The best financial services for your money!

Download this e-book and optimize your finances and save money by using the best financial services available in Switzerland!

Download The FREE e-book

Fourth year of blogging – Summary

Baptiste Wicht | Updated: |

(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)

The Poor Swiss blog just turned four years old last month. Funny enough, I forgot about this birthday this year. It is why this article pops up in November instead of the usual October.

The fourth year of blogging has had very mixed results. I have continued to write regularly, updated many articles, and translated many others. I believe the content is in a good place. Unfortunately, my efforts did not pay off in terms of traffic since traffic is lower now than it was a year ago.

This article is a retrospective of this fourth year of blogging, and I share the numbers about this blog, what went well, and what did not go well.

The Poor Swiss in numbers

Let’s start our retrospective of my fourth year of blogging with some numbers about the blog.

So, here are the page views of each month of this fourth year:

Traffic on my fourth year of blogging
Traffic on my fourth year of blogging

Note: I don’t have the stats in September because of a plugin bug that counted half the month double. And in October, I switched to a new version of Google Analytics, which means no continued stats.

The year started great, but then all went down to hell after January. Since January 20201, my traffic has been decreasing significantly every month. I finished my third year at 90K page views a month and finished my fourth year at 88K page views. This result is disappointing for me. So, over the entire year, there was still more traffic than last year, but comparing last October with this October shows lower traffic by about 10%.

The sources of this traffic remain the same as last year, with more than 75% coming from Google. I still fail to get much traction from email and social.

The blog now counts 370 articles in English. I have already translated 126 articles into French. And there are almost 7000 comments on the blog.

What went well?

Interactions with readers have been good during this year. I have had many great comments from readers who were starting to improve their finances with what they learned on my blog.

Writing is also going well. I still enjoy researching for this article, learning new things, and writing them down. I do not always have time to do in-depth simulations articles, but I still enjoy doing them.

Finally, the income on this blog went well. I did not do much for this, but it seems to be working on auto-pilot. I got almost twice more than I got last year. It is funny that I got significantly more income this year while the traffic did not grow well.

Overall, what went best was helping people with this blog during this fourth year.

What did not go well?

The main thing that did not go well this year was traffic. I am disappointed to end up lower than where I started. There were some good months, but after these good months, it went down fairly quickly. My expectations were probably wrong in the first place. But this still sucks.

Even though I know this should not be my priority, this hit my motivation for this blog and resulted in a reduction in new articles.

I think this comes from a few things. First, there are many new competitors in Switzerland. And they are doing a better job than me at ranking on Google. I am not good at marketing and SEO, and this is where I am getting hit. Also, these sites are producing more content and more translations than I. But looking at this content, I do not think it is superior, hence why I think it is on the marketing and SEO that I am bad at.

For the second year in a row, updating my articles did nothing to my traffic. I have updated more than a hundred articles in this fourth year, but I did not see any effect on updated posts.

The translation of the website went well, but the results are mixed. I expected the french version of the blog to grow faster.

So, overall, we can say that traffic is the main issue with this fourth year.

What changed during this fourth year?

Only a few things changed on this blog.

One thing I did this year (I believe it was this year) was to separate the index and the blog page. Still, I think it is a good idea, but several readers have told me that it was not great. So, I may have to improve that again, although I do not yet know how.

I translated many more articles during this fourth year. About a third of the articles are translated. Overall, this represents about 10% of my traffic. For now, I am relatively satisfied with this effort. I thought it would grow quicker, but it is still not that bad.

I have done a few more coaching calls, especially in the first half of 2021. These coals were something interesting, but this is not something that I want to pursue more. It feels too much like work, having meetings scheduled on my agenda. Ideally, I want to be able to do what I want when I want for this blog. Otherwise, it feels like a hassle, and I will not do it.

In the middle of the fourth year, I have switched my blogging schedule from 2 articles a week to 1 article a week. I reached a point where seeing traffic decrease regardless of what I was doing took a big hit on my motivation, so I decided to scale the number of articles to once a week. So far, I plan to continue with that schedule for next year.

I have also done some minor tweaks to the website here and there to keep it running fast.

