Partners in Fire published monthly growth updates for the first fifty months as an online publication. We decided to keep these older articles for posterity and to help new bloggers discover what it really takes to build a website from scratch.
Here’s our 46th-month update, edited for grammar, clarity, and to add additional context with the benefit of hindsight.
46th Month Update
After 46 months, you’d think we’d have this whole blogging thing figured out. The journey hasn’t been easy, but this month, we finally increased our pageviews and nearly broke even on spending.
If we continue improving, we will be a profitable blog in no time!
Readership
During the first half of the month, we remained on course to receive the 10,000 or so average viewership count we’ve been experiencing.
However, we learned something new mid-month that helped us explode our traffic, and the last two weeks saw more traffic than ever before!
Traffic drastically increased around the 15th of the month, with even the worst-performing day garnering more viewers than any day during the first two weeks.
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?
I know you come here because I’m always honest and transparent about my growth and strategies, but this one is 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 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 away 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 to 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.
It’s been a few years, and the cat’s out of the bag. I grew my readership so quickly using web stories. And I was right, once everyone started doing them, they stopped working. I rarely even see them on Google Discover anymore.
The story highlights the constantly changing landscape of blogging. Some things will be hot for a while, and if you can jump in while the getting is good, you can improve your readership.
Content
We didn’t publish much original content this month, but what we did publish was timely and relevant. 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, discussing why it is essential to happiness while providing tips for overcoming your fear and speaking up for yourself. The crucial piece also discussed the societal reasons people (especially women) struggle to advocate for themselves. It was so good it was featured in Tread Lightly Retire Early’s weekly Women in Finance round-up.
On the lighter side, we published a review of our tour through America’s oldest brewery. Yuengling Brewery is the oldest still-operating brewery in the country. The company offers free tours through its old tunnels and original packing houses.
We published three additional pieces, a look into whether following your passion is really good advice, a list of weekly bullet journal spread ideas, and a guest post on music and playfulness.
We’ve since deleted the guest post.
How Are We Going to Improve Our Readership?
Our primary goal remains improving readership, especially since we want to get into a better ad network.
It won’t be easy. We need ten times our current 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 need to be more strategic. Building links is great, but if I’m building links to 500 posts at the same time, it will take forever to rank.
Instead, I’ve identified five posts with high keyword volume with a good chance of ranking. I will focus on building links to those five posts, rather than spreading the love around to everything.
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 for these five.
The web story strategy helped us get into Mediavine before it stopped working. We did build a lot of links to our top posts, but with Google’s constantly shifting algorithms, the traffic came and went.
Monetization
We were close to profits this month, ending with less than $25 in the hole.
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.
Overall, we made about $250. Most of it (about $150) came via display ads, and the rest came through various 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.
Continued Growth
Thirty thousand page views in September was out of the question, but we achieved 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?