Welcome to the Bitter to Richer one year anniversary post! It’s been quit a while since I started, and I’ve made a lot of progress, but it feels like I launched just a few months ago. Hopefully you have enjoyed my content so far, as there is a lot more to come. For more info on that, you’ll have to stay tuned. In this article I’ll just be going over what’s happened during my first year as a blogger – the good and the bad, with everything I’ve learned along the way about starting a blog and building a brand.
Website And Branding
Over the past year I’ve undergone some heavy changes when it comes to the Bitter to Richer aesthetic. I’m currently pretty happy with the overall site layout and theme. However, I do wish I had a better logo for the site. If you or someone you know does logos, feel free to reach out. It’s definitely something I’ll invest in at some point, but it’s not really a limiting factor for now, so I haven’t been working on it. Right now the main concern is just releasing strong content and keeping a consistent schedule.
Writing And Publishing
Over the past year I’ve gotten into the habit of writing one article each week and publishing it on Sunday. I also have two interview series I currently do. In Money Managers, I mainly interview financial professionals or personal finance bloggers. In Money Makers, I interview notable professionals from every industry, including entrepreneurs and investors. Both series have done well, and they’re very rewarding. They don’t take a lot of time from me, but they add content to the blog, and it is usually excellent. There are a ton of amazing gems in those interviews, so I recommend reading them!
Unfortunately, for the time being I don’t plan on releasing more than 2 posts per week on the blog. I will always post a new article on Sunday, and I will post interviews (when I have them) on Wednesdays. If you’d like to participate in an interview, make sure you email me! Other than that, I have too many projects going on at work and in my personal life to commit to doing more consistently, without hurting the overall quality of the content. In other words, I’m choosing quality over quantity. I’m hoping that one day I am able to devote a lot more time to Bitter to Richer and can give you articles a lot more often.
Overall State Of The Blog
I’m okay with where Bitter to Richer is overall, but it’s been a journey with tons of peaks and valleys. That being said, the first year usually seems the most tumultuous for new blogs. I’m incredibly excited to keep working at it and making Bitter to Richer better than ever. While it’s been up and down, I’ve certainly seen a lot of progress across the board.
Views
Overall, daily views are in a very mediocre spot. I had a pretty linear growth for several months (with one outlier where I had something go viral). After a bit, I had a period of intense exponential growth. Unfortunately, my main traffic source has died down immensely over the past month, which has been a significant setback. If I end up getting back to the traffic I was making a couple months ago, I’ll probably focus a little bit more on my monetization strategies. For now I’m just focused on quality content, posting consistently, and growing my audience. Continued growth will come with consistency and quality!
Interaction & Engagement
The interaction with the Bitter to Richer community has been little (probably because BtR is still small and growing), but truly meaningful. I get contacted at least a few times a week through email or Twitter, and I’ve had some great conversations with some of you. I really appreciate any and all feedback, and I’m grateful for all the interactions so far and what they’ve taught me.
Email Lists
Right now I’m growing my email list, so if you’re interested in staying up to date on Bitter to Richer content, sign up for the newsletter. I used to send out a weekly email, but had mixed results. For now, I’m working on getting people to sign up and sending out basic updates, as I prepare for big announcements through it. So, if you really want to stay tuned for the latest and greatest stuff BtR has going on, be sure to sign up for it.
Affiliate Marketing
Right now I have quite a few affiliate links on the site, most of which you can find on my Recommendations page. I only sign up to be an affiliate for products I use (or have used) and trust deeply. For more details on things like banks and investment brokerages to good deals on Amazon, be sure to check that page out.
Since I am mainly focused on content and growing an audience, I haven’t pushed my affiliate links particularly hard yet, so the income I produce from it is very minor. Would it be nice to make enough from affiliates to cover the cost of running BtR and give a little extra? Yes. But all of that will come in good time. For now, it’s more important for me to establish an audience and build connections.
