How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging?

So, how long does it take to make money blogging?

You have seen the wonderful income reports of bloggers, seen how they rake in thousands of dollars a month from blogging, but one of the main questions is, how long does it take to make money from blogging?

I am going to share with you in this article how you can start making money from blogging today. Now, blogging is not a traditional business model, nor is it a get-rich-quick scheme.

How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging

To earn a decent income from blogging, you need to spend countless hours producing quality content, sorting out the technicalities of a blog, and learning all there is to start a blog.

When I decided to venture into blogging five years ago, I had NO clue how much time it takes to earn from blogging. Now, I am earning 5 figures and thought to myself, if I can earn that much with one site, how about 5 sites?

So I set up 5 sites!

Thankfully, there are plenty of resources now to guide new bloggers into setting up a successful blog!

Without further ado, let’s get to it!

Summary

1. How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging?

2. How To Make Money From Your Blog

3. How Long Does It Take To Make $100 Blogging?

4. Why Does It Take So Long To Make Money Blogging?

5. Essential Blogging Tools

6. How Do Beginner Bloggers Make Money?

7. How Do You Start A Profitable Blog?

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you.

How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging?

You can start making money from blogging around 6 to 12 months after starting up a blog, provided you implement the correct strategies to monetize it.

Even for total novices, it takes 6 months to a year for most bloggers to start making money from their blogs. This period fluctuates depending on how effective your plan is and how much time and work you spend each week.

If you have been following my content on Instagram for a while, you will know there are a few questions that I ask when it comes to making money from a blog.

How quickly can you get 100 articles up?
Is your content SEO-optimized?

Speaking from personal experience, I started making decent money from my blog once I had 100 articles up and running on my site.

When I had produced 100 articles, my traffic skyrocketed and I qualified for Mediavine, an advertising network, earning me approximately USD2000 – USD3000 a month.

Note- You can make money with much less than 100 articles but that was just my experience and my niche was competitive.

When I first began and had no idea how to effectively make money from my blog, it took me around 2 years to start seeing the money.

Now I know how to implement the strategies to monetize my blog and I am happy to report that my second niche site brought in USD1,000 within 12 months.

How To Make Money From Your Blog?

Choose A Profitable Niche
Learn SEO
Help Your Audience
Learn and implement Affiliate Marketing
Implement Display Advertising
Consistency Is Key

1. Choose A Profitable Niche

Choosing a profitable niche is undoubtedly one of the most important decisions that you will have to make that is directly related to how much time does it take to earn money from blogging.

Typically, when picking a niche, you would want to avoid any niche that is under the YMYL (Your Money Your Life) category.

Topics and specializations that can have a direct impact on your reader’s health or finances are referred to as YMYL. The argument is that Google has increased the bar for certain categories, making it necessary for a site to have a lot of authority to compete.

For example, if you choose to start a blog under the health niche, you will have to compete with a website that already has higher authority like Medical News Today or Healthline.

This makes it harder for you to rank on the first page of Google which is related to the amount of money you earn from your blog.

Choosing a specific niche for your blog is all about concentrating on a specific subject ie Niching down.

A specialized blog has a central theme, and each article delves into various elements of that one theme.

For example, the travel niche.

Travel is the main theme of your blog but within your blog, you can create content and all things travel-related ranging from the best hiking boots to buy to safety tips for women traveling alone.

Ask yourself these questions when niching down on a blog:

Who are my target audiences? (Age group)
What is the social situation of my target audience? (Single parent, retirees, etc)
What industry am I passionate about? (Food, travel, etc)

Once you have identified the answers, you can start researching your niche. Study what other existing bloggers are doing within the niche of your choice and learn from them.

When you pick a niche that does not have enough demand, your site will go unnoticed.

It is a reality that, there is no money if there is no traffic or audience

If you want your posts to rank, you will need to persuade Google that they’re worth more than just having keywords peppered throughout them. Google wants to know that you go into further detail about a certain issue, providing significant value to your viewers.

Choosing a successful blogging niche or writing for a certain sort of audience can help Google recognize you as an expert, and you will quickly be ranked on page 1.

This will help you earn backlinks, which will boost your domain authority, which will help you rank for additional keywords, and so forth, until your blog traffic snowballs.

Backlinks are the links from your website to another website, and vice versa.

You have a backlink from someone who connects to your website. If you connect to another website, you are providing them with a backlink.

If you do not have clear answers to the questions above, here are the 21 most profitable niches for blogging for you to look into! Have a look through the list, see which niche sparks an interest and you can take it from there.

