How Long Does It Take to Make $500 Per Month Blogging?

Written by Jeff Campbell in Blogging Last Updated November 9, 2023

Some people get into blogging just to have an outlet for their opinions. But many, myself included, do it to earn a full-time living. But we have to start somewhere, so how long does it take to make $500 per month blogging?

As a general rule, it takes about 8-12 months to make $500 per month through blogging starting from scratch. But the quality of the content, the topics covered, and the ability to find low competition phrases people are searching for in Google will have a big impact on that.

There are several factors to consider too, such as traffic sources and whether you plan to just make money from ads or by selling affiliate products. Those can determine how fast you reach that goal.

Continue reading till the end because I will be sharing with you lots of stuff, including the factors that affect the goal of reaching a $500/month income through blogging and tips to achieve this goal.

Spoiler Alert!: Blogging definitely makes you money if you are passionate about it.

I’m not like those online gurus showing you expensive cars and mansions, but I’m a normal family man just like you. And yet, I quit my day job in September 2020, and now I earn around low to mid-six figures full-time blogging (see my income reports here for motivation).

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Factors That Affect the Timeline of Reaching $500 Per Month Blogging

#1. Traffic

In the online world, fundamentally, the only way to make money is to first get traffic irrespective of the platform. Whether you have a blog or a youtube channel, you are basically monetizing your traffic. Always remember this formula for earning money online:

“Traffic = Money”

Your first and primary goal should be to bring high-quality traffic to your blog. Suppose you are currently getting only below 1000 page views per month and thinking of making around $500 per month through it.

In that case, the reality is you actually need to increase the traffic level at this point instead of focusing on the earnings.

The more traffic you will have, the more people will see your ads and your affiliate links. And as more people see your ads, your earnings will eventually be high, and your chances of getting affiliate sales would also increase.

#2. Content Quality

Content is King; you might have heard it quite a lot if you have been blogging for some time. So you might think, yeah, that’s just a normal saying. But the fact is that unless you create high-quality content, you won’t get enough traffic to your blog.

“High-Quality Helpful Content = High Traffic”

If you just keep pushing out the rubbish or regurgitated content that adds no additional value to the user and solves no problem, the chances of those content ranking will be almost negligible.

And even if you think of tricking or manipulating the search engines, your growth won’t sustain longer.

You might have already noticed that Google is aggressively pushing out frequent updates these days.

The Algorithm will someday or the other pick up that you tricked it, and it will de-value your content accordingly.

#3. Competition In the Chosen Niche

Now, the type of niche you choose will also determine how fast you can reach the $500 per month earning goal through blogging.

“Low competition niche but high in demand = More Traffic”

Suppose you choose a niche that is already quite competitive. Then ranking your posts against those big players in your industry would be quite difficult.

In contrast, even if you chose a low-competition niche, but if it targets non-US countries, then you will receive very fewer ad rates.

Usually, you should start a blog that mainly targets the audience of the States because you will be getting more revenue from ads for the same amount of traffic compared to targeting a non-US country.

#4. Monetization

Ads usually work well in all types of niches. But if you selected a niche where, let’s say, ads are not that heavy earners, what should you do?

“Diversification and Selection of The Right Monetization Is Vital”

Apart from ads, you will have to determine what monetization opportunity will work best in your given niche. It can be affiliate marketing, info products, or maybe just offering your services.

In short, how good you are at determining the right kind of monetization for your blog, your earning of $500 through blogging will depend on that.

For example, I make most of my money through ads. Each month, ads alone generate me at least $15,000 for all my sites combined.

But I usually make at least $2,000 from promoting Amazon products on several of my sites. And then I have a number of other affiliate programs that do well for me too.

#5. Knowledge About Your Niche

Of course, you don’t necessarily have to be an expert at anything to get started. And I know that you can outsource content. So even without knowing your niche, you can create a blog.

But the fact is, having more knowledge about your niche will not only help you in finding the hidden gems while doing the keyword research. But you can also make sure that you are publishing the right type of content on your blog that will actually help your audience.

“More Knowledge About Your Niche = More You Can Help Your Audience”

Overall, understanding your niche plays an important role in how much you can grow your blog and become an authority in your industry.

