How Long Does It Take to Make Money Blogging ($500-$1000 Monthly Blogging)
Blogging is the dream job for many, possibly yours, too. But you are still not sure if it’s worth balancing blogging with your 9-to-5 job. To be sure, first, you need to know how long it takes to make money blogging.
It’s only fair — you need to know what to expect before committing to blogging.
In this article, let’s cover when a blogger really starts earning, how many blog posts and pageviews you need to make money blogging, and how to make $500-$1000 from a blog faster. Keep reading!
We may get paid commissions for purchases made after clicking a link in this post. Read the full disclosure here.
Table of contents
- How long does it take to make money blogging?
- Decisive factors in how long it will take you to make money blogging
- Is it realistic to make money blogging?
- How many blog posts do you need to publish to make money?
- How many pageviews do you need to make money blogging?
- How long will it take me to earn $500 – $1000 per month from my blog?
- How can I monetize my website fast?
- How much money can you make from a monetized website?
- How to start a blog to make money blogging in 2023
How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging?
Many factors define how long it takes to make money blogging and how much money you can earn from a blog.
The average estimated time it takes to start making money blogging is 12-24 months, assuming you have put all the deciding factors to work in your favor. In other words, just starting a blog and passively waiting for 1-2 years won’t get any checks sent to you. For that, you will need to work really hard on your blog during this period.
Also, there is no guarantee that during the 12-24-month period, your blog will be generating at least a full-time salary. Possibly, you’ll be earning some very welcomed bucks, but you’ll need to wait a little longer until you can make a living just from your blog income. It all depends on many factors and varies from case to case.
So, let’s address, one by one, these factors that decide how long it takes to make money blogging and how much you can earn.
Knowing these factors will help you define an effective strategy to achieve your goals as soon as possible.
How Long It Will Take You To Make Money Blogging: 7 Decisive Factors
1. Your Chosen Blogging Niche May Decide How Long It Will Take You To Make Money From Your Blog
When a blogger will actually start earning varies drastically from niche to niche. So keep that in mind when starting a blog.
Some niches have topics with many monthly searches, but the competition is exceptionally fierce, so you need to be prepared to stand out among your competitors. On the other hand, other niches have low competition, but at the same time, few people search for those topics, which means that you will have limitations related to your audience.
Like many things in life, finding a balance is ideal. Here are some factors to consider when choosing your niche:
- Check out your potential competition and see if you can beat them or are on par with them at least. If not, look for other niches with less competition but decent profit value.
- Your blog niche must be evergreen, as the goal is for the blog posts you write today to continue to generate income for many years to come.
- Never, never expect that writing about the things you fancy will bring you a lot of page views! They most probably will not. To make money blogging, be you a beginner or not, you must write about what the audience is interested in reading. Not about your particular interests.
- If you intend to work with affiliate marketing, research the average value of commissions from affiliate programs in the niches that interest you. Evaluating this information means the difference between needing to make 100-200 sales a month to generate a full-time salary from your blog and 1000 sales to achieve the same feat! So pay attention!
You can learn more about blog niches or affiliate marketing here:
2. How Old Is Your Blog Matters – A Lot
Back in the day, new bloggers could rank on Google almost immediately with their new blogs if they were averagely SEO-skilled. But times have changed.
With so many new blogs launched daily, Google had to take steps to control spam.
What does it mean for you who just want to know how long it takes to make money blogging?
For you or any other new blogger starting a blog now, that means a waiting time of 6 to 8 months for Google to pull you out of what is called The Google Sandbox.
The purpose of The Google Sandbox is to test your commitment to creating quality content and preventing spammers from making quick and easy money. Because of this, Google prioritizes web domain names that are older than at least 8 months.
During this 6-8 month period, all you can do is stop worrying about how long it takes to make money blogging and create quality content for your blog.
Unfortunately, many bloggers drop out during this period because they have no idea that every new website passes through the Google Sandbox. On the contrary, they think they are doing something wrong by not ranking for their target keywords or that blogging is a scam.
3. The Number of Blog Posts
The more blog posts you have published, the more topics in your niche you cover. If you cover a massive number of topics in your blog niche, you reach a larger audience and have more significant earning possibilities.
There are exceptional cases, however. In some specific niches, a small number of blog posts can attract a much larger audience than websites with 100+ blog posts. But these cases, as already mentioned, are exceptions.
