Partners in Fire published monthly updates highlighting its growth and struggles for the first 50 months as an online publisher. We decided to keep these older articles for posterity and to help any new bloggers see what growing a profitable blog really takes.
Here’s our 48th-month update, edited for grammar, clarity, and to add a little insight with the benefit of hindsight.
48th Month Update
After achieving thirty thousand page views for the second month in a row, it’s time to ask ourselves “What’s next”. The ultimate goal is to get over one hundred thousand monthly pageviews to gain access to Adthrive, the premium ad network.
It took 47 months to reach 30K page views, but it shouldn’t take nearly as long to triple that and get over 100K.
Here’s how we maintained thirty thousand page views during our 48th month of blogging, and how we plan to grow from here.
We never achieved 100K pageviews. We got up to about 90K before algorithm changes thrust us back down.
Readership
Although we didn’t have quite as many pageviews as last month, we still blew all our other months out of the water. We ended the month with a little over 30K pageviews.
How Are We Getting So Much Traffic?
Our traffic exploded at the end of September and continued on for the past two months. I’m still not going to share the juicy details of exactly how we did it – you can join the TMM insiders SEO Hustle program for just a dollar a month to find out!
This group showed me the strategy, motivated me to keep going with it, and even offered discounted rates for a freelancer to help other members with it (if they don’t have time to do it themselves). There’s a lot to be said for crowdsourcing expensive blogging items, and that’s just one bonus of the group.
This strategy accounted for approximately 60% of our traffic this period, while organic traffic accounted for 16%. Last month, it was 80% and 12%, so the effort we are putting into ranking organically is paying off.
The strategy was Google Web Stories, which no longer drive the same levels of high traffic.
SEO Improvements
The November Google update was kind to us, but I imagine that is because of all the hard work we’ve been putting into SEO optimization and link building. The primary goal this period (and for the next few months) is to get our top 5 most important posts to the front page of Google.
Right now, those posts are sitting anywhere from the bottom of page 1 to the top of page 3, and the goal is to get them all to the top of page 1.
The strategies to do this include link building, creating content clusters for internal links, and on-page SEO optimization. These strategies have been working. None of these were anywhere near the front page last month, and seeing them slowly but surely move up in the rankings has been fantastic. The hard work is paying off, and I know that if I continue it, most of these posts will be on the top of page one in the next 2-3 months.
Unfortunately, the Google Helpful Content Updates of 2023-2024 decimated nearly all our SEO gains. It elevated big brands and forums over original content. Due to the massive loss, we started conducting in-depth content reviews, and we did find a lot of room for improvement. We’ve been working hard to update all our older articles to ensure they’re useful.
Content
Content took a back seat to link building and SEO improvements like it did last month. Instead of publishing my own new content, I updated and republished all of my gift guides (just in time for holiday shopping!) and published guest posts and syndications from various authors.
The best of the month was an analysis of the game franchise LittleBigPlanet from our friends at LBP Union. Not knowing anything about the game but seeing the intensely loyal fandom, I asked them to write a guest post for me that was an overview of the franchises.
They delivered one of the most epic, in-depth reviews of a game I’ve ever seen. Their passion for the game clearly shined through in the writing, and promoting the things people are passionate about is one of our favorite goals.
How Are We Going to Improve Our Readership?
Our goal is clear – achieve 100 thousand pageviews to get into Adthrive. Achieving that goal is harder, but we have a lot of strategies in place to get there.
Link building is still the number one strategy for improving our organic rankings, and that will be a primary focus for the next few months. We will reach out to brands for guest posting, syndication, and collaborations to help achieve this goal.
Additionally, we will focus on creating content clusters around the articles we want to rank, to increase our authority in Google’s eyes and improve internal link-building.
We will write one new piece of content per week aligning with these goals, while updating older content that needs a makeover.
The guest posting strategy failed. Hardly any brands or websites even responded to our queries and those who did requested money. I understand though, I ignore all the link-building requests in my mailbox too.
Lately, we’ve been far more focused on creating great content than marketing or building links. When we’re done reviewing every piece to ensure it’s as good as it can be, we will focus on marketing.
Monetization
Partners in Fire made nearly $700 in revenue this month! Unfortunately, we spent almost all of it, but I think the things we invested in the month will pay off in spades in the future.
We have a deal in the works (with the SEO hustle group) that, if it works as intended, will make every group member a recognized, established, and profitable blog. This deal was too good to pass up and worth every penny invested. Be prepared for more information when it gets rolled out!
The majority of our income came from the ad network Newor. I realize that RPMs are high this time of year, so I’m taking advantage of these earnings to invest in the business, and I think it will pay off over time. We made about $100 from affiliate programs as well, most of which was from the SEO Hustle affiliate program (Did I mention that you get a commission for recruiting new members?
The group is an incredible value even without this, but having the opportunity to get it for a reduced price when you recruit new members, or even free if you recruit enough members, is a spectacular bonus!). We also made a few sales on a handful of other affiliate programs.
The Insiders group no longer offers an affiliate bonus. The deal was the opportunity to syndicate high-quality content to the AP newswire. It worked. I’m now a respected, established journalist.
Continued Growth
I believe that if we continue to work on the processes outlined above, we will hit the 100K pageviews needed for Adthrive in January.
When we started, we always assumed it would take 3-5 years to become profitable, and as we just passed the four-year mark and started seeing gains, that seems truer than ever.
We look forward to what year five brings, and we know that we will achieve our goals this year!
We did become profitable in years 4-6 ish, but Google giveth and Google taketh away. It’s crucial to spread your eggs around in many baskets to prevent algorithm changes from destroying your business.