When trying to make money online as a beginner, we often find ourselves immersed in a world of tutorials and people who have reached success talking about it. A common theme among new bloggers is wondering how long things take. Milestones and such. Common questions are: how long does it take to make money blogging or how long does it take to reach a full-time income blogging. Another common question I see is: how long does it take to get organic traffic from Google? All of these questions have answers, though they probably aren’t the answers you’d like to hear.
Let’s have a closer look at the latter question, and I’ll give you my thoughts on getting organic traffic to a new blog and what you should know.
How long does it take to get organic traffic from Google?
First let’s get the part of this answer where I say “it varies based on your niche and topic selection, it takes a different amount of time for everyone” out of the way. I think you probably already knew that anyway.
If you want a ballpark amount of time for someone who is really giving it their all, then here’s my answer.
Getting a decent amount of organic traffic from Google to a brand new domain can take anywhere from 6-9 months for most people. That’s if you’ve done the following items correctly:
- Niche selection
- Article topic selection
- Article formatting and overall quality
- Published 30-60 articles in the first 90 days, front-loaded as much as possible.
That brings us to the term “decent” that I used. That is really relative. I consider a decent amount of traffic at this stage to only be 30-50 users/day. That may not sound like much, but it means the flood gates are now cracked open. You can now watch those daily user numbers grow and grow.
So it’s really best to shoot for lower milestones like this. Don’t have your sights set on 10,000 monthly users on the day you publish your first article. It’s going to be a long road and if you set your sights too high like that you’re headed for disappointment.
Instead, aim low. Look forward to a steady 10 organic users/day. Then 100… and so on.
What I expect
As someone who has grown sites to 100,000 monthly users multiple times, this is about what I expect for new sites:
- Months 1-6: Nothing. I’m not concerned by close to no traffic at all.
- Months 6-9: Signs of life. This is the range where I expect maybe 3k-10k monthly users to start visiting.
- Months 9-12: A site starts earning some money. In this range I expect 20k-30k users/month and around $500-$1000/month
- Months 12-18: Significant traffic. By this point I’m expecting to be getting 50k-100k users/month, on a premium ad network like Adthrive or Mediavine, and earning $3k-$5k/month.
- Months 18 and beyond: 100k users/month+ minimum, and $5k/month+. Once you reach this point, assuming you haven’t boxed yourself into a tiny niche or something, you cam really scale up into 5 (or even 6) figures in revenue each month.
What is the Google sandbox?
The Google sandbox refers to a period of time when a new website is not ranking well in Google search. The term “sandbox” is possibly indicative of your website being a child and net ready to be ranked. It could also mean that your website is not yet trusted by Google.
During these early months of a new website it will seem like Google hates you and your website. What Google is really doing is slowly getting to know your website. Your content is constantly being vetted and evaluated by Google’s algorithm.
Considering there are millions of websites that have been waiting in line longer than you, your website just doesn’t deserve to be on page one whether you like it or not. It takes time. That’s why it’s called the Google sandbox period.
Is the Google sandbox even real?
According to Google themselves and many professional SEO’s the answer is no, the sandbox is more of a myth. Even if there is not an actual thing called the Google sandbox, does that really make it a myth? In my opinion the sandbox is real simply because the early period of not easily ranking in the SERP is real.
That period may not have an official name, but I call it the sandbox. New websites don’t rank well for several months even though the URL’s may be indexed, that’s just a fact.
How long does the Google sandbox last?
In my personal experience the sandbox period lasts between 6-12 months. I’ve had websites that really took off at 5 months, and other ones that took closer to a year. It depends on things like the competition level, topic selection, and skill level.
For most people though, you aren’t going to see much activity in the first 6 months of blogging. If you go into this business that’s something you’ll need to know going in. It’s why most bloggers fail, they give up before anything happens.
How to get organic traffic to your blog early on
As I mentioned above, there’s not a whole lot you can do early on. However, there are a few things you can do to help speed up the process or at least make sure it doesn’t take longer than expected.
Some may be obvious, but let’s have a look at 5 tips to help get traffic to a new blog.
1. Target low competition topics
This almost goes without saying. In the beginning you should target low competition keywords. This is so that you can rank on the first page for searches early on and get some traffic trickling in. Most times, low-competition means low volume, but not always. Always watch out for low competition and medium to high volume, it’s like finding buried treasure.
Having said that, don’t go too low-competition. If you go off the map with obscure topic choices, then you’ll probably miss the mark here. You’ve got to find the gray area that you can operate in.
2. High-quality, well-structured content
Make sure that your content is well-researched, properly structured, has good use of subheadings, and any grammar errors and typos are kept to a minimum. The goal here is content that’s easy to scan, and easy skim over. Easily digestible.
Keep your sentences short, and your paragraphs shorter. It’s also my opinion that Google rewards content that is properly formatted and well structured with proper use of headings and various HTML elements. It’s just an opinion, but it’s also just good practice to have nice looking articles.
3. Front-load content
If you’re at all serious about having a go at blogging and getting traffic as soon as possible, then you need to front load a chunk of content. What I mean by this is publish a lot of content right at first.
I typically do 30-60 posts in the first 30 days of a new site if I can. That gets all of those URL’s marinating in the SERP’s as quickly as possible, which really pays off about 6 months down the road.
4. Publish content that attracts links
You’re also welcome to build links through outreach and hurry your site along, it can certainly work. It can also be risky and expensive, so I choose not to do it. Instead I publish content that attracts links naturally.
You’ll have to figure out what type of content is best in your niche to attract links. If you create a killer piece of content that you’re proud of, you may want to do some outreach and try to secure a few links manually. I have a handful of large articles I could do that with but I just don’t.
5. Don’t give up
In the first several months, maybe even a year, the question will inevitably pop into your head. “Should I just give up?”
Even though I may have briefly considered failure as an option, I never really entertained the idea. I was pretty determined from the beginning to eventually make money with niche websites. It was initially just meant to be a side-gig, I never thought it would turn into a real business.
Now it’s my full time job and I’m earning more income than I ever could have at my old job. Sure, the internet could go away tomorrow and I’m screwed. But you can also get fired from a job.
Final notes
In the end, our hands are kind of tied when it comes to getting organic traffic to a new blog. The most important thing we can do as publishers is keep churning out good content, and not give up when things are looking bleak.
It takes time for a new domain to get traction, even with tons of content being published to it. Just go ahead and bank on a year going by before you see anything significant happening if you are a beginner. Having said that, there are outliers and you could be one of them!