Food Blog Income Report – March 2024

In this blog post I’m sharing my first ever income report! I want to share this with you because the idea of being successful at blogging can seem so mysterious if you are unfamiliar with the industry. My hope is that by sharing my income reports you can learn how to earn an income from blogging and be inspired to start your own! If I can do it, you can do it.

About me and my blogging journey

I had long admired food blogs and contemplated starting one for years before I actually did it. I’ve LOVED to cook ever since I can remember and found I had a natural talent for it. Although I didn’t pursue working with food professionally, my love of cooking (and let’s be real, eating) delicious food never faded. And that little dream of somehow making a living doing something I loved would just. not. go. away.

So I finally started my blog (FigJar.com) in 2018, but I was clueless! And the worst part is that although I really wanted to be successful, I wasn’t great at seeking out education and resources on how to blog in order to make an income. And if I’m going to be super honest here, I really don’t think I believed I could be successful and so I didn’t put in the work. But more on believing in yourself another day because it’s really important.

I was inconsistent about working on it and often got overwhelmed and frustrated. No one seemed to notice when I published something new and my lack of focus and motivation to figure things out got me basically nowhere.

Fast forward a couple of years and I was in a job that I absolutely hated. I hated it so much that it was hard to focus on my blog at all because I was consumed with that job and how much I hated it. BUT, I also started to see my blog as a way out. My crummy job motivated me to start getting serious about educating myself. I started seeking out podcasts, articles and courses. I started looking for answers to questions like: “What the heck is this SEO everyone is talking about? And is there really a way to be successful at blogging without being Instagram famous?” I’m here to tell you that the answer is a big YES!

It wasn’t really until I understood SEO and implemented it into every single blog post that my traffic started to grow steadily and exponentially. I got super serious in the spring/summer of 2023 and finally qualified for Mediavine at the end of February 2024.

Dutch Oven Pot Roast

Why share this information?

It’s helpful

Yeah, I know it’s a little weird to talk about how much money we make in a lot of settings but I think posts like this are very valuable for new and aspiring bloggers. There’s so many ways to create an income blogging and income reports help you understand the possibilities for income sources. For me personally, seeing other bloggers’ income reports is something that really pushed me to keep going and figure things out for myself.

It’s (hopefully) inspiring

Yes, I know $1,700 in a month might not sound like a ton of money to some people but it’s still significant and even more exciting when it’s earned working for yourself doing something you enjoy. So, I hope this post can encourage and inspire you if you’re interested in blogging but don’t know where to start. And I genuinely mean it when I say if I can do it, you can do it. There’s enough blog ideas out there and enough money out there. You just have to really want it!

Progress tracking tool & accountability

Honestly, reaching this income milestone is personally so exciting for me. It’s a helpful way for me to track my progress and sharing it in this way forces me to really organize myself, analyze the data (which isn’t my fave) and track my success. Along similar lines, I am hoping to significantly grow my income from blogging and putting all of this information out into the open motivates me to work even harder so I can show you my progress.

Okay, let’s get into the details of my food blog income report

Traffic Sources

So where does my blog traffic come from?

• Organic search – 74%
• Direct – 16%
• Social & other – 10%

As you can see, the bulk of my traffic comes from Google search. Thank you, SEO! A decent amount came from direct traffic which isn’t 100% definable but it mostly refers to users typing my url directly into their browser.

The next place my blog traffic comes from is social media sources (mainly from Instagram and Pinterest in my case). I’m not too active on Instagram but I try to post something once a week. I do pin daily and my Pinterest traffic is something I am currently really focusing on because I believe there is a lot more potential for me there. Plus, RPMs are much higher from Pinterest (more on that sometime too!).

Income sources

As you can see, at the moment, my main source of income is from Mediavine ads. If you are still fuzzy on how people earn money from ads on their website, it just means that peoples’ eyeballs are on my website (which is what advertisers will pay for). I host ads on my site and get paid as a result of how many visitors I have on my website and how often ads are viewed/clicked on. That’s it!

I also use Amazon affiliate links when they are relevant to a post. The payout is not great from Amazon but it’s really easy to add the links to a post and pretty much everyone shops on Amazon so I still share this even though I only getting a small amount from it each month. It’s still something!

• Mediavine Ads – $1,788.19

• Amazon Affiliates – $29.35

Total income – $1,817.54

Blackberry Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Expenses

A blog is a business and running a business comes along with expenses! My biggest expense is currently groceries, as you might imagine. Though, as my site grows I’m sure that will change! The nice part about the groceries expense is that although it is a true expense for the business, I also get to benefit from the fact that I get to eat the food!

The next biggest expenses are the tech-y aspects of running a blog. Things like web hosting, email service, plug-ins (to make my Wordpress site function better) and actual professional tech help from Nerdpress. I also started using RankIQ for the first time this month. To see how I’ve used this great tool to improve my rankings on search engines, check out my in-depth RankIQ Review.

Sometimes have more irregular purchases come up, too, like photography props.

March expense breakdown

• Nerdpress – $169
• Hosting – $12.67
• Keysearch – $14.08
• Rank IQ – $49
• Plug-ins and apps- $6.92
• MailChimp – $26.85
• Groceries – $233.45
• Miscellaneous (this month is was a cake stand) – $37.40

Total expenses – $549.37

March 2024 net profit

My total profit for March 2024 was $1,268.17. I know that doesn’t sound like much in some ways, but to me it’s a huge leap from where I started! And it really motivates me to keep going.

Conclusion

I hope you found this helpful! Let me know in the comments if you have any questions and I’d be happy to share anything that could be helpful to you. 🙂