Partners in Fire kept a monthly log of strategies and growth for the first fifty months as an online publisher. We kept these older articles to offer realistic insight for new bloggers hoping to begin their journeys.
Here is our 21st monthly update, edited for grammar and clarity and to add additional insight with the benefit of hindsight.
Twenty-First Month Update
I like to call my twenty-first month of blogging the epic failure month of blogging. It was horrendous!
We have been backsliding a bit each month for the past three months, but this month was more of an avalanche than a backslide. We are keeping on keeping on, though, and looking for ways to prevent similar slides in the future.
Readership
We had a massive decrease in readership during this period.
Not only did our daily averages decline, but our peaks were smaller every step of the way. Last month, we only had a few days with less than fifty users, but this month, we only achieved that benchmark a third of the time!
We also had way too many days with less than thirty users. In the past few months combined, we rarely had a day with under thirty users, but this month brought a handful of days with user counts in the twenties.
Overall, we had an average of about 45 daily users in our 21st month.
We used the term “21st month” a lot because it was our keyword, and the plugin told us to use it more often. Though we deleted most of them, we kept a few to showcase the error. We should have used common sense rather than followed the plugin instructions when writing the article.
Traffic Drivers
Social Media
Although social media continues to be our top traffic driver, it’s also where we saw the most significant decline.
Only 638 users found us via all our social networks combined this month—less than what we had from our biggest platform alone last month!
In total, 300 fewer users found us via social media this period than last period – a 30% decrease.
Pinterest continues to be our top social network, but it saw the largest drop in users. Only 528 users came to us from Pinterest this month, which is two hundred less than last month!
The colossal decrease accounts for the majority of our user loss.
My goal for this month was to get over 1000 users from the platform, and clearly, that didn’t work.
According to Pinterest analytics, my audience and my engagement increased. Unfortunately, that led to fewer visitors to my website. People love the content I pin, just not the stuff that leads to Partners in Fire. I guess I can look at the fact that I’m building an audience on Pinterest as a small consolation prize.
Most Pinterest users came from the two older pins that have historically done well -Adult Conversations and Becoming a Twitch Affiliate.
None of my other pins performed well enough to be worth mentioning this month, which was pretty sad.
I didn’t change my Pinterest strategy at all. I accepted invitations to a few new group boards but did everything else just as I always have. My Pinterest engagement was much lower when I was a member of underperforming group boards, so maybe one of the new ones I joined is problematic.
However, I don’t want to drop any boards until I do some thorough research into which, if any, are underperforming, causing Pinterest to think my account is unworthy of their algorithm.
That’s a task for the next few months!
This month was the beginning of the end of our Pinterest growth. We never figured out why we lost the traffic and never fully recovered.
Looking back, it was likely an algorithm change. It could have been the one that devalued group boards or focused on fresh pins rather than pins republished using tools like Tailwind.
Back then, we didn’t have our ears to the floor about social media and search algorithm updates. If we had talked with people and done a little online sleuthing, we probably would have discovered that many users lost traffic and found ways to change our strategy to keep up with the newest rules.
We did not do that, but now, if we lose traffic on a platform, we need to determine what changed with the algorithm and adapt our strategy to stay relevant.
Twitter was Partners in Fire’s second-best social media platform, driving 80 users during this period. Unfortunately, that was also a massive decrease, with only half as many as last month.
My strategy of posting a link to an older post daily didn’t result in as many users from the platform as I had hoped. Although I didn’t remember to do it every day, I did it at least two-thirds of the time, and it doesn’t seem to have improved my traffic from the platform.
However, my traffic may have been much worse if I hadn’t done that, so maybe it was my saving grace. Since Twitter doesn’t care as much about algorithms, I will continue to do it whenever I remember.
Twitter (now X) got much worse. It doesn’t exactly care about algorithms, but it does care if you pay. It elevates content from people who pay while people who don’t get lost.
Only 28 users found us on Facebook during this period, making it the third-place social media platform for traffic.
However, I also didn’t try very hard on the platform. The only things I ever posted were my new blog posts, and I didn’t even share them on my personal page.
I also learned that with the algorithm, even people who like my page rarely see my posts. My sister likes my page, but she told me that she thought I stopped blogging because she stopped seeing my posts on Facebook.
