This post contains the answer to the question every new blogger is asking:

How long is it going to be before I start to see profits from my blog?

If you are new to blogging, or maybe you’ve been at it for a while but you’re yet to see any profits from your efforts, then read on to find out how long it takes for your blogging business to become profitable.

This is a question that a lot of new bloggers ask.

As soon as their blog is live, they want to know how long it’s going to be before they reach a certain income level.

A lot of them started blogging in the hopes of one day being able to leave their jobs and earn a full-time living from blogging, so they want to know when they will be making at least three or four thousand dollars per month in order to make that happen. Before we get into the answer to that question, let’s first take a look at exactly what a blog is.

A blog is NOT a business, which means that a blog, on its own, will never be profitable.

Not what you wanted to hear?

Sorry about that. But there’s good news, so read on.

Your blog is just the marketing vehicle. It’s the place where you publish your content – the purpose of which is to attract customers so that you’re able to ultimately sell something to them.

You can think of your blog as a form of advertising, much like a commercial ad, or an ad in the yellow pages, and so on.

Of course, your blog is different because it’s not all yellow highlighters and sales. Instead, the content on your blog is created in such a way that it leads with value.

But, that being said, it’s important not to lose sight of your blog’s fundamental purpose.

And this is not just about the details of vocabulary, it’s about the basic mindset that you have to adopt if you want your blogging business to succeed.

I know some of you are already a bit confused because I called it ‘your blogging business’ after saying that a blog is not a business…

Let me explain:

A blog is fundamentally different from a business. Your business is what makes money, while your blog is that business’s public marketing vehicle.

So, your business will do what all businesses do – it’s going to be providing products or services to your market in exchange for money.

So there you have it. The answer to the question: How long before my blog starts making money?

Your blog will NEVER make that kind of money. But your BUSINESS will!

Yes, blogging is vital, but only as a way of communicating with your audience. Your blog is an effective means for you to create content that others can consume, and for you to communicate messages to your audience. And that’s great!

But, without a business behind that blog, all it is is just water cooler talk.

And why is this so important?

Because if you believe that a blog makes money, it will result in you focusing on all the wrong things, which is the reason why so many hardworking bloggers never see any significant profits.

It makes a lot of sense when you stop to think about it.

People who think that blogs make money go into it totally focused only on the blog side of things. They do everything that bloggers do such as writing tons of blog posts, stressing out over the posting schedules, spending loads of time tweaking their themes, being on social media all throughout the day, and so on.

I’m not saying that none of these tactics work, just that all that is a sort of giant hamster wheel that just goes round and round.

You’ll probably build up some eyeballs that way, and maybe even a little following, but having all that will mean nothing without the business.

It’s all potential energy that goes to waste, as no income will ever come from it.

But sadly, that’s what most bloggers are doing out there, yet it’s still a surprise to them why their blog doesn’t make money…

So, now that we’ve established the problem, what is the solution? (I hear you ask)

In order to make money quickly with your blog, you need to understand that blogs need businesses behind the scenes, and stop spending ALL of your time blogging, and spend some of it on building up your business.

This is the only surefire way of shortening the time that it will take you to reach your income goal.

Time To Talk Business

Now for the most exciting part:

The Actual Money!

To generate money, you must focus on the business aspect of your blog. But don’t get me wrong, this is not to say that you shouldn’t pay attention to your blog at all. You will definitely need to work on that, but just remember to keep everything in the proper perspective.

Your business needs to provide products or services that your market wants and will exchange money for.

It’s great if that product or service is an offer of your own so that you have 100% of the profits and full control. But, if you don’t have one yet, then you can start with some of the affiliate offers available in your own industry.

In past blog posts, I’ve talked about how banner ads are not the most effective way to monetize your blog because you need a TON of traffic to make any real money from them, and if you’re going to work so hard to get that amount of traffic to your site, you may as well show them your own offer and make a hundred times more money than banner ads would ever pay you.

Unfortunately, a lot of bloggers seem to think that their blogs are forms of media that should be monetized in the same way as the news channels – with commercial ads. But that is very far from the truth.

You’ll have a hard time trying to build up any kind of real income that way.

