Keeping Up With The Bulls is officially 2 years old! They say the second year is much easier; however, the pandemic derailed things a bit. When I was off in 2019 for the holidays I pre-wrote a lot of content knowing I had a busy year ahead at work. Then, the pandemic hit. And, a lot of this content didn’t seem relevant. We were shocked, concerned about our health, uncertainty about our jobs. Many of my articles just seemed tone deaf and irrelevant. Last Dec – Feb I started a saving money attending wedding series and a saving money celebrating holidays series. Even the content I wrote at the start of the year was immediately irrelevant. Nevertheless, this personal finance blog improved over the past year, I’ve learned a lot more about how to blog and I’m excited to continue to improve it in 2021.
A Whirlwind of a Year Led to the Blog on the Back Burner
In March, I stopped caring about the goals I set for my personal finance blog and focused on buying groceries like most of the world. I wrote a few new articles that were a little more relevant for the times like Fast Easy Recipes With Few Ingredients and Self Care at Home for any Budget. With pure luck, I happened to write Tips for Working Remotely back in February bringing my total relevant content to 3 blog posts.
After surviving March, I went in waves with this blog. Some weeks I was super motivated and thought we’re home always, this is my opportunity to really bring my blog to the next level. But most weeks it wasn’t a focus. I decided to build out a career section because so much content out there focused on side hustles and not enough on making more money in the typical 9-5.
In March, the stock market went crazy. A few friends knew I liked to invest and wanted to get started so they reached out to me. After a few years hiatus of mostly holding stocks with a few trades here and there I got back into it. I texted quite a bit with friends about what we were buying and selling. I created spreadsheets with target entry points which we never got back down to and started following a lot of traders on Twitter. Looking back, financially it was better to spend my time investing and not blogging. I ended up beating the market! It was a welcome distraction and you can read all about my 2020 stocks investment performance. With my enthusiasm for stocks renewed I’m excited to finally write some investing content here in year 3.
What I Learned In My Second Year of Blogging
In year two I learned more about how to blog. As always, there were things that went well, and other things I need to improve upon next year. Even still, I continued to make a lot of improvements based on what I learned in my first year of blogging. I’m excited to really begin to take my blog to the next level in year three.
Things That Went Well On The Blog
SEO Basics
I’m still far from a pro at SEO but I’ve improved from where I started two years ago. I have Yoast installed now which has helped improve the ease of readability. I do a little keyword research using the Moz keyword explorer and try to incorporate a keyword or two but mainly still write what I want.
I also was able to build a few backlinks this year. While I didn’t keep track, there were two notable ones. Thanks to A Dime Saved one of my saving money tips was included in 13 Ways to Make the Most of Black Friday This Year on MSN. I was also featured as in the Know Your Blogger Series on Personal Finance Blogs.
Ranking for Keywords
At the end of 2019 my post on Why Attend a Women’s conference? started getting some traction in Google and I was super excited. Same with some of my wedding related content like How to Plan a Bridal Shower on a Budget Almost all of that traffic went away starting in March. One step forward, a few steps back. Luckily while this traffic went away, other posts began to improve in ranking. Overall, search drove a lot more visits in year 2 than year 1 and I have no doubt this trajectory will continue in year 3.
In 2019 I tried a bunch of pins and really never got any traction. I’m not very creative and pins take so much more time than writing a tweet I was ready to give up on Pinterest. But in 2020, some of my pins actually started driving some traffic to my site! My most popular pin is for Smart Money Moves in Your 20s. It’s only a few a day, but enough to motivate me to really learn about Pinterest this coming year.
Move to SiteGround
After a lot of technical difficulties with Bluehost and my site going down for days at a time multiple times I finally switched hosting providers. I am now with SiteGround and have had a much better experience. It’s more expensive, but you also get what you pay for.
Partnership and Sponsorship Requests
At this time, I am still not monetizing my blog, but I have received a few requests for paid sponsorships. Even though I am currently turning these down, it’s exciting to get the requests. Once the blog hits a certain traffic level I will consider partnerships and sponsorship requests.
THE THINGS THAT WENT WRONG
Wrong Google Analytics in 2019
My Google Analytics never matched my WordPress metrics in 2019 but I thought this was common and didn’t think much of it. Well, in Jan, turns out I had Google Analytics installed twice somehow and it was double counting all of my visits! So, I thought my blog didn’t do great in 2019 to start and turns out I did even worse. LOL! Luckily it was fixed early in Jan so 2020 is right; however, my 2020 blog goals were based on faulty data. When I found this out I was still determined to hit my initial blog viewership goals. When the pandemic started though I decided to put these goals aside.
