Often as bloggers, especially when starting one, we look at the blog traffic and blog income numbers others are achieving.
And it may seem impossible to ever reach those numbers.
However, it is good to have a little perspective on it, so you don’t give up.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
Understanding the math behind blogging won’t help you get the traffic you’re looking to achieve. Unfortunately, getting traffic, especially in the beginning, is challenging and a whole separate topic.
But it can ease how you’re feeling about how many visitors your site has. And how many it needs on a smaller scale to achieve the traffic you desire.
Additionally, putting your blogging numbers in perspective can help you understand how to monetize your site better based on your traffic.
Blog Traffic: The Most Important Number of Blogging
When it all comes down to it, the number of visitors to your blog is going to drive everything else about your blog for the most part, right?
While it is possible to monetize a site with lower traffic numbers, for the examples below, I’m going to use 25,000 sessions per month.
I choose that number because that is the minimum traffic requirement for the Mediavine ad network, something a lot of bloggers strive to do to move beyond Google AdSense.
Monthly Blog Sessions
When you only have traffic in the hundreds of sessions per month, or even less, 25,000 sessions can seem unobtainable.
However, let’s break that number down.
- 25,000 visitors per month
- Approximately 833 visitors per day
- About 17 visitors per US state per day
Thinking about how many visitors per day in each state in the US that you would need is much easier to picture than the total per month.
I can easily fathom a room of 17 people visiting my website. I have a hard time picturing more people than can fit in a typical NBA arena visiting my website.
And the great thing about the internet is, based on your niche, your audience can include the entire world. According to Internet World Stats, North America only accounts for about 7.2% of all internet users.
Retail Store vs. Online Traffic
If you consider a typical physical store, 17 people aren’t that many to visit each day.
And that would be a single store, not one in every city in the entire state.
For reference, there are approximately 445,000 brick-and-mortar retail stores in the US as of 2018, according to Statista.
I don’t know about you, but during a typical week, I probably only go to 2 or 3 stores.
However, according to bluelist.co, a typical person performs 3-4 Google searches every day.
And they have access to every public website around the world.
Now, according to internet live stats, there are over 1.7 billion websites. However, less than 200 million of them are active.
It seems daunting, but if people perform 3-4 searches a day and there are over 4 billion internet users in the world, that’s 12-16 billion searches every day.
Yes, a majority of those searches won’t be on the topics you cover in your blog.
And until you have content ranking on Google, you won’t get much exposure to those searches. But, once you are ranking, the potential exposure to those searches is vast.
But think about the physical store example.
Those 17 people in that store are only exposed to what is in that store or stores nearby.
However, your posts can potentially be found by millions of people across the entire country searching every day. And billions around the world.
And to reach 25,000 monthly sessions, you only need about 833 people to find it each day. That is less than 0.0003% of the US population. And that is less than 0.0001% of the searches.
Again, getting your site to be visible to that potential traffic is one thing, but once it is, the numbers aren’t quite as daunting on a smaller scale.
Individual Page Traffic
For traffic, there is one other important consideration I’d like you to consider.
If you look at the top traffic pages for a lot of sites, you’ll notice that typically the top two or three articles drive a vast majority of the overall site traffic.
You can see this by using a tool like Ubersuggest. This site is useful for looking at your blogging numbers as well.
If you look at those top articles getting a majority of the traffic, you’ll see that they typically cover a unique topic, are comprehensive guides to a particular topic, or do an excellent job fulfilling the search intent.
That is why content planning is so vital.
You want to come up with ideas that others haven’t covered very well, that you can discuss from a unique perspective, or that you can fulfill the search intent better than others.
Anything to make your article stand out from the others has the potential to draw more traffic in the future.
Blog Monthly Income: The Blogging Number Most Important to You
While traffic is the most critical blogging number overall, your blog’s monthly revenue is most likely more relevant to you individually.
A typical long-term goal for a new blogger is to become a six-figure blogger. So let’s break that number down as we did for traffic previously.
