u/chouqfih

Small update since my last post.

Last month, my AdSense RPM was around $23. I was already happy with that.

Now it’s sitting closer to $33 RPM, and the biggest change is that I’m publishing across 3 Facebook pages instead of relying mostly on Pinterest.

Right now, about 70% of my traffic comes from Facebook.

My posting flow is simple: one hour I publish a Reel, the next hour a regular Facebook post using a template. The Reels are mostly static recipe photos with an animated video background generated through Groq.

The whole publishing flow is automated across the three pages.

What surprised me most isn’t only the RPM increase. Visit duration is up too, and bounce rate has dropped quite a bit.

I’m still trying to understand exactly why the Facebook traffic is monetizing better, but the difference has been very noticeable compared to when Pinterest was my main source.

Small update since my last post.

Last month, my AdSense RPM was around $23. I was already happy with that.

Now it’s sitting closer to $33 RPM, and the biggest change is that I’m publishing across 3 Facebook pages instead of relying mostly on Pinterest.

Right now, about 70% of my traffic comes from Facebook.

My posting flow is simple: one hour I publish a Reel, the next hour a regular Facebook post using a template. The Reels are mostly static recipe photos with an animated video background generated through Groq.

The whole publishing flow is automated across the three pages.

What surprised me most isn’t only the RPM increase. Visit duration is up too, and bounce rate has dropped quite a bit.

I’m still trying to understand exactly why the Facebook traffic is monetizing better, but the difference has been very noticeable compared to when Pinterest was my main source.

Just wanted to share a quick update.

Last month, my AdSense RPM averaged around $23, which honestly surprised me a bit.

This month so far, the site is already at about $2,000 in AdSense revenue.

Traffic mix is roughly:

70% Pinterest

30% Facebook

The interesting part is that most of this is running on automation now.

Pinterest brings the steady traffic.

Facebook gives the extra pushes when a post catches.

Still testing a lot, but it feels like Pinterest + Facebook can still work really well for recipe/content sites when the system is consistent.

Not a crazy overnight story.

Just slow testing, better templates, better posting flow, and staying consistent.

I’ve been testing something on my recipe Pinterest account for a little over a month, and honestly, it helped more than I expected.

I stopped guessing which pins to repost. Before, I would just make new pins, publish them, and hope one of them picked up. Now I spend a little time looking at the pins that already worked on my own boards, then I compare them with pins from other recipe accounts in the same niche. I mostly look at the title, the image style, the template, and what kind of recipe seems to be getting saves and outbound clicks.

I also started checking my account every day to see if any pin got flagged or restricted. If I notice something weird, I delete it right away. I don’t want one bad pin to hurt the board or slow down the reach of my other pins.

The biggest thing I learned is that reposting is not the problem. Reposting the wrong pins is the problem. When I reuse a pin idea that already proved it can get clicks, and I make a fresh version with a better title or cleaner design, it usually performs better than starting from zero.

After doing this for more than a month, my outbound clicks went up by around 20%, maybe a little more. Nothing overnight, but enough to make me keep doing it.

For me, it’s now part of the routine. Check what worked, check what competitors are doing, make a better version, and keep an eye on flagged pins before they hurt the account.

I’ve noticed a pretty sharp drop in Pinterest outbound clicks over the last 3–4 days.

I don’t think it’s just one account or one niche.

A lot of creators seem to be seeing the same thing right now, especially with impressions and outbound clicks dropping without a clear reason.

So I wouldn’t panic after only a few days.

But I also wouldn’t build my whole traffic strategy around one Pinterest account.

My honest take:

The safest move is to build more than one Pinterest account.

Each account should claim one main website.

Then you can diversify your risk by using links from different sites across your content strategy.

Not in a spammy way.

Just in a smart way.

Because if one account slows down, gets limited, or stops pushing traffic, your whole business doesn’t crash overnight.

That’s the part most people ignore.

Pinterest traffic can change fast.

One week everything looks normal.

The next week outbound clicks drop hard.

So the real protection is simple:

1️⃣ Don’t depend on one account

2️⃣ Claim one main site per account

3️⃣ Use multiple websites to spread the risk

4️⃣ Keep posting fresh pins daily

5️⃣ Test different titles and designs

6️⃣ Track every account separately

For me, Pinterest is still one of the best traffic sources for bloggers.

But you have to treat it like a system.

Not like one account that carries your whole business.

If Pinterest is testing something right now, or if the algorithm is shifting again, the people with only one account will feel it the most.

The people with multiple accounts and multiple sites will have a much better chance of staying stable.

A month ago I had zero email subscribers. Today I'm at 2,400 and it's growing every day without me doing anything extra.

I want to share this because I spent over a year blogging without even thinking about email. I was so focused on Pinterest traffic and pageviews that I completely ignored list building. Huge mistake.