Still Not Achieving My Target Blog Viewership Numbers
I could have achieved my viewership goals but decided to put less effort into the blog. The reality is, blogging is a lot of work. If you put in the work upfront it can become passive over time but you have to put in the effort to get there. Many blogs that have much better numbers than me post one to three times A WEEK! In 2 years of blogging I have a total of 64 posts. The people who post 3 times a week end up getting to this same amount of content in their first 5 to 6 months. Like many things, your results are based on the amount of effort you put into something. Had I put more effort into this personal finance blog over the past year I likely would have hit or exceeded my target blog viewership numbers.
KEEPING UP WITH THE BULLS BLOG BY THE NUMBERS
In my second year of blogging about personal finance, I wrote 24 blog posts. This exceeded my goal but is also less than the 40 posts I wrote in 2019. I also went back and improved content I wrote in 2019. Some of the initial content was pretty terrible and I still need to rewrite a few of the initial posts. For social platforms, I am mainly on Twitter and have 1,485 followers, over double the followers I had at the end of last year.
In 2020 I had 17,217 page views, compared to 14,130 page views in 2019. I also had almost double the amount of visitors. Since some of the page views were double counted last year due to the plugin mishap, it’s more likely I had 8,881 page views in 2019 as that’s what is listed as unique page views.
Keeping Up With The Bulls Most Popular Posts in 2020
- 5 Little Known Health Insurance Benefits
- Fast Easy Recipes With Few Ingredients
- Why You Should Enroll in a 529 Plan for Your MBA
- Best Trader Joe’s Dinner Ideas
- 10 Pieces of Career Advice for Young Professionals
The most exciting thing for me on the blog this year was that more traffic came from posts actually about personal finance and helping people make more money! Four of the top five posts last year were all about food, this year it’s down to two. I’m glad people are finding ways to save money on food helpful and finding new recipes but that really isn’t the focus of my blog. I really started this blog to help people make more money. Even though a few food posts generated a lot of traffic last year, I saw a lot more traffic overall come through for personal finance and career related content.
Keeping Up With The Bulls Search Performance
Keeping Up With The Bulls showed up 212K times in Google search, over 4X more than 2019! Of these, 5.57K clicked through to the blog, over 8X more than 2019! Overall, I have a lot more search optimization to do but I am pleased at this year over year progress. Some of the content I think is very important like learning about RSUs and the importance of sponsorship at work just isn’t searched much. RSUs in your compensation package and having at least one sponsor can immensely impact how much money you make at your job. Even though this content doesn’t do well in search I will continue to write it. If it helps even just one person it’s worth it.
Keeping Up With The Bulls Highest Google Search Referrals Posts
- 5 Little Known Health Insurance Benefits
- Why You Should Enroll in a 529 Plan for Your MBA
- How to Ask For a Job Referral
- Why You Should Attend a Women’s Conference
- 10 Pieces of Career Advice for Young Professionals
Originally my 2020 goal was to get more traffic from the posts that drove the most search traffic in 2019. The top search referral post in 2019 was Easy Trader Joe’s Dinner Ideas. Since my main focus to drive more traffic to personal finance and career related content I ended up focusing on other posts instead. I am happy about the progress I made here over the last year.
Keeping Up With The Bulls Year 2 Blog Goals Results
- Consistently hit 75 + views / day. I did not hit this, but this goal was also based on faulty numbers. In Nov and Dec I consistently hit above 50 views per day though with almost no social promotion so I’m pretty excited about this.
- Hit 5,000 views at least one month. The highest amount of views I got in 2020 was 2,632 back in May (excluding January). I am going to keep this goal for 2021.
- Reach 500 views / month from organic search. Achieved! Not only did I hit this, but I hit this goal the past 5 months and even got to over 1,000 views per month from organic search in Nov and Dec.
- Write 20 more blog posts. Achieved! I ended up writing 24.
- Continue to refresh old content. Achieved! I still have a few posts I need to refresh but overall I made a lot of progress here. I will continue this in 2021.
- Continue to learn more about SEO and implement what I’ve learned. Achieved! Still much more to do here, but I am happy with the progress I made last year.
- Reach 1,000 Twitter followers. Achieved! I am now at almost 1,500 Twitter followers.
Keeping Up With The Bulls Year 3 Goals
- Consistently hit 100 + views / day
- Hit 5,000 views at least one month
- Reach 1,500 views / month from organic search
- Write 20 more blog posts
- Write more investing content
That’s a wrap on the year 2 of Keeping Up With The Bulls! For anyone that started their blog after me I hope this was helpful and that you can learn from my mistakes. Thank you to everyone who has read my blog and engaged with me the past year. If there is any content you’d like to see more of please don’t hesitate to reach out!
