So how long does it take for content marketing to work? By “work”, in this instance, I mean how long does it take to start producing an income from content? Content marketing can take many forms. You can create a YouTube channel or build a blog, for example. So the time it takes will depend on many variables which I’m going to define in this post.
Generally though, it will take several months to start seeing a regular stream of traffic from content marketing if you create content regularly and promote it well. How you monetise that traffic will determine how much money you can make from it. The type of traffic you attract through your content will also have a bearing, and the relative competition in the niche you choose will massively impact your success, or lack of it.
So let’s have a look at some of the variables involved in creating content and getting paid for it!
How Long Does It Take For Content Marketing To Work – SEO & Content Promotion
Typically SEO (search engine optimisation) is very slow. So if you’re relying on your content getting ranked on Google, Bing, Yahoo or on YouTube and other search engines it can take a few months. Your content may never rank too, which is a consideration. In a competitive topic/niche, there’s thousands or even hundreds of thousands of competing websites or videos. So even with awesome content which out performs others, you’re up against high authority domains and channels which will out perform you because they’ve been around much longer than you.
They may have tens or hundreds of thousands of back links which have accumulated over many years. So competing with these high authority sites can be incredibly difficult. So if you’re in a competitive field it’s going to be useful to self promote all your content. This can be done through sharing on social media and through building an email list of subscribers.
Content promotion, when done well will massively speed up your progress. If you simply publish your content and sit back waiting for it to show up in the rankings, you’re going to be very disappointed! It may never show up! So once you have published some content, always promote it through sharing it as much as possible.
How Long Does It Take For Content Marketing To Work – Your Choice Of Niche/Topic
In a competitive topic, such as money making online for example, it’s going to be very competitive. With a lot of competing content out there and some high authority channels and domains taking the top rankings for many of the best keywords. A new website won’t rank anywhere near the top of Google for the top keywords.
There’s ways round this of course and one way is to find and target long tail keywords which have low SEO difficulty.
You don’t have to rely on Google for your traffic either. You can publish your content throughout your social media presence and create a strategy for finding visitors there.
In a less competitive niche, you’re going to be able to rank your content more easily, so you can attract traffic more quickly to your content. If you have a particularly “out there” niche, and therefore little competition, you might even find yourself getting visitors quite quickly.
How Long Does It Take For Content Marketing To Work – Targeting “The Right” Traffic
Not all traffic is equal, so if your aim is to get targeted traffic to your website, or channel, you’re going to need to determine who that is specifically. Targeted traffic is super important, especially if you’re monetising your website with a specific product or service. Some content will attract buyers and some will only attract “browsers”.
You really want the buyers coming to your website so before you create content, make sure you know who they are. For example, a review of a product will attract people looking to purchase that particular product. This kind of visitor is very likely to buy from you if you can attract them.
On the flip side, “how to guides” don’t attract such specific buying traffic. More likely they will take your guide and leave without having made a purchase.
How Long Does It Take For Content Marketing To Work – How You Monetise
You can also monetise a website or video channel without selling products from it using advertising placed on your content. This can be done through using Google Adsense, for example, or a similar service. With advertising on your content you get paid for each click on an advert. Your type of content will determine how much a click is worth, with more competitive topics paying more.
If you use affiliate products to monetise your content the targeting of your content is more important, since whatever you create will attract a certain type of visitor; and you want buyer traffic.
Your choice of affiliate products too is important and needs to match your niche. So in a golf niche for example, you would promote some golf related course, training or physical product to your visitors.
This can be done through the use of email marketing. This can dramatically speed up the process of making sales from a website/channel. By choosing subscription products (which carry recurring income) and high value products, you can become profitable more quickly, too.
Using Email Marketing To Speed Up The Process
Email marketing is another “ace” up the sleeve of content marketers. By offering a freebie giveaway on your content, such as an ebook, you can encourage content visitors to subscriber to your list.
An email list gives the content marketer a means to interact with their visitors on a more regular basis and build a longer term relationship. On a website, visitors only stick around for a few minutes. So they are less likely to make a purchase. But get them on your email list and you can follow up with them for months and even years.
This can dramatically speed up the process of selling from your content alone.
Your Content
Your content of course is massively important in the equation of generating an income from content creation. If visitors are impressed with it, they are much more likely to take further action on your site; share it, sign up to your list or purchase a recommended product, for example. This is a massive signal to Google (and other search engines) that your content is valuable.
If people like your content they are likely to share it and link back to it. This gives you a natural looking link profile which is a major SEO signal to the search engines. If you continue creating valuable content for long enough, you should see your content begin to rank on the search engines, further boosting your visitor numbers.
This has a compounding effect over time as more people get to your posts, more will share it and purchase from you/sign up to your list. See also the magical compounding effect of blogging.
Not only do you need to create awesome content which is share-worthy, but you need to actively promote it, too. How well you do these two things are a huge factor in how long it will take you to get a high volume of traffic, leads and sales through your content.
Summary
So, how long does it take for content marketing to work? You could create a post and publish it on social media, attracting a buyer straight away, (in theory), assuming you’ve set up your site/channel to sell something. But long term consistent traffic, leads and sales will take much longer than the odd “lucky win” you might get. In most cases it’s going to take months of consistent publishing and sharing of your content before you see this. In my experience of blogging, I started seeing the odd sale early on, within a couple of months. Over time, they become more consistent as I continued building content.
These are the main factors which will determine whether the timeline of your success:
- Your content quality, and action steps towards creation and promotion
- The relative competition on the search engines in your particular niche (more competition means it will take longer to become established)
- How you monetise your content and the type of traffic you attract is a big factor; ideally use high paying products and recurring income products
- Whether you use an email autoresponder – an email autoresponder will dramatically speed up the time it takes to earn consistently from your content so you should definitely get one. (Get one for free here).
Because it can take so long to create and share sufficient content to make your efforts worthwhile, it’s definitely worth choosing a topic you’re going to enjoy working in. Imagine still working 3 months down the line without having made any sales. Are you still going to love what you do? See also how to choose a niche for affiliate marketing.
