Partners in Fire wrote monthly updates reviewing its growth for the first fifty months as a publisher. We decided to keep these old articles to help others on their blogging journeys.
Here’s our 26th-month update, edited for grammar, clarity, and to add additional insight with the benefit of hindsight.
26th Month Update
Although we didn’t achieve over two thousand users like last month (that SEO fluke was fun), we stayed consistent and saw a little organic growth over the previous months.
Readership
Our overall readership increased slightly during this period.
A little over 1300 users visited Partners in Fire this month, slightly more than we had last month if you disregard the fluke.
We’re still averaging between forty and sixty users per day, but this month, we saw more spikes and valleys than in previous months. We still only had one day below thirty users, but we had quite a few days between 30 and 40. We also had a few days with over 60 to average that out.
Traffic Drivers
Organic Search
Organic search was our most significant traffic driver for yet another month. We didn’t have any wild spikes this month, either, which shows that our organic traffic is at least becoming consistent. The only thing I did this month to help with SEO was update one older blog post. Unfortunately, being sick for a week set me back, and I didn’t have much time to focus on blogging this month.
On the plus side, I did at least keep with the posting schedule, even on my worst days. It’s amazing how much being sick can set you back with the things you need to do. It’s been three weeks, and I still don’t think I’m all caught up (or feeling 100%).
A little over 515 users found us via organic search during our 26th month, similar to what we would have gotten last month without that weird fluke.
Social Media
Social media was our second biggest traffic driver during our 26th month. However, it’s declining slightly, with only 416 combined visitors from all the platforms, 25 fewer than last month.
It’s not a massive difference, but any decline is troubling.
More users came to us from Pinterest this month than in the last few months. Over 300 users visited us from that platform, as opposed to 238 last month and less than the month before.
The increase comes as a massive shock to me. Not only did I let my Tailwind scheduler run out, but I also canceled my subscription to Tailwind altogether. I’m no longer scheduling pins and automatically pinning. It was a huge time suck, and I wasn’t seeing the kind of results that I wanted for the money I was paying. Instead, I manually pin one or two images for my blog post to my board.
I planned to pin more often manually, but I couldn’t do that this month because my Pinterest account got suspended (the day after I canceled Tailwind – how is that for suspicious?).
It took about a week, but I finally got it back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t pin at all during that time, and I got a little behind on posting even my own pins.
Given all this, I’m shocked to see growth from the platform, but I’ll take it!
We didn’t know it then, but ending our Tailwind subscription likely boosted our visibility on Pinterest. The platform started devaluing old pins repinned using schedulers and promoting fresh pins. It took us far too long to stop using Tailwind after the update, but we weren’t knowledgeable enough about social media platform algorithms to understand what was happening.
We only had 84 visitors from Twitter this month, a 100-user drop-off from the previous month. Due to my illness, I didn’t post old posts or engage with people on the platform for over a week, significantly reducing traffic.
I know I’ve mentioned before that I need to improve my engagement on the platform, but seeing such a large decrease was eye-opening.
Engaging on Twitter is just as important as sharing older posts. The platform is so fast that even a few days without being active can seem like an eternity to your users. I have to do better.
Twitter (X) is no longer worth the effort unless you’re willing to pay. Links on social media provide a little SEO boost, so it’s best practice to have an account and share your articles, but it’s far harder to grow a following and find like-minded people to build relationships with on the platform.
I still haven’t focused much on Facebook. Since I’m not spending as much time on Pinterest, I’m trying to decide if it would be worthwhile to build up my Facebook or Instagram accounts, but I haven’t yet decided between the two.
I shared articles on the Partners in Fire Facebook page this month and got 24 users from the platform. That’s ten more than last month, so it’s not a huge increase, but still better than nothing.
We never focused on either Facebook or Instagram and rarely post to either platform.
Direct Hits
A little over 250 users came to us via direct hit during our 26th month, a slight increase from the previous month. We saw a decline over the past few months, so it was nice to see an increase this period instead.
