How Long Does It Take to Make Money Blogging?

Everyone wants to make money online. I mean at least every person reading this article right?

A million-dollar question is How long does it take to make money blogging?

Here in this article, I offer you my honest opinion about making money online, how long it really takes to make the first dollar online, and why it takes more than you might think.

Also, we are going to cover what is the easiest way, what is the proper mindset, and what is the first thing you want to do if you want to start earning online.

Right off the bat let me tell you that making money online might be not as easy as you originally thought.
Does it mean that it is more difficult than let’s say 15 years ago?

I don’t think so.

Let’s say in the 1990s it was this big “.com” boom, right? It eventually evaporated and other new ways of making money online emerged.
What I find more difficult is that there are so many shining objects these days, so it is more difficult to concentrate on one thing.

But let’s try to keep it simple and the main purpose of this article is to show you how long it really takes to make 1st $ online and how long it takes to make a consistent income…
Let’s say $3,000 per month.

What is for sure though is one thing – there is no such thing as getting rich quickly.

And I can’t stress this enough.
Many people come online because they want to earn their first $1,000 a day in a month.
The internet is full of such promises and similar claims.

Don’t believe these claims – they are in 99.9% of cases scams!

So let me repeat myself again – there is not such a thing as get rich quick and it the following article I believe we are going to cover it deep enough, so everyone understands it to the core.

What is the Easiest Way to Start Earning Online?

The easiest way to make money online is such a business model where your work is directly connected to the revenue.
That means that your energy is not “wasted” on things like commuting to the office, where to store the items, hiring and firing, and so on…
In other words – let’s keep it simple.

How Long Does It Take to Make Money Online

That would mean

No products to store
No customer service
No employees
No big investment (probably a $400 to $600 in education and hosting for a website)

The last point covers also no initial investments in products or advertising.

What you would need is:

Education (some course on how to build a website, or how to start a YT channel)
Time

Yes, the Time for content creation.

What business model is it going to be?
Yes, Affiliate Marketing.

You may have already heard about affiliate marketing.
We are not going to discuss in detail How to start an Affiliate Marketing business, but rather how long it take to make the 1st $ online with affiliate marketing.

So How Long Does It Take?

Let’s reverse-engineer it.

How does the money get to your bank account?
Simply put – from other’s people wallets or credit cards, right?

And the only way how they will make that transfer is to exchange their money for a service you have to offer.

But what service?, you may be asking,
In the case of affiliate marketing, it is the content on your website. The content is objectively valuable and it helps those folks in some way.

For example, they did not know what kind of coffee machine to buy, or they want to have advice on what laptop within $500 is the best.

You get the picture right?

One tip: In your content -> You don’t want to be salesy.

These people reading your content need to get on your site – somehow.

What options do they have?

from social media – You post a link on Facebook/Pinterest, and Twitter/ about the top 10 laptops within $500 that directs them to your website
from an email – assuming that you run an email marketing campaign
paid traffic (or PPC) – you run a googled Ad (which I don’t recommend for beginners)
organic traffic
etc

Let’s concentrate on organic traffic as this is the biggest portion of traffic to your site.

You want to optimize your site so it ranks well in google in other words you want to be on the 1st page.

How Google chose which sites to rank well?
It depends on a lot of factors and it is called search engine optimization. I bet you have heard about SEO right?

Another important factor is the website’s age. That means that your website needs to have let’s say at least 50 articles of content and be more than 3 months old.

These are rough numbers but the point is that it takes at least 3 months until your site gets some traffic.
In some niches, it can be even slower.

Generally, this is what the amount of traffic to a new site looks like.
In the beginning, not much is happening and then it starts to grow.

So we are now getting closer to the question – how long does it take o make the first dollar?

You need some traffic (10 to 50 visitors per day). You can have that within 3 months. Actually, it is very exciting to see the first organic traffic
Then, you need consistent traffic. That means about 100+ visitors per day. Meaning another 3 to 5 months. At this point, we can talk about the 1st sale.
And then, you want to have 1,000 visitors per day. Finally, at his point, we can call it a business online and it can take from 1 to 2 years.

So here we are.

I hear you saying, it does not worth it, since there is no income for an entire year.
That is right.

But are you really working for free?
Not at all.

Guess what. You are creating virtual real estate. Its value goes up and once your site earns $300 per month, you can sell it for at least $6,000.
But would you sell it at his point? I guess not – since it is getting better.

Be consistent and within 2 years your site can earn $2,000 to $6,000 per month.

Do you want to know the secret?
90% of people starting with such a site give up within the first 6 months.
With that being said, have a proper mindset and you can belong to the fortunate minority group (10%).

What are the other ways to monetize the website:

Having ads on your site.

This can be annoying and I know that I am guilty as well as you can tell, right 🙂

But how about an extra 3 figures per month?
Does it sound like a good deal?

Well, yeah – and it also might increase the site authority (in some eyes).
This is what a real passive income is.

Making Money with Youtube

Let’s take a look at another way how to make money online.

Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world (after Google) and many people see these Youtubers making millions of dollars.
Did they become “millionaires” in a week?

