Partners in Fire published monthly updates highlighting our growth efforts for the first fifty months as a publisher. While revisiting old articles, we decided to keep these updates for posterity and to help new bloggers find their way.
Here’s our 32nd-month update, edited for grammar, clarity, and to add additional context with the benefit of hindsight.
32nd Month Update
Our 32nd month of blogging was just as great as the two previous months. I still feel like we’re on the cusp of breaking through, and that’s even more apparent after all the big wins this month.
Read on to see what I mean!
Readership
Our readership during our 32nd month was about the same as last month. We had slightly fewer users this period, but it’s not enough of a decrease to be concerning.
Considering the long holiday weekend and the traditionally low traffic that July tends to bring, I think it’s a win that we didn’t see a steeper decline!
We had a handful of days with under 100 users this period, but half of those came during the July 4th weekend. Our lowest day this month was July 4th, but 70 people still visited the site on the weekend holiday. That’s pretty awesome!
We didn’t have any huge spikes this period, but we did have consistent traffic throughout the month, which is far superior.
Traffic Drivers
Organic Search
Our organic traffic keeps improving. Nearly 2,500 users found us through organic search this month, and my goal is to keep the momentum going!
I’ve updated a few more blog posts and started focused keyword research to meet that goal. It’s nice to see some of the hard work I’ve been doing in SEO pay off.
Our top page from organic search remains How to be a Twitch Affiliate in 30 Days. I updated that post a bit after I became a Twitch Affiliate on my own account, and I updated an older post about alternatives to Twitch to ensure that I maintain relevant content in that niche.
You must keep updating and improving if you don’t want to be overtaken!
We haven’t updated Twitch content in years, and our organic traffic from those articles has declined.
Although the majority of my organic search traffic is going to the Twitch affiliate post, it’s not the only post that’s getting attention.
Our articles Buffy is the Greatest Show, Pet Regret, and Animal Crossing are still coming in behind the Twitch affiliate post, but Coast Fire and the Fire Movement are both close runner-ups.
Hopefully, in another few months, and with additional links, my finance articles will rank higher. I mean, this is a finance blog…kind of.
Although some of our finance articles rank, most traffic comes from topics outside the Your Money, Your Life niches. We decided to focus on the freedom and happiness aspects of financial independence rather than the money side of it.
Increased Domain Authority (DA)
I think I’m going to start ranking better with some of my finance posts because of my huge increase in Domain Authority this month. I mentioned that my DA has been stagnant at between 25 and 29 for years now, but that all changed this month.
My DA skyrocketed to 55!
Isn’t that awesome?
Now, I can target a few higher-volume keywords in the 30-40 difficulty range, and if I write correctly for SEO, I should have no problem ranking high in search engines. A higher DA also gives me some negotiating power with brands, so my next order of business is to think of companies I might want to work with for sponsored post opportunities.
We never found success with sponsored posts or brand work.
How Did I Increase My DA?
Increasing your domain authority takes work. It requires a lot of commitment, guest posting, and an excellent link-building strategy.
This month, I wrote guest posts for three different websites and appeared on a podcast, which helped.
But the number one reason my DA increased so drastically is my involvement in the Money Mix Insiders. They helped me develop a link-building strategy that got my links on high-DA websites.
We also work as a group to lift each other up. That helps give the links we offer each other even more juice.
Don’t get me wrong – the Insiders isn’t a link-building group. When you network with experienced bloggers, you will naturally build excellent links.
The Insiders is a blog help group that assists with all aspects of website growth, from site speed to social media to writing skills. They offer expert advice on blogging questions, like prioritizing when you’re a one-person show and which plugins work best.
I learned so much during my free trial with them that I decided to get the paid membership.
Direct Hits
The problem with blogging is that you will sometimes see random drastic decreases in specific acquisition channels. Although we’re killing it with organic traffic, we see declines everywhere else.
This issue is readily apparent with our direct hits. Only 700 users visited us via direct hit this month – a massive decrease from the 1200 we had last period.
I’m still not sure where the users are coming from. However, we didn’t see an increase in any other acquisition method to correspond with the decrease in direct hits, so it isn’t a problem for Google to change how it records things.
Direct hits come from anywhere. It’s typically referral traffic that Google can’t record.
Social Media
Speaking of declining on specific platforms, we are getting destroyed on social media.
According to Google Analytics, we continue to see a decline in the number of social media users. We barely had 200 users from all social media platforms combined!
Google Analytics may not tell the whole story. It only reports a handful of users from Pinterest, but Pinterest analytics reports over 300 users.
This is the same problem we had last month. I’m fairly certain that these Pinterest hits are now being recorded as direct hits, but there is no way to tell for sure.
Pinterest isn’t great at defining where users go. Not all recorded “outbound clicks” go to Partners in Fire.
I spent time improving my Pinterest game this period. The Insiders offered great insight into what types of pins perform best on the platform, and I tried to redesign a few of my pins to fit that theme.
Unfortunately, that work hasn’t resulted in more views from the platform yet, but I hope it will pay off over time.
I didn’t do as well on Twitter this month as in previous months. About 150 users came to us from the platform this month, nearly 100 less than last month.
I also wasn’t as active on the platform. My tweets were down 15%, which led to less engagement. In addition, I failed to ask the Insiders to share my blog posts on Twitter. We share each other’s posts across social media to help increase engagement, and I was sharing nearly every single one of my articles last month, but this month, I hardly shared any.
