How Long Does It Take To Start Making Money From Your Blog?
How do you get paid for blogging, and how long does it take? Many bloggers quit before they start making money from their blogs, because they aren’t patient enough. Once you start a blog, it could take one year, two years or longer to start earning real revenue from it.
Many bloggers will tell you that it was well worth the wait. However, if this sounds frustrating, don’t quit your day job. Blog on the side, build your blog, and know that one day in the future, you could see some return.
Making money from a blog is similar to the fabled story of digging for gold. In this fable, the hero typically receives credible information that there’s gold underneath his land. He therefore digs and digs, to no avail. After digging up to 99 feet, he quits, having no idea how close he was getting. The gold was at the 100-feet mark, but he put all that work in for nothing.
This concept of giving up without knowing how much progress you were making is a common pattern with bloggers, too. Most bloggers have the talent and the know-how to churn out good content. They also have the motivation to learn what they don’t know. The only thing that stops them is a lack of faith, or impatience.
Imagine you start a blog within a niche you’re knowledgeable in, and you start writing regular blog posts about that niche. You keep this up for a few months, and assume you’ll start making money soon. 6 months pass, and you become discouraged due to a lack of income. This discouragement results in you either starting to neglect your blog, losing motivation, or quitting entirely.
Is there a required amount of time you need to put in before you can make money from blogging? It helps to understand how long it can take to get paid for blogging before you start, so that you can muster the patience to see it through.
Thought Catalog on Unsplash
The Importance of Consistency and Patience
The two most important qualities a new blogger requires are consistency and patience. You’ll need to consistently post new content weekly in order to start earning a Google ranking and eventually an income.
Aim for 3 new blog posts every week. If this doesn’t sound doable, don’t start a blog until you’ve created a backlog of 6 months worth of content.
Write a bunch of blog posts (enough for 3 – 6 months of posting 3 times per week) and build a backlog of blog content. Don’t launch your blog until you’ve already written months worth of content. That way, you won’t fall behind, as you’ll continue writing new content while you’re using your backlog to publish scheduled posts on time.
This sounds like a lot of work, and it is. Patience is required in order to not feel discouraged when all this work isn’t paying off quite as soon as you hoped. But how long does it take to start making money from your blog? How many visitors per month do you need to start making money? The answer is typically around 10,000.
Related Post: Productivity Tips For Bloggers
The 10,000 Monthly Visitors Mark
It takes an average of one year to bring in substantial money from blogging. The key word here is ‘substantial’.
For example, the founder of Niche Pursuits, Spencer Haws says, “It took me 4 months before I made an income from my website. But once I started to make an income, the earnings took off pretty quick. By month 7, I was earning $128.41 per month. By month 10, I had crossed the $1,000 per month mark. So, in less than a year, I built myself a $1,000 per month cash flow and an asset worth about $30,000.”
Spencer Haws made small amounts of money at first. Another caveat is, Spencer is an expert at what he does. Even then, it took him 4 months to bring in the first dollar. When you take into account a complete rookie or someone who’s started recently, it takes at least a year.
Another expert blogger, Neil Patel, clearly states: “If your blog gets over 10,000 monthly unique visitors, then yes – you can monetize your blog and create a nice revenue stream with it. The real challenge is making money from a blog that generates fewer than 1,000 visitors per day…You can’t compare your new blog to one that’s been around for years.”
By combining the two insights from above, we find a clear barometer to aim for. If you want to start making money from your blog, you need over 10,000 monthly visitors. Once you reach that number, it becomes easier and easier to make money blogging.
What about complete beginners who don’t even have 1,000 visitors per month? Read on:
Brooke Cagle Unsplash
Speeding Up the Process: Even If You’re a Novice
How do you get paid for blogging as soon as possible? There are several strategies you can implement to make money from your blog faster and easier. It all depends on your skill level and how much you’re ready to hustle. You do have to put work into a blog to see results faster. (For example, you’ll need to post lots of new content weekly.) Try some of the below strategies to speed up the process:
Ad Networking
Ads are the easiest and the most popular way to boost your income from blogging. You need to get approval from ad networks, and they’ll show ads on your blogs. Based on the click rate on those ads, you’ll earn money. This is a great source of passive income, as you don’t have to work.
The best ad networks available right now are Google AdSense and Media.net. If you have less than 300 visitors a month, you can try other networks.
It’s true that you won’t make much money off ads when you’re still a new blog with low traffic. However, as your traffic grows, clicks will increase and ad income will begin to accumulate.
Affiliate Marketing
This is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing still used today. With affiliate marketing, you refer someone reading your blog to an e-commerce product. When that person buys using your blog post’s unique affiliate link, you get a commission.
To begin, sign up with Amazon Associates and other affiliate programs to monetize your traffic.
Selling Digital Products and Services
One of the most direct means to earn a recurring income from your blog is to sell your own digital products and services on your blog. Write an ebook, record an online course, offer premium templates, or offer a service you’re good at.
Products are better than services, as you only have to create them once and they will keep selling. Services such as designing, writing, or voiceovers require you to hustle every day unless you’ve engineered a muse.
Focusing on Your Niche
Write content about topics you’re already very knowledgeable in and passionate about. It could be nutrition, self-help, beauty, fitness, travel, or anything else. Once you choose your niche, it’s only a matter of producing enough content for 3 new posts per week.
As per Marketing Insider, “Publishing 2 – 4 times per week provides the highest results in terms of both traffic and conversions.”
We find the sweet spot to be 3 posts per week. Aim for that, if not more.
Keeping Up with Trending Topics
Before choosing a niche for your blog, ensure there’s decent interest around it. This will give you an idea of whether this niche topic is worth your time to focus on. A free tool you can use to find this out is Google Trends.
It’s also wise to choose a niche that often has trending topics surrounding it. For example, if you start a blog about solo travel, there will often be trending topics about solo travel to write about.
Writing Sponsored Posts and Reviews
Paid sponsored posts and brand reviews are a great way to increase your blogging income. Many brands and businesses will pay for bloggers to write a review-style post for their brand. For example, one blogger makes over $3000 per month writing these types of blog posts.
It’s best to grow your blog a bit before you try to convince brands to work with you. If you’ve used the above tips for several months and your blog is growing, it could be the right time to start working with brands. Your blog doesn’t need to be huge to attract brand sponsorships, but it can’t be brand new with no traffic yet, either.
Don’t wait for brands to approach you. Pitch them instead, or join a networking platform such as Scalefluence to match your blog with appropriate brands.