Can you start making thousands of dollars per week within 30 days?
No, that is not possible either.

Let’s break it down.

In principle making money off of Youtube is the same as having a website;

instead of a website, you have a YouTube channel
instead of articles (posts), you create videos

and the rest is pretty much the same. Meaning you can earn money by

posting affiliate links in the description of videos
adding the ads to your videos.

There is one restriction from youtube, though,
In order to monetize the channel with ads, you need to have at least

1,000 subscribers
4,000 watchers

in the last 12 months.

There are certainly other questions, like

Am I good in from of the camera or not?
Do I have to buy all the products I want to review?

The good news is you don’t have to be in front of the camera.
And no you don’t have to buy all the products.

Regardless of what kind of videos you decide to upload, you want to be consistent and patient. usually, it takes up to a year until you make consistent 4-figures a month from YouTube.

One tip
If you choose a niche within the digital products, it is easy to make reviews of these products:

Choose products that offer a money-back guarantee, so in case you are not satisfied with it, ask for a refund.
There are already tons of videos that you can use as inspiration for your review.

WARNING:
I do not recommend downloading the video, upload it to your channel pretending that is yours.

That will result in a copyright strike and eventually, your channel will be closed.

The same applies to your website.
You do NOT want to copy and paste the text from other sites.

I believe we are on some pages here.

Are you interested in learning how to make videos on YouTube?

This guy here teaches how you can make videos on YouTube without showing your face.

The link that directs you to that course contains an affiliate link. That means that if you click on it and purchase the product, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.

Mindset – First and Foremost

I did not want to start with this, but it is the first thing you need to realize and that is the proper mindset.

I know what I am talking about since I wanted to make money quickly and it took me quite a long time till I understood that it is not possible.
The thing is that there are many gurus outhere teaching how to make money fast.

We listen to such stuff and we want to be like them as well. We want to make $1,000 next week.
What we don’t realize is that even these gurus (and I have in my mind only those who really know what they talking about) do this internet thing for quite some time, probably for 5+ years.

Sure they want to teach you how to avoid mistakes and how to speed up the process. But still, marketing is not a science where one specific technique can be applied and have the same result.
So it is good to learn how SEO works, and how to rank well but eventually, you have to focus on what is working and whatnot.

Many times you have to change the approach a bit – meaning you have to be flexible.
This has a lot to do with what is written above – most of the newbies are not flexible and they are not willing to change their approach and eventually they give up.

So what is the proper mindset?
To be certain about the success. By success, I mean that you know that you are going to make the 1st dollar online.
You know that you are going to make the first $1,000 per month.

Without that, you will give up soon.

If you need some inspiration, I can recommend you to check these TOP 9 books on personal development. Most of them are available as audiobooks as well, and you can listen to them for FREE.

What Motivates You?

This is also a big one and I did not include this headline to provide you with an answer.

You have to find an answer for yourself.
We all are different people and our brains work differently.

What motivates you can be something totally different from what motivates your spouse or brother, sister, a classmate.

It could be something in your subconscious. It could be something that you are aware of.
One of the best motivators is women (in case you are a man… sure about this does not apply to about 4% of the population right:), but you get my point.

If you are doing OK in your 9-5 job, don’t you want to accomplish something more?
I don’t know – again it is up to you.

My point is that you have to have a reason.

Is it More Difficult than Offline Business?

There is no straight answer to that – since for some people, it is easier and for some not.

Let’s take a look at the Offline business.
If you start from scratch you go door to door so to speak. To be precise the best way is to attend a business fair within your niche.

You are going to meet people and other companies that might need your product or at least you build a connection with other people.

It may happen that within a 6 months, you get an offer or a contract.
You take the income to reinvest and you are on your way to becoming a successful businessman.

Or not.
And there are a lot of businesses that go bankrupt within a few years.

But the same applies to the online world as well.
Remember, most of the newbies just give up.

In the Online world – it may take even a year or more to get traction.
Getting traffic is difficult.

But once you get the traction, you are not dependent on one geographical location. Your business is always with you. Besides, it works for you 24/7.

So in the long run the online business is much better than offline, although it is also difficult at the beginning.

Have you tried offline business as well?
Let me know your experience in the comment section below.

Choose Your Niche

If you are still with me, I want to thank you for being patient.

Also, I believe you are ready to start your own online business.

Where to start?

First of all, you need a field of endeavor – or in other words, a niche that you will build your business around.

Or just take from Neil Patel:

Once you have chosen your niche, there are some technicalities you want to learn.
But no worries. It is not that difficult, especially if you surround yourself with people that have already some experience in internet marketing.
And Imagine a course that teaches step-by-step what to do and how to do it.

I had no clue about SEO, websites, or organic traffic…
But slowly I have learned how to create an article that ranks well in the search engines and that means traffic.

I now make 4 figures and for me, the most important is that I can work from home, from my parents’ place, or any other place with an internet connection.
My GF had a business trip so I went with her and worked from there. In the evening we had a great time together.

Also, the freedom for me is, that whenever I don’t feel like working, I don’t.
Then I can catch up let’s say at 1 am when I don’t feel like sleeping.