Social media sharing pods can help increase your followers, engagement, and clickthrough rates.
I no longer spend time on sharing pods on Twitter (X), as the changes to the platform limit your visibility unless you pay. I allow my posts to publish automatically with the Revive Old Posts plugin.
I failed at Facebook yet again this period. My strategy for Facebook was the same as last month (so no strategy), and we had the same number of visitors from the platform (6).
Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time or energy to focus on all the things. Since I’ve seen limited results even when I try on Facebook, I decided that was where I could give up a little and not see huge declines.
I also gave up on Instagram for the time being. It’s a hard nut to crack, and I haven’t figured it out. I posted at least once a day for a month and still couldn’t get above two thousand followers. I decided it wasn’t worth the effort for now. Maybe when all my blog posts are perfect for SEO, and I’ve gotten my Pinterest traffic back up, I’ll give it another go.
But getting to the 10K mark that I need to drop links into my stories—and getting higher than that to be a viable influencer—all seem like pipe dreams.
We were never able to gain any traction on either Facebook or Instagram. We’d go back for short periods, then give up again. We still don’t have a large following on either platform.
Content
Partners in Fire published lots of engaging content this month. At the beginning of the month, we stuck to guest posts to help improve our domain authority.
We featured an interesting story about growing up with hoarders, an informational piece on supporting People of Color, a look into the differences between Canada’s COVID response and our own, and a piece on value and growth investing.
As you can see, all these stories are wildly different in scope and content. That’s one of the great things about featuring guest posts—you get an interesting array of stories and viewpoints you wouldn’t usually think to write about. Hopefully, my audience will enjoy the variety.
We deleted the articles on COVID and supporting people of color, as they were focused on that specific time in history and weren’t evergreen.
I’m Still Writing Posts!
I wrote some of my own posts this month, too!
It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t write about our messed-up system. I delivered with the article about how toxic the traditional life script can be for some folks. I also wrote a review of I Like to Dabble’s new course – Launch Your Side Hustle, which is loaded with great information on how to start and grow a side business.
I rounded out my posts with a super in-depth post about FU money—describing what it is and how to get some for yourself.
How Are We Going to Improve Our Readership
Our readership has been stuck at about 3.5k for the past three months. Don’t get me wrong; I’d much rather be stagnant here than at the 1K I was stuck at for the previous eight months.
But I also want to grow.
I’m hoping that the improved DA will help more of my pages rank, but I can’t count on that. I also have to make sure the content is high quality. Therefore, I updated five articles that are ranking fairly high (think pages 2 or 3) to try to get them up a bit.
Hopefully I’ll see results on that in the next few weeks.
I’m also doing more keyword research, and trying to target words that people are actually searching for.
When my DA was low, I looked for keyword difficulties in the twenties, but most had low volumes. Now, I’m going to target higher-volume keywords in the 30s.
I’m thrilled that some of my articles rank on the first page, but it’s not very helpful if only ten people search for the content per month. I will focus on ranking on page one with keywords that thousands of people search for.
The final thing that I’m doing is improving my social media presence. Yes, I already admitted that I’m giving up on Facebook and Instagram – but Twitter and Pinterest are where it’s at for me. I got nearly 100 new Twitter followers this month even with my lack of engagement on the platform, and I know I can do better. Pinterest is harder, but I know that it can be a huge driver of traffic if I can figure it out.
Monetization
I actually made money blogging this month! Then promptly spent it all on the Insiders group. But you know what – making any money on the blog is a huge win, and I’m more than happy to reinvest those earnings if it means I’ll see the continued growth that I’ve seen by being a member of the group.
Here’s my revenue breakdown for the month:
Sponsored Post – $100
Another bonus to joining the Insiders is that the sometimes have sponsored post opportunities. This is kinda rare for to get during the free trial, and even for the basic membership, so don’t join just for this – you’ll be disappointed.
After COVID, a lot of the sponsorship opportunities dried up.
Ads: $24.79
I run two types of ads on my site. I work with Interactive Offers to embed HTML into my posts, and I work with SheMedia to run display banner ads. I made a little over thirteen bucks with Interactive Offers and a little over eleven bucks with SheMedia.
Someday (soon I hope), I’ll get over 10K page views a month so I can switch to a higher level platform, but I’m happy to be allowed into these two networks at the level I’m at.
Affiliates: $2.9
I made five sales on Amazon this month – and for the first time ever I sold something that I mentioned on my website. This was the first month that I made an affiliate sale to an actual customer, and not to a blogger friend being supportive (though I appreciate those as well!).
Yes, the commission is horrible. Less than three bucks for 5 items is pretty atrocious. But, the items I sold weren’t really worth much to begin with. The five sales were only worth about $93 total, so 10% commission isn’t all that bad.
I also applied to a few other affiliate programs this month, so hopefully I’ll be able to start making conversions on some of them soon. We shall see!
Net Earnings: $127.69
Expenses:
Money Mix Insiders – $120
So I actually still made seven bucks, even with paying for the insiders!
I know, I need to account for my hosting fees as well, but I paid for that in advance, and for a bunch of different domains, so I considered it a hobby expense at the time. It will be included as a business expense the next time I have to pay for it though.
Continued Growth
Partners in Fire is continuing to learn and grow. Now that the DA is up, my biggest focus is on traffic growth. I think with all the things I mentioned above, I will get to over 10K views a month in no time! And I’ll definitely continue sharing the journey with you.