In addition, if you are just starting out, then most likely, you won’t be having lots of money to invest in outsourcing content. Right? So you would rather be forced to write the content yourself, and thus you will have to gather knowledge about your niche.

#6. Overall Blogging Knowledge

Apart from knowledge in your niche, your success will also be determined by how much knowledge and skills you have related to blogging.

“More You Learn = More You Can Earn.”

Note that blogging just doesn’t mean that you have to keep writing content. Content creation is just one part of blogging. I agree that it is a major part, but still, there are many other things that you will have to know about.

Like, for example, building the website from scratch, setting up the hosting, domain name, overall theme design, learning about the platforms like WordPress, knowing about the usage of various plugins, and the list goes on and on…

Although all these things may not directly impact your growth, you would require a particular skill that you either have to learn yourself or hire somebody else to do on your behalf at some point in your blogging journey.

Whatever the case, you will have to ultimately keep learning if you want to become a successful blogger.

I would also highly recommend you check out this post where I explain how hard it is to start a money-making blog.

Tips To Reach The $500 Per Month Through Blogging

#1. Pick The Right Mentor (and only one)

Since you might have searched how long it takes to reach the $500 per month through blogging and landed on this post, most probably, the chances are that you are currently stuck.

You are not able to see significant growth on your blog. You cannot move the needle. Maybe you are just publishing content after content but still feeling demotivated.

Well, first of all, I want to make it clear that you are not alone. So get rid of the thought of feeling demotivated. And I would like to reiterate that if I can make money through blogging and go full-time, then you can too!

So now the question is: how? The straightforward answer to that is to pick the right mentor.

You know what, if you have already poured in more than a year or so into blogging, and still, you are not noticing any income through your blog, there are high chances that you have followed the wrong methods and strategies.

I know. I started my 1st blog in August of 2016, and it took me about 3 years to start to make any serious money.

Why?

I was following a bunch of different people. Now, most of them were great in and of themselves (Pat Flynn was the first, then Brandon Gaille, Brian Dean, and then several others I’ve since forgotten).

BUT there’s a real danger in just cherry-picking different strategies from different people. It’s not cohesive. And different people have different ideas about SEO, backlinks, content length, etc.

And so, you might not ever get ahead by listening to too many different people. Or you might get stuck in what I call analysis paralysis, where the options are so overwhelming you never get started.

Now, the good thing is I’m going to share with you the name of my mentors. When I found them, I was making about $2,000/month. But within 6 months, I had doubled that to $4,000/month.

Now I’m close to $30k/month just 3-ish years later. They are none other than the guys behind “Income School.”

With full transparency, I want to highlight that I’m an affiliate for Income School. But I’m sharing about them because their methodology REALLY works and has changed the lives of many bloggers around the globe, including me.

In truth, I don’t recommend anything I don’t truly believe in. And I’ve been a paying member of Income School for almost 3 years now.

So I’m sure you can get a lot of help following their methods to grow your blog and make your $500 per month through the blog. And actually, you can even make way more than that by following their premium blogging course called Project 24.

The name comes from their stated goal of making a full-time income (they call that $4,000/month) within 24 months. But if you sign up, it’s not just 1 program. They have dozens of specific topics, including a full YouTube course if you’d rather go that route (I do both).

Income School was originally founded by Jim and Ricky, and both are great internet marketers. At present, the income school is mainly run by Ricky and his awesome team.

They already share a lot of helpful stuff related to blogging on their YouTube channels for free. I was even interviewed on one of their YouTube videos. Here it is!

Going from $1000 to $10,000/mo Within 15 Months

Long story short, if you are looking for perfect mentors to succeed at blogging, then Income School is the one I would recommend.

And obviously, if you can afford it, you can purchase their project 24 course, which teaches you everything about succeeding at blogging in the perfect organized step-by-step way.

CLICK HERE to check out Project 24 on the Income School website.

#2. Avoid The Shiny Object Syndrome

The next thing you should consider after picking the right mentors is to avoid the shiny object syndrome.

The inc.com defines shiny object syndrome as a condition that affects many business owners every year. (And note that blogging is a business and if you don’t consider it as a business yet, then start considering from now onwards)

So what happens in this condition is instead of focusing on the big picture tasks that actually fuel up your current business, you start getting distracted with other business projects or ideas that excite you.

