You’ve seen it.
Blogger income reports showing thousands upon thousands of dollars earned per month.
Success stories of people quitting their mind-numbing corporate jobs to travel full-time and live daily adventures thanks to their blog income.
People paying off their debts and living the comfortable life we all dream of…
Bloggers all over the internet share their success while their readers look in awe and start their own blogs to try and get a piece of that delicious pie.
All that being said, it’s safe to say that any new blogger is going to be eager about how long it’ll take them to earn money through their own blog.
So, how long does it take to make money blogging?
The answer is a big, fat it depends. The best answer I can give you is around 3-6 months to a year.
I wish I could give you a solid answer, but the truth is that it’s impossible to say. However, there are a few hints that’ll help you get an idea of how long it’ll take, as well as a few tricks that’ll help you get there faster.
Check out these 3 factors to get an idea of what you need to do to start earning money from your blog and how long it may take:
1. How often will you work on your blog?
Content is king when it comes to blogging! The more time you can spend putting out content and working on your blog, the faster you’ll start earning money.
Generally, it’s a good idea to have at least 30 posts published so your blog looks established.
The amount of time it takes you to get to a decent amount of blog posts will depend on how often and how fast you’re able to write.
Publishing between 1 and 5 blog posts per week is a great goal to have. Try to shoot for more than 1 per week, if possible. The more, the better (so long as you’re not sacrificing quality for quantity).
Want to go full force into blogging? Then take ChasingFoxes for example. Silas and Grace, bloggers at ChasingFoxes, earned $3,000 just 3 months after launching their blog! They recommend “doing the work first” and launching your blog with 25+ blog posts.
2. What monetization strategies will you use?
There are many different ways you can monetize your blog. The method(s) you choose will have an impact on how quickly you can make money.
For this post, I’ll focus on display ads and affiliate marketing because they are, in my opinion, the most beginner friendly.
Display ads are ads placed around your website and within your blog posts. When someone views or clicks the ad, you get paid!
Google Adsense is probably the most well known ad network. You can submit an application for them to review your blog and decide if they want to place ads on your blog. They’re great for beginners since they don’t have strict monthly traffic requirements, but they’re generally not recommended since their pay is quite low.
Mediavine and Adthrive are two popular ad network options for bloggers that offer better pay than Adsense, but they both have a monthly traffic requirement that a beginner may not be able to achieve immediately.
If you want to get started with ads on your blog asap, then there’s no harm in signing up for Adsense and switching to a new ad network later when your traffic increases!
The other monetization strategy that can get you paid fast is affiliate marketing. This is when you link to products or services and get paid a commission if someone clicks your link and purchases the product or service.
The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t need tons of traffic to start getting paid (unlike with display ads). As long as someone reads your post and purchases something you linked to, you can get paid. It doesn’t matter if they’re the 1st or 1,000th person to visit your blog!
The products and/or services you link to will depend on your blog’s niche and the type of blog posts you write. That being said, Amazon Associates is a great option for beginners.
With Amazon Associates, you can link to just about any product on Amazon. Not only will you get a commission if someone purchases the product you link to, but you’ll also get a commission for every product the buyer purchases even if they didn’t buy what you originally linked to! Pretty cool, right?
Amazon Associates is just one, beginner friendly example. However, there are tons of affiliate programs out there so be sure to check out other options to find what’s best for you.
3. How will you be getting your traffic?
How you get your traffic is an important factor in determining how fast you can earn money.
There are many different ways you can get traffic to your blog, but I’ll focus on Google and social media in this post.
If you’re going to rely solely on SEO/Google search traffic, then it’s likely going to take a few months up to a year to start getting traffic.
Why so long? Because it can take quite a while for blog posts to rank on Google.
It’s a good idea to start learning SEO and implementing SEO strategies into your blog posts from the very beginning so you can start getting Google traffic ASAP. However, I wouldn’t recommend only focusing on SEO if you’re hoping to earn an income fast.
Another way you can get traffic to your blog is through social media. Pinterest is a great place to start. People on Pinterest are often specifically looking for blog posts that contain the information they want or need.
If you can make great pins for your blog posts and pin them onto Pinterest, you’ll likely be able get traffic to your blog pretty quickly! And believe me when I say this, many bloggers get crazy amounts of traffic from Pinterest.
If you’re interested in using Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog, I recommend checking out the course called Pinteresting Strategies. I used this course to take my Pinterest views from almost nothing to the thousands in just a few weeks!
Along with Pinterest, you can promote your blog on other social media such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and even Youtube.
However, I’d recommend picking Pinterest as either the main or only social media you focus on since it will probably get you the best results.
I made my first dollar on my blog in 2 months
Here’s my personal example. I earned my first dollar on my health niche blog in just 2 months!
What method did I use? I monetized with affiliate marketing (Amazon Associates) and used Pinterest for traffic.
Alright, I only earned $3.55. Not the most impressive. But this was only 2 months in with just 7 blog posts published. This particular blog is now earning money on a daily basis, mainly through Google search traffic.
Check out this post if you want to learn more about how I made money with my health niche blog.
How long does it take to make money blogging?
While there’s no definite answer, a safe range to say is anywhere between 3 months to a year. It really all depends on how much you work, how you get your traffic and how you monetize your blog.
Even though I can’t give an exact answer, I hope this post helped shed some light on what you can expect as far as income from blogging goes.
Remember this: Most bloggers don’t make it because they quit before they see success. Often, that success is right around the corner!
Don’t give up, set up a blogging schedule that works for you, work on your blog consistently and the income will come with time. You can do it!