This post was most recently updated on October 16th, 2023

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[This article was originally published in April 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.]

How many months have you started blogging? Are you going to enter 6 months of blogging soon?

It has been 10 months since I started blogging in June 2020. I have passed 6 months of blogging and soon will celebrate a year of my blogging journey! It’s crazy how fast time flies and how things progress so far. 

I didn’t even notice that I had been doing all my blogging routines for 10 months. Not only me, I thought everyone was never really aware of timing or anything because you’re passionate about what you do. So I have found that if I really love what I do, then time flies.

It’s been so CRAZY for the first two months of blogging. There are many tiring and pleasant things that I have experienced. I can say it’s been a really fun challenge after starting to work from home last year.

Everything that I learned was really worth it for the growth of my blog. I always plan my blog content in advance (altho I like to change the order of publishing), try my best to stick with my daily blogging schedule, optimize my SEO game to increase my domain authority, and many MORE.

However, without knowing what you should monitor or do next after 6 months of blogging could be so overwhelming. You’re not sure how many pageviews you should aim for after that 6 months period. Which aspects do you have to pay attention to more to increase your blog traffic or to make money blogging?

Well, for numbers, personally I think there’s no definite answer. No exact number to measure how much traffic or money you should achieve before entering six months of blogging.

6 Months of Blogging is the Hardest

Before getting to know what you should achieve in six months of blogging, I will let you know why the first 6 months of blogging are the hardest – according to many bloggers.

No one reading your blog

Why is no one reading your blog? I have a whole post covering this particular topic.

Apart from the blog aspects (design or content), you need to focus on connections – that make you successful in the online community. I got some questions on both Twitter and Instagram about how I grow my social accounts so fast.

My answer is: engaging.

I always wonder why most new bloggers don’t spend much time engaging or networking with other bloggers. I received so much support and love from bloggers around the world. I know this step is very important in taking your blog to the next level when you build a trusted audience from the beginning.

How to connect or network with others as a new blogger?

There’s no way you can get a wider reach for your blog if you don’t spend quality time connecting with other bloggers.

• Schedule your time for engaging with others on social media platforms that you find the best – for me Twitter and Instagram.
• Spend time commenting on others’ blogs. Never leave blog comments less than 8 words or “Great post. Thanks for sharing!”. Always read their posts thoroughly and make meaningful comments. This way you will be able to get their attention and some traffic to your blogs.
• Guest posting is the best way to get more reach to your blog posts especially if it’s brand new. Spend time analyzing your targeted blog topics and writing suitable posts for them.

You barely get enough traffic

Traffic is the lifeblood of any successful blog. Most bloggers quit before 6 months of blogging because they don’t see any traffic they expected.

In the first 6 months, you won’t get much traffic without having any online engagement. Trust me, I have done this in the first month and I know it’s quite hard to get thousands of visitors from a brand-new blog.

I spend hours engaging and promoting my blog on Twitter – it’s really worth the time if you see the proof of my 1st-month blogging below.

Unfortunately, there are no shortcut ways to get huge traffic to your blog posts. If your blog is brand new, focusing on increasing your blog traffic from search engines is a waste of time because organic traffic takes time (sometimes it may take years to get traffic from specific keywords). But, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t learn SEO from the beginning, okay?

My best recommendation is to focus on getting traffic from social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. It doesn’t matter what day you posted your post, you need to promote your post on these channels because they can give you a lot of traffic.

But you should build a brand for yourself on these channels to get others’ attention. Here are a few tips on how to do that.

• Send friend requests or follow some bloggers in your niche using Facebook, Twitter,  Instagram, or Pinterest and connect with them.
• Try to get more followers on Twitter. Try to be active on Twitter and share quality links on your Twitter timeline. You can use Buffer or other schedulers to schedule your tweets. I usually schedule less than 9 promotional tweets/day. Don’t also engage in following for following the game, it would be good if you follow someone because s/he inspires you.
• Share their content on your social media channels. This can help them to recognize you. If they find your content valuable or aligns with their niche, sooner or later, they will also start promoting your posts.
• Use Facebook groups to your advantage, there are a lot of groups where you can promote your posts. Don’t forget to return their favor as well.

You can also invest in Ana’s blog traffic ebook (100+ pages of tips and strategies). It helps you with blog traffic, SEO, social media strategy, and bonuses like 100 places to promote your blog and 100 Facebook groups for bloggers!

You don’t know how to write for your audiences or search engines

It takes a lot of time to get good at writing and you need to convince both your readers and search engines to build a profitable blog. For me, I spent more days writing a post that required a lot of research.

Here are a few things to keep in mind to satisfy both.

• Write for your readers first (that solves their problems) then optimize for search engines.
• Try to write longer posts instead of 500-600 short posts. Short posts don’t rank high in a competitive niche. Find out what is the average blog post length to get rank in Google.
• Linking is the key to getting more traffic – remember to link your posts to relevant old posts and external links with high authority.
• Whenever you use others’ images or references, give them credit by linking to their sites. Do your best to blog legally.

If you do the above tasks every time you write a post, you will soon notice a change in your traffic and Google definitely rewards your site by giving top ranking to your keywords. Just focus on producing quality content all the time.

Do’s and Don’ts

In the first 6 months of blogging, most people make a lot of mistakes that can decide the fate of their blog. Check out some of the blogging mistakes that you need to avoid to build a better blog in the long run.

You don’t make money

First things first, it’s almost impossible to make money in the first 6 months of blogging. A new blog doesn’t make money so quickly unless you already build a big presence on social media (like an influencer on Instagram) and then decide to make a blog from it.

When you’re a new blogger, people may not be interested in buying your products or affiliate products because they don’t know who you are or they are not aware of what you sell.

