How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging?

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I get asked these questions a lot so I thought it would be easier for me to write this here.

Today I have a post that will answer your questions “how long does it take to make money blogging?” and “how long will it take to reach 10,000 monthly pageviews on your blog”

I also often hear people asking, “Why am I not making any money with my blog yet?”

First of all, I want to emphasize that making money with a blog is NOT something that will happen overnight.

If you desperately need money now, or within the next 3 to 5 months, you are likely not going to achieve those results immediately.

Sure, it’s possible.

I know you hear tons of stories about how bloggers make money within their first, second, and even third month of blogging, but the truth is, that most people, especially beginners, won’t see these fast results, and I will emphasize more about this point later, so be sure to check out the section below on “how long does it take to make $500 per month blogging?”

The great thing about starting a hobby blog, however, is you can work on it during your free time and learn how to gain readers and monetize it at your own pace, and there is no set “blogging timeline” that will determine when and how much money you’re going to make.

How quick or long it takes you to make money blogging depends on a lot of factors, and I will elaborate as you read further into this article.

 

Is it realistic to make money blogging?

Yes, it is realistic to make money blogging whether you’re aiming to earn extra money or to become a full-time blogger as your career.

I really recommend setting realistic expectations and treating your blog as an asset or long-term investment if you want to increase your chance of success.

Whether you dedicate as little as 5 to 8 hours a week, or as high as 20 to 30 hours a week, working on your blog, you must be consistent and stay committed. And you need to stick with it, in the long run, to see it pay off. Remember, there is NO such business that started making money on day 1.

I honestly ALMOST gave up blogging at one point when I was barely seeing results at the beginning (it seriously crossed my mind, but I had an inner voice that refused to).

The HARDEST part is staying motivated and sticking to something that isn’t yielding any results yet.

It’s even HARDER when you are struggling and seeing that full-time bloggers are earning over $10,000 or $20,000 a month blogging, and you’re here wondering “What am I doing wrong? Are these bloggers just lying to me and fabricating their income reports?” Trust me, I once felt that way when I was making no to little money with my first blog after many months of nonstop trying!

However, I used those blog income report stories as fuel and motivation to push me to go beyond my limit.

Instead of thinking that these blog income reports were “lying” to me, I instead asked myself “What can I do to be at the stage I want to be? What can I do to increase my traffic and start earning money with my blog?”

Reframing the statement from “These bloggers are lying on their income reports!” to an open-ended question like “What can I do to see results like them?” was a huge game-changer. It made me become more open-minded and made me question what I was doing wrong so I could fix it.

Having said that, I am thankful that I kept going and learning from my mistakes by being more open about the possibility. The more you acknowledge that you may be making mistakes with your blog, or doing something wrong, the higher your chances of succeeding because you are letting go of your ego and willing to learn how to fix the problem. They do say “the faster you fail and acknowledge that you’re failing, the faster you get back up to move forward.”

If I didn’t change my mindset, or willing to be more open about the idea, I would have been the blogger who dumped money into starting a blog and “failed” before seeing any money come in. I was really that close to stopping when my blog wasn’t making any money at the beginning.

 

See Faster Results By Investing Money In Your Blog

That also means you must be willing to invest in your blog and be ready to spend money on it BEFORE it even makes money.

Sure, there’s a TON of free information on the web but the truth is a lot of them are either misinformation, dated, or written by people who haven’t even made any money online.

On top of that, if something is truly profitable and working for them, no one is going to freely reveal their secrets, or what’s working for them, without charging for it. They would be de-valuing their work and experience. The people who actually see results value their time, knowledge, and experience and that’s why they charge for it.

Let me ask you a question.

If you were doing well at something with results to back it up, and a lot of people want to learn from you (and they are willing to pay for your knowledge and experience), would you not charge for it or accept the money for your skills?

If that was your main occupation and source of income, would you give it out for free and be okay with it? (BTW, that means you won’t be able to support yourself and your family because you’d be working for free… I really encourage you to take the time and think about this.)

Framed differently, would you invest your time at your current job and work for free at your company? Would you be okay if your company invested $0 in you and took advantage of you working for them without paying you a single dime?

Probably not.

Like everyone, you would be offended if the company did that because it would mean they see no value in you (or they are taking advantage of you). But in reality, they aren’t paying you $0 and they are investing in you because they see value in you helping their company grow and make money.

So, why would you think that you can make money for free without investing any money in your blog?

The good thing, however, is compared to other business ideas, starting a blog and investing in a few blogging resources and tools can be cheap and affordable for beginners. It’s what attracted me to start my blog when I was a total beginner with no experience.

I even told myself that even if I didn’t make back the money I invested, then so be it. I kept a very positive mindset about this opportunity. At least I tried it without spending too much money. You honestly pay and invest your money to learn regardless of what the outcome is.

