New Niche Blog [My Case Study]

I often get asked, “How long does it take to get organic traffic?”

In 2023, Google made it super clear that they want relevance from blog posts.

This can definitely mean one thing – that they kinda support niched blogs.

They’d rather trust a makeup blog to give a foundation review than a lifestyle blog discussing home decor, makeup, and plants.

It’s a fact.

I’m seeing my niched blogs getting extra love from Google this year.

The question is, how long does it take to get organic traffic in 2023?

In my last post, I discussed the new art blog I published in March 2022. It’s currently making me about $650-$750 per month with a combination of ads and marketing.

It’s alright. It’s taking a lot of time to grow because the niche is sort of competitive.

So, I started another blog in the hair niche in October 2022.

And I thought I’d publish my stats today – because recording everything is so much fun.

Plus, it will give you an idea of what kind of traffic and income to expect on a regular blog that is not about drawing or artsy.

Here’s what we will discuss in this post:

• My own case study of a new blog I started this year (+ screenshots)
• What I did to get organic traffic fast
• What am I going to do to continue to speed up the growth
• How I plan to monetize

But first, please make sure you get my brand new eBook on how to start a blog from scratch – I’ve also included a 24-month blog plan (where I describe what actions to take each month, how many posts to write, and what monetization strategies to implement and include how much money you should be making each month), for free this week only!

This post includes affiliate links to products I truly (from the bottom of my heart) recommend, meaning at no extra cost to you, I may earn a small percentage which I will use to buy my poor dogs food.

How long does it take to get organic traffic to a brand-new website?

The short answer is 6-8 months.

However, if you write many SEO-optimized posts and release them quickly, you can speed up the process to 4-5 months.

The blog niche also matters.

But let’s get back to my case study.

I started this hair blog in October 2022.

This blog’s niche is hair – as you can tell.

It’s quite easy to write about since I have a natural love for hair and all things hair related – I do have to research extensively before writing each post, but it’s a lot of fun.

Please note that I don’t use social media or have an email list for this blog – it’s completely reliant on Google traffic.

Let’s look at the traffic stats:

Month 1: October 2022

In October 2022 (Month 1), I wrote 22 blog posts for the new website.

Since I stepped out of my comfort zone and wrote over 20 blog posts, you can see that a few posts did get indexed by Google in the first month itself, and I got a few pageviews.

So, here are my stats for Month 1:

• Total pageviews for Month 1: 246
• Total posts written for Month 1: 22
• Income: $4.94 (Amazon Affiliates)

The ups and downs happen a lot when you start a new website because Google is indexing your posts and doing a lot of trials and tests. They keep bumping your post to the front page and back to see how it measures up.

You cannot expect any solid traffic in the first few months.

Month 2: November 2022

I did slow down a bit and published only 17 blog posts.

I managed to get 221 pageviews in my 2nd month of blogging – you can see the traffic picking up towards the end of November. I did this to quickly see some progress since December is a good traffic month for most bloggers.

So, here are my stats for Month 2:

• Total pageviews for Month 2: 221
• Total Posts written for Month 2: 17
• Income: $3.85

Month 3: December 2o22

I really couldn’t work on Christmas week, so writing took a bit of a nosedive – and I only wrote 15 blog posts, but now, traffic is picking up, and I’m glad to see the numbers double!

Here are the stats for month 3:

• Total pageviews for Month 3: 527
• Total Posts written for Month 3: 15
• Income: $0

Although I got many more pageviews, I didn’t make any Amazon affiliate income in December.

But that didn’t get me down.

Month 4: January 2023

Ah, now we get to January, and the new year begins.

Because I’ve finished three months of blogging, I took it easy and reduced the number of posts I churned out.

I only wrote 6 blog posts.

Here are the stats for month 4:

• Total pageviews for Month 4: 1498
• Total Posts written for Month 4: 6
• Income: $0.30 from Amazon Affiliates

Month 5: February 2023

In February, I only wrote 5 posts, but traffic continued to pick up:

Here are the stats for month 5:

• Total pageviews for Month 5: 2373
• Total Posts written for Month 5: 5
• Income: $16.58 from Amazon Affiliates

Month 6: March 2023

In March, I wrote 8 posts, but traffic continues to bloom.

Here are the stats for month 6:

• Total pageviews for Month 6: 4,439
• Total Posts written for Month 6: 8
• Income: $45.37 from Amazon Affiliates

Month 7: April 2023

In April, I was traveling and a bit under the weather, so I only wrote 1 post, but traffic continued to increase.

