Partners in Fire published monthly updates highlighting growth strategies and progress for the first 50 months. We decided to keep these old articles for posterity and to help new bloggers get a realistic idea of what it takes to build a profitable website.
Here’s our 33rd-month update, edited for grammar, clarity, and to provide additional context with the benefit of hindsight.
33rd Month Update
Our 33rd month was freaking epic! Okay, so we still haven’t reached 10K pageviews and still haven’t made over $100, but we’re getting closer and closer.
With another few months of consistent growth and excellent posts, we will hit all those milestones and then some.
Let’s see how we did.
Readership
Our readership improved compared to last month. Over 100 users visited us every single day of the month – that’s a first! We had over 120 on all but a handful of days – and most of those were due to technical issues.
That dip in the middle of the month was because I didn’t correctly re-install my SSL certificate and briefly lost my “HTTPS” heading. The error caused Chrome to block my website, which resulted in fewer visitors.
Luckily, I was able to fix it the next day, and my viewership improved. The one other point below 120 in the second half of the month was due to a plugin error that destroyed my site for three hours until I could fix it. Luckily, all is going well now!
Traffic Drivers
Organic Search
Our viewership from organic traffic is improving. Over 3000 users found us through organic search this month, over 500 more than last month.
It seems like all the hard work I’ve been putting into updating posts and writing for specific keywords is finally starting to pay off. I will continue to do the same in the future – my goal for September is an ambitious 5000 users via organic search!
Our top page from organic search remains “How to be a Twitch Affiliate in 30 Days”. About 60% of our users started with there. While I’m happy to be getting so much traffic, I am concerned about all my eggs being in one basket.
As we finance folks like to say – diversification is key! And that is true of traffic as well.
My next top three posts each attract about 125-150 monthly users. They are the same as last month – Animal Crossing is Addictive, Buffy is the Greatest Show, and I Regret Getting Pets, but we saw a little more traffic on each this month than in previous months.
Nearly all of my top ten pages got more traffic this month than last month, with the exception of Coast Fire, which had about 15 fewer page views. Having a few more pages creep a tad bit higher in page views each month is one way we will break that 5000 mark!
Direct Hits
This month, a little under 800 users visited us directly, which is in line with last month’s numbers.
Many of these hits are from our wonderful subscribers (thank you!). If you haven’t subscribed yet, you should do so now to never miss another post!
I was wrong. Most direct hits weren’t subscribers but random traffic that Google couldn’t record. You should still subscribe, though!
Not all the direct hits are subscribers. I don’t know where the rest of them come from. I’m guessing some are referrals, and some might be social media posts that Google doesn’t record correctly. From what I understand, Google calls any traffic it’s not sure of a direct hit. But I’m happy to take the traffic wherever it comes from!
It took us nearly three years to understand direct hits.
Social Media
Nearly 400 users found us via social media this month—about twice as many as last month!
It’s interesting that sometimes a blog post just takes off on social media. I think all my posts are good, but sometimes, you will write something that resonates with people and get a ton of shares. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened on Twitter this month.
Over half of my social media users came from Twitter during my 33rd month. Many of those visited my tell-all on financial abuse, but FU money also got a decent amount of love.
I tried to be active but didn’t share as much as I should have. To fix that, I scheduled some tweets with a plug-in. I downloaded “Revive Old Posts,” which will share to Twitter every 12 hours. It may even share some stuff that I don’t even remember writing!
I’ll also continue to share on my own when I have time. I can craft a more interesting Tweet than a plug-in can! We shall see which ones get more engagement.
I gave up sharing on my own and let the plug-in do it all for me.
I still don’t think Google Analytics is telling the whole story regarding Pinterest. According to them, I only have 130 users from the platform, but Pinterest tells me I have over 100 more.
I think this is where some of those extra direct hits are coming from. I’m not sure why Google would report some of them from Pinterest and some as direct hits, though. It’s such a mystery!
