Keeping perspective about where you are on the path is extremely important to keep your mindset strong and focused on what actually matters.
On Twitter yesterday I found the thread where someone I don't actually know documented their growth of their niche blog from start to making nearly 20 grand per month.
It took them six months of publishing and a total of 24 posts before they made their first dollar online.
You've probably heard me talk about "the chasm" before where you have to work your ass off with no results for 6 to 9 months...
Well, turns out I'm not kidding… That's not only true for the five separate websites I've built this way…
It works the same for the other real deal builders.
So… Some perspective!
Have you been publishing nonstop for 6 to 9 months yet?
If not, there is nothing more important than researching that next low difficulty keyword and crafting that next search engine-optimized post.
The next noteworthy milestone is at month 11...
This is when they actually generated over $100 in commissions which is the threshold for receiving a payout.
So even though they generated commissions they didn't get their first paycheck for 11 months.
They'd written 38 posts at this point in time.
Talk about delaying gratification.
That's nearly a year of work before receiving a $100 check.
Most people don't have the mental fortitude to give value to others for a year, nonstop… Without seeing money in return.
Which is sad because the numbers start to get really exciting after this due to the power of compounding.
At month 20 they had published 97 articles in the blog was generating $1300 dollars per month.
Month 21 reached $2600 dollars in revenue (119 posts), Month 22 was $5400 bucks revenue (148 posts) and month 23 was over $13 grand in revenue (165 posts)!
Now we are talking some real deal lifestyle income.
And the numbers have kept going up with month 27 generating over $19,700 in cashflow!
But again...
And this is the most important part:
Most people are not willing to persevere for YEARS with no promise of returns...
Therefore most people just dabble and never make any money.
But you?
Well… Let's just say that you now know the secret.
And maybe we should call it common knowledge.
Building a real business online takes years of hard work publishing hundreds of posts that give value to one specific target audience.
Results rarely begin to show up before months 6 to 9.
Noteworthy cash flow that one could even consider living on rarely shows up before months 18 to 24.
Really exciting cash flow levels show up from year 3 to 5.
So...
Where are you on this path?
Another question you might want to ask yourself:
How many times have you "started over" by choosing a different niche or jumping into a different "method" pitched by some greedy Guru?
Remember...
Every time you start over you are resetting the clock back at zero.
If you put in six months of effort on one site to see no results...
Then you get frustrated so you change the method or change the niche and start another site… You will have to spend the next six months getting zero results again.
Instead of putting one year of effort in on one site and seeing results, many put a year of effort in on two sites and see no results.
I hope this is been a valuable perspective.
You can check out the entire thread here on Twitter.
And now...
I'm going to go publish some content on my blogs today...
Because clearly, that's the thing I can do to grow my business!
Miles "Content Marketing Geek" Beckler
P.S. If you're ready to take the next step but you're not exactly sure how, here are three things you can do today.
#1 - Just Start! - If you have not yet found your niche and started your blog, you aren't even in the game and there's a 0% chance you'll succeed.
Right now, click here... Read this post and follow the steps to get started.
#2 - Find a Low Difficulty phrase/question your audience is searching -
If you are not targeting keyword phrases that your audience is searching, you will never drive traffic. Also, if you are targeting keyword phrases that are too competitive with high difficulty scores, you will probably never receive any traffic.
This video shows my exact process for finding low difficulty keyword phrases.
This is the #1 skill that's helped me grow massive audiences in a wide range of niches.
#3 - Outline & write your post so Google falls in love with it.
People make SEO way harder than it needs to be! All of the information you need to properly craft an optimized post is hidden in plain sight.
This video shows my exact process for crafting content Google loves, fast.
From this point...
It's simply a matter of showing up every day...
Writing and publishing every day...
Because that's how you get in the flow state
And then it's just a matter of executing relentlessly on this one blog, crafting content for this one audience for the next few years.
It's simple.
Not exactly easy...
But it truly is this simple.