Traffic & Income Report June 2020

Welcome to my June traffic and income report! This is the 20th month in the life of my food blog, which I started in November 2018.

I’ve been tracking my progress and income from the very beginning so head to my reports section if you’d like to take a leap back in time.

This month saw lower traffic, which I was expecting, given that most of the world is out of lockdown now, but at least it seems to have stabilized. Plus, I have some BIG BIG BIG news (which I’ll talk about in the review and goals section)!

Without further ado, let’s get into the numbers for June. Scroll on down or click on one of the links below to jump to the section that interests you.

• Posts
• Traffic
• Email Subscribers
• Push Notifications
• Facebook
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Income
• Review and Goals

Posts

Posts this month: 5

This is the same as last month and was around what I was aiming for. As I mentioned last month, while I’m still working fulltime from home at the day job and taking care of the kids as well, one post a week is fine for me.

Traffic

June 2020 69,893 (compared to 88,474 last month and 7,303 in June 2019)

Am I only the person who gets really annoyed when their traffic numbers don’t round off? Just 107 pageviews short of 70,000! Grrrrr.

Although initially, this looks like a bit of a disaster considering May traffic, this decrease was to be expected. In May traffic had been continually trending downwards from mid-May, given everyone finally being able to leave their home and eat out.

So I knew that June traffic would be lower as traffic returned to “normal” levels and I’m actually pretty happy with the numbers as I know other bloggers have seen drops of 30-40% traffic.

On the bright side, traffic is very stable as you can see from the graph. I’m hoping to maintain these numbers, and fingers crossed, see some steady growth over July and August (traditionally not great for food blog traffic).

Before lockdown and the overall mess of 2020 so far, my blog usually saw growth of around 20.1% per month, but I don’t think that’s something I can really hope for during the lower-traffic summer months. We’ll just have to wait and see!

No real change in traffic sources, just lower numbers over the board.

Email Subscribers

262 (versus 237 in May)

Slow growth in the email list continues as part of the no-popup or opt-in saga. But not to worry, I have a plan! (Details at the bottom)

Push Notifications

1100 (versus 803 in May)

Still seeing easy and effortless growth using the OneSignal plugin and traffic bumps every time I send out a new post.

Facebook

Just some token effort from me on Facebook this month. Followers currently at 3,854 (compared to 3,603 in May).

It’s been quite a while since I had some posts do really well on Facebook, a good mini-viral or viral post can bring a huge bump in traffic and followers, but a little effort brings me around 200 new followers a month.

Pinterest

In June I finished up with 1,900 followers, compared to 1,671 in May. Fresh new pins are still the theme of the day and it’s still a huge pain making them. I didn’t make a huge effort in Pinterest this month but did get new pins out for posts (10 new pins per post).

Rich pins are still turned off. I’m planning to turn them back on for two weeks at the end of July, if traffic stays stable this month, to fully test which is better, on or off.

Traffic from Pinterest decreased as did all sources, down to 21,502 pageviews compared to 27,139 last month.

Instagram

445 followers (up from 403 in May)

Hilarious. As previous blog report readers will know, I’m not a huge fan of Instagram. This month I actually didn’t post to it at all, yet saw more followers gained than in May when I had someone posting regularly!

I will, at some point next month, update my Instagram (probably all at once), but just because, you know, pretty.

Income

June Income : $1118.41 (compared to $903.20 in May)

June marks the end of the second fiscal quarter and RPMs do tend to rise as advertisers get rid of the excess budget allocated to that quarter.

This quarter was no exception, with my average RPM rising to $16.24 per thousand pageviews, compared to $12.46 in May!

Although it’s great to see RPMs finally rise after the disaster that was the second quarter, I’m not counting my chickens yet.

Next month brings a new financial quarter, and with that, a corresponding drop in RPMs, which Mediavine (my amazing ad company) says results in RPMs of around 16% less initially.

All income mentioned is the gross amount, not my net income, and doesn’t take into account deductions for tax, social security, accountant, expenses, etc.

Review and Goals

I set NO goals for June, given my current home situation, and I won’t be setting any for July either. The reason?

Because….I have handed in my notice at work and will be working on the blog full-time from August! Yayyyyy! Nervewracking!

My last day of work is the 20th of July and I have a lot of things I need to tie up before then. We’re also heading up north on to escape the stifling heat for a while and I will be turning off my phone and laptop until we return.

I won’t be doing any work at all on holidays, I’ve been having issues with my arm and some tendonitis so it’s time to take a break.

But I am absolutely psyched to finally be on the blog full-time! It’s not really making enough for a full-time salary yet but it’s enough to cover our costs here in Spain with my husband working as well, and I’ll be able to spend more time with my kids as well.

So, as I said, no goals for July as I’ll be busy finishing up work and on holiday. But in August I’m going to be doing a LOT of planning, organizing my schedule, and getting ready for the best-earning months of the year, September to December.

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I hope you found this report useful, if you have any questions or would like to see other items included in the next report, holler at me down below!

Stay happy and keep blogging!