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!