For the record, I will never be an affiliate for a product I wouldn’t use myself.
Traffic Sources
Right now I have a few solid sources of traffic. Most of this is still being grown too, but I’m happy with a lot of it. I’ve hit my first year goals for all of them – much to my own surprise.
First up on the list, I use Twitter. I recently hit over 1,000 followers (yay!), but I’ve still got a long way to go on it. On Twitter most of my content is just a bite-sized version of what you can find on the blog. I try to pack information in, but there is a limit to how much I can convey with so few characters. Of course, being able to build strong threads helps me get over that hurdle.
Currently, Twitter is a decent, stable traffic source. I get a moderate amount of people coming to my website through it daily. On top of that, with Twitter I occasionally get viral posts which spiral out of control. For example, I had 900 link clicks to my blog in a single day when I was just starting out from a single post that went viral on Twitter. That’s not reliable by any means, but it is nice when a post goes viral.
With all of that said, the best use of Twitter has been engaging with other people. I love responding to posts in the comments, but I’m mainly talking about direct messages. Twitter is a great platform to build a network – it’s how I landed most of my interviews!
Pinterest has been an incredibly mixed bag. There was a very slow, but steady, progression for the first few months. After that there were some algorithm changes and my progression stalled for a bit. Eventually I figured out the new algorithm and started growing at a steady pace. At that point Pinterest started giving me more traffic than Twitter. I went through a long period of exponential growth on Pinterest, and BtR was on its way to actually making several hundred dollars per month! That may not seem like a lot to you, but that is a lot for a still budding blog like this one.
Unfortunately, all of that changed over the past month or so. I started losing traffic rapidly, and am only producing a small fraction of what I used to through it. There has been no news of an algorithm change, and I’m not the only one affected by it. For now I am assuming that the traffic dropped for me leading up to the holidays because what users search for has changed. If I don’t see Pinterest normalize around March or April of 2022, I’ll definitely shift my focus elsewhere.
Should I Join Any Other Social Media Platforms?
Currently I’m only on Twitter and Pinterest (which is technically a search engine). If you have any other recommendations for me to join, please let me know! I’m always interested in the social media platforms that my readers use, and I’d love to interact with you on them.
SEO
SEO has been hard to get the hang of, but I have a feeling this will be the best traffic source by far. I didn’t get much SEO traffic for a long time, since I was a newer blog. Now, I’ve gone back and fixed some of my original posts, which weren’t optimized for SEO, and I make sure all new content is set up for SEO.
I’ve also finally built up a decent rapport of articles, so I can see it making a difference. These days I get SEO traffic pretty consistently, and I get minor spikes in it about every other week. The people who access my blogs from search engines also tend to stay longer, read more content, and click affiliate links.
SEO will definitely be a huge source of traffic in the future!
Goals Going Forward
Right now, I’m perfectly content with just growing. After the 18 month mark, I would like to see more consistent income from Bitter to Richer, and hopefully one day BtR will make enough for me to leave my day job – that will be a long time from now though.
I’ll be taking the gas off on trying to grow my Twitter account. I will still post new tweets, respond to comments, and engage with others, but the focus will be more on building new connections. The current plan is to continue my Pinterest strategy. I still think it is a great source of traffic, although it may be somewhat seasonal. If I don’t end up seeing returns, I’ll put it on the backburner.
As for the content, I have a lot of special articles coming up, and they’re better than ever before. On top of that, some old friends of mine (who gave me the idea for Bitter to Richer’s name) started a blog and YouTube channel of their own, so you’re bound to see some collaboration there soon.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading the update! If you have any tips or experience of your own to contribute, please leave a comment. If you’re interested in reading more personal finance articles, check out mine here. For more content like this, and a free budgeting template and financial goals worksheet, be sure to sign up for the Bitter to Richer newsletter.
Congrats on finishing out your first year. Blogging is a long game, but as long as we keep at it we’ll get there! Cheers.