So how long does it take to make money blogging? Serious questions require serious answers. I know you probably want to hear an answer like “3 months”, but the truth is not that simple. However, in this blog post, I will give you the best chance of success and prepare you for the journey that lies ahead.
How Long Does It Take?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer.
We all know the blogging world is changing. There are now more opportunities to make money with your blog than ever before, and it’s never been easier. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can start earning money from your blog as quickly as possible, so you can get back to doing what you love: writing!
And if you can post quality content consistently, over time, you will build up an audience who appreciates your blog.
Then, as you grow, it will become easier and more lucrative to make money from blogging.
Your audience growth makes your content a lot more valuable. You can easily monetize with ads or affiliate links. And that is the most passive way to earn money, but it might not be the most lucrative.
So today, I will help you explore all your options to start earning as quickly as possible.
How can I make $1000 a month blogging?
Setting a goal is brilliant. And the goal of $1000 a month is reasonable.
How to make $1000 a month blogging will depend on your business model. I will explain a few of the most popular ways to make money from your blog in this post.
But ultimately, it comes down to a few key things:
Traffic level – how many people visit your website every month?
Traffic intent – are your visitors motivated to buy?
The offer – does the offer or advert match their need?
Conversion rate – how many people are buying?
Let’s make it simple.
If you get 100 visitors a day, and you’re selling an ebook for $10 with a 10% conversion rate, you will make $100 a day.
Hopefully, you can see how powerful this approach can be when it’s done right.
Of course, the variables are high, so we can never make a fully informed prediction without gathering data. But understanding this approach should help you build a profitable blog.
How do beginner bloggers make money?
A new blogger will usually make money in two main ways: with ads and affiliate links. These methods are the easiest, and many blogs create enormous wealth from both, but they are not your only options.
If you find the right niche and choose the right keywords, you can earn money online by selling products and services. I’ll explore these options later on, to help you build a successful blog.
Make money with advertising
If you have a popular blog, the easiest way to make money is through advertising. Many platforms offer this service, and most of them will be happy to work with beginners.
What is CPM?
CPM stands for Cost Per Thousand Impressions.
These are a common type of display ads, and they can be profitable for bloggers at any stage.
The advertiser pays you based on how many people see your ad – they are not paying for clicks or actions.
The advertiser only pays when someone sees the ad, and you make a small amount of money for every thousand people who see it.
For example, an advertiser might be willing to pay $0.50 per 1000 impressions (CPM). That means you need to generate 2000 page views to make $1.
To make the most money possible, bloggers need to be generating traffic and have that traffic convert into as many page views as possible.
The more valuable you are to advertisers as an audience member – the higher price they will pay for your ad space.
Some people will be able to make a full-time income from their CPM impressions.
In fact, from 2004 to 2007, I made most of my living from CPM ads.
What is CPC?
CPC stands for Cost Per Click, this is one of the most popular ways bloggers can make money with online advertising.
The advertiser only pays when a visitor clicks on the ad (as opposed to CPM), though they don’t have to pay anything if they never convert it into action – like making a purchase or filling out a form.
Therefore CPC ads tend to have lower conversion rates than CPM ads, but they are also often cheaper for the advertiser – which means more profit potential for bloggers who invest in them.
CPC advertising usually works best when promoting services to measure success through counting responses or clicks on an ad (like social media marketing or search engine optimization).
What is CPA?
CPA stands for Cost Per Action.
It is similar to CPC advertising except that the advertiser only pays when a person takes action.
The most common CPA ads are for lead generation because it’s clear whether or not they were successful, and advertisers will know exactly how much they spent on generating these leads – so there won’t be any confusion around ROI.
What are Sponsored Posts?
A sponsored post is a paid collaboration with brands.
They are not strictly advertisements but instead a mutually beneficial partnership between the blogger and brand, resulting in more exposure for both parties.
Suppose you have enough followers to command an impressive audience that would be interested in what you’re promoting. In that case, this is an excellent way of making money blogging because you’re essentially being paid to post something you already love and believe in.
While I don’t accept sponsored posts on mickmeaney.com or profitcopilot.com, I occasionally get them on my niche websites. Sponsored posts have proven to be a very profitable income stream.
Some bloggers are hesitant to conduct sponsored posts for fear of being perceived as a sellout or because they don’t want their blog’s credibility risked. But, when done correctly, there is no need to worry about your credibility diminishing.
