Partners in Fire published monthly status updates showcasing its growth for the first fifty months. We decided to keep these articles for posterity, and to help others on their growth journeys.
Here’s our 29th-month update, edited for grammar, clarity, and to add additional context.
29th Month Update
Wow, what a month!
We saw hardly any growth in the previous 6-9 months. We were chugging along, trying this and that, and although we didn’t have any setbacks, we didn’t see any growth either.
We saw a drastic change this month.
Our 29th month was the best consistently good month we’ve ever had. It’s the best month we’ve had since our 5th month when our epic post, “The Worst Financial Mistake of My Life,” was featured on Rockstar Finance.
Is it a fluke, or are we finally arriving?
Readership
Our readership increased dramatically during our 29th month, with over 2500 users and 3000 sessions!
That’s a massive increase of over 1000 users from previous months.
The month started like any other. Traffic during the first week of April was fairly consistent with what we’ve seen in previous months.
But then, something magical happened. Our traffic started to increase.
We went from averaging 40-50 users a day to 80 and then to over 100 users each day! It was glorious to behold!
The beautiful thing is I know how a lot of it happened.
Traffic Drivers
Our traffic explosion mainly resulted from organic searches, but we also saw users from various other sources, such as social media and direct hits.
Organic Search
We killed it on organic search this period.
Nearly 1500 visitors found us organically this month -well over the 1000-user goal we set for ourselves!
The best part about this is the consistency. It wasn’t a one-day fluke – we had over 60 users coming to us via organic search nearly every day this month.
Our top page from organic search is still “How to be a Twitch Affiliate in 30 Days”.
Are more people searching for that because of social distancing, or are we starting to become authorities on that topic?
I’m hoping for the latter- because I did two things this month to make that happen. First, I updated the post. I hadn’t touched it since I wrote it over a year ago, and since it was getting a few hits, I thought it was time. I updated it the first week of April.
Then, I decided I needed some more related content. So, I wrote a post on how to start a Twitch stream to link those pages together. I hoped to help the Google Gods see that I’m still writing relevant and related content. I published that post on April 16.
I think those two things appeased the Google gods and improved my ranking.
The lesson? If you have a post that’s getting picked up by Google – try updating it and writing something related. Make sure you add backlinks in both posts. I don’t know for sure that this is why I saw an increase, but it does make sense, given the timeline.
We discovered the magic of content clusters. Having numerous articles related to each topic is crucial. It helps search engines see you’re an authority on the subject and provides users with a better experience, as they can find all the related information they need right on your website.
It’s important to note that we no longer rank on the front page of Google for our Twitch-related content. We haven’t updated any of the articles in years. However, we plan to do so in the next few months. Unfortunately, when you’re a one-person show, you can’t keep up with everything.
Social Media
Social media came in second for the second month in a row, but we also saw improvements here.
Slightly under 650 users found us via social media this period – twice as many as last month.
Here’s where we found the most success.
Most of our social media growth came from Pinterest. We went from 270 users to 468! That’s a pretty spectacular increase.
I attempted a little manual pinning this month, meaning I went to my Partners in Fire board and manually pinned the content onto other boards (mostly my own, but some group boards). I also repinned content from my group boards onto my personal boards.
I spent about an hour in total manually pinning this month, about 30 minutes on two different days.
To be fair, I’m unsure if this contributed to the increase in users. People weren’t clicking on the pins I shared—most of the traffic went to the old standby “adult conversations you need to have before you move in together,”—which is not one that I repined.
But it’s possible that being slightly more active on the platform showed my top-performing pins to more people. I don’t know how the algorithms work.
We still don’t know how the algorithms work, but we know that the more active you are on a platform, the more likely you are to see growth.
We also saw a massive increase on Twitter, with 114 users visiting us from the platform. That’s an increase of nearly 70 users from the previous month.
Part of the growth stemmed from the new strategies I implemented from a Twitter guide I purchased on GumRoad called Make it Stick. The mini-book highlighted ways to write engaging and evocative tweets.
