Partners in Fire published monthly status updates highlighting strategies and growth for the first fifty months as a publisher. We decided to keep these old articles for posterity and to help others navigate their own journeys.
Here is our 31st month updated, edited for grammar, clarity, and to provide additional context with the benefit of hindsight.
Have you ever felt like you were on the cusp of something, ready to break through? That’s where I think we are with Partners in Fire. I believe if I continue writing, improving, and growing, we will see epic growth.
31st Month Update
Let’s see how we improved during our 31st month – and find out why I think we’re ready for a breakthrough!
Sadly, we never had a massive breakthrough. Our growth has been slow, with numerous ups and downs.
Readership
Our readership improved significantly during this period. We went from 2800 to 3300 to now over 3500 users! And we’re so close to breaking 5,000 pageviews!
The best part is seeing the growth right before our eyes.
The last week of the month was the best yet, with over 1,000 users coming in just that week. Most of these were from SEO improvements rather than social media (not that social media isn’t necessary—it’s just not as consistent).
We still had six days with fewer than 100 users this month, but this period’s lows were slightly higher than last month’s, which is a win.
Our peaks were also higher and more consistent.
I don’t know why we saw such a huge spike this period. We published an article on remodeling the bathroom, which saw a lot of social shares, and updated “How to Avoid Being Taken Advantage of” and noticed a slight increase in users to that post as well.
We’ve since deleted the article on bathroom DIY. Although well-written and fun, it didn’t fit the site’s overall theme and hasn’t received any traffic since its publication.
We get traffic from various sources, which helps our growth.
Traffic Drivers
Organic Search
Our viewership from organic traffic remained consistent this month. Nearly 1800 users found us through a search, similar to last month.
Although the numbers are the same, the traffic wasn’t as consistent. A few days saw low search numbers, but they improved toward the end of the month when we saw about 80 searchers daily.
Our top organic search page remains “How to be a Twitch Affiliate in 30 Days”, and I continued with that theme.
I wrote an SEO-friendly post on “ How Twitch Affiliates Make Money,” a perfect cross between gaming and finance.
We’ve since removed the article on how Twitch affiliates make money, as it was similar to a better post we published later, “How to Make Money on Twitch,” so we redirected it to avoid duplicate content.
Although most of my organic search traffic comes from the Twitch affiliate post, it’s not the only article getting attention.
Why Buffy is the Greatest Show Ever continues to be at the number two slot, I Regret Getting Pets is three, and Why is Animal Crossing so Addicting comes in at number four.
The Twitch affiliate post hasn’t been updated in years and currently generates very little traffic. The articles on Buffy and Pet Regret still bring in decent traffic, with over 350 monthly users from them combined. The Animal Crossing article also brings in very little traffic, but we recently updated it and hope it will make a comeback.
What Do These Articles Have in Common?
The articles that rank best have one thing in common: they aren’t in the “Your Money or Your Life” category.
The fact that we can rank well on articles about gaming, pets, and entertainment highlights how much easier it is to gain organic traffic on posts that don’t impact finances.
However, I know that niches are essential (though I hate the idea and would rather write about anything), so I aim to improve my rankings on those posts. Since I’ve done my best regarding on-page SEO, the next step is to strengthen my EAT rating.
I’ve since learned that a “niche” isn’t as essential as I thought. We’ve done much better expanding our niche rather than contracting it. We’ve “niched up” rather than down.
Although we don’t have a specific niche, we have an overall theme. Everything on Partners in Fire relates to happiness, wellness, and living on your own terms. Money, mental health, culture, and the things we love to do are huge parts of that.
EAT
EAT is Google’s way of determining whether a website is legitimate enough to rank high—especially in those “Your Money or Your Life” searches.
It stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. Google wants to show users the most relevant sites with the best information, and it uses a complex algorithm based on those three criteria to make the determination.
So the real question is – how do you improve your EAT ranking? No one knows Google’s exact algorithm, but we have a general idea of what they’re looking for.
I’m no expert, but I’m trying to figure it out. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
Google has since added an extra “E” to EAT, making it EEAT. The extra “E” Stands for “experience.”
Expertise
Expertise is all about your content. Write legitimate content that answers every user question about a given topic.
I’ve worked hard to showcase my expertise about being a Twitch affiliate by updating the article to include extra information covering related topics. Then, I write an even more in-depth post about that header and link to it.
