Partners in Fire published monthly growth strategy updates for the first fifty months of its existence as an online publisher. We decided to maintain these articles for posterity and help others struggling with their blog journeys.
Here is our report from our 23rd month as a publisher, edited for grammar, clarity, and to add additional context with the benefit of hindsight.
23rd Month Update
We’re so excited to report that we didn’t have another decrease during our 23rd month! In fact, we even saw a tiny bit of growth!
Go team Partners in Fire!
Read on to see how we did during our 23rd month.
Readership
Our readership improved slightly during this period, but after the massive losses over the past few months, we’ll call this a win.
Over 1,200 users visited Partners in Fire, about 100 more than last month. We’re still averaging about 40 users per day, but we only had three days with less than thirty users (and one of those days was Halloween—who stays in and reads blog posts on Halloween??).
We are still lacking in really good days. We only had three days with sixty users or above this month.
Our best-performing post was my honest review of pet ownership. I love the little buggers, but I really do regret having them sometimes. The honesty of that post garnered a lot of attention, and I hope it helps others make a more informed decision about pet ownership.
Traffic Drivers
Social Media
Social media continues to be our most significant traffic driver, but with it continuing to be so low, direct hits and organic searches are catching up.
Four hundred eighty-two users found us via social media this month, a slight decrease from last month when we had closer to 500.
Our reach from Pinterest continues to decrease, but it’s still our largest traffic driver. We had 297 users from Pinterest this month, compared to 357 last month.
Seeing such a continued drop-off is interesting because my reach on Pinterest seems to be growing slightly. More people are viewing my pins on Pinterest, but fewer are clicking them.
As my Pinterest page views continue declining, I’ve considered taking a Pinterest course. I’m obviously doing something wrong; maybe it’s time to pay to find out what it is. I haven’t decided which course to take yet (I’m looking for recommendations!), but I’ll write a review once I take the plunge.
I eventually took a few Pinterest courses. The first one I took was abysmal. It covered all the common-sense stuff I was already doing: making pretty pins, posting them to group boards, and hoping for traffic. It didn’t include any information on Pinterest SEO, the algorithm, how to tell which group boards are worthwhile, or how to find them in the first place.
I don’t recall the course creator, and I’m unsure if it’s still available.
The second course I took was much better. It explained that Pinterest is a search engine and went over how everything from the file name of your pin to your board description plays a role in pin discoverability. This was many years ago, and I don’t recall the name of this course either.
The point is there are excellent courses out there, and there are really bad courses. Before paying for a course, get honest reviews from people who aren’t trying to sell you to determine whether it’s the right move for you.
Our reach on Twitter increased during this period, with 147 users visiting us from the platform. I followed through with posting a link to an old blog post every day, which really helped increase our readership on the platform. Hopefully, I’ll be able to continue doing that consistently.
I can do better on the platform. Unfortunately, posting to blog posts is one of the only things I did on Twitter this month. I haven’t been as active as I could have been, leading to less engagement.
This month, my goal is to do both: post links to older blog posts and actively engage with others on the platform. We shall see if that strategy increases my engagement even more.
Twitter (now X) no longer works for driving traffic or engagement unless you pay for a blue check mark. It’s a lot harder now to gain a following, and even the account I built before the takeover, which has thousands of followers, gets very little engagement.
We saw a slight improvement in visitors from Facebook, with 39 users this period compared to 29 last month. I still don’t focus much on the platform. One of my goals this month was to share my blog posts on my personal page, and I think I remembered to do that two or three times at best.
It’s hard to focus energy on a platform when you aren’t seeing results, especially when there are only so many hours in a day. My Facebook strategy continues to be on the back burner while I focus on other platforms.
We refuse to share articles on our personal page now, as we’d prefer to separate our business and personal lives. We don’t use Facebook for either, but we use a plug-in to share old content on our page.
Organic Search
We saw a slight uptick in organic search traffic this month. Three hundred sixty-eight found Partners in Fire by searching keywords, a decent improvement from the 315 we had last month.
Most of the new traffic came in the last few weeks.
This month, I achieved my goal of updating two older posts with SEO in mind and have focused on writing new content that appeases search engines. My recent posts on peer-to-peer lending have all been accessed via organic search, showing that my newer content is appearing in search engines.
A lot of visitors have been finding my posts on barista fire and the fundamentals of fire via organic search, which is great because those are some of the critical concepts of Partners in Fire.
But the funniest thing about my organic search views is that my post on why Buffy is the greatest show ever—something completely unrelated to finance and that I wrote as a blogiversary gift to myself—is my top referral.
To me, that is proof of the “your money and your life” algorithm. It’s harder to rank on search engines for content that revolves around real-life and money topics that can hurt people if they get the wrong information.
As financial bloggers, that makes it harder for us to rank without building authority – but that’s ok. It makes sense that search engines want to ensure people get the correct information. We just have to work harder to build that authority (and ensure we are giving accurate information!)
I didn’t update the articles on peer-to-peer lending for over four years, and they stopped garnering traffic via organic search. It’s crucial to keep SEO articles up-to-date. Someone will always be looking for ways to outrank you, and the search algorithms are constantly changing.
If you let your content age, they will lose their ranking. Sometimes, they will lose even if you keep them up to date. None of the articles listed here still rank well despite recent updates. The only one that still drives organic traffic is the article on Buffy, which sends about 50 users to the site monthly.
However, lost traffic from those rankings was replaced by traffic from other articles that do rank. The more great content you have, the better the chance that some of it will rank.
