FOOD BLOG INCOME REPORT – QUARTER 4 2024

In this final Food Blog Income Report of 2024, I share my income and expenses for quarter 4 which hit new highs (a total of over 1.1 million views to the site this year!), but hit some road bumps due to a few Google Algorithm updates. I will also go into some updates about my email list, new income sources, lessons learned as well as the debut of some new digital products I released this quarter.

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 first Food Blog Income Report (here) 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 by this summer to be at home more with my 2 year old), and I think that’s important to keep in mind while reading this income report.

Family Time

First off, this quarter wasn’t as productive as I would have liked, due to the busy holiday season. But I wanted to spend more time being with family, and we did get to do lots of that!

Traffic Sources

WHERE DID MY BLOG TRAFFIC COME FROM IN QUARTER 4?

This quarter had 194,790 sessions according to Google Analytics. I’ll explain below where that traffic came from!

Note: The first number next to each traffic source is the Q4 data. The numbers within parentheses are percentages from Q3 2024.

• Organic search – 72.6% (77.1%)
• Direct – 14.1% (12.7%)
• Social & other – 13.3% (10.2%)

As with previous income reports, I’m still getting a majority of my traffic from organic Google search. This is both a blessing and a curse, as SEO is a big factor in people finding my site, but it also means that any disruptions to that traffic source can impact revenue significantly.

As you can see, I had a big jump in the Social & other category this quarter, and specifically 16.5% of my overall revenue coming from Pinterest. So, while my organic search traffic went down, the additional Pinterest revenue (thanks to an RPM of $59.54!) made up for it.

Updating Old Posts & Optimizing New Ones

Since Q2, I started using RankIQ to optimize each of my posts. I continued doing that in Q4.

Here’s how many new posts I created as well as how many older posts I updated. If you’d like a more in-depth review of how I used RankIQ to optimize posts, check out my honest RankIQ Review.

• New Posts – 12 (Including a new type of post for me, a Holiday Gift Guide!)
• Updated Old Posts – 20
• Total Posts – 32

Best California Burgers with Homemade Burger Sauce

Income Sources

As you’ll see below, I earned a bit of income from some new sources – RankIQ Affiliates and Digital Products – resulting in my highest-earning quarter yet. Yay!

• Mediavine Ads – $7,578.07
• Amazon Affiliates – $427.13
• RankIQ Affiliates – $100
• Digital Products – $16

Total income – $8,121.20

Mediavine Ads continued to be a major source of income this quarter. 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!

RPMs

My average RPMs this quarter was $39.13. RPMs (Page revenue per thousand impressions) were calculated by dividing my estimated earnings by the number of page views I received, then multiplying by 1000. My average RPMs from Pinterest traffic was $59.93, meaning that it’s much more valuable to drive traffic from Pinterest than from Google.

Expenses

QUARTER 4 EXPENSE BREAKDOWN

• Nerdpress – $507.00
• Web Hosting – $38.01
• Keysearch – $42.24
• Rank IQ – $147.00
• Plug-ins and apps- $20.76
• Props – $35.49
• Groceries – $502.71

Total expenses – $1,293.21

Quarter 4 2024 Net Profit

My total profit for Quarter 4 2024 was $6,827.99 (minus taxes!).

Cherry Scones with Dark Chocolate and Pistachios

Lessons Learned

Don’t start work on a project until after the contract has been signed by both parties. I knew this intuitively already, but got so excited to work with a company that I thought was equally excited to work with me, that I got ahead of myself.

They were a major company who were offering very fair compensation in exchange for the creation of a post ($1,500.00).

But after hours spent testing the recipe, buying props, shooting and then reshooting the recipe, they pulled back their offer and instead proposed compensating me with a gift box, which they had already sent to me, which had a retail value of a couple hundred dollars. I was grateful for the gift, but it was not fair compensation for the work I had done by that point.

If you’d like to know how to charge fair prices for food photography, Joanie Simon’s YouTube channel is a great starting point for learning about that side of the business!