Here's what changed.

I started using a tool called Linkflows that has an email capture feature built in. I didn't have to set up a separate email platform, design pop-ups, connect APIs, or any of that. I just turned it on and it added a signup form directly on my recipe posts.

That's it. No lead magnet. No free ebook. No "subscribe for exclusive recipes" nonsense. Just a clean form that shows up while people are already engaged with the content.

The reason it works — and I think this is important — is timing. The form appears when someone is actually reading the recipe, not when they first land on the page and haven't even decided if they care yet. By the time they see it, they're already invested.

My audience is mostly women 25-65 coming from Pinterest. They land on a recipe, they like it, and the form catches them at the right moment. That's why the conversion rate is way higher than I expected.

What surprised me the most is I didn't have to think about it at all. I didn't spend a weekend setting up Mailchimp. I didn't watch 10 YouTube tutorials on email funnels. It was already part of the same tool I use for publishing and pinning. One less thing to manage.

Now I'm sitting on 2,400 emails and starting to figure out what to do with them — probably a weekly recipe roundup to start. But the point is I actually have a list now. A year of blogging and I had nothing. One month with the right setup and I have 2,400 real subscribers.

If you're running a food blog and you're not collecting emails yet, you're leaving money on the table. Even a simple form in the right place makes a massive difference.

I collected 2,400 emails from my recipe blog in about a month. Now what?

So I've been running a recipe blog that gets most of its traffic from Pinterest. About a month ago I added an email capture form — nothing crazy, just a simple opt-in on my posts.

I honestly didn't expect much. My audience is mostly women 45-75 who come from Pinterest to grab a recipe. I figured they'd read the recipe and leave.

But somehow I'm sitting at 2,400 emails right now. And it's still growing every day.

The problem is I have no idea what to do with them.

I've never done email marketing before. I set up the form mostly as a test to see if people would actually sign up. Turns out they do. But now I've got this list just sitting there and I feel like I'm wasting it.

Here's what I'm wondering:

What do you actually send to a recipe email list? Weekly roundups of new recipes? A "best of the week" type thing? Do people even open those?

Is it worth trying to monetize the list directly — like sponsored content or affiliate links in emails? Or does that just kill your open rates?

Should I be segmenting somehow? Like people who signed up from a chicken recipe vs a dessert recipe? Or is that overkill for a food blog?

What platform would you recommend for someone just starting out with a list this size? I've heard Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Beehiiv — no idea which one makes sense for recipe content.

I feel like 2,400 emails in a month is a decent start but I also feel like every day I don't do something with it, those subscribers are forgetting who I am.

Anyone here actually making money from their email list on a food blog? Would love to hear what's working.

Everyone says Pinterest traffic pays garbage. And yeah, for a while my RPM was stuck around $8-10 and I couldn't figure out why.

But I didn't want to ditch Pinterest. It's my main traffic source and it works great for recipe content. So instead of chasing Google rankings for months, I just did two things.

I submitted my sitemap to Google.

Sounds stupid simple. But I was so focused on Pinterest that I never properly set up Search Console. Half my pages weren't even indexed.

Google traffic is still less than 10% of my total. But even that small amount changed things. Google visitors have higher intent — they searched for something, they engage longer, they don't bounce immediately. Ad networks notice that. When your site has a mix of traffic sources with decent engagement, advertisers bid higher. That small slice of search traffic lifted my RPM across all visitors, including the Pinterest ones.

I added a recipe card with HTML schema to every post.

This one was the real game changer.

When you have a proper recipe card — ingredients, steps, cook time, print button — users actually interact with it. They scroll through ingredients, check steps, adjust servings, hit print. All of that counts as on-page engagement.

And here's the part nobody talks about — every meaningful interaction triggers an ad refresh. The ads reload in existing placements without adding new ad slots. More refreshes per session = more impressions per visitor = higher RPM. Same traffic, more revenue.

On top of that the recipe schema makes your posts eligible for Google rich results, which feeds back into getting more search traffic over time.

My RPM went from ~$10 to consistently hitting $20. Same niche, same content, same Pinterest traffic. I just gave the ads more reasons to pay me more per visitor.

Nothing revolutionary. Submit your sitemap. Use a proper recipe card. Let the engagement do the rest.

Everyone says Pinterest traffic pays garbage. And yeah, for a while my RPM was stuck around $8-10 and I couldn't figure out why.

But I didn't want to ditch Pinterest. It's my main traffic source and it works great for recipe content. So instead of chasing Google rankings for months, I just did two things.

I submitted my sitemap to Google.

Sounds stupid simple. But I was so focused on Pinterest that I never properly set up Search Console. Half my pages weren't even indexed.