In other words, how long it takes to make money blogging can vary greatly from niche to niche, how many blog posts you can publish, and in what time frame.
But please note that the number of blog posts means nothing, neither in ordinary nor exceptional cases, if the articles do not have quality content and are heavily optimized for SEO and conversion.
4. How Old Are Each of Your Blog Posts Is a Decisive Factor
It’s not enough to just publish your blog posts for the magic to happen. Each of your blog posts needs to be at least 6 months old to start ranking well on Google.
If you can afford to speed up the blogging process to start earning early from your blog, that’s perfect! But even if you hire a team of skilled SEO writers to deliver you 100 blog posts in a month, you will still have to wait until each of the 100 blog posts is at least 6 months old to see them ranking well for your target keywords.
5. The Quality of Your Blog Content
As you’ve noticed already, the number of blog posts published directly influences your number of page views and, consequently, your profit potential. However, quantity is far from being the answer to your money-related problems regarding blogging.
Your chances of becoming a successful blogger and making money fast are higher if you publish one quality, SEO-optimized blog post per week than if you publish 5 crappy articles per week.
Google prioritizes articles that are genuinely informative and respond to user queries engagingly and dynamically.
Also, a 1600-word article that immediately delivers the content that the title suggests works better and is more likely to convert than a 3500-word article that is tedious to read and filled with fluff.
6. The Blog Posting Frequency
Although there is no data specifying that Google rewards blogs for posting frequently, like Instagram used to do (I’m afraid I’m not 100% up-to-date with how the Instagram algorithm works these days, as I don’t use the platform anymore), posting frequency indeed plays its role in blogging.
Here are some reasons why posting frequency interferes with how long it takes to make money blogging:
- If you don’t post often, your blog gives off an abandoned vibe, which can cause your possible audience not to give credibility to the information found on your blog.
- Every 6 months that go by, you could be ranking for countless new keywords, but you are not because your blog continues to have a low number of posts.
- Without committing to a posting frequency, it’s easy to make neglecting your blog a habit, which is the perfect recipe for NOT making money from a blog.
The best way to maintain a posting frequency is to commit to what you can deliver. If you can only post one article a week, do it. But don’t post 10 articles this month and go for 5 months without posting anything! Also, always keep in mind that not getting pageviews and making $0 a month is part of the natural process of a new blog. The only way to get to the profitable part of blogging is to survive this stage. Every well-succeed blogger went through this phase.
7. Your Blogging Strategy Is The Key To How Long It Will Take You To Make Money Blogging
Your strategy is responsible for dictating how long it will take you to make money blogging, how much money you will be able to earn, and in what time frame.
Commonly, blogging strategies involve:
- Aggressive SEO optimization
- A number of blog posts to publish in the year (i.e., 2 blog posts per week, 15 blog posts per month, 100 blog posts in a year, etc.)
- Monetization methods (i.e., displaying ads, partnerships with affiliate programs, selling info products or courses, etc.)
Depending on your particular strategy, you can start profiting from your blog much sooner or much later.
For example, if you want to monetize your blog in the most passive way possible — that is, displaying ads — you will need a remarkably high number of page views to get a full salary out of it. Hence, you will have to post quality articles more often.
On the other hand, you can start profiting much sooner, even with a low number of page views, if you plan to sell your own products and services or work with affiliate programs.
Your blogging strategy is up to you, your commitment, and your available time.
FAQ
Is It Realistic To Make Money Blogging?
Yes, it is realistic to make money blogging, but simply starting a blog is no guarantee of anything. You have to move even if, ironically, bloggers spend most of their time sitting. To realistically earn good money — not just those bucks you use to buy a pizza — from a blog, you have to work on:
- Choosing a profitable and evergreen niche
- Optimize your website or blog structure for SEO
- Be good at researching topics to write about and choosing good long-tail keywords
- Write SEO-optimized blog posts with quality content
- Maintain posting frequency
- Not giving up on your blog while it is on The Google Sandbox
- Have a defined monetization strategy
- Diversify your sources of blog income
- Include a Call To Action in your blog posts
- Work on growing subscribers to your mailing list
- Promote your blog on Pinterest and/or YouTube (optional in most cases)
If you work hard on your blog, always look for data-backed information about blogging, and deliver quality, SEO-optimized articles, you will make money blogging.
