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 end up quitting just before things really 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.
Here’s the blog growth report for February 2023 in case you missed it.
*The pageview (sessions) for March are not accurate because starting March 12, the GA4 code was dropped from my website thanks to an update and 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 it’s important to keep a close eye on your blog’s key performance indicators (KPIs).
This Month
Google Analytics Reports:
According to Google Analytics, I only had 7 sessions in the month of March, with 5 of those coming from organic traffic. This number is only counting those that took place in the first 11 days of March so with 20 days not accounted for, there was most likely growth and at least 5 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 106 keywords in Google. So I am now ranking for 6 new keywords and have moved from 3 to 7 of them ranking in the top 25.
How am I ranking for so many keywords?
Since my garden site is pretty young and only has 19 blog posts on it, you may be wondering how I am ranking for so many keywords.
The answer is pretty simple, actually. 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, as well as off-page SEO, which brings us to backlinks. In February I only had 4 backlinks coming into the site and I managed to double that number for March.
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 at all. Once traffic begins to increase, I will set up ads to bring in additional revenue.
Plans for April:
- Publish at least 4 blog posts
- Make sure ALL Posts are indexed
- Divide posts into categories and put them into silos. (I didn’t get to this one in March due to lack of time.)
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 it’s a good fit for you.