If you’ve ever thought about starting a blog, you’re probably wondering how long it will take for your blog to rank on Google and actually start making money.
There are tons of blog income reports out there claiming they’re earning six figures a month. But the truth is, the average blog isn’t performing at that level.
And the blogs that do are long-standing, well-established, and have a team of writers with literally thousands of articles.
That doesn’t mean you can’t make money from your blog, but so many people start a blog with such unrealistic expectations that they quit just before things start to take off.
So, in an attempt to give you an actual look at what it’s like to grow a blog from scratch, I am sharing monthly blog growth reports for my gardening blog that I will be growing from scratch. This is a blog that I am working on growing on the side as my schedule allows, but this blog is not something I’m working on full-time.
In case you missed it, here’s the blog growth report for March 2023.
Inaccurate Numbers for April’s Page Views
*April’s pageview (sessions) are inaccurate because starting March 12, the GA4 code was dropped from my website, thanks to an update. I didn’t realize it until mid-April, so those numbers for March and April will not be accurate representations of page views. This happens from time to time and is pretty normal if you have a blog. That’s why keeping a close eye on your blog’s key performance indicators (KPIs) is important.
April’s Statistics
Google Analytics Reports:
According to Google Analytics, I only had nine sessions in the month of April, with 3 of those coming from organic traffic. This number is only counting those that took place in the last 15 days of April, so with 15 days not accounted for, there was most likely growth, and at least three people found this site on Google. While that still seems like a small number, most blogs don’t start ranking until they have at least 100,00 words on them, so I’m considering it a win.
Keyword Report:
According to Ubersuggest, my garden blog is currently ranking for 102 keywords on Google. So I lost the ranking for 4 keywords, but 5 of the keywords I’m ranking for are in the top 25.
How am I ranking for so many keywords?
Since my garden site is pretty young and only has 23 blog posts, you may wonder how I rank for so many keywords.
The answer is actually pretty simple. Every single blog post on my website is fully optimized with a proven SEO strategy, just like the one I teach in Creative SEO.
Not only are the blog posts themselves optimized, but I also optimized my website by running a lightweight theme and focusing on site speed and off-page SEO, which brings us to backlinks. In March, I only had eight backlinks coming into the site; in April, I’m up to 10.
Monetization
Right now, my garden site is monetized only with Amazon affiliate links. Since traffic is still very low, I don’t expect to see much income from these links, if any, but in April, I had one Amazon sale that earned $1.20 in commission. As traffic continues to increase, I also plan to set up ads to bring in additional revenue.
Plans for May
- Publish at least four blog posts
- Make sure ALL Posts are indexed
- Divide posts into categories and put them into silos
Final Thoughts
If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog or trying to grow your current blog, a strong SEO strategy is essential for its success. Check out Creative SEO and see if its a good fit for you.