I know it can be overwhelming when choosing a niche but don’t worry. You do not have to have it all figured out, take it at your pace!

2. Learn SEO

If there is one thing that helped increase my income TREMENDOUSLY from blogging, it is SEO aka Search Engine Optimisation.

SEO is the backbone of your blog. Even if you are just starting and you have only uploaded 5 articles, Google is keeping an eye on you.

You cannot run away from SEO.

SEO entails a series of operations that boost your organic traffic by optimizing your content.

The better your blog entries are optimized for SEO, the higher your blog will appear on search engine result pages, allowing more people to find your website and learn more about you.

Say you are running a food blog and you just uploaded an article on “5 Easy Dinner Recipes For Busy Moms”.

With the right SEO strategies, your article may be the one that is on the first page of Google when someone googles “easy dinner recipes for busy moms”.

How often do you frequent the second or third page of a search engine result?

Rarely, am I right? We often look for solutions on the first page of google and when your blog appears on the first page, you will bring in more traffic and subsequently increase your revenue.

To master SEO and increase your chances of ranking on page one of any search engine, here are two helpful courses that will get you started.

3. Help Your Audience

What is a business without its customers? Every brand out there has a handful (sometimes more) of loyal customers.

Blogging is the same.

If readers are drawn to your blog and can connect with you, and find your blog helpful, you will have a group of loyal readers.

When you are coming up with content ideas, instead of it being about yourself, and your interests, it should be a journey for your readers that gives them something in return for their time.

Writing for your audience should be your primary focus.

This will assist you in producing material that your readers will enjoy and trust. They will be more inclined to take on your advice and purchase any products you recommend if they find you reliable and trustworthy.

To be able to help your audience, you must first identify your target readers.

The type of writing style and content produced has to be in line with your readers. If your blog is aimed to attract professionals, you are not going to keep them around if you have Comic Sans as your font and a wonky writing style.

Identifying your audiences will help you decide on the type of content you put out, which in return will have an impact on how much time it takes to earn from a blog.

4. Affiliate Marketing

For the most part, affiliate marketing has been one of the primary sources of income for bloggers. You must study and comprehend how affiliate marketing works if you want to make money quickly.

Affiliate marketing is essentially the promotion of products of other companies.

You earn a commission every time someone buys a product through one of your affiliate links. In essence, you are delivering leads and traffic to an advertising or seller’s website in exchange for a fee.

The affiliate link is unique to you and your brand and will be given by the company.

One thing to keep in mind is to never promote an item or brand just because the payout is good. When you attempt to trick your readers for the payout, your reputation will suffer as a result, and your readers will lose faith in you.

You would not make any money if you write about a product without including an affiliate link. You will need to join an affiliate program to get your unique affiliate link. Here are some affiliate networks to check out.

5. Display Advertising

You can get compensated for each time someone visits a page on your blog or clicks on an advertisement on your site.

The advertisement will be placed for you by the advertising network.

It is undoubtedly one of the best ways to earn a steady stream of passive income. Imagine sitting on a beach in Bali and you watch the passive income roll into your bank account because someone saw the ad in your article.

Sounds a little unbelievable right? I felt that way too when I first saw the ad revenue being paid to my account.

Joining an advertising network is the simplest method to place adverts on your site. Below is a list of ad networks for your consideration.

Now you may be asking, why would an ad network pay you, even if no one clicks on the ad on your blog?

Think of it this way, your blog is a mini-billboard. You know how on the highways, you see advertisements, one after the another, why do you think it is placed there?

They are placed there in hopes that a passenger from a car will be intrigued by the product and make a purchase from the company.

The same goes for your blog. The companies are gaining exposure thanks to your readers, and your readers would not be there had you not set up the blog.

6. Consistency Is Key

So, if you ask me how long does it take to earn from a blog, I will ask you can you be consistent?

Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme.

It takes focus, patience, effort, and consistency to earn from it. My first blog is making me over USD 11,000 per month now and that is because I continued publishing content over the past three years.

It is easy to become overwhelmed when it comes to blogging.

Bloggers frequently go insane generating a to-do list while attempting to focus on a hundred different things at the same time!

Tackle one task at a time, however, keep in mind that every decision you make for your blog should be strategic.

Do not produce content simply because your keyword research tool stated it would be simple to rank for.

Create an outline or a plan for it.

This way, you will know exactly what you need to accomplish to reach your objectives instead of guessing or wasting time on finding the perfect theme to beautify your blog that does not pay the bills.