So, back to the business.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What products or services are you selling?
• What sort of results or outcomes do you want to deliver to people?
• In what ways do you want to help them achieve their desires?
• Is your product or service one that people will actually want and pay for?
• How is your offer different from everyone else’s?
• Why should customers choose you?

While answering these questions, keep in mind the option of providing services and consultation.

It’s a viable option that allows you to make an offer out of thin air. And while some people may be reluctant to engage in ‘time for money’ activities, there’s nothing wrong with it, really – particularly in the beginning.

You don’t have to stay that way, but depending on your circumstances, selling your time could be the best way to get the income coming into your business fast.

Okay then. So how long does THAT take?

I hope by now we are all on the same wavelength about the right mindset for success. Time to address that million-dollar question once and for all.

How long is it going to take me to reach a particular income goal?

First up, if you don’t have the right mindset, it will take you a heck of a long time (if it even works at all).

If you’re still pursuing a blog instead of a business, then you’ll fail to reach those income goals. But, if you start building a business that has a blog as its marketing vehicle, then you’ll see income in no time at all.

Now, the amount of time it takes will vary greatly and is dependent on each individual.

There’s no definitive answer that I can give you – after all, I don’t know your schedule or work ethic, or even if you’re the type of person who makes decisions and quickly takes action to move their business forward.

Everything counts:

• The time you have to focus on your business each week
• The money you’re willing to invest in it
• The speed of implementation you exercise in completing the tasks associated with your business

These are all factors that play a role in how quickly your business will start to make money.

Also, I don’t know the type of product or service that you’re offering.

If you’re selling a product or service that’s not so hot in a market where people hardly care, then you’ll have a longer path to that desired income than someone whose products are super awesome and have a huge demand in the market for them.

There’s also the issue of your product/market fit. If your product doesn’t match the market, then you’re going to struggle to make sales.

The better you match your product or service to the market, the easier selling it will be. You first need to come up with a hypothesis for your product/market fit, and then immediately test it.

So you see, there’s no need to start blogging about it since you don’t know if it will work yet.

Instead, this is the time to focus on the most important metrics such as whether visitors will opt-in for your offer or buy it.

So rather than focusing on blogging, to begin with, your first steps will involve creating the right landing page with the ideal lead magnet for your target audience and then testing that opt-in.

If you don’t get a decent percentage of people opting in, then you probably have a bad product/market fit.

Next, you focus on your pre-offer, where you make an offer for a product or service even before you’ve created it.

If you get some sales, then you’ve got your proof that you found a winner. And in order to do all this, all you require are just a few pages, not a whole entire collection of blog posts.

That will come with time, and when that happens, you can be sure that those posts are going to be what your target audience actually wants to read because now you know exactly what they want, thanks to all your research and testing.

Use Paid Traffic To Shorten The Length Of Time It Takes To See Profits

Also, in order to see results in the fastest time possible, you’re going to have to make use of paid traffic in the beginning.

You’ll be able to rely on it less as time goes on and your content starts to bring in organic traffic, but when you first get started, this is the best way to reduce the length of time that it takes before you start to see real profits in your business.

The good news is that quality, targeted traffic doesn’t cost much, and you can turn it on and off at will to test your ideas and see which ones work. If your numbers aren’t adding up, simply turn it off, and re-evaluate before turning it back on again.

This is the only way to remove those huge time requirements.

Once you see proof of sales, you can then start to create your product. At this point, you know from the numbers that there’s life in that market and that your product is going to sell, and now you can start creating that big blog property (that you’ve been itching to work on…) and focus it around your product.

See how it all works?

Great!

This is a whole lot more effective than what most bloggers out there are doing.

There’s no denying that they are awesome bloggers who are creating extremely valuable content for their audience and for the Internet at large, but my job is to help you make money from your efforts.

No blogging about stuff just for fun on my watch.

If you want to see real income from your blogging, you’ve got to treat it like the same way you would any other business.

Recently, I wrote about how to launch a blog quickly and start making an income within three months, but if you follow all the steps outlined in that post, you could possibly even make a sale within the first couple of weeks.

Trust me, it can happen as long as you don’t beat about the bush and act on the things you have learned.

Just focus on doing the correct things, in the correct order, and you’ll be seeing revenue before you know it – And that is my official answer!

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PlanetBizOp.com

->Steven

Updated: Originally published October 30th 2018