How long it takes to grow a successful blog is one of the questions every blogger has asked at some point in their blogging journey.
The short answer is 4 – 6 months, sometimes up to 12 months. The long answer is “a successful blog” is relative, to say the least. What is considered a successful blog depends a lot on the perspective of the definer.
Every blog has an owner and for most owners, ability to generate income defines a successful blog. However, not all blogs are monetized. What then is the yardstick for measuring the successes of blogs that are not monetized?
What is a Successful Blog?
There are a number of parameters we’ve identified that either individually or jointly define a successful blog. Let’s take a look at some of them below.
- Page Views
- Income
- Google Ranking
- Comments
- Subscribers
- Etc.
For example, a blog with a rich combination of page views, Google ranking and subscribers could altogether generate good income for its owner. That’s a successful blog. So also a non-income generating blog with a high Google ranking, page views and commenters is equally a successful blog.
1. Page Views
Number of page views is not exactly a general yardstick for measuring the success of blogs in different niches. How much traffic your website should be getting depends on 3W factors:
- What is your business about?
- Who are your audience?
- What is your strategy?
Studies have shown that adult contents sites top the charts for sites with the most page views. A study of some of the top ranking porn sites revealed an average of 1 million page views on a monthly basis.
So, Blog A in a similar niche as discussed above might consider 300,000 page views in its twelfth month unsuccessful.
On the other hand, Blog B, an SEO blog averaging 300,000 page views a month in its twelfth month might consider itself to be highly successful.
So, it takes Blog B 12 months to grow a successful blog but takes Blog A over a year or more to become nearly as successful as its industry competitors.
The relativity here is how much traffic do you consider your industry success benchmark?
2. Income
For most people, the amount of income generated is what defines a successful blog. However, the real question is how much money do you consider to be a good income?
Google AdSense has a payment threshold of $100. So, technically, Google AdSense is of the opinion that you’ve become a successful blogger when you earn at least $100 a month! A $100 monthly income earned from your monetized blog is a huge success if it can pay your monthly bills. More succinctly, such a blog is successful if $100 is the commensurate monetary value for the time and other resources invested into your blog.
The folks at Financial Samurai are of the opinion that $1000 to $10,000 is the ideal income a blog publishing 3x a week of targeted content should be generating in its first year.
So, if you agree with the folks at Financial Samurai and you consider $1000 to be the monetary value of all efforts put into your blog for a month, then the real question is how long did it take successful blogs in your niche to make $1000?
3. Google Ranking
Google ranking is an important determinant of a blog that could be termed successful. The reason for this is not so farfetched. Having a blog that ranks among the top 3 on search engines is a huge success no doubt.
Our study of how long before Google ranks your new website revealed that with good SEO, it takes between 4 – 6 months and sometimes even a year. So if you define a successful blog as one that ranks high on Google, then it takes exactly that long to grow a successful blog.
How to Grow Your Blog Faster
You are probably wondering “how long does it take to grow a successful blog” because of your not-so-fast growing traffic? Just so you know? You’re not alone. Every blogger has been there at some point in their path to owning a successful blog.
Now that you know that everyone has been there at some point, what then can you do to make your blog grow faster? In just a bit, you’re going to learn all about how to grow your blog faster and keep your readers coming back for more.
Below are 7 helpful tips to help you increase your blog readership and grow your blog.
- Take SEO serious
- Have a responsive blog
- Engage with your audience
- Encourage your readers to share your contents
- Publish quality contents that satisfy your readers needs
- Network with other bloggers
- Become a contributor for other blogs
1. Take SEO serious
Your SEO is probably the most intentional effort you must make for the success of your blog. Search engine optimization is the only way you can get organic traffic for your blog. These 5 essential SEO elements will help you develop a solid SEO strategy for your blog.
2. Have a responsive blog
A responsive blog is one that displays correctly across all types of devices, including mobile and desktop. It is especially important that you have a mobile-friendly site because it has been said that more than 50% of internet traffic come from mobile devices.
Keeping your site highly responsive decreases your bounce rate and helps your site visitors have the best user experience while on your blog.
3. Engage with your audience
No blog can ever be successful without an audience. It is important that you take the high road when it comes to engaging your blog audience. Apart from publishing contents that are engaging, replying to their questions and getting feedback on your blog and other social channels is a great way to engage with your readers and keep them coming back for more.
While a lot of readers might not leave you comments or any feedback at all, some others do go through great lengths to drop you their comments and questions when they read something they relate with. So, you should never leave your blog comments unattended to.
4. Encourage your readers to share your contents
This is like the case of someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows an elf! Social media has become such a powerful tool for reaching out to others in a geometric progression.
There’s no limit to the virality of a post shared on social media with a call to share further. After you’ve published those amazing contents, make sure to share. Also encourage your blog readers to make use of their share buttons.
5. Publish quality contents that satisfy your readers’ needs
Publishing quality contents that meet your audiences’ needs is a sure way to build trust over time. Search algorithms are constantly being updated with the goal being to serve users only quality contents that meet their search intent.
6. Network with other bloggers
You need a network of other bloggers in your industry to grow a successful blog. There are a number of proven ways you can take advantage of such networks. You can interview an industry top shot; you can reach out to them for backlinking purposes or to become a contributor on their blog.
Working with a network of other bloggers helps to gain valuable insights from each other while working together to grow each others blogs.
7. Become a contributor for other blogs
Contributing to other blogs, especially top blogs in your niche is a great way to market yourself to a larger audience.
Your profile as a contributor to top blogs is your pitch to their larger audience to see more of your works on your own blog. This is a great way to build trust and enhance your credibility to a larger audience on a massive scale.
Conclusion
Now that we’ve shared some industry tips on how to grow your blog like a pro, I would like to leave you a final thought on how long it takes to grow a successful blog.
A triangular relationship exists between the trio of a high ranking blog, page views and income generated. How long it takes to grow a successful blog can be rephrased to imply how long it takes to attain a certain success bench mark peculiar to blogs in your niche.
If what defines a successful blog for you is the number of commenters or subscribers, then the answer is how long does it take for your industry number of commenters and subscribers to come along.
We hope you’ve found this exposition on how long it takes to grow a successful blog really helpful.
Do let us learn of your experience growing your blog thus far in the comment section below. Thanks.