Traffic and Income Report – August 2016 – $13,925

Trevor here, swinging in with the August 2016 Income report and the official announcement of our new workshop series!

Bring on the income report!

If you’re new to Show Me the Yummy, one thing that we embrace is transparency and we want to show people how the business side of blogging works and that is absolutely possible to make an income doing something you love and working on your own terms. Don’t worry, the food will return shortly.

If you’re not into income reports, the food will be back Wednesday and in the meantime you can whip together some Lara Bar Bites and have an awesome snack right at your fingertips!

Here’s a brief introduction to these traffic and income reports…

If you’ve stopped by our about us page, you know that Jennifer and I started this blog a little over a year and a half ago with the hopes of it earning an income for Jennifer. I’ve since quit my job and we’re taking a calculated risk that we can make this blog both of our full-time jobs.

Income reports are what showed us that it’s possible and gave us the courage to take that leap. Our hope is that, for those interested, these reports can help to show what worked for us, the mistakes we made and that it is possible to make an income online doing something that you love if you work hard and stick with it.

None of these reports on their own tell the whole story. As time passes they can make things seem out of reach, but they aren’t at all. Think of each one as a chapter in a book that continues to be written. To get the full picture, I suggest looking at our traffic and income reports page where you can click into individual reports, like this one, to see the slow steady growth from our first month where we made $28.

Okay, enough with the backstory, let’s get on to the report…

Landmark Month

August was a pretty landmark month for us. It was our first month making over $10k which was a big milestone we were looking to achieve, but an even bigger landmark was that it was the first month that we exceeded my base monthly salary at my previous job.

To give some perspective, when I quit in mid-June 2015 we had made $610 in May. There were a lot of question marks as to whether we’d make it or if I’d have to go back to a corporate job, how long it would be until we could pay our bills without digging into our savings… if we were doing the right thing.

August made us finally feel like we’ve made the right decision. I’ll break the suspense, we’re definitely going to be down from August in September, but we know we’ll be back. Six days away from our two-year wedding anniversary I just want to say that it wouldn’t be possible without my amazing wife, the greatest partner in life and this whole crazy blogging business we’ve started together.

Freelance

For those who follow along regularly, you’ll see that we’ve added freelancing to the sponsored content line item.

Freelance for us covers anything that we are contracted for through the blog that we don’t post about. It only lives on the brand’s pages. This work includes, recipe development, photography and as we have been talking a lot about lately, video creation.

Freelancing allows us to work a lot more with a given brand than we would on the blog. If a brand is looking for ten videos for their site, we wouldn’t be able to do that on SMTY because it would be too much. This gives us the opportunity to do additional work for brands and have both of us benefit from it.

When I first updated the traffic graph to include the YOY (year over year) growth, it was to keep our eyes on the big picture. This month is yet another example of what small incremental growth looks like a year later. We’re up 7% for the month, but over 102% from last year.

There aren’t just one or two things that affect traffic growth. We were just talking with Marly on the ChoppedCon Podcast about how it’s 500 little things that notch us up just a tenth of a percent here or there that add up to that 102% over the course of the year.

It’s about looking at everything you do, patting yourself on the back and saying good job, then asking yourself what you could have done better.

Here are the detailed social stats for August from The Blog Village Social Stats Dashboard:

SMTY Food Video Workshop

I mentioned last month that we were going to start doing video workshops and I’m now excited to announce that registration is open! These are going to be very intimate workshops limited to twelve people of any skill level designed to have you creating awesome videos in two days.

Here’s a little video that gives more information about what they’re about, and you can head over to the SMTY Video Workshop Page to learn even more and sign up.

Why are we doing food video workshops?

We love teaching

Both Jennifer and I love teaching. Jennifer used to teach theater and I used to have a creative arts academy teaching photography, cinematography and editing. We gravitate towards it and are really looking forward to getting back into it. There’s nothing like helping someone learn something new that can help move them forward in their life or career.

Help others earn more

Video creation is a very valuable skill in blogging that can show a direct and immediate return on your investment and we want to help people achieve that. Our goal with the workshops is to have people pay for them with the additional income they make from just one or two sponsored opportunities.

This month is a perfect example, video has helped us greatly increase our income potential with brand work as well as freelance opportunities. Like I mentioned last month, about 75% of our clients are looking for video content, so now is the time to start.

Quality is Important

There are more and more people doing video every day and at this point in time, it doesn’t really matter what it looks like. I’d argue it was very similar when food blogs were first starting and how photography has become such an important part over time.

We’re going to see the same thing with video, those who are creating high quality videos will start to grow faster, be in greater demand and have a bigger earning potential. We want to help people achieve all of those goals.

Income Diversification

You always want to be looking to diversify your income in as many ways as possible so that you’re not overly dependent on one or two channels. By incorporating workshops as an additional income stream we can help to level out the peaks and valleys we may find with traffic oriented income that we would see from advertising.

Obviously workshops aren’t feasible for everyone, but there are e-courses, e-books, meal plans, cookbooks, and many more possibilities beyond those. It’s about looking at your audience, figuring out how you can help them and developing a product that you can offer.

Meet other bloggers

Networking is a big part of blogging and these workshops allow us to meet people that we may not have otherwise. It expands our as well as their network and gives everyone a group of peers that they can share their highs and lows with.
Just like with Show Me the Yummy, we’re looking forward to watching our workshop offerings grow and see the awesome content that attendees start to create on their own blogs!

Grow The Blog Village Community

As a bonus to the workshops, participants get a year membership to The Blog Village valued at $300. It’s a great opportunity for us to be able to continually follow-up with everyone that attends the workshop and it introduces them to The Blog Village Community. Win. Win.

Interested in learning more? Head over to the SMTY Video Workshop Page for all of the details and to sign up.

Thanks for hanging out and I’ll see you next month. If you want to spend a lot more quality time together (who wouldn’t?) head over to The Blog Village, we’d love to have you!

As always, if you have any questions, leave a comment below. I answer every one!