they can make money blogging and how long it will take them to make a decent income. Hence, I am sharing the details of my blog. The last few months have been very successful for Piping Pot Curry, and I want to thank all my readers for their continued support.
I also want to thank other bloggers who have shared a ton of information online, from which I learned a lot. Attending the Everything Food Conference was very beneficial and a tipping point for me to decide to continue blogging. Another helpful resource has been Food Blogger Pro to help me improve my skills (even though I joined them just 5 months back).
If you are completely new to blogging and decide to start a blog, check out my how to start a blog post for a step-by-step guide to do it. If you are wondering whether you can succeed. This is really why I am writing this post and I hope that this can inspire you. There is room for everyone to grow and succeed here.
Note:
- This is an income report after 1 year of full time + 7 months of weekend blogging (while I worked full-time).
- I know some bloggers have made more money while some have made less blogging. It very much depends on the niche you are in and how much time/effort you are able to put in. I am just sharing one example, which might hopefully inspire some.
Why am I writing this income report?
Before I delve into the details, I want to share why I am sharing this income report. It is definitely very unusual for me to share these numbers, and I discussed with my husband countless times whether I should do this. We talked about this from the very start, but I was too shy, terrified, and embarrassed to share the numbers. I was still in two minds, but writing down the reasons helped me decide to go for it.
- I am learning every day, as you all are. This gives me a perspective of what I have learned and achieved in this one year. It will also give me a chance to look back after a few years to see where I started.
- I want people to know that they can make an income from an online business. But this is not a get-rich-quick or easy kind of business. It requires a lot of hard work.
- I want to inspire people to do what they enjoy. I loved my job when I was working, but I still needed something more—something that made me feel it was my own, something that I was passionate about, something that did not feel like work!
Income from Food Blog
Last Month (August 2018) – $5110.36
- Raptive – $4784 (This is the ad network I use)
- Amazon Associates – $326.36 (This is what I make when anyone purchases something using a link from my site. It doesn’t cost the buyer anything else, but gives me a small portion of the sale as a referral fee for the purchase)
Last year
As I am sharing this report after a year plus of blogging. I wanted to share the month-by-month growth so you can see where I started and how it grew.
- February 2017 – $11.59
- March 2017 – $78.11
- April 2017 – $37.58
- May 2017 – $90.13
- June 2017 – $52.23
- July 2017 – $100.03
- August 2017 – $150.76
- September 2017 – $188.32
- October 2017 – $371.61
- November 2017 – $762.86
- December 2017 – $1082
- January 2018 – $1139.52
- February 2018 – $848.11
- March 2018 – $800.41
- April 2018 – $771.39
- May 2018 – $2814.75
- June 2018 – $4930.94
- July 2018 – $5263.75
- August 2018 – $5110.36
Notable Trends in the Food Blogging Income
Monetizing the blog from Day 1:
- Yes, I have put ads on my blog since day 1! I started the blog on Feb 5, 2017, and hence, you see the income from that month itself. I just added basic Google Adsense ads on the blog (I believe I got approved after 10 posts on the blog).
Food blogging Holiday Trend:
- You will notice the income starts increasing in October and then goes up to $1000+ till January. October is also the month I crossed 100K monthly pageviews. This is the holiday season trend. After January, the traffic and the income dropped, showing the start of the low season for food blogs (not focused on health/fitness food).
Joining an ad network:
- There is a significant upward trend starting in May this year. This is when I moved to the ad network Adthrive. This was the tipping point for me. Before this point, I was still deciding if I wanted to continue blogging or if it should just be a side hustle. (I actually did not leave my job to make blogging a full-time career. I took a break for other reasons but continued blogging as I enjoyed it).
- You would wonder why I did not move to an ad network like Gourmet Ads or Mediavine earlier. Frankly, I was naive, I thought I was making what I could with Google Adsense and will not be a big gain compared to the loss of user experience with the amount of ads I see on websites which are with an ad network. Obviously I was wrong! That said, I am happy with the amount of ads on my blog now with Adthrive and not feel like they are worsening the user experience.
