There were two major things I did differently in January. I focused on my photos and adding revenue streams to my posts.
I realized that even if I had great blog posts with witty dialogue and to-die-for recipes, I still wasn’t going to attract people to my site. People eat with their eyes first. I need my pictures to captivate my audience and make them start drooling. I had some basics in food photography – like the very basics. But I needed help! So I turned towards Craftsy. I took a great Food Photography class that walks through all the steps on how to make envy-worthy food pictures.
The best thing I got out of the Food Photography class was lighting tips. I had heard before to make your pictures as bright as possible. But the HOW was eluding me. Take a look at a picture I took a few months ago compared to recent photos.
The Chocolate Covered Strawberries looks like a photo from an advertising agency, right?? I am still dumbfounded that I was able to do that.
The next thing I did was sign up for Google Adsense. I had applied previously and was denied. As the old adage goes, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. This time I had enough traffic that I was accepted! I set up some ads on my newest postings, not even doing a ton of research or analysis on the best ads or best placement. Just getting them in there was my goal. I was so excited when I found a mere 12 hours later I had made $0.18. My FIRST $0.18! It turns out that the $0.18 was actually just an estimate based on traffic. My actual income in 12 hours was $0. But, I did manage to make $0.01 before the end of the month. It isn’t much, but it is so encouraging to see that it is possible to earn a revenue from my blog.
So how were my January numbers?
Views 176
Visitors 125
Revenue $0.01
Most of my views came from the sugar-free dessert Sex-in-a-Pan that I posted last February 2017. My post from December 2017 for Sugar-Free Vanilla Buttercream was a close second.
This is an improvement over my December numbers where I had only 146 views and 102 visitors. Things are definitely trending in the right direction!
Until next time, Happy Baking!