Partners in Fire published monthly growth updates for their first 50 months as a website. We decided to keep these older articles for posterity and help new bloggers understand the truth about growing a website.
Here is our 43rd-month update, edited for grammar, clarity, and to prove additional context with the benefit of hindsight.
43rd Month Update
Our 43rd month brought minor setbacks. It was the first month in a long time that we didn’t achieve 10K pageviews. We were so close we could almost taste it, and I’m sure we would have made it if June had 31 days rather than 30.
Still, it’s more important to track readership and growth over 30 days than to give yourself a bonus day, so we need to do some work to determine why our traffic dropped during this period.
Readership
Even with the drop in traffic, our readership remained consistent.
We had one bad weekend, during which our traffic dropped below 200 users per day. We’re unsure whether we were hit with a Google algorithm change or if it was a normal drop due to summer travel.
However, despite that, most days saw between 200 and 300 users, and we had a few tiny spikes at the beginning of the month when our “What Type of FIRE are You” Quiz received a lot of fanfare.
Traffic Drivers
Organic Search
It does appear that we saw a little bit of traffic loss due to Google’s algorithm update. Our organic traffic was slightly down throughout the period and only accounted for 54% of our traffic this month, whereas, in previous months, 2/3rds of our traffic was coming via organic search.
I hope the second phase of the rollout will correct those issues or at least not make them worse. The hit wasn’t so severe as to destroy our traffic, and we’ve done a lot of work building links to essential posts this period, so hopefully, that will have an impact soon.
While our organic search improved for a while, the helpful content updates (HCU) of 2023/2024 decimated us. The things we rely on for traffic won’t always be available.
Top Pages
Our top organic traffic drivers have remained the same for months. It’s interesting that the older posts are driving organic traffic! I’ve been told that posts take 6-18 months to start ranking in Google, and my anecdotal experience matches that.
The only “young” post receiving a lot of organic is FU money. However, we’re close to that post’s one-year birthday, and it didn’t start ranking until it was over six months old. Every other post in my top ten is much older.
Another interesting fact about my top posts is that most of them are not in the Your Money or Your Life niche. I have two finance posts ranking, but the rest are about gaming, Buffy, and Twitter.
As a newer website owned by someone without fancy credentials, it’s easier to rank in these niches. During my first two years of blogging, I wrote solely about money, and hardly any of those posts ranked. I started branching out in year three and saw my organic traffic grow in various niches.
It’s not just the niche, though. In year three, I’ve learned so much about writing and blogging, and I think that has been a massive help in gaining this organic traffic, probably more so than expanding my niche.
Most of that was due to joining the SEO hustle group. They gave me many SEO tools that helped me with keyword research and on-page optimization. In addition, they helped me get my content featured on some fantastic websites! Joining was one of the best blogging decisions I ever made.
It’s also the quality of writing. We realized how awful our early writing was during this massive content review. We had to delete the vast majority of the content we wrote in year one because the quality was so poor. However, we wouldn’t have the writing skills we have now if we had never started. The only way to get better at something is via practice, and it’s obvious that our writing has vastly improved over the years.
Direct Hits
Direct hits were our second largest traffic driver during this period.
Over 1700 users visited us via direct hit this month from various sources, including our features on other sites and directory listings, and a few who typed our name directly into Google.
People who sign up for our email list never miss a post. Be sure to join them!
Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to determine where these users came from, but I’m thankful they found us!
Referral Traffic
We had consistent referral traffic this month. About 800 users found us from other websites during this period, which is only slightly more than last month.
The exciting thing about this month’s referral traffic is where those users came from.
Although Github still tops the list, we saw some users from Budgets Are Sexy, MSN, CNBC, and Fool, which means our links are getting on these established publications, and that’s even better than the referral traffic, in my opinion.
Social Media
Our social media reach is still lacking, but we did better than last month. A little under 500 users found us via our social channels this month, nearly 200 more than last month. Most of that growth was due to Pinterest.
A hundred more users visited us via Pinterest this month than last month due to one crucial strategy: pinning.
I started publishing a few pins to Pinterest each morning during the last week of the month. It wasn’t a lot, just two or three. But I noticed something weird.
On the first day I posted on Pinterest, my views on the platform increased. It wasn’t on the pins I just published but on older ones.
I’m still unsure if this was a random coincidence or if posting new pins made Pinterest show my old pins more, but it’s worth looking into. I decided to post every day for the rest of the month (which was only four days) and see if the pattern held.
Although my best traffic from Pinterest came on those first two days, I did notice that I had more traffic from the platform on the days I posted than on the days I didn’t.
Twitter and Facebook
Twitter and Facebook made up the rest of my social media traffic (most of it anyway; some other sites sent onesies and twosies). I’m not seeing a lot of traffic from either channel, but I’m also not focusing on using either for traffic.
I consider any traffic I get from either site as a bonus.
Twitter is still a great networking tool. I’ve made many connections on the platform, which have led to guest posts, collaboration opportunities, and interview requests. I generally use the platform for these purposes, and any traffic I get from it is a bonus!
I no longer focus much on Twitter, as it’s no longer a good networking tool or traffic driver but a cesspool for political divide.
Content
For the first time ever, I didn’t publish any content I wrote myself for an entire month. Instead, we published guest posts and syndicated content, which gave me the time to write guest posts for other websites and finish some of the products I’ve been working on.
The guests’ posts covered a wide range of topics, from alternative housing ideas to building your brand as a streamer.
We’ve since removed the guest posts, as the writing quality wasn’t up to our current standards.
How Are We Going to Improve Our Readership?
Our top priority remains Search Engine Optimization (SEO) through link building and on-page optimization. This month, we focused on links through a combination of guest posting, round-ups, and collaborations.
We also tried to conduct cold outreach to bloggers in various niches, but unfortunately, we didn’t see any success with that. I understand. I ignore most emails asking for links, too. Most of the ones I get are from marketing companies and not individual blogs, but I know that most people get too many of these emails and ignore them. It was worth a try, though.
Joining the Money Mix Insider’s SEO Hustle program drastically improved our SEO knowledge. It’s a mastermind group dedicated to helping with every part of the blogging journey, including access to many great SEO tools for on-page optimization.
It’s been such a great experience and has helped me immensely. The group still offers a three-month trial period for only a buck a month, so if you need some help growing your blog, be sure to check them out!
We’re still a member of the Insider’s SEO program, and it’s still beneficial. The group has adapted to the changes in blogging after Google’s HCU, helping members find alternative ways to gain traffic and grow their websites.
Monetization
The money is going to start rolling in; I can feel it! This month was the same as last month. We made a tiny amount of ad revenue, but not enough to cover our expenses. We made one affiliate sale worth about twenty-five bucks, so that was nice. All in all, I made about eighty dollars this period, but I spent about three hundred.
I launched my new product, the How to Discover Your Passion Worksheet Bundle, this month. It’s available on Etsy and Gumroad.
I haven’t sold many copies yet, but I also haven’t put anything into marketing it – the development and launch came first, and I will focus on marketing this month. Hopefully, I’ll be able to drive some sales! It’s a fantastic product that I put a ton of effort into – and it will benefit anyone who isn’t quite sure what to do with their life.
We still believe in our product but struggled to market it. We’ve recently created a shop on Partners in Fire and offer it directly.
Continued Growth
We will not meet our goal of 30K page views, but that’s okay. I think we will get there by September!
Love reading these updates! I have no doubt that one day, I’ll read “we hit 30k page views this month!”.