Partners in Fire published monthly updates outlining their successes, failures, and growth strategies for the first 50 months of their publishing career. We decided to keep these old articles for posterity.
Here’s the 18th-month update, edited for grammar, clarity, and to add extra context.
Eighteenth Month Update
Welcome to our eighteenth-month update! We’ve been blogging for a year and a half now and are still going strong. Partners in Fire saw about 1800 users during this period, a slight increase from last month. Slow growth for the win!
Readership
Our readership is growing slowly but surely.
We only saw a growth of 100 users, but it’s something. There were a few rough days this month – we had our first day with under 30 users in quite some time. I guess people actually want to go out and do things on Saturdays when the weather is pleasant rather than stay in and read blogs. Weird. Despite that, we are still averaging about fifty users a day. That’s the same as last month, but at least it’s consistent.
We joked about it then but did not understand how seasonal trends affect traffic. The traffic dip was right around Memorial Day – the gateway to summer. Summer typically has lower traffic than winter, as folks get outside to enjoy the sunshine. Holiday weekends have lower traffic than regular weekends, as people enjoy weekend getaways. To build a surviving website, you must accept the traffic dips.
Traffic Drivers
Social Media
Social Media was the top traffic driver for Partners in Fire during this period. Pinterest was the clear winner yet again, but Twitter and Facebook are still bringing in consistent traffic.
In total, we had 954 visitors from social media this month.
Pinterest continues its reign as the number one social media network for traffic. The biggest traffic drivers are the same as they have been for the past few months. The pins representing our articles on Adult Conversations and Becoming a Twitch Affiliate continue to outperform everything else. My newer pin on the Spirit of the Financial Independence Movement also generated some traffic, and tons of pins got at least a click or two.
Tailwind has been such a great help in getting my content shared regularly. I love it!
We no longer use Tailwind.
Overall, 613 users found the site via Pinterest, exactly the same as last month. That’s odd, but I’m glad there wasn’t a decrease.
All social media traffic ebbs and flows; it’s to be expected. I’m still working on increasing my reach on Pinterest, but I’m happy with where we are.
We never grew our Pinterest reach. The platform’s algorithm changed, making rescheduled Tailwind pins less visible, and we didn’t try hard to regain the lost traffic.
Twitter was the second biggest social media platform for Partners in Fire this month, sending us 294 users.
Most of the traffic came in the last few days of the month following my nasty breakup. I appreciate all my Twitter friends banding around me and showing support.
Twitter users flocked to my post describing what to do when your partner isn’t on board with a no-spend challenge. Many of my Twitter friends thought that was the break-up post because I had shared it earlier.
Sadly, it was not. It was an upbeat article about us getting back on the same page. The whole experience shows how much people are drawn to a heartbreaking human story. I think it’s important to share aspects of your real life and be relatable to your audience. People thrive on personal stories. It’s the personal side of personal finance.
We combined the article on getting a partner on board with the no-spend challenge into a massive article about our no-spend year.
Facebook was my third biggest traffic driver from social media this month, and it wasn’t a huge source. We had 47 users from Facebook, less than the previous months.
I failed to post anything besides my blog posts, which is probably part of why I lost engagement. I also didn’t share many of my posts on my personal page, which was also a big reason for the lack of traffic from the platform.
We haven’t shared articles on our personal Facebook page in years. It’s crucial for branding to keep your personal life and your publishing life at least a little separate.
Organic Search
Organic search was our second biggest traffic driver, but unfortunately, it was less than last month. We welcomed 470 organic search users this month, a 17% decrease from last month.
Why is our number of organic search users decreasing?
One of the main reasons we saw a decrease is the time of year. Saturdays tend to be my worst days for organic search, while Mondays are the best. People go out and enjoy their weekends but search for topics related to financial independence when they return to work.
Another reason why my organic search may have decreased this month is that I stopped updating posts. Last month, I updated an old post every week, but this month, I completely slacked on that.
Clearly, Google likes updated content. I will prioritize updating my old posts.
We have no idea what Google likes, especially with all the latest updates.
A final reason my traffic via organic search decreased is that I didn’t do anything to increase my page speed. I didn’t delete any plug-ins, and I didn’t even check the speed. These are essential things that need to be done to ensure that the website works for SEO.
We didn’t prioritize updating older content for another year or so. At that point, we stopped publishing two new articles per week, published one new article, and updated an old one. The strategy ensured we’d focus on updating old content at least weekly.
We’ve been more laser-focused on updating old content after Google’s tragic Helpful Content Update (HCU). We’ve been attempting to update four old articles weekly, starting with the earliest articles and working towards the freshest. In doing so, we discovered a lot of articles that had no value and deleted them. We improved the articles with good bones to make them more helpful to users. Though we haven’t regained lost search traffic, we’re happy to provide a better experience to users.
Direct Hits
During our eighteenth month, 352 users came to our website via direct hit, a slight decrease from last month. Getting those subscribers is paying off!
I appreciate all the support from every single one of our subscribers. You guys are fantastic!
We wrote about subscribers and direct hits every month. We were convinced all those users came from subscribers, but now I’m certain that’s not true.
Our subscriber content is better now than it ever was. We offer exclusive content via Newsletter now, but we still don’t get more than 50 users per month.
Content
Despite the challenges in my personal life, we published some amazing content this month. I wrote an article about my tough breakup and how I’m trying to adjust and move forward.
On the day we broke up, I wrote a post on how we were trying to compromise on the no-spend-year challenge. It’s difficult to know that I wrote it thinking we were getting back on the same page only to be broken up with later that night.
That wasn’t a good day.
Before the breakup, I published a lot of content about financial independence. We delved into the definition of financial independence, how to be yourself, and how to pursue financial independence so you can pursue your passions.
These were fun topics to write about, and they need more discussions in the personal finance space.
Blogging About Life
I know it’s odd for a personal finance blogger to write about heartache and breakups. Some people would say I should stick to my niche if I ever want to monetize and be taken seriously as an influencer in the finance sphere.
But, as I indicated in my favorite post of the month, Partners in Fire is about the Spirit of Financial Independence, and life is a big part of that. I don’t know what’s more real to life than breakups and heartache. It’s part of the human experience, and that’s what Partners in Fire is about—the human experience as it relates to seeking financial independence. So,
I’ll continue to write about my losses, wins, best financial advice, and biggest setbacks.
Real life is messy.
It’s hard to separate your personal life from your website. We got too personal in writing about a breakup and have since removed the piece from the site. Moving forward, we focused on users over ourselves.
However, personal articles have a place. People like to feel connected to authors. Since Twitter’s downfall, we haven’t had much of that, but we need to focus on it more.
Content related to non-financial reasons to pursue financial independence became our bread and butter. We realized that was the crucial piece missing from the conversation and stepped up to fill the void. We discovered our niche, though it would still take us a little while to flesh it out.
Monetization
I’m still struggling to monetize Partners in Fire, but it’s a work in progress. We did get some sales this month, which is super exciting. Viglink and Amazon drove sales this period – I made $17 with Amazon and a whopping ten cents with Viglink (gotta start somewhere, right?).
I also got more clicks with my Bluehost affiliates than in the past. Those clicks haven’t resulted in sales yet, but I hope they will eventually pay off.
We no longer use Viglink and rarely promote Amazon or Bluehost affiliates.
What’s Next?
We still have tons of room to grow, and we are going to get there. My main goals are to get over 2000 users per month and more than 20 users per day via organic search.
That means I’ll have to step up my SEO strategy! I’ll continue the plan I started last month (updating old content and focusing on page experience), and Partners in Fire will continue to grow.