If you are starting a blog this year with the hopes of earning money from it, then you should be prepared for a massive challenge. On the other hand, though it might seem challenging at first, the number of people who are earning incredible incomes from blogging should serve as inspiration.
I can already anticipate amateur bloggers asking ‘How much money can you make blogging if you start a blog in 2023?’ Well, let me break it down for you.
What Bloggers Earn
According to Financial Samurai (whose founder I interviewed here), it is possible for you to earn from $500 to $2,000 a month from your blog in the first year. However, you will have to put in a significant amount of time and effort to meet those numbers and exceed them in subsequent years.
According to Glassdoor, the average annual salary of a blogger is $32,800 at the time of writing. That is a nice income especially considering that you are working for yourself.
But if you’re only starting out, and don’t yet have your first blog post written, prepare for a small initial investment. You’ll need a website and a domain name for your blog.
A good place to start is to look for shared hosting plans. There are plenty of options available to host your first website, take a look to this example. Your first financial goal could be earning enough to cover the monthly cost of the site’s upkeep.
The majority of full-time bloggers who have done it for more than five years make more than $200,000 per year. The best part about it is that they only work for ten to thirty hours per week. Some bloggers make that kind of money blogging nights as a side hustle.
The crème de la crème of blogging makes more than a million dollars per year from their blogs. Most of these blogs are over 10 years old and are run by definitely more than just one person.
They can be considered enterprises of their own kind. If you can make a million dollars a year working 30 hours a week, that would be an insane return on your time and effort. Though, while you should aim for the stars, you should not expect to make this type of money by working alone, and in the while.
How Much Money Can You Make Blogging
During the first year of blogging, you should expect to make barely enough to cover your hosting expenses. Starting out and expecting to make a living vague from day one will discourage you, so set expectations accordingly.
Some successful bloggers say that they barely made any money until their blog was ten or eleven months old. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to build the initial loyal following for a blog.
If you are blogging for a different company, you can make money right off the bat. On the other hand, you will not be directing the content creation and you will be earning only a salary with limits on how much it can grow.
Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers
Most bloggers want to write for their own site so I will cover exactly that. If you create a blog through which you can sell things or direct readers to sites such as Amazon or eBay, by taking part in affiliate programs, you can make $25,000 to $50,000 after your first year of blogging.
The amazing thing about starting a blog is how quickly it can scale up. Your readership can increase gradually or exponentially. It all goes down to the quality of your content and how good you are at promoting it.
If we take an optimistic estimate, you can expect to double your income every year if you remain committed to blogging. That means $2000 in your first year, $4000 in the second year, $8000 the third year, $16000 the following year, and so on.
It will take time and a lot of writing, marketing, and collaboration to get to the point where you can make hundreds of thousands every year. However, the ability to earn such sums of money from a laptop anywhere in the world is very liberating.
Using Google AdSense
Making money through blogging is not only about increasing traffic to it, though that is a great way to do it. Some of the highest-earning blogs have a very specific audience but they know how to capitalize on their niche.
However, for starters, you have to increase traffic to your blog to be eligible to earn.
If you can earn $0.25 on a single post, per view from advertisers and get 1000 page views per month (which is a very low estimate) you can earn $25 a month and cover the cost of running the blog through a single post. If that readership increases to 10,000 views, you earn ten times more and so on.
If we use Google AdSense as an example, this would depend on the CPC – cost per click.
Read also: How to Find a Good Alternative to AdSense
Earning Through Email Lists
One of the most crucial assets of a blogger is their email list. That is another reason why traffic is so important. The bloggers who make a living from blogging, are often the ones that have a high email subscriber value.
If you have 50,000 subscribers, and per each email, you earn $0.25 cents, that’ll make you 12,500 per email.
It All Rests on Traffic
Using SEO strategies is the best way to increase revenue from your blog exponentially. Basically, if you don’t have traffic, you won’t be able to earn from affiliates, AdSense, or email lists.
Take the time to learn about on-page and off-page SEO practices, reach out to write guest posts, and market your blog. Increasing organic traffic from Google is the most sustainable and successful traffic strategy that will definitely open up revenue streams.
Conclusion
Blogging is a great way to express yourself while earning on the side. Do it for long enough, optimize your content for search engines, market your posts, and you’ll be counting bills in no time.
How much money can you make blogging? There are no limits. It’s all about staying consistent, producing quality content, and knowing the many different ways you can turn your hobby into a job. Good luck!
About The Author
Mary is a passionate blogger and the chief editor at her own content marketing company PRable.com. Since college, she’s been interested in break-through technology and technical writing about innovative products and services that change our everyday lives for the better. She’s also interested in web design and photography.