We have two hypotheses regarding the fluxations in direct traffic, and we aren’t sure which is correct. Either the holidays impacted traffic, or our content didn’t appeal to audiences.
Reflecting years later, we believe both theories were valid. The holidays do affect traffic, and our holiday content at the time wasn’t beneficial. We’ve since removed those articles.
Referrals
Campfire Finance featured our post about the awful state of sick leave in the United States, providing a nice traffic boost and valuable backlinks for SEO.
We’re also seeing some referral traffic from Personal Finance Blogs, a directory of websites offering great personal finance content. We are included on their blog feed, and our post, “Lessons Learned from a No Spend Year Challenge,” was one of their daily features.
A big thanks to both platforms for helping us out!
Campfire Finance no longer exists. Link building is a never-ending process as websites come and go. Those that stay often take down older articles, so you must constantly build new links to compensate for lost ones.
Personal Finance Blogs lives on, showcasing their favorite money articles daily. We still receive referral traffic from them occasionally, though we no longer track any features.
Content
We published a ton of great content this month. I might say that every month, but why would I publish stuff I’m not proud of? I got a little personal and transparent with my first-ever net worth update and finished my series on a no-spend year with a review of how December went and some lessons learned from attempting such a travesty.
Partners in Fire also dabbled a bit into policies and politics this month.
We published content about how companies use our data as a payment for goods and services, reflecting on how nothing in life is truly free. It’s a crucial fact to remember as technology advances and politicians call for taxes on data/technology.
Then, I got really sick, and it made me realize how privileged I am to be able to take time off to get better and to have health insurance to be able to see a doctor.
Millions of Americans don’t have that luxury.
I rounded out the month with less serious posts – one related to finance (cash or card) and another related to my fire goals lifestyle (what type of RV are we getting?). I prefer to write various content that could be appealing to everyone. Some people visit Partners in Fire because they want to live the RV life and see our plans. Others visit for social commentary, and others still like strictly financial content. I enjoy writing about all of it, and it all ties into finance in one way or another.
We removed many articles mentioned, as they no longer served a purpose or our audience. We consolidated all the monthly no-spend reports into a massive article highlighting the entire year, which provides a better user experience.
One of the most impactful parts of reviewing old content is learning how bad the writing was. Five years ago, we were proud of this content. Now, we cringe. And that’s a good thing. It shows how much our writing has improved over the years.
Monetization
I’m not sure why I have a section on monetization every month. It doesn’t ever change. I don’t do well with my Amazon affiliates and only make a few bucks a month with my ad network. It’s nothing fancy.
I do know that I’d make more money with ads if I had more visitors to the site (basic math, right?), so instead of focusing on making money, I’m going to focus on getting visitors and improving our readership.
We should have focused on traffic from the very beginning.
How We Are Going to Improve Our Readership
So how are we going to do it?
We’ve seen that focusing on SEO has led to some growth, so I will continue doing that. Updating at least one blog post monthly shouldn’t be difficult, but I will shoot for two.
But I will not ignore all of my social media baskets, either. As I said above, I’m not going to spend as much time on Pinterest as I said above, but I’m going to focus on something else.
My choices are basically Facebook or Instagram. Although I want to grow Instagram to get sponsorships on the platform, I need at least 10K for that, and I don’t think that’s doable any time soon. I hardly see any traffic from the platform, even with nearly 2K followers, so it might not be the best thing to focus on.
Facebook could be a fantastic resource if I learn how to grow it. I’m in a few blog-growing communities but haven’t seen any posts from most of them lately. Maybe they gave up, or Facebook’s algorithm isn’t showing me the content.
Regardless, I think that posting more often and engaging on Facebook under my page rather than myself will lead to growth on the platform. I’m going to try that this month and see what happens.
I’m very happy with how our 26th month of blogging went, and I’m excited to see how month 26 goes if we implement these small changes!
We never tried on either platform. Instead, we focused on SEO growth, learning to write better content that users actually search for, and working to build authentic links. It worked out for a while, as we saw a lot of growth in organic traffic. Unfortunately, algorithm changes led to setbacks, and we know we need to focus more on socials to stay ahead.