Food Blog Income Report of a New Blogger

Let’s take an inside look at Go Healthy With Bea’s bottom line with this very first food blog income report.

On this six month anniversary of my blog I wanted to share with you a little bit of what is going on behind the scenes with my first income report as a new food blogger.

Over the last 6 months I’ve poured my heart and soul into coming up with recipes that will make the challenge of making you forget about your "free from" diet.

My hope is that this food blog income report will give my readers and other new bloggers a behind the scenes look at what it really takes to run a food blog.

Jump To / Aller directement à

• How Go Healthy with Bea got started
• Current mindset : letting go of perfection
• Total traffic of my first semester
• Income
• Expenses
• Profit
• Goals
• What can you do to support my work?
• Conclusion
• Comments / Commentaires

How Go Healthy with Bea got started

January 19th 2020

Why this blog?

Ever since I started my natural healing journey back in december 2017, my way of eating, my weight loss and my health have been at the center of all conversations.

People were intrigued, fascinated, curious to know more about my diet and to try my recipes to see for themselves if what I ate was edible.

I realised that I was repeating the same things over and over again and that my journey was inspiring for many people.

How it all started

So one day (Sunday january 19th 2020), after many months of thinking about doing something about this, I realised that I could just create a blog.

Except, I had no idea how to create a blog! So I just googled it, made some research, found some tutorials on YouTube and at the end of the day my blog was created. It looked nothing like what it looks like now as I was using a free theme, no multilanguage plugin so the English and French versions were on the same post... Anyway, I was happy because I took the leap!

Funnily, my first blog post was not a recipe but an article on raw food diet pros and cons which is one of the least read articles on my blog. My first recipe (Vegan fall butternut squash salad) was published only a few days later, on January 23rd 2020.

At the beginning of March, I realised I couldn't go further with a free blog theme because it really wasn't user-friendly. I couldn't have my recipe pictures shown on the home page. Buttons and menus were only in English, so it was confusing for my French readers.

So I decided to invest in a food blog theme and a multilanguage plugin. I also had to invest in a newsletter plugin to enable my subscribers to select the language of their newsletter and the category of recipes they want to subscribe to.

How much I work

I work ALL THE TIME! I put in 38 hours each week at my "real job" (that has absolutely nothing to do with food or natural health) and likely spend another 40 hours each week working on my blog.

As soon as I have some spare time, I'm prepping my recipes, writing blog posts, sharing them on my social media accounts, answering my readers' questions. My week nights and weekend plans revolve around my blog.

I do everything by myself. I create the recipes (both in cups and weights), write them down in English (which, like you might have guessed, is my second language) and in French. Then I take the pictures, resize them, upload them, name them (...), share my content on social media, design my pins to pin my recipes on Pinterest... And I do everything in both languages... Yes, that's kind of crazy! lol

I have cried quite a lot in the past 6 months!!

Sometimes of exhaustion and frustration because of some computer bug that would destroy many hours of work or because my recipe testing was a failure. I also have been close to burn out more than once.

But in the end, most of the times, I've cried of very happy tears!

Each time I post something on my blog (either a recipe or a post about my health journey) it feels like I'm getting naked in front of the entire world. Every word on this blog is my heart and soul, what I went through with my auto immune disease and my creativity in the kitchen.

So when you put yourself out there like that and people from all around the world tell you that it helps them, gives them hope, the effect is HUGE on your emotions!!

Current mindset : letting go of perfection

I know perfectly well that my recipes pictures are very "amateur". But even though I am a real perfectionist, I have decided to let go of this for now. Because it already is enough of a time consumer to take the pictures I take. If I try to make them better I will definitely go into burn out. Believe me, this is not an easy decision to make for a perfectionist!

Like I said earlier, I didn't know anything about blogging when I took the leap. I also knew nothing about creating pins on Pinterest, having a FB page or an Instagram account. So I had to learn everything from the Internet, YouTube and books that I borrowed at the library. I still have a lot to learn. That's why I have to let go of some things not being perfect.

Total traffic of my first semester

Page Views: 26.1 K
Users: 14.4 K

Income

I started monetizing my blog in May and here is what came out of it so far:

• Ads : $1.76
• Amazon Affiliate income : $15.2
• Tips : $4.00

TOTAL INCOME : $20.96

Expenses

• WordPress business plan (hosting, maintenance, site security...) : $304
• WPML Multilanguage plugin : $94.80
• Newsletter (email service): $69
• Foodica theme : $82.80
• Recipe card block pro : $82.80
• Groceries: hard to say because I eat everything I cook for the purpose of my blog, so it is part of my food expenses. Although my expenses have risen a lot since I started creating a lot of AIP recipes because AIP compliant flours are 3 times more expensive than my basic whole rice flour. Same with many other AIP ingredients like arrowroot, sweet potatoes (that are expensive in France)...

TOTAL EXPENSES : $633.40

Profit

Well, you can easily do the math and see for yourself that I come out in the red (with a loss).

Let's be real for one minute. Blogging is probably the only job in the world where you work full time for 6 months to earn $21 for the whole semester after investing more than $600!

So why do I keep doing this?

Because I am passionate about this and because of all the nice comments I receive from my readers. Knowing that my recipes are appreciated is motivating. But it is nothing compared to the fact that my readers are telling me that those very recipes are helping them stick to their "free from" diet in order to heal themselves. In other words, if I was sharing "normal" recipes it definitely wouldn't be the same to hear that they are delicious. Knowing that I'm helping people out in their natural healing journey is what keeps me motivated.

Goals

My biggest wish in the long run is to be able to spend more and more time creating new recipes and content. For that, I will need to earn much more from my blog to be able to step back from my current paying job.

The thing is, I also wish to keep access to my recipes and other content free for my readers. Which means that I will need quite a lot of traffic to earn a decent ad and affiliate revenue.

What can you do to support my work?

If my blog is helping you out in any way, please let me know by sending me a message!! Like I said, this is what keeps me motivated.

And of course, do not hesitate to share, comment or like my posts.

Conclusion

Whatever happens in the future, I am very grateful for this life changing semester. It has been an incredible experience. I want to thank my readers for their continued support. This blog would be nothing without my readers!

If you are an aspiring blogger yourself, do not hesitate to check my Blogger gift guide to find out about all the great tools I use for my blog.

Did you like this article? Please leave a review below! Also, let's stay connected on social media! You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.