How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging? 7+ Tips To Monetize Fast

A re you wondering: How long does it take to monetize a blog?

I’ve got good news… You aren’t the only one!

Probably the first thing any blogger thinks about when they start a blog is how long it will take them to earn their first buck.

And in this guide, I’ll show you the exact steps you can follow to make money from your blog in one year or less – as long as you’re focused and determined of course.

So, let’s get right into it.

How Long Does It Take to Make Money Blogging?

You can quickly start making money within the first year of blogging if you have a solid strategy in place.

There are two main factors that dictate how fast you earn income from your blog:

1. How much time you should put in to start making money
2. How you monetize your blog

Let’s take a look at each factor…

How much time you should put in to start making money?

How much time you spend blogging depends on your situation and how focused you are. If you’ve quit your job, then working 40 hours a week would be ideal.

And if you’re looking to build a source of passive income on the side, you should focus on putting in at least 15 hours a week.

The more focused time and energy you put into your blog, the faster you’ll start making money.

But at the same time, blogging is a business you can build in your spare time.

If you’re a mommy blogger taking care of kids, you probably won’t have a lot of time to commit. But, even if you have 1-2 hours to spend each day, we’re here to tell you that you can create a blog as a business.

You need to ask yourself a straightforward question:

How committed are you to creating a blog?

In other words – Are you willing to put in the time it takes to start a profitable blog?

A lot of people think that blogging is easy, and all bloggers do is type on their laptops throughout the day and watch the money roll in.

But that’s a far cry from the truth. Blogging is hard work, and it’s not just about writing. You have to focus on email marketing, affiliate marketing, creating groups on social media, responding to comments and emails, sending out newsletters, and so much more.

Hence, it takes time to build a money-making blog. If you want your blog income to replace your full-time income, you’ll need to be in love with your blogging business and the marketing side of things.

To help illustrate this, check out this general timeline video from the guys at Income School!

How do you monetize your blog?

How you monetize your blog is another important factor that determines how fast you can make money through blogging.

Picking the right way for how to monetize your blog is essential, you need to do your research and look for a monetizing channel that is profitable.

Initially, at least for those who are just starting out, the best and easiest money making blog strategy is through selling ad spaces on your blog. With ad spaces, you can start generating income but it might not be enough to kickstart your blogging career.

You should focus on building your audience and when eventually you start generating traffic, you should move to better sources of income like affiliate marketing.

But don’t just stick with one source of income for your blog. Look for different options to maximize your profits.

Let’s look at some examples of how bloggers earn money and how much money they make.

Lloyd runs a blog called The Extra Income Project, where he has shared his income reports. His main source of income is through selling ad spaces, Google Adsense, Mediavine and other ad networks.

Here is a screenshot of his first year of blogging:

You can see how he has gradually increased his income from $0 to more than $150 a month. That’s a great start!

But just note that 2017 was quite a while ago.

And with time and other monetization methods, you can make even more money.

Abby Lawson is a famous blogger who runs a blog called Just a Girl and Her Blog. She has shared in her income report that she makes the most money through affiliate marketing and selling her courses and ebooks.

Here is a snapshot of her income:

In another example, blogger Adam Enfroy shared in his income report that he makes the most money through affiliate marketing.

According to Adam, he made $44,626 in March 2020 through 56 different affiliate programs.

Here is the screenshot of the summary:

There are countless other examples, and almost all of them show that affiliate marketing is a blogger’s biggest source of income.

We will touch on affiliate marketing more in this guide below, so make sure you read through.

Overall, while there are quite a few ways to make money through blogging, you need to have realistic expectations of how and when you will start earning money.

Most bloggers start earning within 6-12 months of starting their blogs. But that largely depends on the time and effort they put in and how they monetize their blog.

8 Steps For How To Make Money From Your Blog Faster

So, we’ve talked about how long it takes to earn money from your blog. Several factors affect how long it takes to monetize a blog. You can quickly start making money in a year, or if you’ve put in the effort, you can start earning in 6 months.

In this section, we’ll share tips on how you can speed up the process of earning money through blogging.

1. Write for Your Audience

As a blogger, writing for your audience should be your top priority.

This will help you create blog content that they love and trust. And when you have a loyal audience, they’ll be more likely to click on your affiliate links or buy your products.

But first, you need to drill down to your ideal reader/customer before you write an article.

More often than not, I’ve seen bloggers targeting the wrong audience because of shiny object syndrome. Just because a particular audience likes to spend more money doesn’t mean that they would spend more for you.

You can do a little research online to find out who your exact audience is and what they’re interested in.

For example, if your blog is about online gaming, check out online groups where your target audience hangs out. By joining these groups, you will get a good idea of what your target audience talks about, what topics interest them, and how you can help them out.

This is a great way to do free keyword research.