She only sees them when I share them on my personal Facebook page.
I’ve gotten disenfranchised with using Facebook for even my personal stuff in the past few months, anyway. Their algorithm change a while back destroyed any use I had for it. I only see the same posts from the same people repeatedly because someone new may have liked or commented (even if I didn’t engage). So that means I see posts from the people who have collected a ton of Facebook friends (because the more friends you have, the more engagement you tend to get) and share stupid stuff(because memes and stupid stuff get the likes) rather than seeing things from people I’d be interested in.
Moving forward, I will try to remember to share my blog posts on my personal page. Not doing that obviously misses a small audience, and some views are better than no views.
As time went on, we became even more disenfranchised with Facebook. The algorithm got worse and worse, both for personal and business use. We currently use Revive Old Posts to post old content regularly, but we haven’t logged into Facebook for months.
A key lesson is that no social platform cares about you or your website. They care about money. They will do everything they can to elevate content that makes them money while pushing down content that doesn’t.
Organic Search
This month, 338 users visited the site via organic search, a slight decrease from last month. I didn’t update any old posts for SEO, and I didn’t try that hard to write for SEO either.
All in all, I’m failing at the SEO game.
I also uninstalled Hummingbird, that plug-in that was supposed to help me increase my site speed. It also helped break my theme, which was only noticeable when logged out of WordPress (a big thanks to Eric at Tactical Financials for notifying me of the problem!).
It may have slowed my site speed, but at least the theme works!
I replaced Hummingbird with WP-Optimize for cleaning and caching, and I haven’t noticed any difference in my site speed (although I still wouldn’t call it good). As a bonus, my theme works the way it should! Hopefully, these things will help my SEO (or at least won’t hurt it!).
My goal is still to increase the number of users I get each month via organic search, and I need to keep updating old blog posts to do that. I don’t know why I’ve struggled so much with it. I need to figure out how to motivate myself to do it during my free time.
We currently use WP-Rocket for site speed. It’s a paid plugin, but we learned that investing in good tools is essential for success.
It took us a long time to muster the motivation to update older articles.
Direct Hits
Partners in Fire had 284 visitors via direct hit during our twenty-first month, a significant decrease from last month.
However, we did this without prominent features; it was all about the subscribers! So, to me, that’s a pretty big win.
Those 284 users may have come from subscribers, but it’s more likely that a handful came from subscribers, and the rest came from referral traffic that Google Analytics didn’t recognize.
Content
We published some amazing content during our twenty-first month. The fact that no one saw it doesn’t take away from how awesome it was!
We did two posts on the RV life (A review of Alyssa Padgett’s epic book and a post on why we are choosing RV life), two posts on anxiety (wondering if it’s a problem and pursuing financial independence because of it), and a post on consumerism.
My favorite post of the month was Pragmatism vs. Idealism. This post resonated with me because I often feel trapped in a world of pragmatism when I’d much rather live a carefree life. I think that’s why I love the idea of passion fire so much—I want to live my dream life with the security that I have now.
We deleted the content on living the RV life because we realized it didn’t serve a wider audience. It was too personal and all about idealistic plans rather than actionable advice.
Monetization
I have nothing new to report on the monetization front, but I’m still working on it! When I figure it out, I promise there will be a huge celebratory blog post about it!
I’m still with my other affiliates: Amazon, Bluehost, and others -but I haven’t had much success. I still believe that if I increase my readership, the money will follow, which is where my focus is.
We no longer promote these affiliates. Although we’re still with the programs, we don’t rely on any of them for income. When we first started, we had no idea how much traffic it takes to make money with affiliate marketing or how to create sales funnels to make that money.
We learned that we’re more interested in providing helpful content than marketing.
What’s Next?
Obviously, I failed at all of my blog goals from last month, but hey, I’m a Cubs fan; we are used to saying, “There’s always next year” (or, in my case, month).
My biggest goal for my twenty-second month is to stay optimistic about blogging. If I can do it after such a disappointing month, anyone can!
Let’s see if I can turn this blog fail thing upside down and get to 2000 users for September!
Hey! Great post. Keep it up. We all have bad months with our goals. We just have to stay persistent and consistent.
Thank you! I’m good at the consistent part. I’ll get there with the stats eventually