Partners in Fire published monthly reviews highlighting growth strategies and obstacles for the first 50 months. We decided to keep these old articles for posterity and to help new bloggers on their journeys.
Here is our 38th month update, edited for growth, clarity, and to add a little extra context with the benefit of hindsight.
38th Month Update
After a lackluster 37th month, we got back on track during our 38th month, reaching over 10K pageviews yet again.
I’m pleased to announce that we fixed most of the issues we encountered last month.
Readership
We still had a handful of days with under 200 users this month.
Hopefully, that will stop, and soon, I’ll start worrying about a handful of days with under 300, then under 400. It’s a slow game but I’m in it to win it!
Traffic Drivers
Organic Search
Our top traffic driver continues to be organic search. Nearly five thousand users found us via search engines this month.
Hopefully, that number will continue to creep up, and in the next month or so, we will actually hit that target and beyond!
Top Pages
The top page remains “How to be a Twitch Affiliate,” which accounted for over a third of all our organic traffic.
Last month, I learned how dangerous it is to have all your eggs in one page’s basket, so I’m trying really hard to write more posts with SEO in mind to spread that wealth a bit more.
My focus on SEO seems to be working, as the remaining two-thirds of organic traffic is well spread out.
Six pages had over two hundred visitors, and every article in the top ten saw over a hundred. Nearly two hundred total posts had at least one visitor via organic traffic, proving that I didn’t know anything about writing for high-volume search terms for most of my blogging career.
But at least that one person per month looking for that particular term is finding my content!
With all the Google updates over the years, we’ve lost many rankings. Now, we have many more pages in the SERPs but many fewer clicks per page. We’re still working on improvements in the changing face of the web.
Referrals
Referrals took the second spot for top traffic drivers during this period. Over a thousand users found us from other websites.
The coolest thing about this month’s referral traffic is that it came from relationships we built blogging rather than a post we publicized.
One of our good blogger friends got their post on cable alternatives featured on MSN, and they linked to our older post on cutting cable.
The lesson here is to make friends with other bloggers and work together because you can help each other.
The collaborative software platform Github ranked second in referral traffic this money, even though I’ve never used the site in my life and have no idea why someone may have posted one of my articles there. Whatever, I’ll take it!
Finally, Personal Finance Blogs featured our post “How Much Money Do You Really Need” on one of their daily “best of” lists, which resulted in a nice referral boost.
Direct Hits
Fewer users found us directly this month than in previous months. Perhaps Google is finally learning the difference between direct hits and referral traffic, as I’m certain the bulk of our “direct” traffic in previous periods was actually referrals.
Still, over 700 users visited us directly, from Google’s unknown referrals and from our wonderful email list.
Social Media
Partners in Fire is not doing well with social media.
Less than 500 users found us from all the social media platforms combined!
However, since our focus is more on SEO than on social media, it makes sense that our traffic from this source would be lackluster.
Pinterest was our highest-performing social platform this month, and we had about the same number of visits from it as last month.
I still haven’t implemented all of the Pinterest SEO strategies I learned from Pinterest Ninja, but I’m very happy to be getting far more traffic than before taking the course.
I’ve also started experimenting with making my own pin designs rather than using templates, which has been fun and highly educational.
Maybe one day, I’ll even have a packet of templates for sale!
I gave up making my own pin designs pretty quickly. I’m a writer, not a designer.
Close to 100 users came from Twitter this month, a little more than last month.
I’m still focused on building the account and networking with folks in other niches, which I think is a better use of the platform at this stage in my blog growth.
Twitter is the absolute best platform for driving traffic and getting noticed when you are a brand-new blog, but the focus should definitely be on Pinterest and SEO for long-term growth.
Twitter is no longer a great networking tool. I’ve recently moved to Bluesky.
We managed to get close to 100 users via Facebook this month without doing much on the platform.
Facebook is not a primary focus, but I’m pleased to see some traffic from it.
Content
Partners in Fire is continuing to produce killer content. We started the new month and new year with an uplifting post about believing in yourself and then dove into a combination of fantastic financial and passion-fire topics.
