Partners in Fire published status reports for the first 50 months as an online publication. We decided to keep these old articles for posterity, editing them for grammar and clarity and including additional context with the benefit of hindsight.
We’ve been blogging for 30 months, or approximately 2.5 years. Although it’s in the middle of the year, it’s a nice round number that feels like a huge milestone.
We continue to learn and grow as a blog, which shows in the small but steady growth we’ve experienced over the years.
Let’s take a look at how we did during our 30th month.
30th Month Update
I am thrilled to report that our 29th month was not a fluke regarding growth. Our 30th month was just as good – if not better than the previous month.
I was terrified after the big Google update at the beginning of May. The first day after the update, we saw a slight decrease in traffic, which gave me a mini panic attack.
But it picked back up the next day, and things were good from there!
Approximately 3300 users visited Partners in Fire this month, holding nearly 4000 sessions.
We’re still growing!
Readership
Our readership stayed consistent during our 30th month compared to the 29th.
Yes, we had more users overall, but our growth didn’t take off until the second week of April, so, of course, we will have more users in May if that growth remains consistent.
During the period of higher readership, we saw a consistent number of users (about 830 per week) week to week.
As you can see, we only had six days this month with less than 100 users.
I always worry when I see those little drops – Google giveth and Google taketh away, right?
But I’ve also noticed that those are mostly on Saturdays, so maybe people are out and about living their lives rather than reading online articles.
Traffic Drivers
Organic Search
Organic search was our top traffic driver yet again this period, with over 1800 users finding us through Google. Hopefully, we can reach 2000 for next month!
Our organic traffic seems consistent: On average, 80 users find us via online search per day.
Our article, “How to be a Twitch Affiliate in 30 Days,” remains our top organic post, and I decided to own it this month. I wrote a few more posts that would lend themselves to internal links and shared them more on social media, hoping for backlinks.
I have another little trick up my sleeve for this month, which I’ll write about during next month’s update.
Though that one post accounts for most of our traffic, users are trickling in from other posts.
I spent time updating older articles and started seeing some organic traffic on those.
Here are the ones that are performing better after an update:
I’m still not bringing in the same number of views with these posts as I am with the Twitch Affiliate post, but that’s okay.
A little bit of growth is always a good sign!
I have a few more posts in the queue to update this month, too, which will give me even more organic traffic.
It’s been four years since this update. The articles listed here no longer bring in a lot of traffic. We’ve recently updated them yet again, hoping they will move back up in rank.
When ranking well, you must constantly refresh the content to maintain the rank. Others will always come and try to beat you out.
Social Media
Social media ranked second in traffic this period, though we didn’t do as well on social as we did last month. A little over 540 users found us via social media this month, about 100 fewer than last month.
It’s a good thing organic traffic is still growing.
Algorithms constantly change. When one traffic source explodes, another may dry up. You can’t put all your eggs into one basket.
We saw the most significant decline on Pinterest, going back down to 242 users.
However, near the end of the month, I noticed a weird trend. I saw from my analytics statement that I didn’t get any traffic from social media. No matter what, I should at least get a handful, right?
My analytics graph showed that I was doing well until May 17, and then it crashed to nothing.
I logged into Pinterest and realized I could no longer click one of my images to access Partners in Fire.
I couldn’t click any other images or access other websites on my desktop. It’s been working just fine on mobile though. I’m curious if some of the loss in viewership from Pinterest is due to a glitch in the system somewhere.
I sent Pinterest a help desk ticket, so something may come from that. Or maybe nobody wanted to click any of my 200+ pins the last two weeks of May – but that does seem a little suspect, doesn’t it?
Either way, this is a big lesson in not putting your eggs in one basket. I’d be dead in the water if I relied on Pinterest as my primary traffic source.
Over 230 users visited us from Twitter this month, 100 more than last month!
The big reason for this increase was the awesome viral quiz we published, “What Type of Fire is Right for You.” Many people were interested and took the quiz, and I received a ton of positive feedback.
It was a fun and engaging way to encourage people to consider the reasons why they are pursuing financial independence.
I’m also still using the lessons learned in “Make it Stick.”. This mini-book has helped me write engaging and evocative tweets. Since reading it, I’ve been getting more followers and engagement on all of my posts—I think it’s helped drive my Twitter growth.
Make it Stick is more about growing your Twitter following than getting clicks to your website, but the lessons it teaches can easily apply to both.
We stayed consistent with the number of users visiting us from Facebook this month, with 53. I said I would do better with that, and I did for the first few weeks. But then I had a visitor and was focused on a remodel, so there were nearly two weeks when I didn’t do anything.