How to find advertisers and Ad networks?
The biggest and most common ad network out there is Google Adsense. A Google account is required to sign up for this service (you may already have one).
There is a review process, but most blogs are accepted without any problems.
Google Adsense has been around for years, so it is one of the most trusted ad networks. It’s the first ad network most bloggers use.
When your traffic levels increase, you may be invited to more profitable ad networks.
Another way to find advertisers is to use the BuySellAds website.
You can sell ad space privately on BuySellAds and often earn more than with Google Adsense.
Make Money with Affiliate Marketing
Once bloggers see CPM, CPC, and CPA potential, they often look for more ways to increase their revenue.
A popular way to make money from a blog is through affiliate sales.
Affiliate marketing works like this:
A blogger finds an affiliate product they want to promote to their audience.
They write an article about those products that include the affiliate link for readers.
If a visitor clicks on the affiliate link and buys the product, the blogger earns money from it.
Affiliate marketing can be done in a few ways, but the easiest way is to link directly to products for sale.
Many companies offer affiliate marketing.
Some of the most popular affiliate network include Commission Junction, ShareASale, and ClickBank.
However, the biggest name in affiliate marketing is Amazon Associates.
Typical commissions vary from each affiliate network, niche, and the type of product being promoted.
Physical products almost always have have a lower commission rate as the overheads are higher than digital products.
Amazon has the lowest rates in the industry, but they have the highest conversions thanks to brand recognition.
Affiliate marketing is a great way for lazy bloggers to earn money because they do not need their products or inventory. All they have to do is promote a vendors product on their site in exchange for a commission.
Make Money with Digital Products
Making and selling digital products is one of the best ways to make money without starting a physical business.
This can be done through ebooks, software, online courses, and any digital product that has value in exchange for payment or just as informative content.
Digital goods are easy to produce, but they need more marketing than traditional businesses because it’s hard to compete with free information.
These days, my income is made from digital products.
Make Money with Ebooks
Ebooks are popular digital products because they work well for a variety of different audiences.
People who want to learn how to do something can get an ebook that teaches them everything they need and then pays it forward by sharing their knowledge with others.
People want information from a reliable source without spending hours searching for it. So they’ll buy ebooks.
Ebooks are a great product because you can create them and sell them without making the physical goods first.
Ebooks are quick and easy to make, and are almost always educational in nature.
Your ebook should be packed with actionable information and be focused on helping the reader to achieve a specific result.
Ebooks vary in price, usually from $7 right up to $97, but if you’re putting a lot of work into it, people will be willing to pay more, especially if it’s information they can’t get anywhere else.
It could take even less than an hour to create your ebook and list it for sale on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) or sell directly through your website.
With Amazon, you earn 70% of the purchase price or 100% through your website.
Ebooks are an excellent way to make money online because you can write them quickly and easily yourself without spending time sourcing products or hiring a team.
Make Money with Digital Courses
Making and selling digital courses is the next step up from ebooks.
Digital courses sometimes take considerably more work than an ebook but can be sold much higher.
People buy courses for the same reason they buy ebooks, to solve their problems without spending days searching through Google for an answer.
The key to success here is knowing who needs help and what they need help with before putting together an offer they can’t refuse.
Structuring your course is also vital to success.
Think about the journey your customer needs to take. List out all the steps they need to take; in the order they need to take them.
These are the core modules of your course.
Now think about all the steps involved to complete each module. These are the lessons of your course.
It’s essential to make the lessons as short and concise as possible because you want your customer to complete them quickly.
Longer courses are not necessarily better, just like longer blog posts aren’t consistently more effective.
The first three modules of a course should teach the basics, then progress to more advanced techniques.
You can offer each module individually or bundle them all together with one price and upgrade options in between.
Courses are also excellent ways to monetize existing content on your blog while generating passive income.
Digital courses can be priced anywhere from $50 to upwards of $4,000.
Make Money with Memberships
Memberships are a great way to generate recurring income from your blog.
You can offer a monthly or annual membership for an online course, e-course, video series, or other regular content.
Your readers will appreciate having the option of paying in one lump sum or spreading out their payments across 12 months without any additional action required on their part.
Memberships provide enormous value to customers.