Here are the stats for month 7:

• Total pageviews for Month 7: 8,246
• Total Posts written for Month 7: 1
• Income: $62.51 from Amazon Affiliates 

Month 8: May 2023

In May, I could write 5 blog posts, and I noticed that my pageviews crossed 10K per month, so I applied to SHE Media Ads and got in. Now, my income will include ad revenue as well.

Here are the stats for month 8:

• Total pageviews for Month 8: 11,786
• Total Posts written for Month 8: 5
• Income: $72.03 from Amazon Affiliates and $44 from SHE Media ads (TOTAL: $116.03)

Month 9: June 2023

In June, I continued to write 5 blog posts, and traffic continued to grow:

Here are the stats for month 9:

• Total pageviews for Month 9: 14,979
• Total Posts written for Month 9: 5
• Income: $102.23 from Amazon Affiliates + $175 from SHE Media Ads (TOTAL: $277)

Month 10: July 2023

In July, I wrote 8 blog posts. July has very low ad RPM since it’s summer and not many advertisers are bidding – but I still managed to make over $200 with ads.

Here are the stats for month 10:

• Total pageviews for Month 10: 18,180
• Total Posts written for Month 10: 8
• Income: $169.21 from Amazon Affiliates + $222 from SHE Media Ads (TOTAL: $391)

And that brings us to the end of this Traffic and Income report.

I hope you enjoyed it – and if you managed to read this far, you definitely have a lot of patience!

According to my Keyword tool, I currently rank for over 9500 keywords on Google Search. I use Ahrefs, but if you want an inexpensive tool, I highly suggest Keysearch (use KSDISC to get a 20% discount)

And I am currently seeing around 650-700 page views per day.

Seeing this kind of progress on the new website is exhilarating.

Why am I showing you this?

I’m showing you these numbers because I want you to know that I’m not special.

I am not a specialist in hair; I like talking about it. I do research and answer very simple questions.

I like creating content that’s helpful, creative, and non-generic.

I want you to know that you, too, can start a simple blog and grow it to make you a stable income every month.

You don’t need to be an expert – you need to be disciplined enough to write consistently and be able to blog about one topic for long enough to make it work.

I’ve used no social media or email to grow this blog – this blog is completely 100% dependent on organic traffic.

How do you get organic traffic fast?

If you enjoyed this report, be sure to check out my ebook, Start a Blog from Scratch. 

In this eBook, I record every single detail of how I quickly start and launch a blog with minimal design and content – I write the necessary pages like About, Contact, Privacy Policy, and Terms and Conditions.

I also teach you how to validate your blog niche and do topic research before starting your blog so you know what kind of traffic to expect in the first few months.

It’s all basic math and statistics. I go over everything in this eBook. I teach you what to focus on after starting a blog so that you can immediately get traffic and monetize that traffic!

And for this week only, you’ll get my 24-month blog plan for free. It’s not as difficult as you think if you have a plan – the plan will help you stay accountable and do what’s necessary to launch and grow your blog.

So, check out the ebook + 24 month plan here!

Then, I write, write and write.

If I had to summarize my best tips, they’d be:

1. Choose a good niche

Make sure your niche is not YMYL.

YMYL niches basically mean that the niche in some way relates to health or finance. You can read more about YMYL niches here. 

It takes way longer to grow without social media.

If at all you’ve started a YMYL niche site, then it is best to use Pinterest and Organic Search (both) to grow your website’s traffic – this will help speed it up.

I suggest you do manual pinning to help you with this.

2. Choose good keywords

Your keywords should:

• Be closely related to your niche (don’t even go for umbrella topics, this will slow you down)
• Low volume (preferably 10-100 monthly searches)
• Low ranking difficulty (0-5) on a Keyword tool

You cannot start a niche blog without a paid keyword tool – it will really stunt your growth.

I also use Google Autosuggest to help me find topics that are not written about (so I can rank faster).

And I also use Ahrefs to understand similar keywords and the competition.

Ahrefs costs over $99 a month; if you cannot afford it, that’s okay. Please use the next best option, which is Keysearch (in my opinion).

3. Write very good quality posts

You don’t need to be perfect at writing.

Writing is a skill – it gets better with practice.

Do not sit with your content.

Your aim should be to publish as many as you can.

Quality matters, but at the moment, quantity is key.

Your posts should preferably be over 1.5K words and should not be stuffed with keywords.

Use them discreetly and naturally.

Google is now wise enough to understand the post without you having to stuff keywords.

You also have to structure, format, and SEO optimize each and every single blog post you write – this increases your chances of ranking on the front page.

I explain how I do that with my blog posts in my SEO blueprint. It will explain everything you need to know about On-Page SEO.

4. Submit every single post for crawling

Connect your website to Google Search Console.

And submit every post you’ve written for indexing the moment you’ve hit publish.