We can see which were the most popular articles on the blog during this fourth year. This list may not be entirely accurate since I am losing more than one month of analytics, but it should still be a good sample.

So, here are the three most viewed articles:

Interestingly, none of these articles are from this fourth year. They have all been updated to be fresh, but they were written in previous years. I have to go all the way down to the top 20 to get articles from this year. So, either my articles take a long time to rank on Google, or my new articles are worse than they used to be.

The next year of blogging?

I do not have big plans for my fifth year of blogging. I do not have a goal of growing my audience anymore since I do not know how to achieve this. So I will continue with the current flow.

I plan to continue to translate French articles. I will try to get this done by 2022. I have at least a hundred more to go. I do not plan to translate every single article, like monthly updates. Since this a lot of work for little traffic. But this may change in the future.

I am also thinking about German translation, but since my german is terrible, this will be more difficult, and I won’t be able to answer comments. So I do not know yet how this will work out.

I will update fewer articles next year. Updating articles and keeping them fresh did not payout this year. So I will only update very outdated articles but not update many articles like I did this year.

The other ideas that I will probably not end up doing are writing and selling an ebook directly on the blog, providing a new free ebook, and reviewing my color scheme.

And that’s it: go with the flow without any goals.

Your point of view?

This blog is for you! I want to get your point of view on this blog!

What do you think I should focus on next year?

What do you think went well or did not go well during the fourth year?

And do you have anything you would like to have on this blog? Any suggestions for articles?

Conclusion

Edit: Thanks a lot for your comments! This is extremely motivating and encouraging!

Overall, the fourth year of this blog has not been the greatest. After three years of growth, the blog has started to decline.

I still enjoy working on this blog, but for next year, I will not have any goals for this year. See where it is going. I will work less on the blog.

I still had some good interactions with readers and partners. And from what I hear, this blog is still helping many people with their money, so I want to focus on that.

What would you like to see happen during the fifth year of the blog?

What do you think of my blog? Do you like the direction it is going in?

The best financial services for your money!

Download this e-book and optimize your finances and save money by using the best financial services available in Switzerland!

Download The FREE e-book
Photo of Baptiste Wicht

Baptiste Wicht started thepoorswiss.com in 2017. He realized that he was falling into the trap of lifestyle inflation. He decided to cut his expenses and increase his income. This blog is relating his story and findings. In 2019, he is saving more than 50% of his income. He made it a goal to reach Financial Independence. You can send Mr. The Poor Swiss a message here.

Recommended reading

  • More articles about

49 thoughts on “Fourth year of blogging – Summary”

  1. Hello ThePoorSwiss,
    first congratulations for bringing your blog already to 4 years, it’s an achievement. I see that you are not so happy with the metrics, like in business we tend to expect to have a constant if not exponential growth with time but I have always thought that it’s not sane to expect that for everything. Also I’m always doubtful in the reliability of metrics. Not everyone use Google. More and more people use privacy friendly option in their browser or even use Tor browser, so you get less metrics or less accurate ones. I also follow your blog with RSS feed, so I can get notified of new article without giving my email and without behind tracked with Google Analytics links or similar (link from your emails got sometimes tagged by my browser, it ask me if I want to continue because of the link redirection that is flagged as aggressive or something). You also mention that your revenue almost double while traffic has slightly decrease, maybe it’s a much better metrics to take into account. Not because all blog should focus on making money, far from it, but as I assume you make money only from affiliate link, it means that more and more reader trust you and use your link when they decide to subscribe to a service (banking, investing,…) or to buy something you recommended. Unless I didn’t understood exactly where this blog revenue came from, maybe an article (update) would be nice.