Pinterest doesn’t always know which pins go to your domain. In your analytics, you’ll see that some of the “outgoing clicks” are attached to pins that aren’t yours.
Although I redesigned a bunch of pins to improve my views from Pinterest, I had fewer users from the platform than I did last month – if I go with Pinterest’s analytics. I still don’t know what will make the people of Pinterest click – but it’s a nut I’m trying incredibly hard to crack.
The one thing that helped drive traffic from Pinterest was getting re-pins, and the best way for me to do that is to share my pins with the Insiders group. I see a lot more engagement on every pin I’ve shared with them – which shows that sometimes you just need to get your content in front of more people to succeed.
This is my first time mentioning Reddit, but I got 35 views from the platform, which isn’t something to shake a stick at! I’m still very weary of self-promotion on the platform because it can end badly. People on Reddit can be ruthless and unforgiving.
But the financial independence subreddit has a self-promotion thread once a week. I post my newest and best posts there and have gotten some engagement and clicks.
I’m taking Reddit slowly – I don’t want a ton of hate comments on my blog! But I am venturing into it and slowly trying to find communities that allow self-promotion.
We dabbled with Reddit but never tried hard, and we don’t receive much traffic from the platform.
I did nothing with Facebook other than post my latest posts, and it shows with the four users who visited us from the platform this period. Somehow, though, I did manage to get a handful of new page likes, so I’ll take that as a win.
Thanks to the Revive Old Posts plugin, I plan to do more with Facebook this month. It’s going to share an old post for me every day automatically. It will be interesting to see if posting more content on the platform increases pageviews. And the best part is I don’t have to do anything now that it’s all set up!
We receive a few hundred Facebook visitors each month, mostly due to the Revive Old Posts plugin.
Referrals
This month, I got a few juicy backlinks, which gave me some referral traffic.
Most of my referral traffic resulted from my article on Financial Abuse. It resonated with many people, and a lot of bloggers have featured it on their websites.
I can see how some referral traffic is listed as a direct hit because that massive spike in viewers in the middle of the month was the day I got most of those links. Obviously, people were clicking them, but Google didn’t record many referrals for that day. It’s fun to figure out why Google counts things the way it does!
Content
I am proud of the content we published this month.
We started with some staycation ideas to help people have a great time while staying home. Then, we dived into more complex topics like financial abuse, personal financial responsibility, and dealing with financial emergencies.
Not only are these topics relevant, but I also wrote them to appease the Google Gods, so I’m expecting some organic traffic on them in the next few months (in fact, financial responsibility is already ranking – not high by any means, but getting some organic traffic on a brand new post is a pretty incredible feat!).
We wrapped up the month with insight into what a rich life means and a humorous look at my fixer-upper failure.
None of these articles ever ranked well. After about a year, the post on Financial Responsibility made it to page one but then dropped again. We didn’t touch any of these articles for years but recently reviewed them.
The review highlighted why they didn’t rank. Although I was proud of the content at the time, it wasn’t very good by my current standards. I recently updated each one (except the fixer-upper fail, which was too similar to another post, so I deleted it), hoping they would perform better.
And these were just the posts I wrote! The syndications from the Insiders group were all amazing, too, and it’s nice to share a variety of content on Partners in Fire. Just by adding this content to my rotation, I went from two to three to four posts a week, and we all know that Google likes sites with more content best.
Nobody knows what Google likes. At the time, syndication seemed to help, but now, it doesn’t. Nothing seems to help with Google anymore as they attempt to become the only website people visit.
Significant Changes for Partners in Fire
As some may have noticed, we made two massive changes to Partners in Fire this month. First, I finally decided to merge my old travel blog, Travels Near and Far, with Partners in Fire. One of my FIRE goals is to travel the world, so it’s fitting.
The merge went very smoothly, and I’m seeing a slight uptick in traffic on those posts. Unfortunately, most of them aren’t SEO optimized, so I have some work to do to get them to rank, but I think it will be easier on the high domain authority site. And I don’t have to choose which blog to focus on—I can put all my energy into Partners in Fire.