But I’m glad my viewership didn’t suffer for it!
It is incredibly difficult to keep up with all the social media accounts, the blogging schedule, a full-time job, SEO, and real-life stuff at the same time.
It’s normal that things will fall by the wayside, and this month, Facebook and Instagram really suffered. But that’s okay. My time is my own again, and hopefully, with my visitors gone, I’ll be able to focus on some of that.
When you’re a one-person show, you can’t do everything. There isn’t enough time. You can hire some of it out or let it go. We let it go.
Direct Hits
We saw a massive increase in users coming to Partners in Fire via direct hit this month—over 700 users visited us directly this month! A big portion of that is our subscribers checking out our new content (I love you guys!), but I think part of it is also referral links from other websites.
Very few of the direct hits came from subscribers. Most were referrals incorrectly coded in GA.
Partners in Fire was featured on a ton of different blogs this month, and I’m pretty sure some of the traffic from those features was recorded as a direct hit rather than a referral – mainly because some of my posts that were featured also happen to be the posts with the most page views via direct hit. But I also got some hits on those via referral traffic, so I’m not sure how any of that works.
We still don’t know why or how Google codes traffic the way it does. But anything Google can’t figure out gets coded as “direct.”
But the key takeaway is that I’m still writing excellent content that people want, so I’ll take that as a win!
Content
As the quarantine continues, I wanted to write something more lighthearted but still in line with that situation, so I decided to write two articles on my favorite game of the moment: Animal Crossing.
That doesn’t mean I shied away from discussing the situation around the pandemic, though. I published a post discussing the value of human life as it relates to our COVID-19 response and notes on how we as a society can do better.
Though we kept the article on the value of life, we updated it to make it evergreen, deleting most of the content relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. The idea is vital, but centering it on a past event makes it seem stale.
I continued writing about real-world socio-economic issues, including the just-world fallacy and the scarcity mindset.
Both of these psychological concepts have big-picture impacts on real people’s finances. Acknowledging that internal biases like these exist is significant—it can help us recognize them in ourselves and do better in the future.
My favorite piece of content this week was the one that made my Twitter views soar—my epic quiz on financial independence.
“What Type of Fire Are You” was a blast to write, and the people loved it. We received positive feedback from users and comments telling us that the questions got people thinking about their reasons for pursuing Financial independence.
That’s exactly what I wanted!
The post also garnered a lot of attention for the financial independence term I coined: Passion Fire. I hope that takes off and becomes a thing.
How Are We Going to Improve Our Readership
Although we maintained our consistently better readership this month, we still have a long way to go. My goal is to get the coveted 25,000 monthly sessions needed for Mediavine—I feel like getting to that would mean I’ve “arrived” as a blogger.
Mediavine has since increased their session requirement to 50,0000, but you can apply for their journey plan when you reach 10,000.
I had many ideas last month for improving my readership, but unfortunately, a lot of those fell to the wayside when my sister visited for over a week. I will continue to focus on those things for my 31st month, and hopefully, I’ll see an increase in traffic.
The biggest thing to focus on to increase my readership is SEO. That seems to be paying off, and the more I dive into it, the more I learn and the better I get at it.
The hardest part is getting those backlinks. Although I’ve written a few HARO pitches, none of them have come to fruition, and most of the requests I see aren’t really applicable to me. The best thing I, or anyone, can do to get backlinks is to continue pumping out awesome content that other sites want to link to.
I also have that little trick I mentioned previously – if it works, you will learn all about it next month!
Finally, I must continue working on my social media presence. I did well on Instagram and Facebook, but that fell apart over the last two weeks.
The goal is to get back to where I was before. I already have most of the content available, so publishing it should be easy. I’ll be doing that this month.
What Else Can We Do to Increase Readership?
If you’ve been following along with me on this journey for these 30 months, maybe you have some insight. What ideas do you have for increasing readership? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
Nice post!
How much time do you spend on all the social media channels combined?
Look forward to seeing your next hack that you’re writing about at the moment.
J
I spend way too much time on Twitter hahaha! But I don’t spend much time on the rest of them. Maybe 10 minutes per day on the other 3?
Congrats on the success! Your numbers are indicative of your success! Its helpful to see what works for your platform. Not many bloggers share the successes of their analytics, so thank you for that!
Hey, I just discovered you through twitter.
I am a podcaster and I have been blogging for a bit longer than you, but I have less traffic. It’s good to see what other bloggers are doing.
Thank you for sharing.
I’m glad this series is helpful!