How Long Does it Take Before a Website Makes Money

Like most answers to this type of question the answer is that it depends. But most likely the answer is: a lot longer then you would hope.
Especially since you are asking this question. Most likely you are thinking of starting a website or have already started one but are not making any money. In either case you want to know how much longer till the money starts to roll in.
The sad fact is that in most cases the answer is never. Most website fail to make any significant amount of money. The reason is simple - making a money making website is not easy. Websites are no different then restaurants. Just because you open a restaurant it does not mean that you will make money - just because you create a website it does not mean that you will make money.
The right question to ask is: How long does it take to build traffic to the website?
Continuing with the restaurant analogy, we can ask what makes a restaurant a success?
The answer is simple - traffic. As long as people come to eat at your restaurant you will make money.
The hard part is getting people to visit your restaurant. It takes time. You need to promote, people need to like the food, they need to want to come back, they need to recommend it to their friends etc.
Same thing applies to a website. Once your site is built the hard part begins - getting people to come visit. And that takes time.
You could have good content, lots of advertising, and selling great products, but if nobody comes then money cannot be made. As with restaurants, there is lots of competition amongst websites. Most likely your website will not be unique, you will be competing with other websites.
So week after week, month after month you will need to promote your website and fight for the visitors attention - to get them to visit your website instead of somebody else's.
For this reason, the question you should be asking is not how long it takes to make money with a website - it is how long does it take to build up enough traffic to start making money.
So how long does it take to build the traffic that will generate the money?
The sad fact is that when you look at successful websites that have lots of traffic, most of them are at least 1 year old.
The successful sites get traffic easily now, just like successful restaurants, but all of them started off the same way - painstakingly, day by day, promoting and increasing their traffic one visitor at a time.
How long does it take before a website makes money? With hard work, do not expect any results for at least a year.
On my website I have listed in more detail what you need to know to make money with a website. For more information about creating, maintaining and making money from a website have a look at http://www.howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com - Learn by example.