That’s why I wrote a post on how Twitch Affiliates Make Money. I realized that’s one of the main questions asked about being a Twitch Affiliate, so I added a subheading addressing it in the main post, then wrote an entire in-depth post about it and linked them.
Writing various posts covering different aspects of the same topic is a content cluster.
All these articles related to the topic show Google I’m addressing all the questions their users might want to know.
Expertise is also about being a subject matter expert in the topic. You must show that you know what you’re talking about. Your content must cover all the aspects of a topic, but it must do so correctly.
Authority
Authority is all about your domain authority, and here’s where I’m still lacking (and where I have big improvement plans!).
How does Google measure authority? Backlinks, backlinks, and backlinks!
From what I understand (and Google is complex, so I may be way off), it also uses your social metrics (media shares) and searches for times you are mentioned without a link. Most of this is too complex for me to understand – how does Google know they are talking about me when I’m not even linked?
Some of my finance posts aren’t ranking higher because my Domain Authority is low.
At the beginning of the month, it was a paltry 24. With the help of my blogger group, The Money Mix Insiders, I got it up to 27, and they’ve helped me do a ton of stuff this month that should skyrocket my DA.
Unfortunately, Google doesn’t work instantaneously, so I probably have to wait a few more weeks to see the full results, but I’m sure it will be epic. Everyone who started in the group before me has a DA of 50+.
Google technically doesn’t use DA as a metric, as it’s a third-party system developed by MOZ. However, we can assume they use something similar. Our DA is currently 67.
Trustworthiness
Google also wants to ensure the pages it features are trustworthy. The Insiders helped me make a few changes to my overall site that would improve trustworthiness.
I’ve improved my site speed and made minor tweaks to the user interface. I’ve also started linking to reputable sources to show that I’m researching topics I’m unfamiliar with. Getting them to link back to you is crucial but much more challenging.
Some of the other components of trustworthiness are harder to assess as a blog. I don’t have a Yelp page or a place where customers can leave reviews. I don’t do any transactions, so I don’t have any information on returns, and I don’t have terms and conditions regarding the products and services I offer (because I don’t offer any).
I’m not entirely sure how Google measures trustworthiness outside of those few things – it’s a nut I’m still working on cracking.
We’ve improved trustworthiness by hosting a terms and conditions page, privacy policy, and robust “About us” page highlighting Partners in Fire as a brand. We’ve also created separate author pages with in-depth bios about our writers, which also promotes trust.
Our linking strategy was incorrect. We simply linked to big brands, and as Google’s latest update shows, those big brands aren’t always the best source of information. Now, we source quotes from experts and dig deeper to find actual research that backs up our claims.
Direct Hits
We saw another massive increase in direct users this month—over 1,200 users came to Partners in Fire via direct hit!
A significant portion of that is our wonderful subscribers. We got three new subscribers this month (awesome!), and continue to pump out content that you love (hopefully). I think it’s time to upgrade my email list so I can have more control over the content you guys get.
You deserve it!
Most of the direct hits were not from subscribers.
But I don’t think the direct hits are only from subscribers. I’m starting to believe that some of my Pinterest traffic is recorded as direct because, according to Pinterest analytics, I had 344 link clicks, but according to Google, I only had 16 users from the platform. Something doesn’t add up there.
Someone told me that Google counts any user of unknown origin (that means Google isn’t exactly sure where they came from) as a direct hit. That’s happening a bit with Pinterest users and even some referrals. But hey, traffic is traffic, and I’ll take it!
It took me 31 months to learn what Google considers a direct hit, and I still didn’t completely get it.
Social Media
Speaking of social platforms, according to Google, we have seen a considerable decrease in users via social media.
We dropped from 542 last month to just over 400 this month. But it’s easy to see where most of that decrease came from.
As I said, Google only recorded 16 users from Pinterest this month. That’s way off from the 344 link clicks that Pinterest recorded. It’s difficult to say precisely what is happening here, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m getting at least some users from the platform, regardless of where they are being recorded.
I’ll have to be sure to watch my Pinterest analytics in addition to my Google analytics in the future.
Some of the Pinterest clicks may have counted clicks to other sites, as the technology doesn’t always know which pins are yours and which pins belong to others.
I’m still working my Twitter magic. Over 240 users visited us from the platform this month, a slight increase from last month.
