How Long Does it Take to Make Money Blogging?

This is the million dollar question, is it not? How long does it take to make money blogging? I will tell you what, I have been blogging for a few years, and I have only made a supplemental income. A few hundred dollars at most per month. 

A lot of this is due to the time and effort spent on my blog. Let’s talk about this for a minute. I was blogging consistently for about a year (posting 3 blog posts per week, more or less), before I even started getting traffic to my website. 

I made my first sale within 6 months, but this was due to me posting links to social media. I will never forget, my earnings from the sale were $8, and I was over the moon! 

It was frustrating waiting a whole year for traffic! 

You cannot make money without traffic. You need visitors to visit your store, or website. However, you have chosen to monetize your blog, you will not make any money without loads and loads of traffic. Think 100s are going to do the trick. No! It is going to take 10,000s. 

If you are not getting traffic, this can be due to different reasons. Some will argue the market is saturated (my thoughts, impossible!), some say that you need to choose low hanging fruit keywords (I did!), someone told me that it was possible that my domain name was the issue (ding ding ding!). I really think that this was the problem, because once I changed it, the traffic started rolling in. 

It was pretty cool to see my analytics account go from 0 to 1200 visitors over the course of a few months. The problem was probably that the previous owner of my prior domain name, gave Google a poor opinion of his website. My old domain name was workonlineusa.com. 

The co-owner of Wealthy Affiliate, Carson, gave me that idea (about the domain name), and I am glad that he did. You can give Google a poor perception of your website, if you are someone who spams people with affiliate links, ads, or banners. 

If you have a problem with Google, then you should fix it and quick, because they currently own over 70% of the market share (the audience). That is a whole lot! Considering there are a few billion people online these days. 

Back to the Question at Hand.. How Long Does it Take to Make Money Blogging?

Let me put it to you this way, in a perfect world, you can start making money within 6 months. Your website will be profitable within 1 year, and you should start earning a full time income within 2 years. 

This is a general opinion because there are variables which determine this, which we will talk about. You can earn money in less time, if there is a high demand in your niche (your target audience), and if you are following all of your SEO (search engine optimization) techniques. 

You can read my blog post on how to seo your blog, if you want some more tips. 

Consistency is the key. I picked up a really good tip from a member at Wealthy Affiliate, Frank, or Affilicoach, that the more consistency you offer with writing your content, the faster you will rank. You see, Google sends spider bots to your website when you create new content, and then rank you accordingly. 

The more you write content, this will trigger Google bots to come by your website. If you only have done like me recently, one blog post every other month, then we will get nowhere in a hurry. It is important that you understand this. 

You have got to write content every day, if not every other. Publish 5 articles per week if possible; a minimum of 3. 

This is my expert opinion. 

I received a major compliment from the owner of Wealthy Affiliate one day, as I was messaging him for support. 

I asked him if I should consult with an SEO Specialist about why I am not ranking or getting visitors on my website. You know what he said, “You are the SEO expert! You probably know more, than those so called SEO experts.” Pretty amusing when I think back to this. 

I did not believe him, but when I called the SEO expert, he told me everything I already knew. And, it seemed like I knew more than him. Not to mention, he was going to charge $100 per hour. 

The More 1st Page Rankings You Have on Google, The More Money You Will Make!

I think you understand this by now. However, I will to touch on it a bit more. Think about it this way, are you going to make more money with ten 1st  page blog posts, or one hundred of them, or more! You have got to remember, the more visitors you get to your website, the more money you will make. 

This is so important. You just cannot settle for little to no visitors, because it will not grow by itself. Also, if you are not getting the results that I mentioned above (in the How Long Does it Take to Make Money Blogging section), then you should consider getting plugged in at a place like Wealthy Affiliate, where they have some excellent support for internet marketers. 

Plus there is a lot of emotional support there. People going through the same things that you might be. There are over 2 million people in community there. Sharing success stories, that can encourage you along the way. 

The Perfect Analogy

You can look at internet marketing, or how long it takes you to make money blogging, like a diet. Yes I said it! Those dreadful words (smiling). 

I think a reason why it may seem a bit dreadful is because of the statistics that exist of failing. How many times have you started a diet or exercise program to lose weight, and just did not meet the deadline. Almost always (at least for me)! 

There was one time that I did succeed. Oh, how sweet it was. I still think about it to this day. A couple of years ago, I lost a total of 50 lbs, and I was super proud of it. I was 205 lbs, and dropped down to 150 lbs. I never felt better in my life, energetically and healthily wise. 

I will tell you what I did different that time, which was different from the other 99 (exaggerated, but realistic). You can probably guess what it was, without me telling you. 

You are probably right. I was committed. Ooh, some other scary words. How do we feel about commitment? I refused to fail. Failing was a 1% chance, in my mind. The only way I could have failed, this time, was because I was physically, or medically incapable of succeeding. 

I was more determined, than I had ever been, my whole life. Thinking back on this, really is an eye opener for me. I was at my all time heaviest. I was fed up, and felt like it was the only option. 

What will it take for you to start making money online, or how long will it take you? It took me six months to lose all that weight. I have heard of one guy, made his first $10,000 month within six months (another member at Wealthy Affiliate). I wonder what was going through his head?

Could we agree that 99% of this is mental. Will you succeed? How long will it take you? What do we have to do to get that type of determination? 

Last, But Not Least – PPC vs Organic Traffic

I hate to go into it, but considering the topic, I think it is a must. I remember a guy inside my Wealthy Affiliate (WA) network, who was a bit misleading because he posted about extraordinary results within a very short period of time. It was something like $1,000-$2,000, within 1-2 months. 

Disclaimer, there are over 2 million members inside the WA network. If people are using discretion to tell you how they received certain successes, then you should probably take it with a grain of salt. 

This particular person revealed in the comment thread of his post on the network’s forum, that the results were strictly from PPC. 

You can make a lot of money from PPC marketing, but you have to be careful not to lose money. Speaking of this, there is an awesome training course that I took, inside of WA that was very helpful to understand the ins and outs of PPC advertising. 

You can spend $100s, or even $1,000s on ppc ads before you start to learn what really works. Then you will finally have the opportunity to scale it back. Maximizing your earning potential by focusing all of your spending on those specific keywords that have the most conversions. 

I think it is safe to say, that most of us, don’t have the spending money, and prefer organic traffic instead. Plus I have heard that organic traffic converts at a higher rate than ppc, which is promising. 

In order to get results sooner (make money sooner), relying on organic traffic, you will need to strap on your boots, so to speak, and get to work on search engine optimization. Understand what it takes, and make sure to get the support you need through the long haul.

Learn About Joining the Wealthy Affiliate Network Here!