First, we published a review of Mistplay, an app that pays you to play mobile games. What better way to combine finance with our love of gaming?
Next, we got deep into finance to discover what the investment advice “Buy Low Sell High” really means.
We continued with more Passion Fire content, publishing a review of the game Immortals: Fenyx Rising and the art post of the month, where we shared some Painting Ideas.
We started a special content series with our post on Discord Servers, which explains how Discord works and why every content creator should be on the platform. Be on the lookout for monthly content explaining how different aspects of the app work.
We rounded out the month with a post on how a brain dump can help you be productive and two traditional money posts: one on cutting food costs with cheaper food choices and the other on the best websites for selling stuff online.
All in all, I love the mix of content that we deliver each month, and I hope you do as well!
The only article we removed after all these years was the game review. We’ve updated and republished all the other articles, improving their usefulness and readability.
How Are We Going to Improve Our Readership?
I know I’ve talked about this every month, but I still think improving our writing for SEO is the number one way to improve readership.
We can see how crucial it is now that “FU Money”, the first post we wrote with SEO in mind, is starting to rank. Hopefully, the other posts we wrote with an SEO focus will also begin to rank soon.
We also hope to improve our readership by continuing to produce various content under the Passion Fire umbrella. I mix up the monthly content plan by having a few posts on gaming, a few on traditional financial topics, and an art post or two each period.
Hopefully, the variety will appeal to a broader swath of the population, and we will be able to grow from there.
I’m also working behind the scenes on projects designed for networking. I hope to find ways to network with more bloggers in the art and gaming niches.
With Twitter’s destruction, networking with other bloggers became a pipe dream. We tried reaching out to numerous folks via email but rarely received a response. Most probably thought we were spam link builders, which makes sense because that’s all I get in my emails, too.
YouTube
Another big move we made in January, hoping to increase our readership, is creating more content on YouTube. We had a few videos in the past, but mostly, the channel was just uploads of full Twitch streams, which no one really wanted to watch.
Instead, we started making more content, like this Coast Fire video, which I can embed directly into blog posts. The goal is for people to watch the videos directly on the website and spend more time interacting with the page.
However, a secondary goal is to increase brand awareness, as the videos are also searchable via YouTube. We’re going to create some videos specifically for that platform as well.
Check out the YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss any new uploads!
Although our videos are still live, we no longer have the time to create regular content for YouTube. One day, we will get back into it. We really enjoyed it.
Monetization
We decided to try something new with monetization this month. Instead of trying to make money, we decided to spend all the money. I know this goes against everything I’ve been working towards for a few months, but hear me out.
Partners in Fire is a business. Businesses need investment to grow and expand.
I’ve ignored that advice in the past but took that to heart this month. I officially filed to make Partners in Fire a business by filing an LLC.
We also invested in additional tools and branding to help us grow the business.
We got a new logo and decided to pay for Canva Pro, Grammarly Pro, and Convert Kit’s premium service. In addition, we paid for BlogFixer to fix a bunch of our messed-up links.
We are still part of the SEO Hustle group, which gives us access to Moz and other premium optimization tools. All in all, I spent a whopping $950 on the blog this month.
You’d think that if I spend money like this, I’ll make it back. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. January was one of our lowest-earning periods in months.
I only made about fifty dollars this period from display ads.
Most of those expenses were yearly, so running Partners in Fire will cost $200 a month moving forward.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to start earning that and more in the very near future!
We’ve since invested in stock photos and better hosting, so running the site costs about $500 a month. Although we’ve had some years with great returns, we aren’t currently recouping the investment.
Continued Growth
I’m investing so much money into the blog because I believe I can grow it into a successful business.
These next six months will genuinely answer that question. In the past few months, we’ve spent a lot of time building up new processes, focusing on SEO, and working to make Partners in Fire a legitimate brand and company.
I’m confident that if we stay the course, we will meet those goals in 2021.
We did grow and excel, but then Google updates thrust us back to where we were. Blogging is a roller coaster. Sometimes you’re at the top, and sometimes you’re at the bottom.