Direct Hits
We also saw some nice improvement in our viewers via direct hits this month. We had 352 users visit us directly this month, an increase from the 315 we had last month. I love that our subscribers keep coming back for more!
Unfortunately, we haven’t had many new subscribers lately. We’ve been stuck at just under 100 for the past few months.
How we believed that over 300 users came to us via e-mail subscribers while we had less than 100 subscribers is beyond me.
Direct hits can come from anywhere: email subscribers, referrals from other sites, social media, forums, and even bot attacks. It’s nearly impossible to tell where this traffic originated, so Google Analytics uses “Direct” as a catch-all for unknown traffic sources.
Content
We continue to publish amazing content on Partners in Fire every month. I like mixing the content and writing about various topics each month.
In that vein, we continued our series on peer-to-peer lending with a post dedicated to the ins and outs of using it as an investment method. We continued our series on our journey to RV life by writing about the estimated costs of RV life. Writing that made me wonder how much life in general costs, so I also decided to write an epic post about the average cost of living for US citizens. That one took a lot of research, but it was fascinating to see how expensive just living really is for most people.
This month, we also delved into more traditional financial topics, discussing the advantages of a home warranty and non-traditional loan options. As a finance blogger, it’s important to discuss these topics, and I sometimes get so caught up in the lifestyle side of things that I forget to address the technical aspects. But I aim to do better on that and write a few posts each month on these more traditional topics.
That doesn’t mean that I avoided the lifestyle topics this month! We mixed it up by publishing two lifestyle posts, the one on pet regret that I mentioned earlier and one on the looming threat of Automation, which I thought would be fun to publish on Halloween.
These may not be traditional financial topics, but they both have financial impacts on our lives, and I think it’s important to relate the real-life stuff to finance. In the end, pretty much anything can be related to finance (even Buffy!).
Most of the content we published in our 23rd month is still valuable. The only article we completely deleted was the estimated cost of living in an RV.
The rest of the articles were woefully out of date and poorly written. However, as they still serve the audience, we decided to revamp them rather than delete them. All of them were rewritten with fresh information and better content.
Monetization
Affiliates
I’ve gotten some clicks on my affiliate links, but none have resulted in sales. Getting accepted into affiliate programs via CJ has also been a struggle. Most programs I’ve applied for have rejected me, probably based on my low page views. I’m guessing I will get kicked off of CJ soon due to a lack of sales, but that’s ok; there are plenty of other affiliate programs out there.
Speaking of other affiliate programs, I got tons of clicks from Impact, but none of those have resulted in sales. My next step with affiliates is to scour the Fincon marketplace (I haven’t even joined yet, isn’t that sad?) and Awin. I’m also considering testing out direct affiliate marketing with Pinterest.
We have never had success with affiliate marketing. In fact, we remove most of our affiliate links when we update and republish articles. If they don’t serve the audience, they are removed.
With web publishing how it is now, we want to stand out. We want users to trust that we have their best interests at heart, not our bottom line. Although we could easily pump out content on the top ten best X and push affiliates, that doesn’t serve people.
Our goal has always been to help people. Making money is obviously essential, but we refuse to do it in a way that impacts the folks who rely on us for honest information
Ads
I’ve had a little success with the new ad platform I’ve been using on Partners in Fire. You may have noticed a few ads in our content lately (hopefully, they have been well-placed and don’t affect the user experience!). Those have been via Interactive Offers, an ad platform focusing on the financial industry.
As a newer company, they accept newer bloggers (yay me!) even though their main focus is still direct email marketing (which I don’t engage in). I’ve made over three dollars so far during the six or so weeks that I’ve been on the platform, which is better than my experience with Google ads.
I’m still hoping that one day, I’ll reach the 25,000-user threshold needed for Mediavine. A girl can dream!
We make the bulk of our money via display ads now, though it’s only a few hundred dollars per month. When traffic is good, we can make thousands, but with recent changes in organic search, we’re making less.
I prefer to monetize via display ads. Visitors know they’re ads and know exactly what they are doing if they click. There are no surprises and no obligation to click to get the information you come to us for. The ads help keep the website afloat so we can continue serving real people.
How We Are Going to Improve Our Readership
I was thrilled to see a slight improvement in readership during our 23rd month, and my goal is to continue this trend. One of the most important things I can do is continue writing for SEO and updating old posts. My goal of updating two per month was challenging yet achievable, so I will stick with that for now. Hopefully, we will see another improvement in our hits via organic search.
The other big thing I need to improve upon is Pinterest. I’ve been failing at it on my own, so now I think it’s time to invest in a course. Hopefully, this will help me improve my Pinterest game and increase my readership from the platform.
We now update four posts a week. In the beginning, getting content out there was crucial. However, now that we’ve been publishing for years, we have a lot of old, outdated content. It’s vital to consistently revisit old content—updating articles that still serve a purpose and removing those that don’t.
We’ve been seeing nice improvements to organic search for the articles we update, and they get a fresh opportunity on social media.
With the changes to Google, we’ve also leaned more into Pinterest, using Pin Generator to help us create and schedule daily pins. We also use Canva to design original pins, so the platform has a nice mix of content. Our viewership is growing slowly but surely, but we still haven’t returned to the traffic levels we saw in the early days before Pinterest changed its algorithm.
The Blogging Journey
Next month will mark my second anniversary on this blogging journey, and I’m so thankful that I took this plunge. Running this blog taught me much about social media management, blogging, writing, and finance. It hasn’t been profitable financially yet, but it is well worth the time and effort for what I gained in personal growth and friendships.
My blogging journey has had its ups and downs, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m excited to see what my 24th month will bring, and I can’t wait for year three!