I scaled my blog to over 100,000 pageviews in less than 6 months. Here is a reflection of everything that I learned and how to get to 100,000 pageviews per month.
How to Get to 100,000 Pageviews in 6 Months
Blogging is amazing. I'm hooked.
It's a great way to hold yourself accountable personally, have fun, set goals and crush them. Oh, you get to make some money along the way too. Doesn't that sound fun?
Blogging isn't for everyone. There's plenty of pros and cons of blogging worth considering before you start.
It's a pretty tough gig that doesn't always reap massive benefits. It's a ton of tinkering, learning and optimizing.
But, if you are willing to put in the work. You'll learn a ton about digital marketing along the way.
Here is a snapshot of my growth over 6 months. I launched Financial Wolves in late July/early August.
I've successfully scaled my blog to 100,000 pageviews per month in less than 6 months. I'll highlight a few things I learned along the way to help you get there as well.
If you don't have a blog, I suggest that you use Bluehost to get started. It's only $3.95/month to get started and you will even get a free domain name.
I used Bluehost to scale my first set of websites (and I still use them today). Once my sites grow up and become sustainable sites, I generally switch to Siteground for faster server speed.
Table of Contents
How Many Pageviews Per Month is Good?
Pageviews are somewhat important as a blogger, but they are not the metric you should be keen on.
I'll explain most of that below.
I hate pageviews. I think people should trying to stop targeting pageviews as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for their blog.
Pageviews are not a huge moneymaker. You need to focus only on conversions either in the form of affiliates, course purchases or email opt-ins. That is all.
But…
Pageviews are a great way to start building a foundation for your site, audience and brand.
By using an amazing display advertising partner like Mediavine, pageviews can help you establish a nice foundation of recurring revenue to your site.
So, if you are wondering how many pageviews is good? You need to think about what that translates in terms of customer value and sales.
How Much Income Can be Earned from 100,000 Monthly Pageviews?
Here is a breakdown of what 100,000 monthly pageviews can add up to:
- 100,000 monthly pageviews multiplied $20 RPM (Revenue Per Impression) = $2,000 in monthly display revenue
- 80,000 monthly sessions (not pageviews because you generally only get 1 conversion per user) multiplied by a 3% conversion rate for affiliates multiplied by $2.00 per lead = $4,800 in monthly affiliate revenue
- Imagine if you receive 100 monthly email signups from those sessions. This would be another $200 per customer acquired. This varies depending on the lifetime value of the customer.
So, pageviews do not matter. Not nearly as much as you think. $2,000 in display revenue is not shabby at all, but the gold is in affiliate marketing, courses and email leads.
What should matter is how you are converting. All the numbers above can go up or down depending on how you are converting your customers.
The income opportunity with the most potential is affiliate marketing and courses. But that starts with email leads.
Read more about affiliate marketing with these top books.
6 Helpful Tips I Learned from 0 to 100,000 Monthly Pageviews
As I reflect on making it to 100,000 monthly pageviews, I learned a few helpful tips that I'd love to share with you.
Keep the Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) Always in Mind
Everyone should know the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule. This principle says that 80% of the effects come from 20% fo the causes.
This is directly related to building your audience as I will touch on below.
It also relates directly to everything you do with blogging.
Blogging already takes a ton of time to get started. You can't waste it. Focus on the things that will drive results.
What are the results with blogging?
- Pageviews -> Email Leads -> Conversions -> Sales
So, if it doesn't drive pageviews why are you doing it?
Things like trying to get Twitter followers, Facebook page likes, Instagram fame, etc. will not get you to where you need to go. Yes, building a massive audience on Instagram can be effective once you get there. It will take a very long time to get there, however.
At least not in the interim. You will spend hours on finding followers, building your base and then promoting your content. Focus on things that give you traffic for the lowest cost to start, like these awesome free traffic sources.
I'll come back to these, but some free traffic sources that are highly effective are:
- SEO (through Google, Bing and Yahoo!)
- Quora
- Pinterest (use Tailwind to make your life easier with scheduling pins.. You'll even get a $15 credit when you sign up for free)
- YouTube
These are all very different platforms that have different purposes. But they are effective for generating revenue. I've found that Twitter is less effective from a revenue standpoint.
Instagram is good for revenue if you have a large enough following. It takes significant work to get there.
Get comfortable with each of them to determine how you want to use them to promote your brand and site.
Plan Your Content Around Capturing an Audience
I used Leadpages and ConvertKit to accelerate my audience building. Leadpages offers a free 14-day trial to get started. It's a great free way to see what subscriber growth you can achieve for free.
Having both Leadpages and ConvertKit is likely overkill, but I like the functionality of both and they each serve different purposes for me.
During that timeframe, I doubled my audience and I was off to the races. I never looked back as it helped take my blog to the next level.
Check out this chart of my growth over a 7-month timeframe (using a prior blog). I replicated this exact process from the beginning with my site now.
That growth doesn't come easy though. You'll likely need to promote your product and do a few things to create your audience with success.
There are plenty of ways to capture emails with the content you already have.
However, if you are starting out and want to get to 100,000 pageviews… Work your content around the type of leads that you want to capture.
Examples of creating content to capture your leads are:
- Say you are targeting debt repayment strategies, you should start creating content with lead magnets related to helping people reduce their debt. Then, build content around that like tips for repaying debt. Drive traffic to those posts.