Expenses for August 2018 – $119.21
- Cloudways Hosting – $18.80
- Seasoned Pro Theme – $10.5
- Genesis Framework – $5
- WP Rocket (caching plugin) $3
- Shortpixel (image compression plugin) – $4.99
- Adobe Creative Cloud (for photo editing) – $9.99
- Food Blogger Pro (membership site for food bloggers) – $18.75
- WP Recipe Maker (recipe plugin) – $7.30
- Yoast (SEO plugin) – $5.75
- Social Warfare Pro (social media plugin) – $2
- Tailwind (Pinterest scheduler) – $19.98
- Planoly (Instagram scheduler) – $9
- Dropbox – $9.99
For yearly expenses, such as for the membership and plugins, I have divided them to show monthly spending. There were other expenses, such as buying a new laptop, attending conferences, buying food for recipe testing, props for food photography, etc, and future expenses, such as buying a camera and tripod, which I have not included above.
Total Profit for August = $4991.15
Traffic Totals for August 2018
The traffic for the month of August was 266,696 pageviews.
The top traffic source was Organic Search, followed by Social (Facebook, Pinterest).
Community & Social Media
I have focused on not only increasing my blog traffic from organic search but also growing the community on various platforms. The numbers below are as of Sept 6, 2018.
- Facebook – 11,442 followers
- Pinterest – 2023 followers (564K monthly viewers)
- Instagram – 1859 followers
- Youtube – 834 subscribers & 37 videos
Join me on your favorite platform to see the latest posts and stay updated on what’s happening at Piping Pot Curry!
Takeaways
Whew, that was a lot. I hope you get that running a blog is a lot of hard work. It is not just writing a few posts, taking photos from your iPhone, and putting it out there.
I am going to share a few takeaways I had –
- Finding a niche is important. I was already posting recipes in the instant pot recipe niche, although that niche is already starting to seem broad. My plan is to concentrate and maybe niche down even more!
- Content is king. Keep publishing good quality content, and readers will come. Yes, this is the advice that everyone gives, but it is so true. I am still learning the ins and outs of keyword research, SEO, and publicizing content, but these are extremely important for success in this competitive area.
- Monetizing from day 1 is important. It makes you feel like you are getting something for the countless hours you are putting in and motivates me to do more.
Looking forward
I wanted to share some things I want to focus on in this upcoming year.
Diversifying Income: I really need to work on diversifying my income. I want to do more sponsored posts and learn that art. The key will be to find sponsored content that my readers would be interested in.
Planning & Consistency: I want to plan my content more and be more consistent in sharing posts. Till now I have be mostly consistent with posting almost weekly, however I have not been planning out for the upcoming months/seasons.
Thanks to you all!
I am able to do this and make Piping Pot Curry my full-time job because of you all. Thank you for reading, sharing, pinning, commenting, liking, or silently following Piping Pot Curry. I am grateful to have you touch my blog in any way. Thank you!
Finally, I would love to hear any feedback you have for me. I do read, respond and take seriously each and every comment. So please do not hesitate to share your feedback.
Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links, and I will earn a commission if you purchase through these links at no additional cost to you. Please note that I’ve linked to these products purely because I recommend them and they are from companies I trust.
This was so encouraging and inspiring! I’m just starting my blog and I just got a membership with Food Blogger Pro. I’m going to continue to keep pushing! Thank you!
Hi Alyrica – So glad to hear the post was helpful. All the best for your blog!
Hi Meeta, great post.
I am in the process of starting my own food blog. I have plans on starting food blogger pro as well. One question I have for you, in your first year how many blog post did you do a week?
Best
Mike Cleavenger
Hi Mike – Glad to hear you found the report helpful. I was doing about 2 posts a week when I started and even now it is about 2 a week. Hope that helps!