It took six years for us to go back, rewrite, and optimize the travel posts, but they’re seeing a slight uptick in traffic now.
The other significant change is a theme update. I finally switched to the Astra theme, which is supposedly one of the lightest and fastest themes on the market. Although Google says that site speed doesn’t play a role in SEO, some experts warn that it might in the future, so I’d rather be prepared. It looks very sleek and professional, too.
We currently use Generate Press.
A minor change I made was giving gaming its own category. I think streaming on Twitch is a viable side hustle, and gaming is one of my passions, so I decided to embrace that and write more about it. Financial independence is about doing whatever you want with your life, right?
We’ve made many category changes over the years to better align with our mission.
How Are We Going to Improve Our Readership
Our readership grew by over 700 users this month -which is fantastic! But we want to continue to grow, and we have some plans to achieve that.
The plans are the same as they were last month. We will heavily invest in keyword research. Rather than writing an article and hoping it ranks, we will develop article ideas and use MOZ to find the best keywords for each idea. With this method, I’ll still be able to write about what I want while focusing on SEO growth.
Next, we will continue updating old articles for SEO. As a member of the Insiders group, I get free access to text optimization tools such as TFID and Text Optimizer. I’ve used these tools to ensure old posts are well-optimized for search engines, and I still have many posts to optimize.
I no longer use these tools; they’ve become too robotic and akin to keyword stuffing.
I’m also going to try to build backlinks to some of my travel posts—now that they are on a high-authority website, that should be a bit easier. Here’s to hoping!
Monetization
This is the second month in a row that I’ve made money! Yes, I’ve spent more on the Insiders group than I made, but if I continue to grow at the rate I have been, that will even out in the next month or two.
My growth is due in large part to the Insiders! I’m glad I found a group focused on website growth.
The Insiders are still an active community, and I’m still a member. You can find membership information here.
Here’s my revenue breakdown for this month:
Earnings
Ads: $65.16
I’m still with the same two ad networks, and with my increase in volume, I’m seeing an increase in revenue. I made about the same with each network this month, so it’s hard to say whether I will drop one and continue with the other.
Also, they do different things. I chose the ad placement with one of them by placing the code in a paragraph break. The other one overlays ads where they see fit, and that’s how we get those bottom banner ads.
Affiliates: $7.68
I made a few sales with the Amazon affiliate program this month. It’s not a tremendous amount of money, but it is more than last month, so that’s a win! Next month, I plan on writing a few posts specifically designed for affiliate sales on Amazon, so we shall see if I get any conversions there.
I also joined a few additional programs and set up a new plug-in to keep track of my affiliate links and sales. If I’m going to start turning blogging into a viable business, I need to start converting sales. I’ve heard that affiliates are the best and easiest way for bloggers to monetize, but I haven’t been very successful with it yet. I have a few ideas, though, that I’m planning to implement in the coming months, so we shall see!
We never did well with affiliate marketing. Spammers and big businesses saw a way to make easy money. They used shady methods to fill the SERPS with substandard content for any keyword that would bring in affiliate revenue. It’s still a massive problem, as companies like Forbes use their reputation to spam page one with shallow content that’s basically a giant advertisement for their affiliate partners.
Net earnings: $72.84
Expenses
Money Mix Insiders – $120
My only expense this month was my Money Mix Insiders membership, which put me in the hole for about $48.
But I wouldn’t have made a thing if it weren’t for the Insiders. They are the reason I’m seeing the growth that I am. And if I keep growing at the rate that I’m growing, I should be able to at least break even for September – if not make some extra money.
You must invest in a business if you want it to grow.
Continued Growth
Partners in Fire is continuing to learn and grow. We have some awesome ideas for September that are designed for growth and monetization, so hopefully, the increases will continue. As always, we will continue to share the journey with you.
Amazing to see your growth, congrats!