If you enjoy writing, devote all of your attention to it and ensure that you produce the greatest material possible. Then you may concentrate on increasing your traffic through SEO and social media promotion.

Have a plan, take action, and stay consistent.

FAQs

How Long Does It Take To Make $100 Blogging?

So, you may wonder how long does it take to make $100 blogging. The answer is approximately 6 to 8 months.

Naturally, you must prioritize your responsibilities and plan your time well, however you may see your first $100 a month after 6 months of starting a blog. (based on my personal experience )

With that being said, many factors play a role in how long does it take to monetize a blog, one of which is your choice of niche.

Travel, food, personal finance, and parenting blogs are some of the most competitive blogging niches.

But these niches are popular for a reason. They’re also among the most lucrative.

But remember, the more difficult it is to break through and generate traffic and followers, the longer it will take to make money blogging.

Every blog is unique. Sometimes 6 to 10 months after starting, some bloggers will experience their first USD100 month. Now, bear in mind that this is a rare occurrence.

About a year after starting this blog, I had my first USD100 month. It will take even longer for certain blogs, it boils down to your monetizing and blogging strategy.

Why Does It Take So Long To Make Money Blogging?

Why does it take so long to make money blogging? It takes time to build organic blog traffic and also to learn how to monetize that traffic too. There is no university of blogging so the learning curve is steep!

It is all about the long game when it comes to creating a niche website. Then you must ensure that your work is properly monetized to get as much affiliate money as feasible.

Blogging is not as rewarding as some side hustles like freelance writing or online teaching where you can see your return in a couple of months.

Creating high-quality content that attracts a lot of readers is a common factor among successful bloggers. However, here are a couple of steps you can implement to shorten the monetizing period.

1. Produce More Quality SEO Optimised Content

So, do you want to know how much time it take to earn money from blogging?

It depends on how content you create.

This is a given. Work hard to produce 100 good-quality SEO optimized articles on your site, sign up to display advertising agencies and ad networks to quicken the monetization process.

One of the ways you can do this is by creating a cluster of articles.

Cluster articles are articles that revolve around one topic. Say you run a travel website and you want to write about the best hiking spots, keep ‘hiking’ as the main topic and create a cluster of articles surrounding that topic.

For example, you could come up with articles like:

People who are interested in hiking will most likely read other articles you have on hiking to see what else you have to offer them!

These articles above are all from one website. I did this because I know that, by producing cluster articles, where I publish several connected blog pieces in rapid succession, I will have a higher chance to increase traffic to my new site.

2. Create An Email List

Having an email is one of the best techniques to gain consistent traffic and establish a devoted following for any niche writer because you control your email list, it is one of your most valuable assets as a blogger.

If you implement all the blog monetization strategies combined with email marketing,you will get repeat consumers.

This is because the easiest individuals to sell to are those who have already purchased from you or are at least acquainted enough with you to join your email list.

Here are some email marketing platforms for you to look into:

Essential Blogging Tools

1. Bluehost

Bluehost is a web hosting platform. One of the factors that affect the success of your blog is the hosting provider you choose.

I use Bluehost for new sites because they are reasonably priced, you will get a FREE domain upon signing up, they automatically link the website builder like wordpress to your site, and they have an amazing team of 24/7 customer support.

Helpful resources on domain hosting:

2. WordPress

WordPress is a simple blogging tool. This article you’re reading now? It is uploaded onto WordPress to be published.

This tool has grown into a content management system and a framework for developing applications.

In other words, WordPress makes it simple to create any form of a website.

WordPress is incredibly adaptable, which is why it is such a popular platform for creating websites. It may be used to establish a blog, a small company website, offer online courses, manage a marketplace, and much more.

Whatever type of website you wish to create, there is almost always an existing WordPress plugin (extension) for it. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can easily engage one of the thousands of developers to create it for you.

I also recommend WordPress over Wix or Squarespace because Google likes it and it’s the most commonly used website builder so it’s cheaper and easier to get tech help if anything goes wrong.

Helpful resources on WordPress:

3. Astra Theme

Astra is one of the most popular WordPress themes on the market.

It is a great option if you want the simplest method to create a great, fast website with no work. It is also simple to grow without compromising page performance because speed is incorporated into the architecture.

I made the rookie mistake of spending DAYS trying to create the perfect-looking blog because I thought that was one of the factors when it comes to how long does it take a blog to make money.

Newsflash, it is not.

The free edition of Astra is good enough to create a professional website. You may have a completely functional, personalized site in only hours with their amazing templates!