There are a few reasons why I can drive so much traffic from Twitter. First, I write engaging tweets that make readers want to click my link. I learned a lot about this in Make it Stick, a mini-e-book on Twitter engagement. It’s mostly about in-platform engagement, but I could make the ideas work for link clicks and finally got over 5000 followers on the platform.
Another reason I can pull some traffic from Twitter is the Insiders group I mentioned earlier.
They have helped with some technical aspects of the blog, but we also help each other as much as possible. One big way to help is to share each other’s posts. That aspect gets my blog post in front of some new audiences and gets me more clicks.
I failed at Facebook during this period. We only had six users from the platform, a considerable decrease.
But, to be fair, I didn’t post much of my own content on the platform this month. I did share a ton of stuff from my blogger group on Facebook (and Twitter), but that won’t get clicks to my site.
I want to do better, but I also have many other things I’m working on, so Facebook isn’t much of a priority. That’s okay—you don’t need to focus on everything all at once. Sometimes, it’s better to focus on the things that will drive the most traffic.
When you’re a one-person website, it’s impossible to do everything, but automation can help. We currently use Revive Old Posts to automatically share older articles on social media and Facebook’s scheduler to plan weekly content.
Content
Partners in Fire published lots of relevant and engaging content this month.
I wrote an article bashing the finance community’s blind spot regarding political policies. I’m tired of all the famous influencers pretending there isn’t a political aspect to personal finance. I get that it’s tough to write about, but we do our readers a disservice by pretending that politics don’t impact every aspect of our financial lives.
Some people can’t escape poverty because political policies hold them back. As finance writers, we need to acknowledge that and do our parts to fix it.
In keeping with the political theme, I wrote a scathing review of the nine-to-five workweek and pondered whether financial security is worth the price we pay for it.
We’ve since updated the post on financial security for SEO—it’s no longer a question of whether it’s worthwhile but rather a well-reasoned article about what it is and how to achieve it.
We weren’t all serious this month! To stay in line with our gaming content, we also wrote about how to make money as a Twitch streamer, published more finance-related content (we are a finance blog) about saving money, and wrote an epic post about remodeling the upstairs bathroom.
How Are We Going to Improve Our Readership
Improving our SEO game seems to have the most significant impact on our readership, so my biggest goal is to make that happen. I have a list of posts currently ranking on pages 3-4 but could rank higher with minor tweaks. My goal is to update at least one of them a week.
Also, improving my EAT should help a lot. I will work hard on that stuff this month with the help of the Money Mix Insiders.
Finally, I will continue working on my social media presence. I think this means focusing on Twitter and Pinterest. I want to have a presence on all the platforms, but it’s too difficult to keep up. I’ll continue doing what I’m doing on Facebook and Instagram (a tiny bit more than nothing), but my main focus needs to be the platforms that are getting results.
It took me 2.5 years to reach over 5k followers on Twitter, but if I become more active on the platform, reaching 10k will be much faster. I aim to get there by this time next year, so we shall see! An active Twitter community also benefits my other big venture – Twitch streaming.
We never reached 10K Twitter followers. With the Money Mix Insiders, we started focusing on other things, like improving SEO. Then, when Twitter morphed into X and became a cesspool of right-wing garbage where it’s impossible to grow unless you pay, we stopped trying. We still automatically share content on the platform and get a little traffic, but we don’t put any effort into it.
Monetization
We haven’t written much about monetization because we didn’t have anything to report. But it’s different this month!
I made a whopping twenty dollars! That may not seem like much, but remember, I made $16 total my entire first year, so twenty in one month is fantastic!
That money came from ad networks, mainly from Interactive Offers, which provides embedded ads. I’ve been doing pretty well with them lately—I didn’t even notice that I’d been averaging about ten bucks a month there—that’s enough to cover my hosting!
The rest came from Shemedia, which iprovides the banner ads at the bottom. I started with them about a week ago, but if my traffic continues to increase, I should also be able to make 10-20 bucks a month with them.
How cool would that be?
Continued Growth
Partners in Fire is continuing to learn and grow. Blogging is a long-haul game; there’s always something new to learn, and I’m dedicated to learning it!
I’ve heard that July sucks for traffic in general, so I’m excited to see if we can at least remain consistent next month. We’ll find out!
Thanks for the updates and ideas! I zeroed in on the monetization because well, I’m still working on that part. Looks like your site is heating up! Congrats!