- I love real estate investing as a side hustle. So, I created a free financial model that helps people invest in real estate the same way I do.
If your content doesn't help get you more leads which means more sales… Why are you publishing it?
If your content doesn't help get you more leads which means more sales... Why are you publishing it? Click To Tweet
If you want to learn how I think about building an audience, check out my free email course.
Free Audience Building Email Course
If you are considering launching a blog, you should join my free email course to help you build an audience and start making money with your website.
Once you start building an email list, you can navigate pageviews, sales and growth however you want to.
You should be positioned to capture readers and subscribers for those mini-viral moments. Because you will have them. It's one of the reasons why I was able to capture the readers and keep them coming back.
Things like this after a few media outlets picked up on my article…
If you don't focus on capturing readers that continually want to come back, your compounded returns diminish over time.
Keyword Research Like a Pro
I won't give you a full guide on SEO. There are plenty of guides out there for that. Plus, there's a lot to cover.
I believe that scaling a website through SEO starts with keyword research.
I put most of my blogging expenses towards that too. It pays off.
There are far too many bloggers out there that think it can get done by cutting corners or not investing in the right tools for success. For me, it's pretty obvious:
- Ahrefs: Ahrefs is an SEO tool that is extremely powerful. You can use it to find link outreach opportunities and do keyword research. The options are endless. It's not cheap though. I pay for the $179/month version. Let's just say I don't have a problem earning that money back each month.
- Keysearch: I love Keysearch. I started with this tool and still use it because it's simply too cheap. It's a good gut check to other keyword research tools out there. It's only $17/month and you can bulk check keyword difficulty, track your rankings and so much more. Want to know more? Read more in our Keysearch review.
Again with the tools to help you succeed. I can't stress it enough. How do you think you are going to get an edge over your competition if you aren't using the right tools?
Also, if you aren't willing to invest in yourself or your business should you really be starting the business in the first place? I'll let you be the judge of that.
Determine Content Profitability (Upfront)
Your blog content is your product. I created a nifty free ad revenue calculator that will help you determine the profitability of a potential blog post.
You need to optimize your strategy upfront. If you are going to put up that much work upfront (trust me writing blog posts takes a lot of time), you should get properly compensated for it.
Does Apple or Microsoft release new products without looking at the margin of the product or if it will even be profitable?
I highly doubt it. No investor would be pleased if that were the case.
They'd struggle with growth along the way as well.
In order to determine your content profitability and the value of an additional page, evaluate the following:
- Does the page offer an opt-in or lead magnet? Each lead that converts on that page could be worth $1-2 per lead (depending on your lead and ability to convert.
- Do you offer display ads? Every 1,000 impressions on that particular page could mean $20 of revenue (depending on your niche).
- Do you incorporate affiliate ads? Each conversion from 1,000 sessions at a 3% rate would mean 30 conversions. At a CPL of $5 that is $150 of revenue.
This is the type of analysis you should continually think about with blogging.
See Related: Blogging vs Vlogging – What's the Difference?
Outreach, Collaborate and Help Others
Outreach, outreach and outreach some more. To me, outreach isn't simply sending thousands of emails asking for a collaboration.
Outreach is talking to brands, engaging with similar content sites, connecting with journalists and so much more.
If you are a writer, you should always think about using credible sources. Do some outreach to get some expert advice on a particular topic.
These individuals will be happy to promote your piece for you because it helps them along the way too.
See Related: Best Blogging Tools to Increase Revenue
Always Be Working on Your Site
This is a bit different than outreach. I like to use the Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) approach with this…
Just do stuff that helps improve your site.
You should always be doing something that involves your site. What does that mean? Here are a few examples that can fill free time that will drastically improve your user experience, which will enhance revenue:
- Add new pieces of content to high performing articles
- Optimize existing pages for lead magnets to capture additional leads
- Squeeze out additional monetization on pages (add in relevant affiliate links)
- Connect with people in your blogging community
- Drop links in Facebook communities or send emails to people in your local area that would find your information helpful
- Ask fellow bloggers for collaboration opportunities (contributions, guest posts, etc.)
You should continue to have a list like the above on repeat.
Whenever you have dead time and don't know what to do, simply do 2-3 of these above tasks per day. It will go a long way.
See Related: Should You Create an LLC for Your Blog?
Conclusion on Scaling to 100,000 Pageviews per Month
What is your end goal? Start there and build backward. This is a business and you should treat it as such.
Here are some helpful summarized tips to understand where you should go with your blog:
- Use tools to make your life easier.
- Always take action. If you have a pocket of time, you should improve your content, outreach to people, share your posts, interact on forums, etc. Keep pushing and keep acting.
- Treat your site like a business. If you lose money on something, is it worth doing? Don't be afraid to bring on help with your website.
- Find where growth works. Once you find it, excel at it. Cut the fat on what is not working. It's not worth your time.
Take your blog seriously. It's a great opportunity to build a network of new friends, learn and maybe make a few bucks along the way.
You never know where blogging will take you in life. Some of us need it to get away from the routine day-to-day life.
I hope some of these tips will help you become a better blogger and reach your goals. Please contact me using our form in the contact page if you have any specific questions. I'm here to help.