Blog Growth Strategies – Our Second Month Blogging

Hey folks! Transparency Disclosure- Some of the links in this article are affiliate links. That means I’ll receive a small commission if you decide to click on it and buy something. Don’t worry, it doesn’t cost you anything extra!

January 2018 marked Partners in Fire’s second month as an online publication. 

Here’s our growth story from December 2017 to January 2018 (edited for clarity grammar, and to include new insights from the period).

Two months flew by! Partners in Fire saw impressive growth during its second active money – check out how we did!

Blog Growth Strategies for Our Second Month

Readership

Our readership grew by over 200 users during our second month. According to Google Analytics, we had 305 individual users during this period, compared to 89 during our first month

How Did We Increase Our Readership?

Social media reigns supreme as we sail into month three. Twitter remains our top platform, but we’re also seeing increases on Instagram and Facebook.  

We ended our second month with over 1000 Twitter followers, 500 Instagram followers, and 100 Facebook page likes. 

Twitter Growth

Our primary blog growth strategy during these early days focuses on social media growth, with growing our Twitter community a constant priority. (Years later, as we’re updating this piece, we realize our priorities are still similar, with our new goal focused on growing a branded Twitter community rather than a personal account for the owner/author.)

The best part is that the Twitter community is even more engaging than it was before. Maintaining engagement levels while growing a larger following is a difficult challenge, but we’ve achieved it. 

Expanding Pinterest Reach

We slightly increased referral traffic from Pinterest this period by trying Tailwind and focusing on high-quality pins. We had two users from the platform during our first month and increased that to 22 in our second month. 

During this early period, we used free images from Unsplash to create our designs (we eventually switched to paid-only providers like Canva Pro and Shutterstock). 

Our first pins were admittedly ugly, and it took a lot of trial and error to start creating pretty pins that people would actually want to click and save. 

We invested heavily into the website (for us at the time) this period by purchasing a year-long subscription to Tailwind in the hopes that we’d see the type of Pinterest growth other bloggers reported from using the platform (spoiler: we never did great on Pinterest; at the time of the update (Jan 2024) we get between 200-300 referrals a month). 

 blog growth strategies

Posting

We stuck to a regular posting schedule this month, contributing to increased readership. 

We posted twice per week (generally Sundays and Thursdays), giving us seven posts for the month. 

Getting users and pageviews is easier if you have new, relevant content to share at least weekly. Re-sharing the same content repeatedly can seem spammy, but sharing things regularly keeps you on people’s radars. 

It’s a thin line and a hard one to tow when you’re just starting and don’t have a lot of content. 

EducationWe are still learning so much about growing a successful website. 

I’ve done much better with Canva and creating images – I just learned that using the blog banner template makes the featured image look way better! I’m creating multiple pins per blog post rather than just re-pinning the same image.

We are also learning a lot about SEO. There are a few cool keyword research tools that I’ve been utilizing to help me find better keyword phrases, though that’s not transferring to pageviews yet because we’re still learning how to use them correctly. 

My writing skills have greatly improved over the past month. I’m regularly getting green readability scores after my first edit, a fantastic feat compared to the first month when all I saw was red! 

I’m still learning to divide the content into easily digestible sections rather than post a massive text wall. The spaces enhance the user experience, but it is challenging to unlearn years of teachings. 

Monetization

Affiliates

We added many affiliate links (tastefully, I hope) this month to begin monetization. We know these things take time, but I think it’s best to get started as soon as possible.

Amazon

One limitation of using Amazon as a new blogger is that the Amazon* affiliates program kicks you out if you don’t have a qualified sale within the first six months.

Luckily for us, we did get a few Amazon sales this month!  We got them by being supportive of other bloggers.  

Being supportive and lifting each other up is the best way to start.  We contacted our Twitter friends, asking for links to their affiliate stores to support them when we needed something from Amazon. 

I bought what I needed from one of my blogger friends, and miraculously, someone decided to pay the favor back and purchase something through our store! Remember, we never asked anyone to purchase our items in return – someone kindly did, but that was never an arrangement. We wanted to support our favorite creators when we had the opportunity. 

Although we recommend supporting your favorite content creators by using their affiliate links and reading their content, we don’t recommend attempting to set up any type of tie-for-tat exchange. Read all affiliate terms of service agreements for their specific policies.

Other Affiliates

We also signed up with additional affiliate programs, including Clicky-Homes (now defunct) and Flex-Offers. Flex-Offers is interesting because it’s a website that’s just a conglomerate of affiliate links. You have to register to access the website, and then you have to apply for each company you’d like to partner with. 

Most of the companies that are members don’t apply to the field of personal finance (lots of retail), but I did sign up for a few travel affiliates and incorporated them into my travel blog.

We wouldn’t have invested time or effort into affiliates this early if we could start over. We rarely made any money off them, and our time would have been better spent building traffic. 

Ads

We are still using Adsense to generate ad revenue for our blog. Currently, we’ve made about twelve bucks total with it (and they don’t give you a payout until you reach 50). We hope to get enough unique visitors and page views in the next few months to upgrade to a better ad program.

What’s Next?

Our goal for February is to work hard at alternate forms of marketing. My biggest challenge is E-mail marketing.  The goal will be to get the ball rolling on e-mail subscribers, though I’m not sure how yet.  It will probably take a lot of research, but I’d love your input! Also, if you aren’t already subscribed, don’t forget to sign up in the sidebar!

My other big goal for this month is to continue growing our readership. I want to increase the number of readers by 200 again, so we have 500 total users for this next month. It’s a hefty goal, but it’s achievable. 

I also signed up for the Share-a-Sale affiliate program. I have yet to use it, but I’ll be sure to add it to my updates for next month!

Author: Melanie Allen

Title: Journalist

Expertise: Pursuing Your Passions, Travel, Wellness, Hobbies, Finance, Gaming, Happiness

Melanie Allen is an American journalist and happiness expert. She has bylines on MSN, the AP News Wire, Wealth of Geeks, Media Decision, and numerous media outlets across the nation and is a certified happiness life coach. She covers a wide range of topics centered around self-actualization and the quest for a fulfilling life. 

10 thoughts on “Blog Growth Strategies – Our Second Month Blogging”

    • I love that about you Angela! You are so authentic, its great! And yes, I feel like I do have to take it seriously because of the affiliates haha. From the beginning, I’ve tried to think of this more as a business than a hobby, so I guess we differ a bit on that. I guess we shall see how I feel about it six months down the line hahaha! Thanks for reading and commenting!

  1. I do some monetization – mostly just Amazon and Adsense. I’m two bucks ahead of you with Adsense at $15! I’ve made more with Amazon, which has a lower payout threshold.

    • Awesome! Keep up the good work! Have you considered branching out and adding more affiliates?

    • Thank you! I’m trying! And I’m hoping that sharing my experiences every month will help and motivate new bloggers. My numbers aren’t the best, but I’m still proud of them. When did you start?

  2. Looks like things are going pretty well! Interested to see how next month will look. We started a little over 2 months ago ourselves and it’s so much fun to see it growing little by little each day. Baby steps!

    • Thank you! I love doing these monthly updates; it keeps me knowledgeable about whats working and I also am hoping that it helps other new bloggers. I don’t want new guys to get discouraged with just seeing all of the “I had 10000000000…. page views my first month!” blog posts, because that just isn’t realistic haha. How is your second/third month going?

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