This is one of the biggest mysteries for a new blogger who just started a new website and has a couple of articles published.
If you are one of them and think that you should be ready to start making some good bucks right at the start, then it’s better to not start blogging in the first place.
Most new bloggers ask if they should monetize their blogs right away or at least after publishing 5-10 articles but they forget an important part of money making online.
It’s the “TRAFFIC” you need to make money and it has nothing to do with the number of articles you have published on your website. Even though it’s pretty easy to start a blog with minimum expense, most bloggers stop altogether when they don’t see any results.
However, there are several other factors too that need to be considered before you start monetizing your blog and the most important thing is to know how to monetize your blog.
I will dedicate a separate blog post for that but now let’s take a look at the main question, “When should you monetize your blog?”
This post is not going to be lengthy but should still answer your majority of questions. I will try to be precise in my explanation while considering the most important factors that create a money-generating blog.
This is the primary focus for most newbies because they don’t know the reality of making money from articles. They just know that people come, click or buy from the banners or links embedded into your posts.
It’s not a bad practice to display advertisements when you have a few articles on your website but when they don’t even give you a single dollar in a whole week, they don’t understand what’s wrong.
The Reality of blogging is that you have to understand what makes the reader click on your ad banners or affiliate links. If you have published 5 posts with some affiliate links into each and get 2-5 visits per day, chances are you are hardly going to get 5+ clicks.
But still, it’s not a bad practice to use affiliate links in your articles right from the beginning as I see affiliate links and ad banners as completely different from the other.
It’s possible to earn more with affiliate links even with a few users but those userswon’t give $10 per day with advertisements.
So, the idea is to just insert the affiliate links without even thinking whether you have 5 articles or 50. These are easier to integrate and don’t take up space on your website.
Advertisements, on the other hand, consume your empty space and slow down your website significantly. The more ads you put in, the slower your website will load and that’s definitely not something you would want when you have a few readers.
The Truth is that Advertisements can be inserted into your sidebars, posts, or different sections of the pages automatically by just using some free plugins like Ad Inserter or WPQuads but inserting affiliate links is notautomatic.
It requires manual effort for each post to insert the affiliate links into the correct text anchor or a button and you wouldn’t want to do it in a single sitting after you have written a hundred articles.
Understand the Difference Between Affiliate and Informative Content
Well, you might not have even thought about it but you should keep in mind that when it comes to monetizing your blog, different types of articles impact your earnings.
A website with 50 affiliate articles is not equal to one with 50 informative articles. If two websites have the same number of articles but the first one only has affiliates and the second one has mostly informative, I can guarantee you that the first one will probably make several times more than the second one if the traffic is the same.
But you may be wondering why even I am talking about such websites that already have a lot of articles with some decent traffic, Right?
The reason is when you have a blog with mostly informative articles, you are going to rely heavily on advertisements and if you are receiving 10-20 visitors per day, you are hardly going to make a buck or two even in several days.
On the other hand, there is a good number of chances that the website with the same traffic but with only affiliate articles may likely get a few sales per month that earn you from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars depending on the niche.
So, what does this tells you?
Didn’t get it? This tells you that when you have a purely or mostly informative content-based website with little traffic, don’t monetize your website with advertisements right now. If you have an affiliate website, you can go ahead and put some affiliate links.
Traffic Decides and you Don’t
The first two sections talked about the content type and quantity and if you have noticed, both of them still mention “TRAFFIC”. So, it all comes down to how much traffic you are getting.
Most new bloggers ask this question: “How much traffic do I have to get in order to earn $XX per day?”
Here, I am going to answer this precisely. If your blog receives fewer than 100 visits per day, you earn a few cents but if your blog receives a few hundred visits per day, you earn a few dollars.
This is purely for those who are looking for earnings through advertisements such as Adsense. If you use Ezoic as I do, you can multiply this by 2 times and your ad earnings will greatly improve. Keep in mind that this is the best-case scenario because not every website earns a few dollars for 500 visits per day. It all depends on your niche and the advertising network you are using.
Also, even if you are getting a good amount of traffic, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are going get paychecks equivalent to what you have been seeing on some professional money-making blogs. Let’s take a look at how traffic quality impacts your earnings.