For the first 5-6 months, Google doesn’t crawl and index posts daily on new websites.

They do not take new websites seriously, so you must request indexing.

You can wait for Google to index your posts manually, but this may take months, and Google might end up skipping a few posts – it happens to a lot of bloggers.

So, sit and submit them manually.

It’s annoying, but we can’t really do much.

Once the post is crawled, it will be indexed if Google deems it fit to be indexed.

Sometimes, posts take time to get indexed – this is normal.

5. Continue to write consistently for months

You’re not going to get any traction in the first few months.

You will not see any progress (or close to zero) for the first few months – you saw my results in this blog – the traffic picked up properly after 4-5 months.

Most bloggers start seeing traffic after 6-8 months.

Some see it in 4-5.

This is dependent on many factors:

• How old the domain URL is (If the domain was already established, posts rank faster and bring traffic faster)
• What niche you’re writing in (I believe some niches do rank faster due to low competition)
• How many posts you’ve released in the first couple of months

If you’ve written 60-100 blog posts in the first 4 months of blogging, you could start seeing traffic as early as month 5 or month 6.

Moving posts from an established blog to a new one will help speed up growth.

Please understand that this is dependent on Google Search.

But the more posts you write, the higher your chance of hitting the $1K/month mark in a year’s time.

It is possible to hit that number, but it depends on all the factors I’ve mentioned above.

6. Use social media

I prefer staying far away from social media because I don’t have that kind of time, but I know many people are comfortable using social media.

For bloggers, I recommend Pinterest.

But then again, do not waste too much time on Pinterest. Do the absolute bare minimum for 8-9 months.

If you start seeing significant traffic on Pinterest within 8-9 months, continue to use it – otherwise, scrap it altogether or pin like 5 pins a week.

I talk about how I use manual pinning for my lifestyle blog here.

It honestly can change at any time.

And it’s not predictable.

Also, it is impractical to focus on so many things when your life is already filled with family, work, etc.

So, do the bare minimum – write lots of content.

What kind of traffic should you expect when starting a new niche website?

Assuming you’ve:

• Started a blog in a good niche (not very high competition like tech, finance, or blogging)
• Are writing a lot of blog posts quickly (at least 15-20 a month)
• SEO optimizing your posts and picking good keywords
• Not used social media or Pinterest (the below expectations are based on a blog only writing content and doing zero promotion.

Here’s what you can expect:

How long does it take to hit your first 100 page views?

In your third month of consistent blogging, you should expect to see at least 100 page views per month.

In my case, I have a lot of experience with websites and blogging, and I know how to choose keywords. This comes with practice. So I could speed up the process and get 1K pageviews by the 4th month of blogging.

How long does it take to get 1000 page views per month?

In the next quarter (Months 4, 5, and 6), you should get around 1K page views per month by month 6.

Please note that these are estimates based on the following:

• Your niche
• Your ability to write a lot of highly SEO-optimized posts

But if you have around 80 blog posts on your blog (which is doable by month 6), and they are all SEO optimized and targeting low competition, 1K page views per month is doable!

How long does it take to get 5K page views a month?

By the third quarter (Months 7, 8, and 9), you should have about 120 posts on your blog and make about 5K page views per month.

It is achievable.

How long does it take to get to 10K pageviews?

By the 4th quarter (Months 10, 11, and 12), you should make around 10K pageviews. But this time, you should have about 150 posts on your blog.

Your traffic will be very low at the beginning for the first 6-8 months.

But after that, you will experience hockey stick growth, and your traffic should take off because your posts will start ranking and bringing in the traffic.

That’s why it’s important to write a lot of content in the beginning because those posts add up, and you’re basically front-lining your blog with content that will bring you a truckload of traffic.

By the end of 18 months to 2 years, you can expect to hit 20-50K pageviews, and you should have at least 150-200 blog posts up on your blog or more.

This will ensure that you hit your traffic goals, and you can apply to some really good ad networks.

How do I plan to monetize my new blog?

I like lazy blogging.

It means focusing on one thing only.

I am currently just writing content.

I am not trying to gain backlinks, and I’m not using social media – it’s just pure, written content for this blog.

So, I don’t plan to do any courses or create high-value programs for this new blog.

I am just monetizing via affiliate marketing and ads, and I’m genuinely happy with that.

If you don’t get approved by SHE Media, try Ezoic or Google Adsense (you need Adsense approval to get approved by Ezoic). I talk about how you can get quick Adsense approval here. 

I will continue using SHE Media ads until I hit the 50K sessions threshold and then apply to Mediavine.

I hope this answers all your questions and you got a great idea of what to expect starting a new niche blog by seeing my own example that I have highlighted.

Let me know if you have any questions – I’ll be more than happy to help!