Food Blog Income Report August 2020

This food blog income report gives you a behind the scenes look at what it takes to run Midwest Foodie Blog as a full-time job that supports a family of three!

Let's take a look at the stats for August...

TRAFFIC:

Pageviews: 576,060
Sessions: 456,526
Users: 351,819

Traffic Sources:

Social: 62.99%
> Pinterest: 98.26%
> Facebook: .80%
> Blogger: .38%
> BuzzFeed: .36%
>Instagram: .13%
Organic: 26.26%
Direct: 10.05%
Referral: .64%
Other: .06%

For reference, at this time last year – in August of 2019 - I had 67,973 pageviews with 54,866 sessions and 44,956 users. 

INCOME:

August RPMs were higher than July which was great! To be honest, I can't wait to see what 4th quarter brings for RPMs this year!

• AdThrive (income from ads): $10,658.00
  • average RPM (pageviews) of $18.50
  • average RPS (sessions) of $23.35
• Amazon Associates (affiliate income): $115.06
• Freelance (Pinterest Consults): $210.00

TOTAL PROFIT: $10,983.06

DONATIONS:

This month we donated $150 of our profits to NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Here is a quote from their site that shares a little bit about the important work that they're doing:

"The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is America’s premier legal organization fighting for racial justice. Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, LDF seeks structural changes to expand democracy, eliminate disparities, and achieve racial justice in a society that fulfills the promise of equality for all Americans. LDF also defends the gains and protections won over the past 80 years of civil rights struggle and works to improve the quality and diversity of judicial and executive appointments."

We will continue donating each month to an organization that benefits the Black community. I will keep you posted on where we donate next month and would love any suggestions you may have for us!

EXPENSES:

Groceries: $200
Nerdpress (site maintenance): $122
Agathon (hosting): $70
ConvertKit (email service): $49
Canva (graphics for Pinterest): $13
Gsuite (email provider): $12
Lightroom (photo editing): $11
Tailwind (Pinterest scheduler): $10
Akismet (site security): $5
KeySearch Subscription: $8.50
New Furniture for Office: $820
New (Refurbished) Computer: $335

TOTAL DONATIONS/EXPENSES: $1,805.50

PROFIT: $9,177.56

*Please note this "profit" does not take into account the taxes I will have to pay on it. It's easy to look at these numbers and think the profits from blogging are great (which they are!) but it's also important to remember that there are a lot of monthly expenses that go into blogging, and then taxes come along and take about 30% of anything you have leftover! I am planning to include taxes in my income reports starting in January 2021. I am also debating moving to a quarterly income report format in order to align more with the quarterly taxes that I'm paying.

WHAT I'VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS MONTH:

Business Stuff

• I started offering Pinterest consults! WOOHOO!! I'm offering a one-hour Zoom consult where we will review:
  • Your Pinterest profile and boards and look for ways to optimize them and ensure they are a cohesive extension of your blog
  • Your pin designs, pin sizes, and pin templates
  • How to use analytics to figure out which pin designs are working for you
  • How to use Tailwind to schedule pins and drive consistent traffic to your site (I'll share with your my personal workflow)
  • How to build up your Tailwind schedule so you've got pins scheduled in advance and aren't scrambling every day
• The nice part is that this one on one format allows me to answer any questions that you might have and explain in greater detail anything that you are struggling with.
• Please email kylie@midwestfoodieblog.com if you'd like to set up a consult!

Personal Stuff

• We are officially starting homeschooling this week! After much hemming and hawing, we ended up getting this book. It was recommended by a friend who has used it and it's an actual preschool curriculum used by teachers so it comes with codes to print out the worksheets from a website. We haven't taken the leap yet, but I will keep you posted on how it's going. For those wondering, we chose to homeschool our 4-year-old because of everything that's going on. To be honest, we were very much looking forward to having a few child-free hours each day, however, it felt right for us to homeschool during this time and we also wanted to open up our daughter's spot in school for someone who doesn't have the option to homeschool their child.
• I've been redecorating our house! Not that anyone will see it for another year and a half...but I decided if we are going to be spending all of this time at home (and with colder weather coming in a couple months, we'll no doubt be spending more time inside) I wanted to take the time to paint the rooms I'd always said I would but never quite found time for. I finally bit the bullet and bought some new furniture for the office. We've updated the light fixtures in our living room and almost the entire second floor has a new coat of paint! There's much more to be done, but it's kind of giving me a purpose to spruce things up around the house, and I'm looking forward to these projects over the coming months. My husband might not be looking forward to them as much as I am 🙂 But I love to do stuff around the house. Just like chopping veggies and cooking is my zen time, painting and drilling holes in the wall gives me a sense of peace as well!

WHAT I’LL BE WORKING ON NEXT MONTH:

Business Stuff

• A group audit with HashtagJeff. AdThrive has set up a way for Jeff to do a mini audit in a group format for their publisher's and I cannot wait to see what the results are! It sounds like this will take place over the coming months, so I will keep you posted on the progress!
• Trying to figure out what my relationship with Instagram needs to be. While I really enjoy the platform and am so thankful for the new relationships I've found and the connections I've made, it is also an extremely time-consuming platform with very little return on investment. If you check out my analytics data above you'll see that Instagram brings in a super teeny, tiny fraction of my traffic, yet it's the platform that I spend the most time on. For me, the return on investment just isn't adding up. However, if I want to do sponsored posts in the future, I will need to keep growing that platform. I feel like this is a common dilemma for bloggers in general and my goal now is to figure out how to get the most out of the platform, without putting too much time and energy into it.

Personal Stuff

• Balancing helping with homeschooling and blogging full time along with the usual cooking, cleaning, and never-ending to-do list. While I've mentioned that my husband will be taking the reigns on homeschooling, I am also realistic in realizing that he is not a teacher. And although he is great at teaching, I know that there will be times when he may feel burnt out or frustrated, and I will have to step in and help out where I can. I think that will be a big learning curve for us in the coming months - figuring out how to homeschool, blog, parent, get the household chores done, and still make time for each other. The good thing is that my husband has been doing about 30 minutes of "homework time" each day with our daughter throughout the summer, so we will just be building further on that routine. Also, I am trying to remind myself (and my husband) that we're all in the same boat - or at least a similar boat. This is an unprecedented time and we don't always have to be DOING and THRIVING. We can also just LIVE and SURVIVE.

As always, I want to thank YOU for your continued support. This blog would be nothing without my readers!!

DON'T FORGET TO CHECK OUT MY PREVIOUS INCOME REPORTS!