This Gal Cooks

Traffic and Blogging Income September 2013

Good afternoon and Happy Sunday! Since October is here, it’s time to go over This Gal Cook’s Traffic and Blogging Income for September 2013!

Traffic and Blogging Income September 2013 www.thisgalcooks.com #bloggingincome #bloggingtraffic #googleanalytics

September was a fantastic month for This Gal Cooks. The blog finally hit the 100,000 page views mark for a single month! Page views are up about 30,000 from August. I know I didn’t do a post for August so I’ll do a quick little overview. September was a busy month and by the time I thought about it, it was almost October!

Quick overview of August

Page views: 77,715
Income: $950.00

Traffic and Blogging Income September 2013

Traffic

September Pageviews

As you can see, September’s page views were up by just under 30,000 page views. I was completely amazed when I looked at these numbers. I’ve never had this high of a jump in traffic before. So what happened in September?

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Pinterest happened. Search engines and direct traffic happened. And finally, my posts were shared at a variety of sites during the month of September. Recipe Lion Foodgawker (shared by myself) Delish, Huff Post Taste and Good Housekeeping all shared some of my posts on their site. While the days the posts were actually the highest generator of traffic, since my posts were shared on those sites, I’ve had continuous traffic from them.

My Pinterest traffic has more than doubled from the August Pinterest traffic. I’ve been pinning more to group boards and a couple of bloggers with extremely large group boards shared a few of my posts. I highly recommend joining and pinning to a few group boards if you have the chance to.

My blog has started to show up more in the top pages of search engines, specifically Google. I have been using the Yoast SEO app for a few months now and my SEO implementation has gotten much better. I also use a recipe plugin called Ziplist that allows me to upload a photo that shows up next to my recipe link in a Google search result. Here is an example. I searched for “Twenty Minute Easy Tortellini Bake.” Not only did it appear first in the Google Search results, a picture of the recipe shows up next to it!

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I actually haven’t been linking up to parties as much anymore. I just haven’t had the time to do it. I still link up to a few each week but it’s usually under 5. I also stopped posting so much during the week. I do about 4 posts per week; usually 2-3 recipe posts plus Sunday’s Marvelous Mondays post. Why did I do this? I read a great article (apologies – I cannot find the link) that said that you don’t have to post everyday to get traffic. People don’t always have time to read blogs every day. I know I sure don’t have time to read blogs every day! So I cut back! I also stopped my Email to RSS emails and started creating my own emails. I do 2-3 emails per week now. I think an email being sent every time a post goes live is a little too much. Now with that being said, everyone has their own method and I do not criticize what they do. What works for one does not work for another. Different strokes for different folks, right?

Income

September saw a total income of $812.34, expenses of $37.79 for a total net income of $774.55

List of income items:

9/11: Wonderful Brands via Clever Girls Collective (July 2013) – $125.00
9/13: Nature Box campaign via Burst Media (July 2013) – $250.00
9/17: Electrolux via Clever Girls Collective (August 2013) – $125.00
9/24: Google Adsense Revenue for July and August 2013 – $212.34
9/30: Green Giant Veggie Chips via Clever Girls Collective – $100.00

List of Expenses

Giveaway participation – $10
Vista Print Business Cards – $27.79

 

I hope this post has been beneficial to you. If you have any questions regarding income or traffic, please leave a comment below or send an email if you prefer to be discrete. thisgalcooks (at) gmail (dot) com

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12 comments on “Traffic and Blogging Income September 2013”

  1. Congrats on an awesome month Julie!! I am so happy for you!! September was filled with lots of great recipes from you and I am glad it paid off. Thank you so much for sharing this report monthly. I always look forward to reading it. Keep up the good work!! I had one question about the plugins…I use both that you mention above however when my recipes show up on Google searches, they show up with my “google+” image instead of the recipe image. Any idea why?

    • Hi Zainab!
      First of all, thank you for the congrats! :)
      When you use the plugin, are you adding a link to the image in the Recipe Link section of the plugin? When you click “Add a Recipe”, the second item in the box that pops up should be Recipe Link. What you do is go to your WordPress media files in your dashboard, click on the image you want to use, copy the url, and then paste it into the Recipe Link section. Let me know if this helps or if you have additional questions!

  2. Thank you for sharing Julie. An impressive month indeed. I am always trying to figure out how food bloggers get so much viewership! Mine is a far far cry from yours. Guess I need to put in more effort with my blog! ;)

  3. Congratulations on your results ! It is so good to see that it is possible to grow. I am so new. I know, better than to compare, with others but it is inspiring to see the possibilities.
    I have heard from several sources to blog everyday, but I know, before I started mine, sometimes it seemed that some bloggers were writing something everyday…. just to have a post. Some of it got a little old, if you know what I mean. However, I am struggling with which I should do.
    Thanks for the information on the plug-ins.

  4. Congrats Julie! You are such an inspiration. Well done & well deserved!!

  5. Congrats! You are doing very well. Pinterest is very powerful for food bloggers! over half of my traffic is from pinterest. Also, having achieved that many organic Google traffic is fantastic! :)

  6. Hi Julie, I was noticing just this morning how some sites have the thumbnail show up on google searches and others do not. I am trying to follow the google directions to get the google+ photo to appear but reading your post here about Ziplist is perfectly timed advice. I am going to read through some of your other Blogging Tips posts today too. Thanks so much! Holly

  7. Great Post! If i may ask, how long have you had your blog running?

  8. Hi Julie, congrats and thanks for this post. May I please know how to get referrals from good housekeeping and huffingtonpost….thanks again for putting all this together :)