How Many Blog Posts Do You Need To Publish To Make Money?
While it’s true that the more blog posts you publish, the more profit opportunity you have, there is no specific number of published articles that will kick-start your blog’s monetization or even define how much money you’ll make. Your niche, monetization method, and SEO strategy give the final words, not the number of blog posts published.
It seems logical that to know how long it takes to make money blogging, understanding how many blog posts you need to write to monetize your blog would be the best way to set a goal and a date, right?
Wrong.
Many aspects are relative when it comes to blogging, and how many blog posts you need to make money is one of them.
Some niches have very little competition but high conversion value. In these cases, assuming you monetize your blog through your own products/courses or affiliate programs, writing 20-30 high-quality blog posts may be enough.
Now, if you intend to monetize your website through Ad Networks, 20-30 blog posts will not be enough to get you the number of page views necessary to be accepted by a Premium Ad Network and earn a substantial amount of money per month.
On average, however, regardless of your niche, if you do SEO correctly and have a good monetization strategy, 100 high-quality blog posts published in your first 12-24 months of blogging should be enough for you to switch to blogging for a full-time salary.
How Many Pageviews Do You Need To Make Money Blogging?
Although there is no specific number of pageviews that, once reached, will allow you to quit your 9-to-5 job and go blogging full-time, some measures can provide you with a better understanding as well as help you better define your goals.
So, let’s say you want to join a Premium Ad Network such as Mediavine. Mediavine has an average RPM (Revenue Per Mille/1000 Pageviews) of $10 and only accepts websites with at least 50,000 sessions per month.
That is, to earn $500 – $1000 monthly, you need to have 50,000 – 100,000 page views.
Profiting by displaying ads is the most passive way to make money with a blog.
Now if you work with an affiliate program that pays you a commission of $10 per sale, just 100 sales are enough to earn you $1000. Think about it!
With a conversion rate as small as 1% and $10 commissions, 10,000 monthly pageviews are enough to make you $1000 a month with a small blog!
That’s why I always recommend that new bloggers look for good affiliate program opportunities in their niche and don’t aim to just monetize their blogs through displaying ads.
How Long Will It Take Me To Earn $500 – $1000 Per Month From My Blog?
If you are willing to put in 15-33 hours a week to work on your blog, in 18-24 months you should be able to start earning $500 – $1000 a month from your blog. Depending on your niche you may be making more, but you are better off aiming for more ambitious earning goals after you are already earning $500 – $1000 monthly.
Let’s explore 2 scenarios you can go through to earn $500 – $1000 monthly in 18-24 months of blogging. But I warn you: all of them require commitment, hard work, and smartness on your part!
SCENARIO 1: Start earning $500 – $1000 monthly through Displaying Ads on your blog
Your goal here is to publish 2 SEO-optimized blog posts per week for the first 18 months of your blog. That will be 8 blog posts per month and 144 blog posts in total after the end of one year and a half.
After 24 months have passed, all your blog posts, including the most recent ones, will be at least 6 months old. That’s the ideal age for your articles to start ranking by your target keywords. Assuming you did research your articles well and optimized them for SEO, 350-700 monthly pageviews per blog post is a perfectly achievable goal for your blog. In total, you will get 50,000+ monthly pageviews.
50,000+ monthly pageviews are more than enough for you to join Ezoic, an Ad Network that requires a minimum of 10,000 monthly page views. Ezoic has an average RPM of around $10.
So, with an RPM of $10 and 50k monthly pageviews, you can make $500 a month from your blog!
On the other hand, with 700 monthly pageviews for each blog post, your blog will surpass 100,000 monthly pageviews. Again, with an RPM of $10, you can earn $1000 monthly!
Most likely, some of your articles will do better than others, so you’ll get between 50k-100k monthly pageviews and earn anything between $500-$1000 monthly just from displaying ads.
SCENARIO 2: Start earning $500 – $1000 monthly by making your blog an Affiliate Partner for companies in your niche + displaying ads
Get ready to write 1.5 blog posts per week, meaning 6 blog posts published monthly and 72 at the end of a year. You also need an affiliate program that pays at least $10 commission per sale, hence the emphasis I always put on finding niches with affiliate programs that pay good commissions.
After 18 months, all 72 of your blog posts will be over 6 months old and ready to rank well.