Understand the Traffic Quality
It’s a simple fact in blogging that your earnings depend on your traffic quality. A blog getting traffic mostly from third-world countries is not going to earn a lot. This is why it is important to consider your traffic quality before you think to monetize your blog.
A blog getting mostly its traffic from the USA, Canada, and some European countries are going to get higher revenue from both advertisements and affiliates because they convert well.
So, a blog with 200 visits per day will do some good earnings if the majority of its readers belong to these countries. On the other hand, if you are getting traffic mostly from India or the Philippines, you need 600-1000 visits per day to earn the same amount.
I have seen some blogs earning up to $100 per 1000visits when 100% of their traffic is from tier 1 countries but take this with a little bit of salt as not every blog is going to convert like that. You can check out the standard ePMV most blogs get from different countries and you can clearly see what I mean.
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Therefore, if your traffic is less than a hundred visits per day and mostly comprises readers from third-world countries, it’s better to wait to increase the traffic to some decent numbers before you put up those advertisement banners.
However, I am not against monetizing your blog from day one if every cent is important to you and this may at least cover your hosting costs.
Be Careful About your Niche Monetization
Different niches have different affiliate programs. While a lot of physical products can be promoted through Amazon, it is not true for every product. For example, if you are running a bike blog, you may find a hard time finding the bike you would like to write on.
So, what you have to do is search for bike companies that also offer affiliate programs. Now here comes the big problem. Unlike Amazon, it’s very difficult to get acceptedin a lot of affiliate programs that have stricter conditions.
Some affiliate programs may require you to show them your website traffic and your reach. Some affiliate programs may even ask for a lot of documentation and in some cases personal interviews as MaxBounty does 🙄.
So, monetizing a blog isn’t a quick thing for every niche. In some cases, you may have to wait enough for your reader base to grow significantly to even apply for affiliate programs.
However, the good thing is that if your blog’s niche is according to Google’s terms and conditions, you will be accepted by Adsense quickly if you are getting decent traffic or even if you have little traffic but solid content. So, if your blog is based on a niche that requires a lot of growth before applying for an affiliate program, you can at least earn some bucks through advertisements.
So do your homework if you are going for an affiliate niche and don’t want to get disappointed.
How Much will you get Paid?
I believe I answered this in short in one of my previous sections pretty clearly but let me elaborate a little bit more if you want an estimation.
With a Tech niche website, I earn somewhere between $2-$6 per 1000 visits depending on the traffic quality(we will talk about it soon) and season. These earnings can be lower or higher depending on your niche. For niches that include money-making and finance, your ad earnings are going to be insanely high but if you are running a blog with gaming tutorials or movies you won’t earn that much.
Considering the ad networks, while Ezoic and Valueimpression can give you 2-2.5X more than Adsense, some Ad networks like Adthrive or Mediavine can boost this number even further. However, their condition for accepting a website is too strict and you will at least need 50K-100K visits per month.
Now let’s come to affiliate earnings. As I said earlier, affiliate earnings generally exceed ad earnings by a big margin. I remember I used to earn almost 3 times more with affiliates than the advertisements a few years ago. This was the primary reason how I generated over $150,000 with my main blog.
A blog with 50 visits per day using only affiliate articles is likely going to exceed the earnings of a blog receiving 200 visits per day that rely just on advertisements.
As for how much you can earn, there are no clear numbers. Affiliate commissions of products differ and this decides how much you are going to earn.
Some may earn $1-$10 per product sale, others may earn $100-$500 per product sale. I will talk about this in detail in some other post but for now, understand that your earnings depend on your monetization method, niche, and traffic quality.
Monetization is not Hard
The fact that most newbies focus on monetizing their blogs instead of building a reader base shows how people just want to get earn money from day One. I remember I earned my first dollar after blogging for 6 months straight.
Monetization is not difficult but bringing traffic is. The most important goal of your blog should be generating traffic because money automatically starts flowing when you have a good reader base.
The more important part is how to retain those readers to come back for more content. This might not be possible for every niche but if you write engaging content that doesn’t sound completely formal, people are going to like it.
That’s all you need to know about monetizing your blog and if you have any doubts, then use the comments section, it’s completely free!