Why is this bad? Let’s understand this with an example.

Let’s suppose that you have blog A where you are publishing 10 blog posts per month, and let’s say that the blog is already one year old. It already has some content on it.

Then, let’s say that you recently had a great idea about starting a new blog (let’s call it blog B) from scratch. Now suppose that your limitation is that you can only create 10 blog posts in a month. In this case, here’s what it will look like:

Timeline: Blog A Blog B
Before 10 Blog posts per month –
After 5 Blog posts per month 5 Blog posts per month

So as you can clearly see in the above table, your efforts get divided into two separate places after you start jumping on another project. This means your chances of success are now divided.

Previously you were laser-focused on pushing out content after content just on one blog. But now, after getting affected by the shiny object syndrome, you decided to start a new project. So your efforts are divided.

Note that I’m not telling you to build only one blog (I have 10 now and plans for more every year). You should never put all your eggs in one basket, and I know that.

But the problem is with the TIMING!

You should start any new project only in the following circumstances:

  • You are an experienced blogger who can invest significant funds in outsourcing content for the new blog.
  • You have made some serious mistakes on your first blog (maybe you niched down too much or chose a very bad niche) such that you are forced to start a new one.
  • You have already achieved decent success with your first blog, and now you are thinking of spreading your risks in this business by starting up a new project.

And there can be a few more circumstances like these where it would completely make sense to start a new blog. But rest than that, be very cautious and try not to de-rail yourself from your main blog.

If your target is to achieve at least $500 per month through blogging, then try to achieve that with one blog first, and once you hit the desired goal, you can start jumping on other projects. I hope you got the idea.

#3. Believe in the Process

The next best tip to make $500 per month blogging is to believe in the process. Like any other field, blogging also has a barrier to entry. The first 8-12 months will likely be very tough for you as you won’t notice any significant development in traffic or earnings on your blog.

This will be the time when you will feel like quitting and get bored, which most other bloggers also face. But I would again like to remind you that if a normal person like me can do this, you can too!

There are 89,409 Google searches done per second. Just imagine! This signifies that there are lots of searches done on the internet.

People are looking for answers, purchasing products, getting information about the products, researching for their projects, and searching for a lot of different stuff.

By starting a blog, you can start targeting the questions that people actually search on Google. You can create helpful and valuable content around those questions– content that actually answers their questions and helps them solve their problem. By doing this, definitely, success in blogging is not very far.

You have to just believe in the process, keep doing what you do, and keep grinding!

#4. Invest In Yourself

This can be one of those things which you might often neglect when you start blogging. You might feel that everything is available for free on the internet, so why spend a penny, right?

Although that’s true, only up to some extent. I’m not saying that you can’t succeed using the free resources. But I’m encouraging you to invest in things that help you to improve as a blogger and as an online creator.

For instance, if you struggle to use any SEO tool to its full potential and have the money to spend, why not invest in a decent course that would teach you to use that tool step by step? You could save so much time with it.

Likewise, if you struggle to make money through blogging, why not invest in a course like Project 24? 🙂

Investing in yourself is one of the highest ROI-giving investments that you can ever make in your life. There is no clear mathematical formula that describes how much specific return you can make on your investment. It will solely depend on how genuinely you could take advantage of your self-investment.

So by investing in yourself, you increase the chances of growth multiple times!

Getting to $4,000/month on your blog (a Real Timeline)

Final Thoughts

As in any other field, to be a successful blogger and start making decent income through blogging, even to make $500 per month, you would need to develop lots of skills.

You need to be a great writer. Yes, you can outsource content, but then you also need to know all other aspects of blogging like maintaining the site, optimizing your blog posts, figuring out monetization, etc.

Long story short, to make $500 per month through blogging, have patience, pick the right mentor, invest in yourself, believe in the process, and keep grinding. That’s it! I hope this guide has helped you get some real knowledge about blogging. Thank You!

Want help starting your blog?

I do Zoom consults every week, and there’s no reason yours can’t be next!

Just CLICK HERE to go to my calendar page to see the available days and times. I charge $100 for a 30-minute consult. So I recognize that’s not for everyone. But if I could save you months of time in getting you to $500/month, what would that be worth?

Image by Peter Olexa from Pixabay

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