If you’re just writing a blog for the passion of it, then it won’t matter how many visitors you have.

However, if your goal is to make money off of your blog, then you’re probably wondering how much blog traffic to make money you might need.

You probably have other questions as well. How much blog traffic is good? How long does it take to get blog traffic?

The answers to these and other questions depend on a variety of factors, including your niche and your ability to get out of the Google Sandbox, but in general, the more visitors you have, the more money you earn.

There are several ways you can earn money through your blog, but the most common is through Ad Network, which pays out based on EPMV, RPM, and CPM, or per thousand visitors.

There are other ways you can make money through your blogs, such as through affiliate marketing or sponsored posts, but for all of the money-making methods, you need to build a sizable audience first.

Here is your guide to getting enough blog traffic to monetize your blog.

TLDR: A blog with good SEO traffic can make anywhere from hundreds of dollars a month, to quite literally a million dollars a month. However, keep in mind that it takes at least six months to start seeing SEO-driven blog traffic.

A Guide to Blog Traffic

One of the most important statistics you can track as a writer for the Internet is blog traffic.

Blog traffic is good from a confidence-boosting level—you don’t want to feel as if you’re writing for a nonexistent audience after all. 

However, blog traffic is also crucial if you want to take your blog from a passion project or hobby to a source of income.

Tracking your blog traffic can help you see how close you are to being able to join advertising networks.

The more traffic your blog has, the easier it is to pitch potential sponsors or affiliate programs and show them that you are an authority in your niche.

Here is what you need to know about blog traffic if you want to take your project to the next level.

What Is Blog Traffic?

Blog traffic simply refers to the number of visitors who reach your blog during any given period.

This can come from organic traffic, meaning people find your blog on their own through search engines or social media, or paid traffic, meaning that people click on sponsored ads or posts. 

How Long Does It Take to Get Blog Traffic?

This is the question that every newcomer to the blogging space wants to answer immediately.

However, a good rule of thumb is that it will take around three to six months before your blog reaches a significant audience.

You need time to establish your credibility in your niche and create enough content that viewers will want to visit your site.

Part of the delay in serious traffic to your blog also comes from search engine blocks.

Among SEO professionals, there is a slang term called the Google Sandbox, which refers to the probation period that the search engine puts on new websites.

Although Google has not confirmed the official existence of this filter, SEO professionals noticed that even when they do everything right, Google still does not rank their new websites for any keywords until a few months pass.

Some SEO professionals grumble that Google deliberately freezes out new sites to drive traffic toward paid advertising, but really, Google wants to provide the most useful information to its users.

The algorithm does not rank new sites until the webmasters build strong SEO practices and show that they’re dedicated to running the site, not just holding on to a domain for spamming purposes.

There is no decisive limit on how long a website spends in the Sandbox, but it usually takes anywhere from six to nine months to get out.

You can speed up the time it takes to get high traffic on your blog with good SEO practices, writing quality posts, and building organic backlinks.

However, be aware that it will take patience to build an audience and gain the confidence of Google’s algorithmic robots.

Monetizing your blog is a journey of a marathon, not a sprint.

Check out my income reports to get an idea of how long it took my blog to go from 0 visitors and $0 income to over 100k Monthly Pageviews and over $4,000 a month in revenue.

How Much Blog Traffic Do You Need?

So you understand that it takes patience to build up enough page views to earn money from your blog, but when will you know that you’ve made it?

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question either.

There is no set numerical answer to how much blog traffic to make money, but a good rule of thumb is that you need at least 10,000 page views per month before you can make serious money.

The figure of 10,000 page views is accepted as a cut-off in most blogging guides, but the answer to how much blog traffic is good is far more complicated than that.

You can make money off of a blog that receives fewer than 1,000 page views per month if you monetize it with content that isn’t dependent on page views, such as paid courses, coaching, and more.

On the other hand, if you aren’t smart about your monetization strategies, not even 30,000 page views a month will save you.