Membership programs are also excellent for building relationships with your customers in the long term and provides them with a sense of ownership of their purchase, leading to increased customer loyalty and a higher overall return on investment.
Memberships provide you many options for recurring income. You can charge members access on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.
You can also have multiple payment tiers, for example, bronze, silver, and gold membership levels, so that people can choose to buy a membership at the level they’re most comfortable with.
Membership prices range from $5 up to $250 per month.
Make Money with Coaching Services
Offering a coaching service is a popular way for blog owners to increase their income. Again you’re monetizing your knowledge.
A lot goes into being a highly effective coach, but you can break it down into three key components:
– Developing expertise in your niche area
– Giving people what they want through personalized attention
– Motivating your students to take action
A coaching program is typically a monthly commitment, with prices varying depending on your experience, your niche, and the level of input you provide to your students.
Make Money with Freelance Services
Offer freelance services is another popular way for bloggers to make money.
Here, instead of sharing your knowledge, you’re providing a done-for-you service.
For example, if you’re experienced with software like Photoshop, you might offer graphic design as a service. Or, if you enjoy writing, you might charge clients a fixed amount per word.
Rates vary depending on the niche, your skillset, the amount of time involved, and the goal of the customer.
Make Money with Merchandise
Another popular way for bloggers to earn an income is by selling merchandise.
This includes anything from pins, posters, and t-shirts to mugs, mats, or other items with your logo on them. This is probably the most challenging way to make money from your blog.
It can be hard to know where to start when designing a product that will sell well online, especially if your audience is small.
To be fair, you’re going to need a strong brand to sell merchandise.
While it’s easy to make the products and have them shipped to the customer, generating sales will be the most difficult part.
To make merchandise, you need an account with a company that manufactures products, such as CafePress.com or RedBubble.com.
Both of these companies will also dispatch the products to be a form of passive income.
One idea is to tap into the core values of your audience and create a slogan that represents them.
People will support (and pay for) the things they believe in. If you can reflect their ideologies to them, you will increase your chance of making sales in merchandise.
Make Money with Dropshipping
On the face of it at least, dropshipping sounds like the perfect solution.
Customers place an order through you, and you process the order with a supplier who ships the product to the customer.
You don’t have to keep any stock, so there is little cost involved. This means that as long as you are sourcing the products from suppliers with a low markup and reasonable quality control, then, in theory, you can make some profit.
The keyword here is theory.
I don’t have too many positives to say about dropshipping, but I include it here because many people succeed.
In my experience, dropshipping has been incredibly difficult. The profit margins are fairly low so you have to be selling many products to make it worthwhile.
And finding suitable suppliers can be tricky. I’ll share my own experience with you.
I sold electric toothbrushes via dropshipping, and while everything went ok at first, it wasn’t long before problems emerged.
A lot of the orders never made it to their destination. Customers were (rightly) upset.
But who bore the brunt of that? That’s right, I did.
And who lost money? Yep, I did.
I realized that, at the time, the suppliers were the ones making money from dropshipping, leaving little for everyone else. And when things go wrong, I had to eat the cost.
Maybe things are different now, and the industry has matured. But drop shipping is still the one business model I have no desire to ever return to.
Make Money with Webinars
Webinars are another way bloggers can make money.
A webinar has two objectives; first, educate the audience and sell to the audience.
Webinars are a great way to convert cold traffic into buyers.
However, you need to have a good presentation and target an audience interested in what you have to say.
The downside of a webinar is the time commitment; they can last for as long as two hours, depending on how much you have to say.
The upside is that if you sell many products during the webinar, it will be time well spent because your income depends on how many sales you make.
I recommend running live webinars for a while – at least until you become comfortable and you can handle the typical customer objections. Then you can automate the webinar, at which point it becomes evergreen.
An evergreen webinar generates passive income.
You will need to create a webinar and then promote it on your blog and social media channels like Twitter or Facebook. If the webinar is converting, you could also advertise it with Google Adwords or Facebook Ads.
Conclusion
Even a beginner blogger can earn a full-time living by combining different types of income streams. And with the right target audience, you can create a lifestyle business that works for you and your family.
It’s worth noting that while you might not make a ton of money from your blog at first, it will take dedication and time to generate any blogging income.
However, if you keep working on growing your online business, and with enough content marketing, the rewards can be significant.