How Long Does It Take to Make Money with a Content Creation Business?
This is a very “how long is a piece of string” type of question.
For one thing, it’s going to take a heck of a lot longer to earn a full time income if your website is about the care and feeing of axolotls vs if it’s about relationship advice (assuming you give good relationship advice), because:
a) there are more people who have relationships than who have axolotls
b) people are more likely to spend a lot more money on their relationships than their axolotls
Not all niches are created equal.
(Whenever I run into some really obscure niche creator doing really well, the first question I ask is “wow – how long have they been doing this”?! And, without fail, the answer is always the same: a long time. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t start a business in a more obscure niche. It means that you should expect success in an obscure niche to take. a. long. time.)
Let’s assume that you’ve done your homework on niche selection (like, you’ve read my opinion on it lol) and your website is in or adjacent to one of the “main money making niches”.
There’s (of course) loads of non-typical success stories about people who go from 0-10k in 6 months (and nothing saying you can’t be one of those)… but a good rule of thumb (imo) is that you could be seeing steady, meaningful income somewhere around the two year mark – assuming it’s your first attempt AND assuming you put in real, needle-moving time for those first two years.
(If you already have marketing experience, or you’ve grown a content business before + you know what you’re doing, it can take a lot less time!)
My first website reached 5k/month in just under a year (that was in 2016). I worked over 40 hours per week (often up to 60) that whole first year.
I’d told myself when I started (in February 2016) that if I made 10 cents by Christmas I’d keep going. Having realistic expectations for success helped me keep my head down and moving forward.
During the first “unmonetized” while, it’ll feel like you’re just working into a void, and that’s normal. Make peace with that feeling.
Unfortunately, because no two people manage exactly the same output in the same time frame, the question “how long until you can make money with a content business” is hard to answer in terms of “time”.
There’s far better ways to ask this question to get answers that give us clear goals:
How Many Posts Do You Need to Have Published to Make Money?
It’s wildly unlikely that every blog post you ever write will be a hit, and it’s even less likely that you’ll have a lot of hits in your first 50 attempts.
I talk to people who’ve published 2-3 posts per month for a year and they’re frustrated that they’re not making progress despite the fact that a year has passed… but let’s be honest:
24 blog posts does not a business make.
24 blog posts is hardly even a hobby.
You’ll learn a lot in your first 100 blog posts, and I think that should be your first goal:
100 pieces of well thought out, useful, reader-focused content.
There are no pageviews or fans without content… so, when you consider our next two questions, you understand why content must come first:
How Many Pageviews Do You Need to Make Money?
If the main focus of your content creation business is a website (if your content is living on a blog), then your early success is likely going to be measured in “pageviews” or “sessions”.
A session is started each time a user lands on your website, and a pageview is recorded for each page that user views. (So, you can have more pageviews than sessions, but you can’t have more sessions than pageviews.)
There’s all kinds of analytics platforms that measure sessions and pageviews – Google Analytics being the gold standard. You MUST have one of these tools installed to know how many pageviews your website is getting.
As time goes on, you’ll learn how to increase revenue per user, but the first step is just monetizing the users you do have with display ads.
Display ads earnings vary wildly across niche, and requirements for application to ad networks vary as well – with programs (like Journey) requiring only 1000 sessions per month before you can apply and others (like Ezoic) requiring 250,000 sessions per month before you can apply.
Personally, if I were looking to run ads on a new site, I would make my first target 25,000 pageviews/monthly with a goal of applying to the Raptive network. (Apply here, with my referral link!)
If your site is getting a modest $20 session RPM, 25,000 pageviews would earn $500.
($20 RPM is arbitrary. I have site right now that has an RPM at $16 and three that have RPM fluctuating between $45-$50. Learning about what affects RPM is a good idea. Here’s a tool that calculates display ad income based on RPM + sessions – fun to play around with!)
Of course, understanding how we make money with display ads helps us increase earnings and make good choices about our display ads, so make sure you’ve read my full explanation on display ad earnings here – so much more about earning with display ads.
It’s all well and good to have a pageviews goal, and it’s nice to get that ad income established, but as you grow you’ll learn that more and more pageviews is harder and harder to achieve.
25,000 pageviews @ $20 RPM = $500
Doubling your income requires doubling your pageviews.
50,000 pageviews @ $20 RPM = $1000
To ten times your income (which you likely wouldn’t say no to when you’re only making $1000/month) requires ten times the pageviews.
500,000 pageviews @ $20 RPM = $10,000
The math looks nice, but here’s the problem:
It’s really freaking hard to get a website to 500,000 pageviews monthly (and even if you get there, it’s equally hard to maintain).
The “traffic hamster wheel” is the curse of bloggers everywhere… there’s not a blogger I know who isn’t constantly in hot pursuit of more traffic.
Framing the “when can I make money” question in terms of traffic definitely gives it a more tangible answer than framing it terms of time, but the EASIEST answer to this question isn’t available in time or traffic… it’s in people.
How Many True Fans Do You Need to Make Money?
The goal of any content creation business is human attention.
If you want to monetize via display ads, you need their clicks and their eyes.
But if you can take it a step farther – if you can get their interest + dedication – THAT’s the shortest distance between starting a content creation business and producing a real income.
In 2008 Kevin Kelly published a (now infamous) essay about how 1000 true fans can create a 6 figure income for anyone who can cultivate them (read it here).
This concept revolutionized my business and the principle guides the vast majority of the choices I make now. Imo, no other concept will take you farther, faster.
So, When Can You Expect to Make Money with a Content Creation Business?
Give yourself at least two years if you’re working part time, one year if you can manage full time.
2000 hours of real investment, experimenting, and embracing failure.
Make your first goal 100 excellent pieces of published content.
Make your second goal 25,000 pageviews per month.
Make your third goal 1000 people who WANT to hear from you, who are invested in what YOU have to say.
At that point – whenever you reach that point – the money should follow.