How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging

How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging

What most bloggers agree about is that blogging does not make you rich overnight. However, you can earn solid revenue if you work diligently and develop the right approach.

A survey reveals that it takes about one year to start earning over $1,000 per month from your blog. After three years, the average blogging income increases to about $2,200 per month and, after five years of consistent blogging, you may expect to earn about $4,000 per month. This might sound like a long time, but there are many steps you can take to grow your blogging income faster.

The main factors that influence how fast you can grow your blogging revenue include:

● The number of your blog articles

● Your pageviews and other visit statistics

● The quality of your content

● Your niche and target audience

● Your monetization strategy

To help you get a better understanding of how to earn money from blogging, we’ve gathered five stories from bloggers who started to earn with their blog within a short time frame (from one month to one year).

1 Month

Monique started her blog, Blog With Mo, in May of 2018 and managed to earn $142.91 in just one month. Here is the income report breakdown:

• AdSense ads: $108.54
• Amazon affiliate income $5.37
• eBook sale $29

During this month, Monique published 40 posts, acquired 340 email subscribers, and got close to 13,000 page views. As you can see on her traffic income report below, after publishing, traffic almost immediately started coming in, and the blog received several thousand page views in the first few days, as well as some ad income. In the second month of blogging, her income reached the $380 mark.

This blogger success story was comprised of several different monetization strategies. First of all, publishing 40 blog posts in the first month was accompanied by a robust Pinterest strategy that greatly helped to drive traffic. Monique also started capturing emails immediately to grow her email list and enhanced her monetization via affiliate links. Finally, she started selling her own product (namely, an eBook), although the number of sales was not very high. 

If you have a travel blog, you can start monetizing it immediately. The scale of your project doesn’t matter. You don’t have to wait for promotions, try to understand AdSense, or create your own products. 

You can earn on hotels, flights, and other travel services by promoting travel brands. This is all possible with the Travelpayouts partnership platform, on which you can find over 100 travel brands, including well-known names, such as Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Kiwi.com, and more.

It’s simple and free. Just sign up for Travelpayouts, join the programs that best fit your project, and place the partner tools (links or widgets) on the relevant blog pages. For each sale made via your partner tool, you’ll receive a reward.

3 Months

Sara from Gathering Dreams went from $0 to $3,878 after three months of part-time blogging. Her income breakdown for this time period is as follows:

• Ads income (Mediavine): $2,572.73
• Affiliate income: $1,263.96

Here is an overview of the traffic. Sara managed to get over 3,000 page views in her first month of blogging.

So, what was the plan for this blog success story? Sara wanted to start earning $1,000 a month from blogging in one year. As a result, she developed a comprehensive approach. First, she learned the importance of using a good hosting provider, as free services weren’t able to maintain good website performance. Second, she focused on sharing valuable content that solved her audience’s issues to ensure a stable inflow of visitors. Third, she discovered that Pinterest is great at driving free traffic. 

4 Months

Spencer of Niche Pursuits managed to see his first earnings come in within four months. He published his first article on September 10, 2018 and had 20 articles online by the end of the month. Within three months, he had made about 40 posts. In early December 2018, the first sale of $3.97 came in from Amazon.

Spencer aimed to attract traffic mainly from Google with posts. He’d also create and promote pins on Pinterest. Although his initial revenue wasn’t high, in seven months, Spencer was already earning $128.41 per month. In ten months, his revenue reached the $1,000 mark. In just two years, Spencer was earning over $3,700 per month.

5 Months

Sarah-Charlotte of The Frugal Millionaire blog is now one of the top-earning bloggers, although her first cheque took about five months to earn. Sarah started her blog at the end of September 2014 and made her first $100, five months later, at the end of February 2015. These were five months of consistent posting, commenting, and monetizing her blog.

Mainly, that first income came from Google AdSense, but Sarah later joined Media.net and Sovrn. She started to post ads right from the start, but was only able to withdraw her money after reaching the $100 mark. Now, Sarah also uses The Blogger Network to monetize her blog with ads.

1 Year

Debbie Gartner of The Flooring Girl shared in this interview how she managed to become a successful blogger within one year. It all started when Debbie decided to monetize the blog she already had through SEO and Pinterest.

