Traffic and Income Report - April 2016

Heads up: some of the links in this post are affiliate links and services I use for OMGfood.

Hello, hello!

Welcome back to another monthly traffic and income report, where I share some information about blogging behind the scenes. I'm aiming to make a living from my blog someday and I want to share the journey there with you! It's a slow climb for this blog, but I'm loving every step of the way.

My goal with these posts is to share what I’m learning about taking my blog from hobby to business, in hopes it will help you with your own journey (whether it’s growing your own blog or whatever else).

If the technical side of blogging doesn’t interest you, I understand. You want recipes, right?  I’ll have something new for you to taste next time. The rest of you who are here to know about the fun behind the scenes, read on!

Traffic Totals

Here are some screenshots from Google Analytics for the month of April.

Traffic Overview

Top Ten Traffic Sources

Mobile vs Desktop vs Tablet

Income

• Sovrn - $24.66
• Gourmet Ads - $7.88
• Switch Ads - $3.97
• Google AdSense - $3.31
• Amazon Associates - $8.74

Total Income: $48.56

Expenses

• Food Blogger Pro - $25
• VaultPress - $5
• Google Apps - $5
• BoardBooster - $10
• Adobe Creative Cloud - $10

Total Expenses: $55

Profit: $0

Top Three Posts of April

#1 Slow Cooker Jalapeño Garlic Beef

#2 Kale and Avocado Salad

#3 Broiled Lamb Shoulder Chops

Page Views

April was an awesome month for numbers, having almost 4,000 more page views than March. A small percentage of traffic came from "food porn" sites like foodgawker and tastespotting and a slightly larger boost was from reddit, where my jalapeño garlic beef recipe became popular again in a different thread (by the way, there's a reason that recipe is a top favorite; if you haven't made it yet and you're into spicy beef, get on that). The blog also got a little bit of love from StumbleUpon and Zeven Up (I talk more about Zeven Up below). I was excited to see the increase for this month came (mostly) organically and not from one specific post that went viral for a short time (i.e. the spicy beef on reddit). If the reddit thread didn't exist, April would still be up by 3,300 page views from March. I will call that a win.

New Visitors vs Returning Visitors

I'm on a mission to grow my blog, right? If you're reading this, you obviously know that already. Increasing page views and readership = being accepted into top notch Ad networks = working with awesome brands = someday creating quality products  = getting paid. Something else that's very important to me, which I don't think I share too often on these reports, is increasing the number of readers who return to my blog. Here's a quick look at the number of returning visitors each month, starting in January:

• January:  1,724
• February:  1,524
• March:  1,900
• April:  2,301

It's good to keep in mind the number of days in each month vary, but that's only a small difference if you were to look at it that way. That said, on top of April being a great month number-wise, 401 people came back because they (you) maybe liked what I had to share! Pretty awesome. Thanks for that!

Zeven Up

Zeven Up is a content exchange network for food bloggers to connect together, allowing them to further grow their blogs. If you look at the bottom of this post, you will see a section showing thumbnails to recipes from my blogger friends. That's there by the power of the Zeven Up widget! You can have up to ten pieces of content uploaded at one time and that content will be displayed across various blogs who also use Zeven Up. It's a really great way to support other blogs, as well as get your own content out there more. The service also has a performance analysis tool, so you can see how the content you uploaded is performing. This was launched back in March. Also, it's completely free to use! If you're a food blogger and are interested in Zeven Up, you can apply to join by clicking here.

Popular Posts Deserve Better Photography

It still fascinates me that the kale and avocado salad has been lingering in the top three posts for so many months. Not because it's a terrible salad; it's very simple to make and it's delicious! But the photo for it makes me cringe. I just can't with that photo. I think I'll be updating the post sometime this year to make it more visually appealing. I had actually updated that post last year because the first photo was taken shortly after launching the blog and was arguably worse than the one you see today and while I'd like to not spend time updating a post for the third time, I think those rules can change when a post becomes more popular than expected.

Thanks For Your Support

It's a great feeling knowing that April had a total of 13,266 visitors, but it's an even better feeling knowing that 2,301 of these visitors are people who decide to come back. So thank you. Whether you are new here today, since last month, or even at the start of my blogging venture, I want you to know I appreciate you. And I wouldn't be doing this without you. <3