December 27, 2017, marked one month of Partners in Fire.
Though the website morphed from a personal blog into a media resource, the early days of learning website creation, journalism, content marketing, and navigating the online world remain a crucial part of our story.
Therefore, we decided to keep the early status updates live as a record to look back on the extraordinary journey and as a resource for those seeking to start their own websites.
Discover Partners in Fire’s notes after one month live (editing for grammar, consistency, and voice, but not for content).
How Did We Do During Our First Month Blogging?
Posting
We did a great job with posting regularly this first month. We’ve published four posts, including this one. I work full-time and am still trying to work on Travels Near and Far in my spare time, so I hustled to get all these posts up.
I’m proud of that.
Note: Travels Near and Far was our first attempt at a website. It was merged into Partners in Fire in 2020 when the brand expanded beyond finance to a resource dedicated to helping you explore your passions.
Social Media
Our social media presence was our most significant achievement during the first month of blogging. Social media is crucial to building a successful website, especially in the early days. It’s the best and easiest way to market a blog.
We killed it on social media during our first month!
We have about 700 Twitter followers (though I started on Twitter three weeks before we published the blog), 350 Instagram followers, and almost 30 likes on Facebook.
But it’s not all about numbers. We’ve built some fantastic communities and partnerships with our social media presence. I’ve met some wonderful personal finance and blogging community members via Twitter and learned so much from them.
I love how supportive everyone on Twitter is. I aim to build the Twitter account but maintain the sense of community I’ve cherished so much. I’m hoping to develop that kind of community through Facebook and Instagram.
The community is so much more important than the number.
Readership
Well, as is to be expected, our readership isn’t stellar. According to Google Analytics, we’ve had about 89 users in our first month of blogging.
Most of our readers during this period came from Twitter due to our fantastic resource dedicated to helping you grow followers on the platform.
Jetpack on WordPress gave far different stats; according to them, we’ve had over 346 users. However, Jetpack counts your own previews as unique pageviews, so they aren’t as reliable regarding the actual number of visitors.
Regardless, 89 users for the first month is a cause for celebration. When I first started my travel blog, it took over six months to reach 80 users. We are way ahead of the game with this one, and we can only get better from here!
Education
The biggest achievement during this first month of blogging is all the knowledge gained. I learned how to use Canva to make pretty images for Pinterest and how to increase my presence on the platform.
I’m learning how to take better pictures and how to use the free pictures available online. I never even considered photography when working on Travels Near and Far, and I’m grateful that I found resources to help me understand them now.
Blogging seriously increases your skill sets in so many different areas, including marketing, web development, social media, and writing in general.
What’s Next?
The next step is to monetize the blog. During the final days of this month, I signed up for a variety of affiliate programs. Our goal is to choose partners and products that add value to you, our readers.
We are also trying to avoid being spammy about it. We hope to increase our readership, even if just by a little. Maybe we can get to 100 for the month! I think that would be awesome.
We will see what the new year and the new month bring us!
Wish us luck and thanks for being with us on this journey!
Congratulations on month one in the books! I’m poised to hit 6 months in just a couple weeks, so I’m basically an old lady blogger at this point 😉 The PF Twitter community is really the best though. Since I really started my blog to get more active online with finance, I’d say it’s been a success. I really feel that there’s a true community on Twitter, which I would never have expected.
Thank you! It’s awesome that you made it to the 6 month mark…looks like you are going to make it as a blogger!! Go you!!! I agree the PF Twitter community is awesome, I’m so glad to have met you through there!
I love this! I’m a new blogger as well and it’s great to hear from other new bloggers!
Yay! Lets learn together! Thanks for stopping by!
Congrats on your first month of blogging! I just finished my first month as well. I did better than I expected, but I want to learn how to grow my blog more. Looks like you crushed it at social media!! Definitely need to learn some tips from you! Looking forward to reading more!
Thank you! I did do super well on social media! Getting the page views to my blog has been my biggest struggle. I’m working on it though! I did better than I thought I would too haha!
Congrats on the blog! It was funny, my husband noticed you guys on Twitter, and he’s like, “Hey – have you seen Partners in FIRE? They seem pretty cool!” and I’m like – oh yeah, I’m already following them on Pinterest too! So – way to snatch both our attentions at different times! #socialmediapower
I’m still learning the joys of Pinterest but groan as I don’t think I’m pretty enough to be on this site! ~ so much pink, so much cursive text. Sigh and smile. Happy 2018 to you & keep up the great work!
Thank you! It makes me so happy that you found us separately on different social media sites! We must be doing something right!! You are definitely pretty enough for Pinterest though, please don’t think you aren’t!! I use Canva to make my pins look as nice as possible, and I still don’t think they are as professional as some of the others that I see. But then again, I’m not paying for a professional photographer or designer, so I feel like I’m doing really well with the tools that I have and you are too!!