Wow, that’s really motivational and inspiring article for beginner bloggers. I hope that you will continue sharing your experience in this niche. And I really hope that one day my blog become such profitable as your. Andy
Hi Andy – Glad the post was helpful!
Hi Meeta,
Go you! Thanks for sharing all of this information. It is extremely helpful, since I am just starting my own blog and am still sorting through all of the “how to” information. Do you know if there are any requirements to getting signed up with the non-Google ad companies? Pageviews? Number of posts?
Thanks again and I look forward to following you.
Hi Shana – Glad to hear the post was helpful. Based on what I know of the current requirements, Mediavine needs 50K sessions and Adthrive needs 100K page views per month. This can change, so please do check with the ad companies.
Thanks so much for writing this post! I’m looking to start a food blog so this was very insightful! Hope your blog continues to grow! 🙂
Hi Layla – Best wishes to you! So glad this helped you 🙂
Hi Meeta,
Thanks a ton for this post, it is really very helpful and motivating. I have started my food blog 2 years back and just now started making videos. But I am having trouble to find affordable video hosting and video player. I am using JW Player right now with 500 GB limit of every month. But my usage of GB is increasing now and can’t fit into monthly 500 GB plan. However I can not afford their custom plan as is still very expensive for me. Can you please give some suggestions to me? I read this post of yours 3 times but you didn’t mention anything about videos and not even in your expenses. I will be very grateful if you can come up with some suggestions or share your experience. Once again thanks a lot for sharing your experience.
Regards – Jigna.
Hi Jigna – I am self hosting the blog with cloud ways. They provide the space to host videos too. So I am not paying anything separately for video hosting. I hope that helps! Glad you found the post helpful.
Thanks Meeta for replying, you gave me an idea and now I will check with my web hosting service which is Bluehost.
Regards – Jigna
What an insightful post. Thanks for the very informative and detailed post Meeta. I stated food blogging in 2011 but took off for years in between only to know I have missed several opportunities to maximise its potential. Keeping the numbers aside it’s a great little feeling to create something from scratch and get income out of it . This can never be equivalent to that of any high paying jobs in my view. Am pumped now @
Hello Meeta. Thank you for sharing with us your income report. You may not realize it, but it is posts like this that motivate others to take a chance or keep going. I am just starting my website and because of layoffs I can dedicate fulltime to it for the time being. I have a few questions if you don’t mind me asking. The first is, how many views per month did it take for you to get accepted into AdThrive. I feel like it may have been 100k per month, but I’m not quite sure. Secondly, how does a newcomer like myself break into the pinterest board. Like how do we get invites to share on the big boards when we are so new. I hope you find time to answer my questions thank you. Feel free to email me if it’s more convenient with the email I used when leaving a comment. Thank you and keep up the great work.
Hi Shon – Glad to hear you found the income report helpful. To get accepted to Adthrive, the minimum pageviews is 100K. Mediavine is another option and their criteria is 25K sessions. Based on my knowledge about pinterest, the recommendation now is to share more of your content (about 70-80%) and group boards are not doing as well as they used to. So it is okay to have your own niche boards and share relevant useful content. All this said, pinterest keeps changing so much and so frequently, that you have to keep adapting as you go. All the best!
Thanks for a great post. We’re still starting out with our website GradFood.com and deciding whether or not to include ads. I appreciate your point about starting ads early, even if it doesn’t make a big profit, in order to motivate us to do more. We’ll have to check out adthrive now!
Glad you found the information useful!
Hi Meeta.. great post.
I’m curious what was the tipping point for you in May? Did another site such as Buzzfeed, refer you, how did your stats jump in May? I’m curious as that jump was high and that’s when you started making “real” money so to speak.
Thanks!
Thanks Neha. The main change in May was joining an ad network, the traffic did not change much. I have included more details in the post.