Interested in knowing some of the behind the scenes stuff for Kitchen Sanctuary? Here’s the latest in my blog income and traffic report May 2017. Check out my previous reports and more info on how to make money from your blog here.
It’s the end of June already, half the year has gone. OMG the time has flown by. Sorry I’m a bit late with the May income report but we have been crazy busy, soo much has happened in May and June. First of all, the rest of this post is written by Chris who will take over the income reports from now on woohoo! Chris over to you….
Urm ok, well probably should introduce myself first. Hello everyone i’m Chris, I’m the one on the right with the glasses here holding up one of my best mates. I was best man at his wedding in early June which in itself was pretty nerve racking, but a great day.
I LOVE photography and videography (hhhmmm is that a word?), it’s been my hobby for as long as I can remember, and having the chance to do this for a living is really cool. I’m also a gadget nut and a bit of a geek I suppose, but in a good way.
Although this is my first time writing on the blog, my recipes have appeared on here, yep I can cook too. I have my mum to thank for that 🙂 If you are interested check out my Chilli which is a family favourite and the kids love it.
We really hope the info in this post gives you some insight and ideas if you’re new to blogging and/or making money with your blog. Also check out our How to Start a Food Blog post if you are thinking about giving this blogging thing a go too!
Nicky asked me to pick this up because I like my numbers and spreadsheets, so lets get to the meat of this post ‘the numbers’.
Income Breakdown
Note – there are some links in this post that are affiliate links – which means that if you click on them and then sign up to the service/product we get a small commission (at no extra cost to you of course). If you do click through then thanks!
Income (fyi – this info is based on earning reports and invoices for work done in the month of May, it’s not based on money that has actually come in yet, so there may be some variations based on things like paypal fees or exchange rate fluctuations):
- Freelance writing & video: £4174 ($5425)
- MediaVine: £1469.86 ($1908.91)
- Sponsored Work £500 ($650)
- Amazon Affiliate sales £11.91 ($15.47)
- FoodBloggerPro affiliate sales £42.97 ($55.80)
- Tailwind Affiliate £0 ($0)
- StudioPress Genesis Theme affiliate sales £0 ($0)
- How I earned $40k in my first year of blogging affiliate sales £0 ($0)
- Tasty Food Photography £0 ($0)
- The Food Photography book affiliate sales £0 ($0)
- You Tube Ads (just started my You Tube channel – check it out here) £0 ($0)
- Stock Photography Sales: £0 ($0)
- SiteGround Hosting Affiliate sales: £0 ($0)
Total = £6198.73 ($8055.18)
Expenses (currently this includes regular payments for tools, membership fees and advertising but not inconsistent things like courses, trips and props):
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- FoodBloggerPro: £16.37 ($20.83)
- SiteGround Hosting and backups: £64.08 ($81.50)
- Tailwind: £8.02 ($9.99)
- Tailwind for Instagram: £8.02 ($9.99)
- MailChimp £60.21 ($75)
- Adobe creative cloud £47.76 ($60.79)
- Facebook Ads £28 ($36.40)
- OptinMonster £12.00 ($15.27)
Total = £244.46 ($309.77)
Net Profit = £5954.27 ($7745.41)
Traffic
Yay! An increase in traffic (20k more page views) to the site this month compared to last month, its a relief after a couple of months of declining page views. In next months income and traffic report I plan to have a look at our stats for the 1st half of this year vs. 1st half of last year to see how we have grown – and share some insights.
Here’s a screenshot from Google Analytics for May:
Here’s a breakdown of traffic sources based on the number of sessions. A 4k increase in Google traffic compared to last month. I am hoping this is because we have started to better optimize the site for SEO. We have also had some good referral traffic from countryliving.com and nationalvegetarianweek.org as two of our recipes in May have been featured on those sites.
Here’s the info on the location of our readers – The US and UK percentages are getting even closer. Top 10 countries stay the same.
May (and early June)Happenings:
- I left my career in IT after 17 years in a corporate environment to join Nicky. We have not killed each other yet, although for the record she very nearly accidentally cut my fingers off with a very sharp serrated knife recently!
- We set up our limited company (LoveFoodCreative Ltd.) More to come on this as I am working on the site design at the moment.
- Durring the kids school holidays we went to Kent. Had a lovely meal in little town called Broadstairs. Nicky had the scallops which were AMAZING.
June/July Happenings and Plans:
OMG my head is spinning, there are soooo many things we want to do now we are both full time. Some of the big things happening late June and into early July.
- Facebook – we have sat down and created a strategy for increasing our FB presence and we hit 10k followers early June. HUGE thank you to everyone who follows us on our social media channels, we are working on plans to expand that further.
- More video work including working out how to build our Youtube following and content specific for our Youtube channel
- Christmas in July, yep you heard me CHRISTMAS. Brands and supermarkets are at that point where they are full steam preparing for Christmas so we will be attending a few Christmas events in June/July.
I think that’s all from me. I hope you found all of the info helpful. Please let me know if there’s anything you want me to talk about in a future report. Just drop me a note in the comments
Oh, one last thing, we are working on creating more content and launching a new site to teach people about what we do, we will probably be moving the income reports. (more to come soon)!