Traffic and income report of an Indian food blog for June 2020 including tips, best practices and take aways.
Thank you for joining me in another monthly blog report for traffic and income that I earn with my Indian food blog. If you are new, you might wanna check out the income reports for March 2020, April 2020 and May 2020.
Traffic Report for June 2020
With 1,50,000+ page views, this months' traffic was slightly higher than the last two months. Here is a screenshot of the google analytics report for June 2020.
Unfortunately I am still struggling with organic traffic that is really getting very frustrating now. Here's hoping to attend the master SEO course on Food Blogger Pro before my annual membership comes to an end this month 🙁
income
- Advertising (Mediavine) = $1397.12 with RPM $11.67 (sessions)
expenses
- Tailwind= $15
- Slickstream = $12.5
- Sitelock
- Food Blogger Pro membership = $23
- Bluehost= $15
- Lightroom= $11
- Jetpack = $11
- Link in Profile = $11
Total expenses = $288
*This income report does not include taxes & payments to support staff helping us with this blog. The expenditure does not include site lock & also no grocery costs are added because it is varied & also consumed within family as meals.
**This income report does not include earnings for sponsored content (which was an Instagram only package for a brand we have been working with since over 2 years) This we plan to keep confidential, however we are more than happy to help you - do write us an email on [email protected] if you have any specific questions for sponsored content 🙂
big announcement
I have been keeping a secret and its time to spill it out. I am switching to AdThrive. I still pinch myself as I write this. AdThrive is considered to be the END GOAL of blogging for many blogger in the food industry for two reasons: i) higher RPMs & ii) lesser ads. So what I get is: better user experience on the site (because of reduced number of ads) and still (hopefully) earn more from it. AdThrive has been goal ever since I got to know about the top ad networks for food blogs. I never really thought I would get registered with them so soon, considering it felt so challenging to reach their minimum threshold: 1,00,000 page views/ month.
Speaking of minimum threshold...
In my first traffic and income report, I had expressed about my goals and challenges while I submitted my application for Mediavine. In a very recent Facebook post, I learned from Mediavine, that they have now changed their minimum threshold. The minimum number of sessions is now 50,000 instead of 30,000. Read more about it here.
Takeaways
Goals from the last month
I love setting goals and had set one for myself last month to cross $1500 revenue in June. Sadly I couldn't do that but I am still pretty happy to earn approximately $1400 purely by advertising with Mediavine.
Switching from Mediavine to AdThrive
As much as I am curious to see if the grass is actually going to be greener, submitting my notice period to Mediavine was a very tough decision. More than anything, mediavine is known for their VIP super special service, which I know I will miss the most. There was a not even a single issue that took more than just a few hours for them to resolve, or even go to the extent to even upload videos for me when my internet was down! They score 100/100 in terms of service. Plus the revenue was pretty decent too (specially in the last 2 weeks). But I have read and heard so much about AdThrive that accepting their offer was my final decision. I have heard how their RPMs are even better, but that we will see 10th July onwards... fingers crossed here.
I would love to know if there is more that you want me to cover in the upcoming posts. Feel free to comment below or drop me an email with your ideas and suggestions 🙂 Thanks again for joining me today, for visiting this website, for trying the recipes. Here is a recap of my previous blogging-related blog posts.
- traffic and income report March 2020
- traffic and income report April 2020
- traffic and income report May 2020
- beyond recipes @ TTCP Feb 2020
- beyond recipes @ TTCP Jan 2020
- a day in the life of a part time blogger
- food photography tips for beginners
- eight ways to grow traffic on your food blog
Hi Sheenam, fellow FBP member! Thanks for sharing this!
I've read your past income reports and it's inspiring to see how you've gone from around 40K page view to currently 150K in just a matter of a few months. First up, congrats on your move to AdThrive! Would love to see if you find that RPMS are higher with them since a lot of big bloggers have stayed on with MediaVine even after crossing the 100,000 threshold.
I'm also curious about how you've managed to maintain and even increase your traffic in June despite the summer slump and with less people online (since lockdown is over in most places)? Would love to hear if you could share, thank you! My traffic has dipped after May (which was the highest it has been in a long time), and I know you use Pinterest alot.
I've been having a hard time increasing my Pinterest traffic not sure what exactly I should be doing! Thanks so much, and appreciate it 🙂
Hi Felicia, thank you for your sweet comment. I know of many bloggers who have continued with Medioavine after crossing the AdThrive threshold – but it all came down to my curiosity about higher RPMs with AdThrive. The only reason I registered with AdThrive was because they provide higher RPMs with lesser ads but it is too early for me to tell you if that is true or not. Regarding traffic – I am struggling with organic traffic but I am working on editing my older posts. The main increase in my traffic was because of a pin that got viral in end of last month and I had consistent traffic on a page that had very high RPM. But unfortunately with Pinterest changing its strategies every second day, now even Pinterest is looking very challenging for me. I am still working on some strategies to improve engagement and traffic on the site and will write to you, once I am able to find something consistent that is working for me, and could work for you too J I also want to add that slickstream really helped. It’s a really nice investment.
Hi,
How much % of the traffic do you get from USA and tier 1 countries?
By the way, I'm a regular reader and love the way you explain things.
Thanks!
That's some fantastic news there! Big Congratulations on getting accepted for Adthrive!
I would love to hear more tips on how to generate more traffic without relying on SEO esp where you mentioned it wasn't your top source of traffic
Also I was wondering if the slick stream is free as you haven't included that in the expenses?
Thanks for bringing that up, just added those 12 dollars in the blog post 🙂