And once you write a blog post on the topic your target audience was talking about, share it with them and watch the page views on your blog and the engagement grow.

2. Pick a Niche and Stick with It

You can’t find a dedicated audience if you can’t decide on a niche!

Let’s say that you love traveling. So, you start a travel blog to appeal to a similar audience. Since you’ve decided on a niche, it’ll be much easier to attract a loyal audience and promote relevant products to them.

But if you decide to stray away and start blogging about tech, your content won’t be as successful as your original travel audience. Instead, you’ll have to attract a whole new audience and won’t be a trusted source for travel tips anymore.

And when choosing your niche, don’t pick one just because you think it will make money.

Make sure that you have a passion for it.

More often than not, bloggers struggle to write blog posts about topics they are not interested in. Sure, the niche may be profitable, but if you have no knowledge or interest in it, you’ll exhaust yourself.

3. Stay Focused

Blogging can be very overwhelming. Bloggers often go crazy making a to-do list while trying to focus on a hundred things at once!

Here are some tips to help you stay focused to reach your goal of making money.

First, instead of learning everything about blogging, SEO, and social media marketing – just focus on one platform at a time. Once you’ve mastered the one platform that you love, you can then move on to learn the next one.

If you love writing, focus all your time on that and ensure you put the best content out there. Then, you can work on growing your traffic with SEO and promoting your blog on social media.

Next, the best way to stay focused is to eliminate distractions. We are a huge fan of Pomodoro technique.

This technique requires you to work in short bursts of 25 minutes and then take a 5-minute break.

There are many apps available online that can help you with this technique. Our favorite is a free tool called TomatoTimer.com.

You should definitely check it out if you want to stay focused while working.

4. Create a Content Calendar

A content calendar is your best friend. It can help you stay focused and on track. It is essential for new bloggers and will help you treat your blog like a business from the first day.

You will have a written plan of action, and the content calendar will help you stick to that plan of action.

The biggest downfall of any blogging site is that they aren’t regular in posting or are reluctant to make the sacrifices to make them go full-time.

Sticking to a schedule also means that you can properly invest in yourself and your blog. As we’ve said before, the more effort you put into your blog, the faster it will yield results.

To create a content calendar, you can use:

1. The Editorial Calendar WordPress plugin
2. An online calendar with Google Docs, your smartphone, or tablet
3. A good old fashioned calendar near your desk or computer

You should also check out our guide on how often you should blog. It will help you get more organized with your content scheduling and planning.

5. Focus on Evergreen Content to Increase Blog Income

Evergreen content is content that is forever fresh.

It holds a lasting value, and people will always want to read it.

When you’re planning out your content calendar, divide it into evergreen content and trending content.

Trending topics tend to attract a lot of traffic, but they die down fast. You could write something about top trending travel products and get a boost of traffic for a month or so, but it won’t last long.

But if you focus on writing evergreen content like how to travel on a budget, you will get a lot more traffic to your blog over time.

Evergreen content is also good for your SEO as bloggers. It helps you earn many backlinks, allowing you to rank on search engines like Google and generate more traffic.

The more traffic you can attract, the better your chance of increasing your revenue.

6. Learn Affiliate Marketing to Monetize a Blog

Affiliate marketing is the go-to source of income for most bloggers. To prove our point, we even shared a snapshot of some blogging incomes.

If you want to earn more money quickly, you must learn and understand how affiliate marketing works.

With affiliate marketing blogs, you promote the products of other businesses. You earn a commission every time someone purchases the product via one of your affiliate links.

So, say your commission is $6 for every sale. If 100 people buy the product by clicking on your affiliate link, you will make $600.

You can easily find products that offer affiliate commissions by signing up for affiliate programs.

The three most popular ones are:

1. ShareASale
2. Amazon Associates
3. Commission Junction

Sign up for these affiliate programs, and you will find a list of products to promote on your blog. Make sure to choose affiliate products relevant to your niche and your audience.

A Word of Warning: Never recommend an irrelevant or poor-quality product just because it offers a high commission rate. This will hurt your brand reputation, and your readers will no longer trust you.

We’ve got a detailed guide on how to do affiliate marketing. Go check it out for more information and start earning affiliate income for your blog today.

7. Find More Ways to Make Money from a Blog

Finding more ways to monetize your blog can also help you make money faster.

If you build more than one source of income you can easily get more money sooner than you think.

Here are some more ways you can monetize your blog:

• Write Sponsored Posts: With sponsored posts, a company sends you a product. After trying out the product, you write a post about it on your blog and get paid. However, you need to write sponsored posts that are relevant to your niche. For example, if you have a travel blog, reviewing the best travel bags would make sense instead of writing sponsored posts on the best vacuum cleaners.
• Use Google Adsense: Google Adsense is an advertising platform by Google that lets you show ads on your blog. You’ll get paid every time someone clicks on an advertisement banner.
• Sell Ad Space: You could also sell ad space directly to other companies. Many companies seek maximum exposure for their brands or services. You can display their ads on your blog and get paid to increase their brand’s visibility.
• Create a Membership Site: When you’ve built a good fan following, you can lock your content and allow only users who pay a subscription fee to read your blog. You can easily set this up with a plugin called MemberPress.
• Sell Digital Products: Another great option once you’ve built a nice following is to sell your own products. This could be an online course – like blogging courses for those with less experience than you or perhaps a library of templates, etc.