Podcasts for Inspiration

This quarter, I leaned into listening to more of the podcasts I love for inspiration. I regularly listen to The Food Blogger Pro Podcast and the Eat Blog Talk Podcast for food blogging tips. I’d highly recommend you check those out for ideas, encouragement and staying current with best practices.

My husband, who helps a lot with my email list and more technical aspects of the blog, listens to Pat Flynn’s podcast, The Smart Passive Income Podcast on occasion but I haven’t had the time to get to that one yet! My husband has learned some good tips and tricks there, which I’ll discuss a bit below.

Social Media

This quarter seemed to have been negatively affected by a Google Algorithm update (or two?). In a quarter with lower than expected traffic, Pinterest has proven to be a valuable tool in keeping traffic coming to my site.

During Q4, Google’s RPMs have increased 15% over Q3, while Pinterest’s RPMs have increased by 26%! In Q3, 6.9% of my traffic came from Pinterest while in Q4, 10.8% came from Pinterest – a 3.9% increase.

In terms of my site’s overall traffic, I saw an 82% increase in Pinterest traffic over the previous quarter! All this goes to show that diversifying your traffic sources is an extremely important business practice in an increasingly volatile search environment.

Matcha Truffles with White Chocolate

Email List Updates

This quarter, more than ever, I’ve tried to hone in on best practices with my email list. After listening to a marketing episode on Pat Flynn’s podcast, my husband and I have made the following changes to the emails we send out:

• I added an ‘Unsubscribe’ button to the top of each email I send. The rationale is that you only want to send emails to folks who really want to receive them, so its best to just make it easy for those who aren’t really invested to opt out.
• I have worked to optimize my emails for the highest open rate using A/B testing. I’ve learned that my particular email list prefers longer email subject lines (which is contrary to “best practice” guidelines you find on many email marketing platforms). It just goes to show that you need to listen to what your audience wants!
• I’ve also been regularly removing ‘bounced’ subscribers from my list to improve chances of my emails being received.

Currently, my email list has 1,930 subscribers and growing. I gained 322 net new subscribers in Q4! Mediavine’s Grow Plug-in has helped tremendously with that.

KIT’S CREATOR NETWORK

Kit.com also has a cool feature that helps creators like myself recommend other food bloggers to sign up to their email list. In return, those creators send subscribers my way as well. Just another way for folks to find and follow me. Here is my profile created by Kit if you’d like to swap recommendations!

Here’s another fun fact about one email in particular (about the Holiday Gift Guide above): it received the highest click-to-open rate (8.5%) of any email I’ve sent to date! You can find the public version of that email here. I’ll definitely be posting another gift guide in 2025!

Digital Products

We used Kit to create 2 new digital e-books, the Easy Sides and Appetizers Ebook and the Easy Cookies and Bars Ebook. So far, I’ve only made $16 from these products, but I’m planning on creating a 30-Day Meal Plan and using these two e-books as upsells for folks who want more Fig Jar content.

My hope in creating this Meal Plan is to create an automated/evergreen email series in order to offer products that are better tailored to our readers’ needs (using the Restored 316 course I purchased in Q3).

Conclusion

Writing this on January 1, 2025, I’m feeling very hopeful about the new year. I’m also really grateful for this past year. I didn’t make as much this quarter as I had anticipated, since other creators frequently talk about how lucrative Q4 is.

RPMs were great, but my traffic was lower than expected, likely somewhat due to Google algorithm updates. In the first quarter of 2025, one of my goals is to focus more on social media. I know I’m probably the only blogger that still isn’t using Tailwind for Pinterest too but I’m planning on integrating that too.

Another long-term goal is to create some sort of month-long meal plan to help my subscribers simplify weeknight meals and possibly breakfasts. And lastly, I’d like to set up an evergreen automated email series to help promote that and other future products. And most importantly…I’m hoping to be able to quit my part-time job by the summer…thanks to this blog!!

If you’ve gotten this far, I’m so grateful you’ve decided to check out what makes this blog ‘tick’ and I hope you’ll stick around for more updates in the new year!!

Take care and please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments!

-Becky <3