August Income – Money Coming Soon!

(morguefile.com)

I want to be completely open and honest here at YUM. When I first tried to make money blogging years ago, one of the things I found to be the most frustrating is that a lot of people talked about making money blogging but they would never discuss how they did it. And if they did talk about how they did it, they would not disclose how much money they made. Then, you would find those that would talk about the money they made, but you would not know how they did it or see some sort of proof of income.

I’ll be honest – I never tried very hard. I was more focused on freelance writing and working on my BA and then my MBA. I made money with my websites but I did not make a full-time living at it. I also did not have a niche I was madly in love with or felt I could do as a full-time job.

I understand that some people just don’t want to give away their secrets. But the way I see it is that the Internet is a huge place. We all have different voices and writing styles. No matter how hard we try we are not going to reach everyone. I believe there is room for us all.

Although I am not completely sure of my plan of action, nor do I claim to be an analytic whiz, I figure now is as good of time as any to put that Master’s degree to use and really get down to the nitty-gritty of it all.

It might take some time, but I am going to figure  it out. Some of it I know from past experience.

I’ve been following Lindsay and her husband Bjork over at Pinch of Yum for quite some time. Lindsay has put together a wonderful food photographer’s tip guide which you can find over in my sidebar if you are interested. Bjork runs another site called Food Blogger Pro which I fully intend to get signed up on and absorb every amount of information they have available. The forums are open for visitors and I have found quite a few of bloggers who share their links. Not only that, they share their income and resources.  Lindsay started at $21 her first month. Three years later the website averages around $6k-$7k.

So, yes, I would say food writing and photography does make money.

Read my ‘Resource’ post titled – “Other Bloggers Share Income” where I discuss other food bloggers who are sharing their income reports.

I know it is a long process. I know as with any business it takes time to build – whether on the Internet or a brick and mortar business. You will get what you put into it.

But I plan to document my experience as I go.

Sometime in September I’ll share August’s income which won’t be much since YUMeating has only been up and going for about 2 weeks and my Adsense didn’t work right with my first theme and I have to redo the ads for placement within this theme. Lijit seems to be working a little better, but I have some minor tweaks I need to work on. It is coming together though. I am not expecting miracles and overnight success.

In 2012 I wrote “Easy Accounting  for the Self-Employed” as a way to help fellow freelancers understand the confusing world of tax when it came to what records they should be keeping track of when it came to working from home.   Because my background is in accounting and tax I get asked a lot of questions. My plans are to completely update it with new information to include any new tax updates as well as information that pertains to food writers and photographers. I am very excited about this project and hope to have it available by the end of October.

I do hope you will follow me on my journey.

If you are starting your own journey I would love to link up with you and hear all about it.