We could list other ways to make a lot of money with your blog.

But you should check out our guide on how to monetize your blog for more tips.

8. Grow Your Email List to Increase Blog Traffic

Email marketing is yet another essential part of making money with a blog. But unfortunately, bloggers who are just starting out often ignore it.

Building an email list is critical to long-term success. Your email list comprises your most dedicated readers, who can’t wait to hear from you.

Every time you send them a message promoting your blog or a product, there is a high chance they will make a purchase and bring in revenue for you.

This is why we recommend getting a lead generation tool like OptinMonster. With OptinMonster, you can easily grow your email list and increase sales.

Using the drag-and-drop builder, you can create email popups to grab the attention of your blog visitors and encourage them to join your email list.

Here’s an example of one:

If you’ve used an enticing lead magnet, like an ebook, you will definitely get more subscribers.

These high-converting opt-in forms will help you build your email list quickly.

For more information, check out this post of quick and easy hacks to get more email subscribers.

Essential Blogging Tools for a Profitable Blog

If you want to succeed blogging and make money as a blogger faster, you’ll also need the right plugins.

Here’s a quick list of WordPress plugins that will improve your blog overall and help you boost traffic, generate leads, and earn more money.

Check them out:

• MonsterInsights (Free): View your website analytics right from your WordPress dashboard. You can see how much traffic your blog is getting, where people discover your site, who your visitors are, and more.
• All in One SEO (Free): Easily optimize your entire site for SEO to improve your search engine rankings and grow your traffic.
• SeedProd (Free): Create beautiful landing pages for your blog with this drag-and-drop builder. And if you want to collect email addresses on your landing pages, you can also upgrade to the Pro version.
• WPForms (Free): Build contact forms, feedback forms, payment forms, and more. This lets your readers or potential clients easily contact you.
• RafflePress (Free): Run giveaways on your WordPress blog to drive more traffic, boost engagement, grow your social media following, and more.

As you start to earn money from your blog, you can upgrade to the premium versions of these plugins to boost your earning potential even more.

If you’re interested, don’t miss our guide to the best SEO blog software options on the market!

How Long Does It Take To Monetize a Blog FAQ

Here are some of the key answers to the burning questions you may have!

How Long Does it Take to Make a Profitable Blog?

For most bloggers, even if they’re complete beginners, it can take 6 months to a year to start generating income from a blog. This time period varies though and there are many factors that affect how long it takes like the strategy you are following and how much time and effort you put in a week.

How Long Does it Take to Make $500 Per Month Blogging?

This depends on the niche, competition, and Google sandbox period. Google sandbox period is the time Google or any other search engine takes to index your website. If you’re working on a high-profit, low competition niche, then you can start earning your $500 in 6 months, but if you’re working in a very saturated niche, then it might take you more than a year.

How Do Beginner Bloggers Make Money?

The easiest and fastest way for beginner bloggers to start making money is with Google Adsense. We’ve talked about this before: Google Adsense lets you display Google Ads on your blog, and when a reader clicks on that ad, you get paid.

Is it Hard to Make Money From a Blog?

This is a tricky one. Generally speaking, making money is hard in all aspects, not just blogging. It may be hard, but it’s not impossible. Sure, millions of bloggers out there never made a single penny and called it quits. But don’t let the failures of others guide you. If you’ve got a passion for writing and you’re willing to put in the time and effort, then you can make money from your blog.

Sure, it might take you a while, but you can achieve great things with your blog if you are focused.

Key Takeaways On How Long It Takes To Monetize a Blog

• Making money from blogging can start within the first year if you have a solid strategy.
• But of course, time investment in blogging varies based on your goals and available hours.
• Some monetization strategies worth exploring include ad spaces, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, and selling digital products.
• Writing for your audience and sticking to a niche are crucial for success.
• Staying focused by prioritizing tasks and using tools like the Pomodoro technique can really help.
• Evergreen content attracts long-term traffic and improves SEO more than always targeting trendy topics.
• Affiliate marketing is a primary income source for many bloggers.
• But building an email list is essential for long-term success and increased revenue.

Closing Out On How Long It Takes To Make Money Blogging

That’s a wrap!

We hope that this article answered your question about how long it takes to make money blogging and that the tips we shared help you speed up your income.

Also, check out our guide on how to make money online, it’s best for bloggers who are just starting out.

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