You should be in a premier ad network and control as much of your blog as possible through self-hosting and maintaining a mailing list.

If your goal is to earn a full-time income from your blog, then you should aim for 30,000 to 100,000 monthly page views.

As long as you have a mostly functional monetization strategy in place, then those page views should earn you a nice monthly income.

Why Do You Need Blog Traffic to Monetize Your Blog?

As mentioned above, higher blog traffic doesn’t necessarily correlate to higher earnings immediately.

However, it would be silly to say that blog traffic doesn’t matter at all when it comes to monetization.

One of the primary ways that blog traffic can help you earn money is through ad networks.

Many ad affiliate sites pay you based on page views or interactions (more on that later). The higher your blog traffic, the more money you will earn.

Higher blog traffic is also helpful for other forms of monetizing your blog, such as selling courses or getting sponsors for posts.

It shows your credibility in your niche, which is attractive to potential sponsors and clients.

Tips for Driving Up Blog Traffic

By now you probably understand the importance of site visitors, but how are you supposed to get these ever-elusive visitors to your blog?

Beware of solutions offering overnight traffic—usually, these are black hat SEO practices that could get you penalized by Google’s robots.

Instead, you can build up blog traffic through steady work, patience, and the implementation of good SEO strategies.

The most important consideration, though, when chasing better blog traffic is to provide consistent, quality content.

If you provide users with useful content, they are more likely to click on your blog, recommend it to others, and return to it themselves.

Updating regularly also shows Google and other search engines that you will continue to provide relevant content to readers.

Just writing content is not enough if you are not implementing good SEO practices.

Make sure that you include keywords (without spamming) in your posts.

Do research in your niche to find out which keywords people are searching.

Target long-tail keywords, or keywords with more words, as they are more specific, have less competition, and are more likely to result in click conversions. 

Besides targeting keywords, there are other important SEO practices you can implement. Include images and include the target keywords in the file name.

Structure your articles well, with eye-catching headings and sub-headings.

Reach out to other bloggers and guest posts to build backlinks, which help improve your credibility in the eyes of Google’s robots.

Finally, the most important thing you can do to drive up your traffic is to have a well-designed, functional blog.

You want your technical SEO to be amazing, so invest in a good web designer or platform that takes care of those concerns for you.

Design is also important in getting visitors to linger on your blog and click on different pages.

Blogging and Advertising

One of the primary ways that bloggers make money through writing is by hosting advertisements on their sites.

Usually, you go through a system such as Google AdSense or Ezoic to manage those advertisements. 

Here is what you need to know about using advertising to make money through your blog and about the importance of blog traffic for it.

What Is an Ad Network?

An ad network is a go-between that mediates between advertisers, developers, and publishers.

They make it easier to get advertisers on your blog. Instead of individually reaching out to companies that may want to advertise on your blog, you can just join a network.

Then, the network will place ads on your page.

There are many different ad networks out there. The most popular is Google AdSense, but you can also join InfoLinks, Mediavine, and many more.

There are even niche networks such as BlogHer focusing on certain demographics of bloggers: in this case, women. 

When you join an ad network, you designate spots on your site for ads, and the network matches you with an advertising campaign.

You can have display ads, banner ads, or even video ads, depending on your site, the specific campaign, and the offerings of the network.

Then, you get a certain percentage of the revenue every time a visitor views or interacts with the ad (the network also takes a cut).

Ad networks have been around since the 1990s and are one of the oldest ways of making money on the Internet.

As such, there are a lot of ad networks floating around claiming to help bloggers—but not all are trustworthy.

Before you sign up for a network, check its size to see if it has enough advertisers, the quality of the ads (some networks buy up rejected ads from advertisers and will spam your site with low-quality pictures), and experiences from previous bloggers.

How Do You Earn Money from Ads With a Blog?

Most publishers pay you per page view or page click.

When you join an ad network, you don’t know how much money you will make because that depends on your blog traffic and interactions.