You really have to let go of the “scarcity” and “limited” mindset and be able and willing to invest in yourself and your blog. It’s the only way to take you and the blog seriously. You can actually learn more about how much it costs for beginners to start a blog on a low budget here.

Not only do you have to be really excited about building your content and helping your readers first, but you also need to be passionate about learning and studying HOW blogs (or websites) make money behind the scenes, which people won’t tell you for free.

Again, that likely requires you to invest in a specific course that teaches you how to earn using a specific monetization approach (e.g. display advertising, affiliate products, your own products, sponsorships, 1:1 coaching, etc.). As I will mention next, I do not recommend diving into learning how to get traffic or make money with your blog when you don’t have the basics of your blog properly set up yet.

 

How do beginner bloggers make money?

This will be different for everyone, but based on my experience, most beginners first learn how to make money blogging by using display advertising on their websites. To do that, they learn how to drive traffic to their blogs through various social media channels. Some also focus on learning how to get found on searches like Pinterest and Google. In my opinion, these two methods are two of the most popular, and practical, methods to drive traffic.

However, before you even learn how to drive traffic to your blog, I highly recommend setting up your blog PROPERLY first and writing good content. There’s actually more to it than just that. You can’t just expect to start your blog, write 10 posts and start making money right off the bat by promoting your blog on Pinterest or being expected to show up on Google searches without a strategy.

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see most beginners make. They get too excited about getting traffic and making money blogging that they don’t spend time on building a proper blog foundation or learn the basics first.

I personally made this mistake too because NO one told me about it or brought it up to my attention. And the truth is, NO ONE is going to tell you this!

You will most likely hear “how to start a blog and make money right away” because this is what most people want to hear (it’s just human nature and I understand why), so most beginners neglect the “building” and “setting up” part of their blog and don’t even put enough thought into it.

They just blindly do things on their website and make mistakes without even realizing it, which doesn’t really help even if your blog is getting traffic.

If you’re a total beginner and you have absolutely no clue what to do or where to start, I recommend this ebook, The Treasure Map To Blogging Success in 30 Days, to help you build your blog properly from scratch.

In addition to setting up your blog and getting it up and running, this ebook will also guide you in the right direction on how to make it profitable. It’s a guide that will help beginners get their blog up and running as quickly as possible by avoiding silly mistakes. I also point out mistakes are hard to fix down the road – I don’t want you to go through that.

Once you learn how to set up and build your blog and optimize it, you can proceed into learning how to get enough traffic by investing in a traffic course so you can start monetizing with display ads, affiliate marketing, sponsors, and selling your own products.

You can learn more about how beginners can make money and monetize a blog here.

 

How long does it take to make $500 per month blogging?

To make your first $500 per month blogging will depend on a lot of factors. I know you don’t like this answer but it’s the truth.

Remember earlier at the beginning of this article where I mentioned that you probably hear tons of stories about how bloggers make money within their first, second, and even third month of blogging?

So, yeah, the truth is, that most people, especially beginners who have no experience, won’t see these fast results. I’m NOT ruling out the possibility that it could happen to you (kudos to you if it does), but we are just trying to set some realistic expectations here for most people.

If you hear stories about how bloggers were able to make $500 per month within their first month, second month, or third month blogging, it could very likely be due to these factors:

• They are beginners who started their first blog and invested in a blogging education and dedicated a ton of time learning, building, and immediately implementing what they learned because they are truly passionate about learning how blogging works
• They are beginners who did a lot of research and invested in a blogging education prior to starting their blog
• They had a blog before and it wasn’t going the way they wanted it to, so they use the experience they’ve gained to start a new blog
• They have at least 1 or 2 blogs that are making money, so they started another one to replicate what they’ve learned to multiply their earnings

There are many other factors, but I will just list out the above main points, so you are aware.

If you are consistently working on your blog and you are investing to learn how to do it properly, then your chances of seeing success will be sooner than those who don’t spend money on their blog.

Not only that, but you have to actually spend the time by taking action and implementing what you learned if you want to start making money.

So, long answer short, I would say realistically, for most people, it could take 8 months or even over a year to start seeing results and making $500 per month blogging. Some may not even see results until their second or third year. It really depends and I really encourage you to put in the time and effort to learn and actually implement as much as possible.

But once you start seeing results with your first blog, you will have learned so much that you end up building a second or even third blog to replicate your success and multiply your earnings.

Some people just stick with one blog and put all of their efforts into it, while some like to diversify and build more than 1 blog, so it’s all up to you after seeing success with your first blog.

Please also acknowledge that the first blog will always be the hardest to earn your first $500, but once you see results, gain knowledge along with some experience, you’ll realize that the sky is the limit! The important part is NOT giving up, and being self-aware of your mistakes, no matter how frustrating they may seem.

 

How many page views do you need to make money blogging?

One question I get asked often is “how long will it take to get 10,000 monthly page views with a blog?” and “how many pageviews do you need to make money blogging?”