By the end of the first year, Debbie was already making about $3,000 per month with her blog. In a couple more months, her earnings reached $6,000. By the end of the following year, Debbie was already making $10,000 per month.

Another great example is the Practical Wanderlust travel blog. Lia Garcia, the voice behind the blog, managed to earn $22,000 during her first year of blogging, which made her decide to pursue travel blogging full time. Here is her income breakdown:

• Advertising: $6,720.14
• Affiliate Income (excluding Amazon): $1,658.91
• Amazon Affiliate Income: $2,764.49
• Paid Press/FAM Trips: $6,135.00
• Sponsored Posts: $2,725.00
• Social Media Consulting & Courses: $2,450.75
• Grand Total: $22,454.49

One can monetize a travel blog in a variety of ways, and, as you can see from the example above, affiliate marketing often accounts for a big part of blogging income. Lia monetizes her blog with affiliate links to hotels, flights, and other travel services. 

Flight affiliate programs can be a great way to monetize your blog or social media page, as they feature great affiliate commissions. To maximise your revenue, check out our free special guide that reveals the best practices for earning in the flight market. You will learn:

• The best airline affiliate programs
• How much you can make with flight offers
• Which sort of content works best for promotions
• How to integrate offers into your content

Use our free guide to add flights to your affiliate marketing strategy.

Start earning on flights

Tips for Making Money From Blogging

If making money from blogging sounds exciting, and you can’t wait to skip the office routine and become your own boss, starting a blog can be a great idea. Not only can you work independently and from anywhere around the world, but you can also choose a niche you are passionate about and develop your own schedule.

Whether you want to start blogging as a side hustle or grow your blog into a full-time career, you need a solid strategy to grow your blog traffic and convert it into money. Here are a few tips on how to maximize your efforts:

1. Choose a Profitable Niche

Selecting a niche is so important since you will be writing about your chosen topic for the entirety of your blogging journey. The key is to find a niche that is both personally interesting to you and lucrative. Start by defining topics that interest you and then check out the brands and affiliate programs in that niche, such as: what commissions they offer, if they can resonate with your audience, if they have a stellar reputation, and more.

To learn how you can select a profitable niche that can generate significant income, check out this video from Travelpayouts Academy.

2. Create High-Quality Content

Just like if you are choosing a brand to partner with based on their offer and reputation, readers will decide whether to come back to your blog based on the quality of your content. So, to grow a community, you should focus on creating excellent content that brings real value to your audience and makes them naturally come back for more.

3. Diversify Your Marketing Strategy

To grow an audience, it is important to get your website in front of as many eyes as possible. You can boost your organic traffic by implementing the best SEO practices and improving your ranking on the search results. You may also want to grow your presence on social media, because more and more brands and users find that social networks are the best way to connect. In addition, email marketing can be a great way to nurture your leads and stay at the top of your readers’ minds.

4. Run Paid Ads

If you need to boost your traffic for a particular campaign or keyword, paid advertising on search engines, social media, or third-party platforms can be a great solution. For example, you can run paid ads on Google for your target keyword to increase the inflow of visitors and boost your conversions. Or you can advertise on another blogger’s site and grow your audience.

5. Become an Affiliate Partner

Affiliate marketing is a great way to grow your blog’s revenue while writing about topics that you enjoy. Essentially, you can earn by recommending relevant products to your audience and get paid for every sale. The key is to focus on promoting offers that bring value to your readers and deliver enough information to encourage them to check out the product. Affiliate earnings can support your blog growth or even allow you to turn blogging into a full-time career.

How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging?

Depending on the strategy you employ, it generally takes from several months to over a year to start earning money from a blog. It greatly helps to write valuable content that rewards visitors for the time they spend on your website. In addition, using Pinterest can be a great idea, as it allows you to drive traffic much faster than search engines.

Finally, ad networks and affiliate marketing present amazing opportunities to monetize your content almost immediately. You can earn on hotels, flights, and other travel services. You can find over 100 additional travel brands of different categories in the Travelpayouts partnership platform. Just go to the brands directory and choose the travel affliate programs that best fits your project.