- $100,000 per year
- Approximately $8,333 per month
- About $278 per day
For a typical job, that would be just under $35 per hour based on an 8-hour workday. But the internet is open 24 hours a day, so it is around $12 per hour.
Blog Monetization
So, how do you make $278 per day? Well, there are many different ways to monetize your blog. However, for simplicity, I’m going to discuss the three most popular.
Advertisements
Banner ads from networks like Google AdSense, Mediavine, and Ad Thrive can generate a decent amount of money depending on your niche and traffic.
If your traffic is in the thousands of page views or less per month, you likely won’t exceed $1,000 in ad revenue each month.
However, as your traffic grows into the tens of thousands and up, you can make a bit more and sometimes a lot more.
But, for a lot of bloggers, while they may make 2-3 thousand dollars on advertising, it typically isn’t a majority of their blog income unless it is the only way they monetize their site.
Advertisements are a great way to start out monetizing your site once you have established traffic. However, be careful when using ads and use them sparingly. Nobody likes a website that is plastered full of them.
So when looking to make $278 per day for the example above, after you have established significant traffic, you might expect $65-$100 dollars per day from ads. However, it may take a long time to reach that range.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing, like advertising, is going to be dependant on traffic.
However, there are wide variations in what you can make with affiliate marketing.
Some programs may pay you $1 based on signing up for an account, while others will pay significantly more based on selling their product.
A popular program people use to monetize their sites is Amazon Associates. Amazon pays a percentage based on the category of the product a customer is purchasing. Again, an Amazon Affiliate site’s revenue potential is related to the niche and traffic.
For a more straightforward example, let’s look at Bluehost’s affiliate program. The commission is $65 for each qualified hosting purchase.
To make $278 per day, you’d need 4-5 of your referrals to purchase hosting using your link every day.
Again, your profit potential with affiliate marketing is going to be determined by the kind of affiliates you work with, as well as traffic to your site and how well it converts.
Affiliate marketing can be very profitable, with many bloggers making over $10,000 per month in affiliate marketing alone.
I’d recommend promoting a variety of affiliate products on your site. But don’t promote items just because you can. Promote them because you are a current or past user and believe in the product.
Digital Products and Courses
Digital products can include several things like checklists, short guides, photographs, or complete courses.
The great thing about making and selling a digital product is the passive income nature of it. Once you put in the work upfront, it can continue to sell for months or even years without any additional work.
While site traffic can help earn more money with products sold on your site, having an email list can help you make a decent amount of money on a lower traffic site.
With an email list, you can build trust with your customers over time. This trust will help improve conversion rates when you suggest products to your list.
For example, let’s say you have an email list of 10,000 people. After gaining their trust, you recommend they try a new course that you’ve created for $100. If only 1% of the people on your list buy your course, you make $10,000.
And there are many courses out there that sell for significantly more.
Additionally, for those that didn’t purchase your course, you can continue to build trust with them or offer them other products, which may result in sales later.
You could potentially make a month’s income in a couple of days with the release of a course to your email list. And then you can expect residual sales after that.
While it may take some time to grow your email list, it is an indispensable tool to have as a blogger.
It is your own captive audience.
And it isn’t affected by changes Google makes to its search algorithm that may drop your site traffic.
Diversification is Key to Achieving the Blogging Income Numbers You Desire
Whatever methods you use for monetizing your site, it is always best to have diversity in those methods.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution since each site is different. And different monetization strategies are going to work better for different websites.
But having a diverse strategy will help protect against sudden drops in traffic or other issues with your site, as well as being able to have multiple income paths from your blog to achieve, and hopefully exceed, the $278 per day to become a six-figure blogger.
Summary
Whether you are hoping for 25,000 visitors or making $100,000 a year as a blogger, those numbers can be intimidating.
But by breaking down those numbers to a more manageable scale, you can see that they are achievable. Many others have done it, and so can you.
How do you go about setting goals for your blogging numbers? Are there other examples of how you like to break down those big numbers to make them more feasible? Please share in the comments below.