Similarly, you might not have enough traffic to earn money through different ad programs like Google AdSense or Mediavine. So, YES, it’s hard to make money in the first 6 months of your blogging journey.

How do I make money then?

Always remember, there are no shortcuts to making money online. You have to learn from your mistakes and be consistent in your efforts.

You have to be consistent, and persistent, and never give up on your dreams. Then and only then you will have more chances to make money from your blogging efforts.

Here are some tips to start making income from your blog

• Join affiliate marketing programs and promote their products through blog posts.
• Invest in affiliate resources to learn more about the strategies.
• Create and sell products that fit your niche and are helpful to your audience.

If you need a valuable guide to start making money through affiliate marketing, Neesha’s affiliate marketing ebook will take you through the process of making money with affiliate marketing – use code ‘monodreame’ to get 30% off.

Goals you should achieve in the first 6 months of blogging

These are not ideal goals but real goals you should aim for in the first 6 months of blogging to take your blog to the next level in 2021 and beyond. If you haven’t reached these goals in your first 6 months, then you need to continue working your way to achieve them.

Have 1000 Twitter followers

I didn’t remember exactly when I achieved my 1000 Twitter followers. But I’m sure I hit that before my 6 months of blogging because my monthly average is 100-200 followers.

As someone who spends time more on Twitter than any social platform, Twitter is the most powerful social media that can bring you a ton of targeted visitors to your blog no matter what niche you are in. Traffic coming from Twitter converts way better than any other social media platform including Facebook, Instagram, and so on.

The best way to generate more traffic from Twitter is to increase your following. While the number is not everything and it’s not so easy to get more followers especially when you’re starting out, you can aim to get your first 1000 followers in the first 6 months.

Here are simple tips you can do to increase your Twitter following:

• Find a list of bloggers in your niche, follow them IF you find their feeds worth following/they inspire you and also start following their followers too.
• Engage in Twitter daily threads to get attention from others.
• Share daily comment threads so people will engage and eventually will follow you – it’s your choice to follow them or not.

Publish 50 blog posts

When starting out, I suggest you should publish as many blog posts as possible. That doesn’t mean you need to write and publish a post every single day. Instead, before launching your blog, you need to have at least 10-15 posts READY to publish and another 3-5 drafts for another date.

Do you know why? When your blog is new, the first thing you need is to increase its traffic. People also want to read your content, but if you only have 1-2 posts, how you will get more traffic? Especially from search engines.

You never know which blog posts will receive more traffic, so you need to find out the RIGHT content that works well for your audience. The only way to do that is to create at least 50 blog posts in the first 6 months after starting your blog. I have 71 posts in 6 months of blogging.

Publish at least 10 guest posts

Without a doubt, guest posting is the most effective way to build dofollow links and increase your domain authority (DA). Your goal should be to be able to publish at least 10 guest posts on sites that have higher DA than you. Mine is 10 so I aim to write 2-3 guest posts/month to DA 10+ or 15+.

Since the beginning of 2021, I noticed an increase in my DA when I decided to write guest posts regularly. It went up +1 every month – 8 (January), 9 (February), and 10 (March). Nice isn’t it?

So start writing guest posts at least once a week or twice a month for other relevant blogs in your niche.

Create and build at least one income stream

If you’re completely new to the blogging world, you should know one thing it takes a TON of time and skills to earn a decent or steady income from blogging.

If you only blog for fun or a hobby, it doesn’t really matter whether you make an income or not. But for you who start blogging for business, to earn additional income, or as a side hustle, most bloggers never make even $100 from their blogs in the first 6 months (or even more). It’s the truth.

So to avoid such a situation of making no money, you must find at least one income source that you can cash in on.

Thus, focus on those income streams that help you earn money even while you sleep instead of finding ways to earn money only when you work. Here are a few passive income sources you can try;

• Affiliate marketing
• Creating and selling your own products

If you don’t know what affiliate program to join, allow me to save you hours of research and give you access to 600+ high-paying affiliate programs to choose from. 

Have at least 5 pillar blog posts

Pillar blog posts contain a ton of USEFUL information. I have 6 pillar blog posts and two of them are a massive article on blogging mistakes (around 2,600 words) and how to increase your DA (around 2,800 words) – and this article is about 2,800 as well (it’s actually 4,000 words but I divide into 2 articles).

Pillar blog posts are helpful for:

• Increasing your search traffic, social shares, and comments
• Attracting quality links from other sites
• Increasing your readership and so on

Increase your blog traffic from 100 to 200 views a day

If you’re just starting out, it’s extremely difficult to get decent visitors from search engines. That’s why you should take baby steps and focus on achieving small goals. Instead of aiming thousands of visitors to your site, try to attract 100 visitors a day within 6 months and you’ll be on your way to success.

I’ve read on one of the Facebook groups that most bloggers are struggling to get steady traffic in 3-6 months. Turned out that many of them didn’t promote their content, or engage on social platforms, their contents weren’t helpful, and yeah many aspects caused it. You can’t just publish your post, and wait until the miracle happens to bring someone stumbles upon your blog.

So find ways to increase your traffic. Don’t rely upon one traffic source, try to use blogging groups, blog commenting, social media platforms, guest posts, and so on to bring more visitors to your site.

Receive 200 comments

If you’re starting a new blog, make time to visit other blogs and comment on content that aligns with your passion. Start responding to the comments you get and remember to always leave genuine comments on other blogs.

Increase your DA to 5+

This is a goal that I made when starting a new blog. If you could aim more, that’s better!

Here are some proven ways to increase your DA:

• I always mention it here, write guest posts to sites that have higher DA than you.
• If you don’t have time to write a guest post, advertise your blog to a site with a higher DA than you.

Which goal have you made in the first 6 months of blogging? Any additional tips you want to add here?