Are we finally figuring this blog thing out? After 46 months, you’d think so, but the journey hasn’t always been easy. However, this month we increased our page views and nearly broke even! Those are huge wins! If we keep this strategy up, we will be a profitable blog in no time!
46th Month Update
Readership
The first half of the month was about average in terms of viewers. We were on course for our typical ten thousand ish page views without much positive movement. But, we learned something fun about halfway through the month that helped us explode our traffic, and the last two weeks of our 46th month were the best two weeks ever!
As you can see, traffic drastically increased around the 15th of the month. Even the worst-performing day of the last two weeks was better than every day at the beginning of the month.
How Did We Increase Our Traffic So Much?
I know what you all are thinking. That’s a 50% increase in traffic in just two weeks! How did you do it?
And here’s where I’m going to change course slightly. I know you come here because I’m always honest and transparent about my growth and my strategies, but this one is just too good to give away. Yeah- I’m being selfish, but it’s not just for my benefit.
You see, I learned this strategy through the blogging group that I’m in – the SEO Hustle Insiders Program. A few group members invested a ton of money to learn and replicate this strategy, and then they showed the rest of us how to do it. I feel like I’d be betraying them if I gave the secret up to everyone.
Another reason for my secrecy is that when word gets out on this strategy, everyone will start doing it, and when everyone starts doing it, it stops working. My goal is to get one hundred thousand page views so I can get into Adthrive, and if I can perfect this strategy while improving my organic traffic, I can make it there by January – if everyone doesn’t jump on the bandwagon.
But, don’t despair. If you really want to know, you can always join the Insiders. Although we’re keeping this strategy in-house, for now, we’re still willing to teach it to new members (all we ask is that you don’t tell all your blogging friends just yet!). If you want to join – use my link and get your first three months for just a dollar a month! If you don’t love it after the three-month trial period, you can leave with no further obligation. I think you will love it though and want to stick around!
Content
We didn’t publish a lot of original content this month, but what we did publish was timely and important. At the beginning of the month, we published a post on Twitch Hate Raids. As a former Twitch streamer and a lover of the streaming community, hate raids are a topic I can’t ignore. It’s a disgusting abuse of the system and a reminder of the toxicity that can sometimes be found in the gaming community. We have to do our part to combat them.
Next, we published an essay on self-advocacy. We not only discussed why it was important but also gave tips on how to overcome fear and speak up for yourself. This piece was featured in Tread Lightly Retire Early’s weekly Women in Finance round-up in early September. It’s an important piece that also discusses the reasons why women especially struggle with self-advocacy.
We lightened up a bit in publishing a review of our tour through America’s oldest brewery. Yuengling Brewery is the oldest still-operating brewery in the country, and they offer tours through its old tunnels and original packing house. It’s nice to mix up serious pieces with fun travel pieces.
The final three original pieces we published during this period were also fun. One was a look into the advice of following your passion and the controversy surrounding it (how could following your passion be controversial?? Find out!), one was a list of ideas for your bullet journal weekly spread, and the last was a guest post from a musician blogger on how playfulness helps with the creative process.
How Are We Going to Improve Our Readership?
The goal is still to improve our readership. The main goal now is to get into Adthrive, and everything we do these next few months will be to get into that network. It won’t be easy. We need ten times the traffic to get into Adthrive! However, we have plans to get there.
First, we will continue to improve and perfect the strategy we learned from the Insiders this month. We should be able to get twenty to thirty thousand page views in October with this strategy alone.
That’s not enough, so our other strategy is still the long-haul game of SEO. However, I’m going to be more strategic about it than I have been. Building links is great, but if I’m building links to 500 posts at the same time, it’s going to take forever to rank. Instead, I’ve identified five posts with high keyword volume that I have a good chance of ranking. My focus will be to build links to these five posts. Clearly, I’ll build links to other posts if the opportunity arises (I’m not going to say no to backlinks!) but I’m going to be specifically looking for link-building opportunities to these five.
Monetization
We were so close to profits this month! Less than $25 in the hole, and that is incredibly exciting! Our biggest increase in revenue was via display ads. The move to Newor (and the increased page views) more than tripled our ad income this month when compared to last month. This is another huge bonus of joining the Insiders– full members get access to a premier ad network with only five thousand monthly sessions!
Overall, we made about $250 this month. The majority of this (about $150) was via display ads, and the rest was mostly through a variety of affiliate networks. We also made about $16 in Etsy sales, which I count as blog income because I never would have started selling on Etsy if not for this blog.
The fascinating thing about monetizing a blog is how little things add up over time. Forty cents on one affiliate program one month can lead to a dollar the next month, and if you add those small amounts up across networks, you start seeing a reason to keep blogging. You can make money blogging!
Continued Growth
Thirty thousand page views in September was out of the question, but we did achieve fifteen thousand. Can we double that in October? Triple it November? I think we can. And if we do, we will start seeing profits around our 4th birthday, just as planned. It’s an exciting time to be a blogger, don’t you think?
Melanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.