With just 280 pageviews per blog post, you will surpass 20k monthly views. At this stage, you can already join Ezoic. As said before, Ezoic accepts websites that have at least 10k monthly views and pays around $10 per RPM. That will be $200 only from displaying ads.
But that’s not even close to earning $500 – $1000 per month from your blog, right? That’s because the secret here is your affiliate partnership (s).
With 20k monthly views and $10 affiliate commissions, you only need to make 100 sales to reach your $1000 goal! That’s a conversion rate of just 0.5% (meaning you make a sale for every 200 visitors your website receives)!
Adding to your ad profits, your blog will earn a total of $1200 monthly in just 18 months!
As you can see, how long it takes to make money blogging, and more precisely, how long it takes to earn $500 – $1000 per month from your blog, heavily depends on your monetization strategy and the speed with which you can write high-quality blog posts.
Haven’t you started your blog yet? Then check out this incredible deal: DreamHost offers quality WordPress web hosting + free domain name with Domain Privacy + as many emails @ your domain as you want for only $35.40 in your first year! Sign up for Shared Unlimited and start your blog today!
How Can I Monetize My Website Fast?
You can monetize your website faster if you are able to make an excellent niche choice, write and publish blog posts more frequently, and have a smart monetization strategy from day 1.
Generally, those who can speed up the process of monetizing their blogs as well as making $3000+ monthly from their blogs in less than 24 months are the ones who already have experience with blogging. Namely, bloggers who have not just had other blogs previously but also have already failed and learned how to do it correctly without giving up.
I say this even from my own experience. These days I laugh when I remember how lost I was when I started my first blog, especially compared to when I started my third blog. With my third blog, I didn’t have to freak out about how long it takes to make money blogging because I already knew the process and that blogging is a long-term game.
But fear nothing! You, as a new blogger, will gain experience over time, just like all bloggers who previously had zero experience and are now successful.
As a new blogger, studying as much as you can and following the advice of successful bloggers is your best chance of monetizing your blog faster.
Pay close attention to the recommendations made in this article (and the other resources recommended throughout this article), and never underestimate the steps you think are not that important.
And if you’re able to publish 16 high-quality articles a month, whether they’re written by you or by hired writers, do it! Undoubtedly, this will accelerate your path to your goal of monetizing your website faster.
How Much Money Can You Make From a Monetized Website?
Just like “how long does it take to make money blogging”, how much money you can make monetizing a blog also depends.
Some bloggers make $1000-$4000 a month, others make between $5000 and $10,000, and some specific groups make around $20,000-$40,000 monthly. There are bloggers who earn as much as $100,000 a month, while others never go above $100.
But make no mistake – luck is not the factor that says how much a blogger makes monthly or annually. In fact, you will hardly see luck as something that plays any kind of role in the journey of successful bloggers.
Fortunately, blogging is something more accurate and reliable than luck. If you learn all the steps you need to take to be successful blogging and apply them correctly, you will be a successful blogger. No luck here — just brains and hard work.
How To Start a Blog To Make Money Blogging in 2024
Now that you know how long it takes to make money blogging, it’s time to start your blog!
WordPress is the best platform for you to start your blog as WordPress (WordPress.ORG not WordPress.COM!) allows you to monetize and customize your blog however you want and easily with the help of plugins!
Although WordPress is free, you’ll need a service to host your blog.
DreamHost is the web hosting service I always recommend for several reasons, some of which are:
- WordPress officially recommends DreamHost
- In addition to being extremely affordable, DreamHost’s annual plans give you a domain name with Domain Privacy for free!
- DreamHost customer support is extremely knowledgeable and always responds quickly and resolves any issues even faster!
- With DreamHost, you don’t have to worry about installing WordPress — they install it for you!
Sign up for DreamHost’s Shared Unlimited Plan for just $35.40 to have quality and secure web hosting for your WordPress blog for an entire year (that’s it, there are no hidden fees)! Plus, you get as many professional emails @ your domain name as you wish!
Once you have your WordPress blog hosted with DreamHost, you will need step-by-step instructions to guide you all the way until you start earning $500-$1000 monthly ASAP! Here are all the resources you need:
READ NEXT:
Share on Pinterest!
Published on May 12, 2022. Last updated on December 8, 2023.
Read Next
Write Blog Posts That ACTUALLY Convert in 7 Easy Steps
Blogging without Social Media: 23 Steps to Grow a Blog Successfully
