How Many Articles Do I Need To Write To Monetize?

I know the amount of articles doesn’t always correlate with how much you earn or how many reads you get, but I’m looking for an estimate. I have 39 articles so far, and 300 website visitors in the last 30 days according to Vercel Analytics. So how many articles do I need to write to monetize the blog? By that I mean with ads. Can y’all give me a clue?

Install Google Analytics first and look at the daily pageviews. Take an average of the last 7 days to come to an estimate. Then, set a goal of reaching 1000 daily pageviews. The article count doesn’t matter here; for example, if you have a blog post ranking first for a keyword with a volume of 1000, you will get around 500 visitors daily.

On average, if you calculate 2 pageviews per visitor, you will easily reach 1000. As of now, you said you have 39 blog posts. Revamp them and push them to rank higher to achieve this goal.

A general guideline is 100 posts. Most of our new builds reach monetization levels of traffic at 100 posts.

That’s 100 quality posts though. No AI garbage, no stock photo garbage. 100 posts of well-researched, custom written, with unique/custom photos and video. 100 posts following all on-page SEO best practices like proper heading structure, file size and dimensions, schema, alt tags, link management, etc.

Where people aren’t able to reach monetization in 1 year with 100 posts, I see a lot of copy/pasted crap from gpt, and stock photos. Those sites aren’t producing “the best” content for their target search terms or in a lot of cases, aren’t producing “anything” at all, just copying AI or stock content.

You get out what you put in; minimum effort = minimum results.

@Johnstone
Quick question about stock photos: I use some paid-for stock photos as supporting, in-article visuals (gardening niche so it’s usually pics of vegetable plants, raised beds, etc.). Is this hurting my SEO if I have an original image as the primary image but 1 or 2 stock photos in the body of the post alongside more original images?

@Wizzy
I have a relationship-based blog and I use stock photos. I also make my own infographics, memes, and videos. I have it set so the stock photos aren’t picked up by search engines, but the others, that are unique to my site are.

@Pulse
How did you set it up so the stock images are not crawled? (I use WordPress. Is this an option?)

Wizzy said:
@Pulse
How did you set it up so the stock images are not crawled? (I use WordPress. Is this an option?)

It’s a setting in the Rankmath plug-in.

Do you want to monetize with ads? You’ll need significant traffic to make meaningful ad revenue. There are many ways to generate money blogging; ads are the toughest; they’re easiest to implement but toughest to make anything.

@Freeman
Would there be an opposite to that? Harder to implement and easier to monetize?

Scott said:
@Freeman
Would there be an opposite to that? Harder to implement and easier to monetize?

Ya. Generally, affiliates are easier to monetize than ads. Paid subscription is amazing and can be easy and lucrative. But the most difficult is products, and it’s the most lucrative by far. Products can be physical or digital.

I have a friend with a blog that is very niche; it’s about a very specific industry. Every year he prints an annual edition with articles and beautiful photography, a coffee table large format print. Very high quality. They sell for $50, and he only sells about 4 or 5 thousand of them, but it’s lucrative.

My blog helps market my brokerage of an expensive custom product, which costs 6 figures each, so getting to 7 figures means only selling 4 or 5 of them. (Not a flex, I’m just illustrating how you can sell different products that are part of your blog or related.)

Be it a book, live event, product; if you have an audience, how can you help them? That’s the number one question. Don’t think, how can I monetize; think how can I help them achieve X, or how can I help this product find an audience.

@Freeman
I think this comment right here illustrates ONE of the reasons many blogs don’t make money.

As you said, the most lucrative way to monetize a blog is to create and sell your own products. But I think most bloggers want to avoid doing that. That’s why they get into blogging.

Blogging, right AND wrong, has a reputation of being a means of earning passive income. And I think when people think of how to monetize a blog, the first thing they think of is Google Adsense (and other such ad programs). On paper, it’s the easiest way to make money, right? You don’t have to create a product, handle orders, ship anything. Heck, your reader doesn’t even have to buy anything! All they have to do is click on an ad. That’s it!

What does that get you, though? Nothing, unless you have a blog that pulls Facebook numbers. Even then, what are you getting from ads versus what are you getting from your own products?

Blogging is attractive because, reputationally (is that a word?), it is a way to make money WITHOUT the hassle of creating a product, handling orders, shipping to customers, handling customer information, and all that. That’s what all the blog posts online talk about when it comes to the wonders of blogging, after all. That’s why affiliate marketing is so popular, too, probably the #2 thing people think of. A little harder than ads, but more lucrative and without all the hassle of running a real business.

But like you said, the most lucrative way to monetize a blog is to create and sell your own products. The problem is that it’s the hardest, and I feel like most people who have a product they want to sell probably aren’t interested in becoming ‘bloggers’.

I’ve no data to back this up, only vibes and the sort of comments I used to see on articles on how to create a blog back in the day. But I’ll use myself as an example. I used to run a retail banking blog once upon a time. I sold no products that were of my own creation and only monetized with Adsense, affiliate links, and sponsored posts. Nothing else, nothing of my own creation. I barely made anything, but I was a ‘blogger’. Now, I plan to eventually start a website dedicated to promoting a series of superhero novels I’m writing. It’s an author website, not a blog, and I plan to sell books, merch, and Patreon subscriptions. But it will also have a blog component, yet in spite of that, I won’t consider myself a ‘blogger’, nor do I expect the affiliate links to generate any real income next to the products I actually create. I expect the money that comes in to come from MY products, not someone else’s. It might be harder and riskier, but I know that it will pay off in the end far more than just doing ads.

Anyhoo, I’m just piggybacking off your comment to agree with you. Enjoy your Like.

@J.cole2
Thank you. I enjoyed that like. And blogging is wonderful without getting paid. The doors it can open are incredible.

@Freeman
I would add that there are better ad services than Google. Also, soliciting your own ads can be really lucrative, particularly if your topic is unique and niche.

It’s not about how many articles you have; it’s about the amount of traffic you generate that makes monetization worthwhile. You’ll need to increase the traffic your blog currently receives before monetizing it. It’s best to start monetizing once you reach around 600 to 1,000 visitors per day.

Keep working on your blog and improving it with more content though!

@Isaac
Okay, understood. Thanks for responding.

@Isaac
+1

I have 39 articles so far

One more. At 40 articles, the money starts flowing. On a serious note, as others said, you need traffic.

1 million and no less.

Kimberly said:
1 million and no less.

Haha, you’re joking, right? Right?

It depends! I’ve seen blogs get monetized in 10 posts and some not get monetized until 250 posts. Just keep writing!