Over one million satisfied customers are operating fast and well-designed sites right now, and the majority of them hardly spent a dime!

They also have FREE plug-and-play starter templates, you can upload and use immediately.

Despite the fact that I am not tech-savvy, I built 5 websites plus sites for my family because of the Astra starter templates!

4. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that improves the performance of your site in search engines such as Google and provides you with the tools you need to improve your content in terms of SEO.

Here is a list of all the things Yoast c a n do for your site:

Check the health of your site
Provide suggestions for content optimization
Provide suggestions for site structure optimization
Help speed up and secure your site
Help analyze the performance of your site

Note – Many people say that Yoast slows your site down and that they prefer Rankmath instead, I tried it but didn’t like it. But either is fine, do what you prefer 🙂

5. Keysearch

Keysearch aids in the tracking of your SEO efforts by revealing what keywords you may realistically rank for because keywords are important when it comes to SEO.

This tool also shows you what your rivals are doing with keywords, and assists you in locating competitor keywords for which you could create a better article.

You can also find niche-relevant keywords. Simply type in the primary term, and Keysearch will return a slew of results, each with search volume and CPC data.

Use my code OUTANDBEYOND to get 30% off your subscription!

Many people recommend expensive SEO keyword tools like SEMRUSH and AHREFS but I have tried them all and still recommend Keysearch because it is the most affordable and it brings me significant results across my 5 sites too!

How Do Beginner Bloggers Make Money?

Affiliate Marketing
Display Advertising
Sponsored Content

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing works by incorporating monitored and unique links into your blog posts. Every time a reader clicks on the link, they will be redirected to a site you promote and when they make a purchase, you can earn a small compensation.

Because you are helping the brand gain exposure and increasing their revenue every time your reader buys their product, you are rewarded with a commission.

So, when it comes to how long does it take to monetize a blog, I’d say that joining an affiliate network will shorten the time.

Here are some affiliate networks for you to consider.

If you are looking for some helpful resources on affiliate marketing for the top niches, check these pieces out:

2. Display Advertising

Display advertising is another way to speed up your earning process so you do not have to wonder how long does it take to earn money from blogging.

Undoubtedly one of the best ways to earn passive income from blogging, and display advertising is when you get paid whenever a reader browses through your articles and looks at the advertisement banner that pops up.

They do not have to click anything, all your readers have to do is LOOK at the ad, and you will get paid. Amazing isn’t it?

Here are some advertising networks for you to join.

Google AdSense
Monumetric
Ezoic– All my smaller sites use them
Mediavine—- I am with them for this site
Adthrive

Some of these ad networks require minimum traffic requirements, so be sure to check them out before applying. Some helpful resources on display advertising are below:

3. Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is relatively straightforward. If you feel strongly about a brand or if there is a company you would like to work with, you can reach out to them and do sponsored content.

The brand or company will pay you to write about their product in your articles.

Once your following is large enough, brands within your niche will reach out to you because they know you have a strong influence on your readers.

The concept is similar to your favorite Instagram influencer promoting the best toothpaste for sparkly pearly white teeth. You are now the influencer for your blog.

However, only work with brands you trust because when you try to deceive your readers for a payout, you will lose the loyal following that you have worked hard to create.

If that happens, instead of earning money, you will be left wondering how long does it take to make money.

Here are some helpful resources on sponsored content.

If you are actively using Instagram but do not have many followers, check out this post on How To Get Sponsored On Instagram with 1000 Followers In 2022.

How Do You Start A Profitable Blog?

Choose a name
Set up your domain
Choose a theme and logo
Install necessary plugins
Learn how to monetize your site

If you would like to know the detailed and exact steps I took to start a profitable blog, read this article and you no longer have to worry about how long does it take to make a blog profitable.

Blogging has given me the privilege to share my interest in saving and earning extra money with others while also allowing me to make thousands of dollars while doing something I like.

I explicitly mention WordPress since that is the platform I use, and I can’t comment on other platforms because I have not tried them. WordPress is a well-known and well-liked blogging platform.

For less than $100 a year, you can start a money-making blog.

Conclusion

There you go, your question on how long does it take to make money blogging is answered!

The journey of every blogger is tailored to their niche, efforts, and persistence. If you see me saying the average time to see a return on your efforts is 6 to 12 months, do not be discouraged if it takes you slightly longer than that.

The niche you are in, the SEO strategies, and the monetizing strategies play a role in how long does it take to start making money from blogging.