This is tricky to answer too because just like asking the question, “how long does it take for a website or blog to make money,” it all depends.

You can review the factors I listed above again to answer the question, “how long will it take to get 10,000 monthly pageviews.”

Generally speaking, the more content you write upfront at the beginning (2-3 posts a week and assuming you are strategic about what you write), the higher the chances you can build traffic quicker because you’ll have more posts to promote on different channels, and you’ll allow your posts to “age” on Google as it may take a long time to start seeing traffic from Google.

So, I recommend publishing your articles one by one as long as they are ready to be published. There is no need to set any “launch” dates. The good thing is you can always go back to your blog posts and make them better by removing or adding stuff.

This is also assuming you focus on learning how to write your blog posts, optimize your blog posts, and get found on Google or Pinterest searches, which is a separate topic that you can learn in a comprehensive course.

If you want recommendations on a Pinterest or Google course, just shoot me an email at ling@finsavvypanda.com and I will let you know which one is right for your unique situation. I am going to be upfront about this and you do have to be open and willing to invest money if you want to learn how to make money and grow your blog.

By the way, writing 2-3 posts a week sounds overwhelming (and I personally wouldn’t be able to do that myself), but my point is to get as much content out as possible, so you can focus your efforts on learning how to get traffic and monetize later on. To make things easier, you’re better off writing higher quality content and aiming for 1 post a week.

There is no right or wrong answer to this because it depends on the person, how much they like to write, and what their style is.

I have this article here that talks about how often you should post or publish an article on your blog. I personally started with just 1 post a week when I was a beginner to avoid overwhelm. If you know me by now, I’m not the best writer (I write in a very conversational tone as if I’m talking to a friend) and I tend to write very slow. The last thing you want is to feel exhausted by pumping too many articles out which may cause blogger burnout.

You can also check out this list of the best blog post ideas if you’re looking for what to blog about on your website.

If you’re a beauty blogger, you can check out this list of beauty, skin, and makeup blog post ideas.

For lifestyle and other niches, you can check out this article for ideas.

Those are all blog posts that tend to do well and are popular by search, so you should check out all 3 articles I linked to above.

After all, popular topics are more likely to get more page views if you strategically write for them and learn how to get found on Google and Pinterest searches. This comes with experience once you start investing in blogging courses that teach you how to do that along with doing some testing on your end.

I do want to point out that more pageviews or traffic does NOT always translate to more money.

For example, my blog, finsavvypanda.com, receives on average 100,000+ monthly pageviews, so it’s nowhere near the big blogs or websites that generate millions of traffic; but I am still able to earn a very healthy blogging income by adding various monetization methods and diversifying it with ads, affiliates, and products.

It all depends on which traffic source you get your pageviews from (e.g. Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Quora, other websites, etc.), the type of audience you attract, the mindset of your readers, and so many other factors that would be too long to list and explain here.

I also know bloggers who get around 10,000 monthly pageviews and are earning over $1,000 per month because they are using other monetization methods like affiliate marketing or selling their own products and services.

But for the sake of speaking to beginner bloggers here, you can just assume that more traffic equals more money especially if you are looking to increase your pageviews to earn money with display advertising.

Having said that, you can expect to start making money with your blog once you have at least 10,000 monthly pageviews.

If you started your blog and have everything properly set up using this in-depth step by step guide on building a solid blog foundation, then your next step is to learn how to get traffic with your blog, so you can get accepted to ad networks like Ezoic, AdSense, or Monumetic to earn you first blogging income via ads.

I recommend applying to these ad networks only once you start receiving 10,000 monthly pageviews. There’s no minimum threshold for Google Adsense, but I recommend applying for it while you’re working towards getting at least 10,000 monthly pageviews.

And while you start getting 10,000 monthly pageviews, you can start learning how to make money using affiliate marketing.

If you focus on learning how to get found on Google searches, this may take at least 8 months to start getting some traffic. You can potentially speed it up if you include sources like Pinterest and social media channels to get pageviews at the beginning.

 

Summary on How Long It Takes To Make Money Blogging

I hope you found this article helpful in your journey to earning your first online income blogging.

It does take time to earn that first $100 or first $500. But I promise that if you are motivated, passionate about learning and you’re not the type to give up, you will reach your first goal.

Some bloggers are able to earn an income in the first, second, or third month blogging but this is rare, and if it does happen, it’s because they had experience with another blog and they know what they are doing.

No matter how long it takes you to make your first $500 or $1,000 blogging, acknowledge that the first step is the hardest. If you can pass this first step, give yourself a pat on the back and bring out the champagne to celebrate!

You will also notice that the next steps won’t be as nearly as frustrating or challenging as your beginning. I’m not saying that it’s easy, but you will understand what I mean if you stick around long enough to push through like what I did at the beginning when I wasn’t making any money with my blog yet.

Until then, let me know if you have any questions.