Although I prefer nuance, the guide helped me understand the psychological side of Twitter, and I used it to write more evocative Tweets to accompany some of the articles I’ve shared. It seems to be working.
The guide is no longer available. Getting engagement on the platform is nearly impossible now unless you pay for it.
We went from four visitors from Facebook last month to fifty this month!
It was a lot less work than I thought. We commented on a few other pages, who, in return, shared our content. We also shared our Instagram posts on Facebook and posted a few older articles.
All in all, I probably spent 20 minutes on Facebook the entire month – that’s definitely worth the 50 users. Maybe I’ll try spending 40 minutes on it in May and see if we can get over 100 users from the platform!
Make sure you like my page so you can follow along!
Direct Hits
We saw a slight increase in users from direct hits this month, which means we were back in line with previous months!
Although the content from March wasn’t a big hit – I’m glad I published it. First, it’s vital to celebrate extraordinary women, regardless of how interested others might be. Second, it’s essential to experiment with content ideas.
Sometimes things stick, and sometimes they don’t, but how will you know unless you try?
But clearly, the people wanted more relevant content – which we gave them this month!
We deleted all the underperforming content published during our 28th month as it didn’t serve any audience.
Content
We’re proud of the content we published this month. Unfortunately, I had to scrap most of my calendar and restart. I can’t imagine discussing being a landlord when millions struggle to pay rent.
So, instead, I swapped that content out with stuff much more relevant to the current situation. I wrote about why it’s ridiculous to panic about the stock market, how the stimulus isn’t enough, and dealing with conflicting feelings during this difficult time.
In addition, I wrote a few pieces on institutional policies that keep people trapped and limit the opportunities to reach financial independence with the Middle -Class Trap and a scathing review of how banks treat people with low incomes.
I also thought it was important to remind readers why a self-professed finance blogger would write about such a wide array of things, with my highly opinionated piece on money’s influence in everything we do.
We’ve deleted the content explicitly related to the pandemic, as it’s no longer current. However, the three articles about institutional policies and money’s significant influence are still relevant today. We’ve edited and updated them to ensure they serve a wider audience.
How Are We Going to Improve Our Readership
Although we did a fantastic job improving our readership during our 29th month, we still have a long way to go.
My goal for the year is to reach the 25,000 monthly page views needed to gain access to high-end ad networks like Mediavine. That’s ten times what we have right now—a feat that seems impossible!
Mediavine now requires 50,000 sessions, but they have a new offering to help smaller websites with 10,000 sessions gain access to an ad network.
But it’s not. If I can nearly double my traffic from my 28th month to my 29th month – I can do it again.
I have a few ideas on how to accomplish that.
Ideas for Improving Readership
As I mentioned above, I will work more on Facebook. Doubling my views from that platform again will go a long way towards achieving the exponential growth I need.
I’m going to continue using the lessons learned from Make it Stick to write more engaging copy for Twitter when I reshare my old blog posts, which hopefully will continue to result in page views. As described above, I will also spend a little time doing some manual pinning on Pinterest this month.
But mostly, I’m going to continue to work on my SEO. That seems to have had the biggest payoff so far. I’ll probably write another article related to Twitch streaming to ensure Google knows I’m still an “expert” on the topic. I will try to increase SEO traffic to other posts with updates, in-depth keyword research, and creating backlinks.
I finally signed up for HARO – which everyone has been talking about since FINCON. Supposedly, it’s an excellent resource for getting backlinks – so we shall see!
We didn’t focus much on social media; instead, we put most of our eggs into the SEO basket. We wrote a massive content cluster around Twitch and streaming, and although we saw growth for a while, the content eventually lost rankings.
Competitors will find you and try to do better if you rank high for something. You must constantly improve all your high-ranking content to stay at the top of the search.
Ready to Keep Improving
We were thrilled to see the growth this period and are ready to keep it going! Hopefully, the 30th month and beyond will be even better!