However, you can calculate it based on the ad network’s rate and your average visitors.

Most advertising networks pay bloggers based on CPM, or costs per mille.

For every thousand visitors who see an ad hosted on your site, you get an agreed-upon sum.

On its own, the sum is usually just symbolic, but when it’s multiplied by thousands and thousands of visitors, you can earn a tidy amount of money. 

There are a few terms that you’ll commonly see floating around this space explaining how you earn money from ad networks.

One method used (primarily Ezoic) is an EPMV, or “Earnings Per Thousand Visitors.”

This calculates how much money you earned for every thousand visitors that you receive.

Many networks prefer this calculation when it comes to evaluating the success of a given campaign because it accounts for several different factors, including bounce rate, pages viewed per visit, and upstream traffic sources.

Another common acronym you’ll see in this space is RPM, which stands for Revenue Per Thousand Impressions.

You calculate it by taking your estimated advertising earnings, dividing them by ad, then multiplying the quotient by 1,000.

This is a simple calculation to estimate how much money you earn on each page visit.

However, just jacking up the RPM could decrease your overall earnings—for example, if you jam too many ads onto your blog pages, you could prevent visitors from enjoying their visit.

As you can see, revenue from hosting advertisements on your blog directly depends on your blog traffic, which is why so many bloggers want to know how to get more visitors.

While there are several calculations you can make to estimate how much money you will earn from a specific campaign, the best rule of thumb is that the more visitors you have, the more money you will make.

Other Ways to Earn Money from Blogging

Earning money through ad networks is one of the easiest ways to increase your income as a blogger because all you have to do is join a network and free up space on your blog for advertisements.

However, you usually earn very low rates per thousand visitors—it’s estimated that a blogger working through AdSense only earns $30-$50 per thousand visitors.

You’re also heavily dependent on blog traffic which is not a factor you can always control. 

Luckily, there are other ways to monetize your blog besides relying on ad networks.

These methods, such as creating affiliate marketing campaigns and selling courses, require a bit more effort on your part but are usually more lucrative than just waiting for advertising dollars.

They’re also a way to monetize your blog before reaching large numbers of visitors.

However, blog traffic is still important for these forms of revenue generation (you can’t sell courses and affiliate links if nobody ever sees your blog, after all).

You also need statistics to prove your authority when pitching sponsored posts and collaborations.

Blog traffic is the easiest way to show that you are a trusted voice in your niche.

While these monetization methods leave you less vulnerable to fluctuations in blog traffic, don’t neglect your efforts to increase traffic.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is similar to ad networks in that you don’t have to create new content.

All you have to do is join an affiliate service offered by a retailer such as Amazon.

Then, every time you recommend a product on your blog, link to that product using your affiliate link.

For every visitor who clicks on that link or makes the purchase you recommended, you get a small commission.

The amount you earn per affiliate link varies depending on the retailer and on the product you recommend.

As with advertising revenue, you’re dependent on how many visitors actually visit your site and interact with it.

However, the revenue is slightly larger than it is with hosting display ads.

Sponsored Posts

Another way you can earn money through your blog is by writing sponsored posts.

Approach retailers in your niche and offer to collaborate with them.

You can write a post highlighting their services in exchange for a sponsorship fee.

For example, many travel bloggers earn free stays and a fee by writing about the hotels they visit. 

Sponsored posts are one of the most lucrative ways to earn money with your blog.

However, you have to show your credibility first—retailers won’t offer money to everyone writing on the Internet!

Showing how long you’ve been working on your blog and how many visitors you attract will help during your pitches to potential sponsors.

Blog Traffic and Monetizing Your Blog

It takes time to build up blog traffic, about six months to hit a threshold of several thousand visitors, but it’s worth it to be patient.

Once you have thousands of monthly visitors, you can monetize your blog by joining an ad network and hosting display ads.

Usually, you earn a few cents per visitor, but with more visitors, those revenues add up.