Do websites make money from traffic? In a way yes, but not directly. If you build a website, add a bunch of great content, and get tons of traffic, you don’t automatically get money from the internet gods. There are a bunch of steps in between adding content and getting paid.
That’s mainly what we’ll discuss in this article, because it can be confusing to be honest. There are millions of websites on the internet right? Some sell things, some don’t, some just have news articles, some have other types of articles. They all have one thing in common though, getting paid through their content.
Do niche websites make money from traffic?
Websites get paid by monetizing their traffic, which we’ll discuss more in-depth below. The traffic itself doesn’t pay you, unless you are selling products. Then you do get paid if a visitor makes a direct purchase from you. Offering physical or digital items for sale and advertising them to your visitors is just a form of monetization.
How much money can you make from website traffic?
The sky is the limit is the best answer. It depends on how much work you put in and how successful your website is. Some people make just a few dollars a month from a small niche website. Other sites can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a month, or anything in between.
Some sites get so big that they get purchased by large companies. One example is like how The Wirecutter, an affiliate website, was purchased by The New York Times for about 30 million dollars.
How does a niche website make money from its traffic?
There are really endless ways to monetize a website, and new ways are always being invented by site owners as they grow their businesses.
Having said that, there are a handful of ways that will always be the most popular. Here are some of the best ways to monetize a niche website:
- Affiliate marketing
- Display ads
- Selling digital products like courses or e-books
- Selling physical products in your niche
- Sponsored posts
Do bloggers really make money?
Absolutely they do. Bloggers are just niche site owners. When a lot of people think of bloggers they automatically think of mommy blogs where stay at home moms sit and write about their days and meaningless things. While some people never figure out blogging and just write about random subjects that are near impossible to monetize, a small percentage of people do figure it out.
Those that do figure out blogging and how to make money from one, treat it as a business and not a brain dump. They learn about keyword research and internet marketing. The really successful ones not only make money from their blogs, but they make a lot of money from their blogs. It’s not uncommon for a successful blogger to make $10k, $20k, or even $30k/month or more from a blog.
How much can a beginner blogger make?
This is the real question isn’t it? How much can you make as a beginner blogger…
Well the answer is not much. With a niche website, or blog, much of the work is front loaded so there isn’t any revenue in the beginning. Even if you are hustling and promoting your site like crazy on every social media platform in existence, you likely won’t see any significant income for 6 months.
For most people it’s going to be over a year before you are seeing any kind of revenue that’s worth mentioning.
This is one of the reasons that most bloggers don’t make it far enough in their journey to see success, they give up too soon.
So if you want an example of how much a beginner blogger makes, I’ll do my best to give you a few examples.
- 3 months in – less than $20/month
- 6 months in – $50-$100/month
- 12 months in – $250-$1k/month
- 24 months in – $1500 – $3k/mo
Like I said, these are just ballpark examples in 2020. It’s getting harder and harder to find success as a blogger as there is more and more competition. But it’s still very possible to get in on the action, if you have the time or money to invest, and the patience. Because you aren’t going to get any rewards for all of your work for quite sometime in the beginning.
Is it easy to become a blogger?
It’s easy in some ways to become a blogger, but also difficult in others. It’s easy in the sense that there is super low barrier to entry. Almost anyone can give it a shot, all you need is about $50 and a computer with internet and you can actually build a money making blog that can potentially one day make you a full time income.
It’s difficult to become a blogger in that it’s difficult to make it past year one and become a successful blogger. That first year involves a lot of grinding and hundreds of hours of work.
If you think you can not only stay the course and continue on the journey, then you have a fighting chance.
But remember, a blog is guaranteed to succeed just because you keep writing for it and going. You can be doomed from the beginning if you mess up one of the first things you do in starting a blog. That is choosing a niche. Choosing the wrong niche, or no niche at all, can make or break you. Which is why you should always research your niche properly before you commit to one.