Google traffic is still less than 10% of my total. But even that small amount changed things. Google visitors have higher intent — they searched for something, they engage longer, they don't bounce immediately. Ad networks notice that. When your site has a mix of traffic sources with decent engagement, advertisers bid higher. That small slice of search traffic lifted my RPM across all visitors, including the Pinterest ones.

I added a recipe card with HTML schema to every post.

This one was the real game changer.

When you have a proper recipe card — ingredients, steps, cook time, print button — users actually interact with it. They scroll through ingredients, check steps, adjust servings, hit print. All of that counts as on-page engagement.

And here's the part nobody talks about — every meaningful interaction triggers an ad refresh. The ads reload in existing placements without adding new ad slots. More refreshes per session = more impressions per visitor = higher RPM. Same traffic, more revenue.

On top of that the recipe schema makes your posts eligible for Google rich results, which feeds back into getting more search traffic over time.

My RPM went from ~$10 to consistently hitting $20. Same niche, same content, same Pinterest traffic. I just gave the ads more reasons to pay me more per visitor.

Nothing revolutionary. Submit your sitemap. Use a proper recipe card. Let the engagement do the rest.

I see a lot of people saying Pinterest traffic doesn't pay well. And honestly, they're not wrong — it used to be pretty bad for me too. My RPM was sitting around $8-10 for months and I couldn't figure out how to push it higher without switching to a completely different traffic source.

But I didn't want to abandon Pinterest. It's where all my traffic comes from and it converts well for recipe content. So instead of trying to replace it, I focused on two things that ended up making a bigger difference than I expected.

First thing — I submitted my sitemap to Google.

I know it sounds basic. But I was so focused on Pinterest that I never even bothered setting up Google Search Console properly. My site wasn't indexed on half its pages. So I submitted the sitemap and let Google do its thing.

Now, Google traffic is still small for me. Less than 10% of my total. But here's what most people don't realize — even a small percentage of Google traffic changes how ad networks see your site. Google visitors tend to have higher intent. They searched for something specific, landed on your page, and they engage longer. That bumps up your overall site quality signals. Advertisers bid more on sites that have a mix of traffic sources because it looks more natural and the engagement data is better. Even that little slice of search traffic lifted my overall RPM across all visitors — including the Pinterest ones.

Second thing — I added a recipe card to every post using HTML schema.

This one had the biggest impact on actual ad revenue per page. When you add a proper recipe card — the kind that displays ingredients, steps, cook time, all formatted with structured data — a few things happen at once.

The card itself creates a section on the page where users actually interact. They scroll through the ingredients list, they check the steps, they adjust servings, they hit the print button. Every one of those actions counts as engagement on the page. And when a user engages, two things trigger: the page session gets longer, and the ads refresh.

Ad refresh is the thing nobody talks about. Most ad networks — Ezoic included — refresh ads when a user takes meaningful actions on the page. Scrolling through a recipe card, clicking on tabs, interacting with the content — all of that triggers ad refreshes which load new ads in existing placements. More refreshes per session means more ad impressions per visitor without adding more ad slots. Your RPM goes up because you're earning more from the same amount of traffic.

On top of that, the recipe schema makes your posts eligible for Google rich results. So even your Pinterest visitors land on a page that looks more authoritative and keeps them around longer. The longer they stay and interact, the more ad impressions you generate, the higher your session RPM.

My RPM went from around $10 to consistently hitting $20. Same niche, same volume, same content style. I just gave ad networks more reasons to pay me more per visitor.

These aren't revolutionary hacks. Submit your sitemap. Use a proper recipe card with schema markup. Let the engagement do the work.

I learned this the hard way so I'm just gonna say it straight.

If you have pins that got flagged on Pinterest — delete them. Don't appeal, don't wait, don't try to figure out why. Just delete them. They're dragging your entire account down even if you don't realize it.

But here's what most people don't do — go through your older pins and look for the ones that are underperforming in a weird way. Pins that suddenly stopped getting impressions. Pins that used to do fine and now show zero activity. Pins with images that could be borderline — maybe a close-up that Pinterest's AI read wrong, maybe text that looks spammy, maybe a stock photo that got reported somewhere else.

If a pin looks even slightly suspicious, delete it. Don't think twice about it.

I know it feels wrong. You made that pin. You spent time on it. But one sketchy pin can drag down the reach of everything else on your account. Pinterest doesn't just punish the individual pin — it punishes the whole account. Your good pins stop getting distributed because the algorithm sees your profile as risky.

I had 21 flagged pins sitting on my account and I didn't even know. I only found them after my entire account got deleted and I had to fight to get it back. When I finally cleaned them all out, my reach started recovering. But it took months to get back to where I was.

Think about it this way — one pin is worth what, maybe a few hundred impressions? Your entire account is worth months of work, thousands of pins, and all the traffic that comes with it. It's not even close. Delete the pin. Protect the account.

I check mine once a week now. Takes 5 minutes. That's it.