FOOD BLOG INCOME REPORT – QUARTER 2 2024

In this blog post I’m sharing my second income report covering April through June 2024. In this post, I’ll share my income and expenses for quarter 2 which honestly was quite a slump from where my traffic was in quarter 4 last year and even quarter 1 this year. But! I am hopeful its just the season (there’s just simply less people searching for recipes) and am looking forward to the remainder of this year!

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you decide to purchase any of the items linked in this post, I should earn a small commission. This creates no additional cost to you and helps support the work that goes into running The Fig Jar. Thank you! -Becky 

If you’re new here, please start with my previous income report to see how my income has grown since then. As I mentioned in my About Me page, I’m currently working on this blog part-time (and I’m hoping to move to full-time soon!), and I think that’s important to keep in mind while reading this income report.

TRAFFIC SOURCES

WHERE DID MY BLOG TRAFFIC COME FROM IN QUARTER 2?

Note: The first number next to each traffic source is the Q2 data. The numbers within parentheses are percentages from March 2024.

• Organic search – 76.9% (74%)
• Direct – 13.9% (16%)
• Social & other – 9.2% (10%)

As the screenshot above shows, I’m still getting a majority of my traffic from organic Google search. I attribute at least some of this to RankIQ. During Q2, I really started using RankIQ to optimize each of my posts. As of yet, I still haven’t seen all of the fruit of that work, but as RankIQ states on their site, it may take up to a year for those posts to gain ranking on Google.

Update on 11/17/24: Since the writing of this income report, my rankings on search engines have improved greatly for certain posts. See how I used this tool in my in-depth RankIQ Review.

Here’s how many new posts I created as well as how many older posts I updated.

• New Posts – 17
• Updated Old Posts – 21

I only updated posts that were over one year old and that were ranking no higher than 2.99 in Google Search (according to Search Console). If a post was between position 1 and 2.99 in Google’s search results, I left it alone so as to not interfere with “a good thing”.

I figure, and RankIQ suggests, that if a post is already ranking higher than 3rd spot on Google, it’s probably bringing a significant amount of traffic already, so I should wait to update it until more of my traffic is being spread out across multiple posts. This provides some security in case a high-traffic post happens to lose traffic after an update for some reason.

INCOME SOURCES

• Mediavine Ads – $6,251.06
• Amazon Affiliates – $88

Total income – $6,339.06

As you can see, Mediavine Ads continue to be a major source of my food blog income. Many other bloggers also report that Mediavine is where a majority of their income comes from as well, so I would recommend you checking them out if you haven’t already! I’ll be writing a Mediavine review shortly!

EXPENSES

QUARTER 2 EXPENSE BREAKDOWN

• Nerdpress – $507
• Web Hosting – $38.01
• Keysearch – $42.24
• Rank IQ – $147
• Plug-ins and apps- $20.76
• MailChimp – $80.55
• Groceries – $343.86

Total expenses – $1,179.42

QUARTER 2 2024 NET PROFIT

My total profit for Quarter 2 2024 was $5,159.64.

Southwest Chicken Burgers

A NOTE ABOUT MY EMAIL LIST IN QUARTER 2

In March, I started using Grow (a tool from Mediavine) and I’ve gotten a net total of about 250 new email subscribers each month since using it. My total list is about 1,300 subscribers as of the time of this post and I’ve been sending out updates every two weeks.

Before I installed the Grow plugin from Mediavine, I hovered around 100 subscribers for the majority of the life of my blog. This is mostly because my traffic was low and it just took me a long time to get serious about publishing consistently and seeking out educational resources. However, I’m currently looking for ways to monetize this list via sponsored emails, etc to help support the work I do here at The Fig Jar. I just wanted to mention this great tool since it will likely be a factor in future income reports as I continue to diversify my income from my blog. 🙂

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, quarter 2 proved to me that earning an income from a blog is no joke! I still haven’t reached my income goals yet but I continue to work hard publishing new content and learning the ever-changing ways of the internet. I just have to take a second to step back and realize that it’s still pretty amazing to even earn the amount that I’ve been able to. I’m super appreciative for how far I’ve come but I acknowledge that I still have some work to do. I’m also looking into diversifying my income by creating an e-book in the near future. I look forward to sharing more about that in my next income report!

Toodles!!

-Becky <3