    Another “metrics” I really like is number of comments and feedback you get out of them. When you start a blog and wrote article that made zero comment, you don’t really care that the metrics tell you it’s been viewed 10, 20, 50 times, you still have the feeling that nobody read it and read it only quickly in diagonal to have a look and didn’t find the article interesting. Positive comment is the only confirmation that someone read it and like it. Also negative comment help you to improve, correct mistake, add missing information,…

    I think I find your blog for the first time about one year ago and it already help me a lot. Initially I just wanted to start with a good 3a but I end up doing much more, I discovered this community in Switzerland, even if I know some personal finance/FIRE blogs from US way before, and all this community gave me the kick to finally start my own blog that was in the starting blocks for 2-3 years already. So sorry I might end up as kind of a competitor as you said. Our blogs have some topics in common but I also went to write other kind of article, it’s never motivating to write something to figure out just before while doing research or even after that other wrote similar article that might be better already.

    You also mention that you most popular article are older ones (updated or not) but I think it’s pretty normal and these articles are the important ones that you must maintain as they have the core information, that help new reader to start and cover the most demanding topics. Even if it seams too basic with time and experience, there are always people discovering service like TopPreise or have always fear to start using Ricardo or Anibis (because of cost, risk of scam…). These articles are important and will bring the new reader to your blog. Then you can retain them with more specific articles that goes more in details or are less obvious for new reader, so also less likely to be found in a search results.

    For what I could read this last year, the quality of your articles are goods and I always discover an old article form a link in a new one as I can certainly not read all your history as you made a huge base of articles already. I hope you will continue your blog in the same way and I will continue to read you in the future and comment when I feel necessary.

    1. Hi Eluc,

      These are excellent points. It’s true that more and more people are blocking Google Analytics and this will reflect on my stats. On the other hand, the number of great comments will not go down with that!
      Yes, I am tracking opening rates and clicks on my emails and this uses GA. On the other hand, I don’t act much on these stats, so I could stop collecting them.
      You are correct on the revenue, everything comes from affiliate links when my readers use some of the services I recommend. But several of the services I recommend give me nothing. If they are the best, I don’t care, I will recommend the best first regardless of what I get.

      Comments is a metric i really like. I am going to focus more on that next year.

      Thank your very much for your feedback. This is very valuable for me!

  2. Hi TPS,
    I believe the content of your blog is very interesting and even if my journey to get awareness on financial investment started a bit before finding your blog, I found in your articles the confirmation I was looking for.
    I started taking care of my finance thanks to the opportunity I had to follow a few webcasts of Andrew Hallam. Your blog looks to me like a confirmation and a deep source of information going into the same direction. I will do whatever I can to spread the url of your blog between my contacts.
    Thank you very much for your contribution to my learning around FI
    Best Regards
    Dario

    1. Hi Dario,

      Thanks! I am really happy it provided you with the confirmation you needed. I hope this was useful towards your journey to FIRE or financial awareness at least.

  3. I want to thank you form the bottom of my heart, your articles are exhaustive yet accessible for finance non literate people like I was. It’s been of great help and definitely one of my go to source of information for certain decisions. Thanks a lot again!

  4. Hello,

    First, thanks for what you write!

    Wondering if the fact of writing articles in French AND English (never found out which ones come first) makes you spend a lot of time for “less” results?!

    Perhaps writing only in English (with reference to fiscal terms in French for example like you already do) would bring a broader audience (by covering more themes) as others can use Deepl or another translation tool for their favorite one and English native speaker tend to be more language-lazy. And then perhaps having some articles in French only?

    Not sure how you can get more revenue with less traffic unless the revenue comes from affiliated links in which case I would argue that the revenue metric is more important towards you FIRE objective than the traffic one, but both are important as combined they inform you on efficacy ;-)

    Happy to discuss live if YOU feel like it!

    All the best including the newborn!

    1. Strongly disagree with the english preference as there are already many many maaany website offering this type of content in english but something useful to Switzerland’s context and in French is precious and stands out! Even if I consult both language, I think the blog is a critical ressource of information (actually quoted several time as a source in some of my finance courses).

      1. If that turns out to be true, then my reasoning could equally apply by chosing French (one of my mother tongues ;-) as the preferred language…

    2. Hi Pedro,

      English comes first. I have started this blog in English and only started translating them in French. Currently, my process is improved enough so that it does not take that much time.
      But that’s a good thought.

      Actually, revenue is up even though traffic is down. But even though it’s a good bonus, I don’t want to focus on it too much. Otherwise, this site would be full of affiliate links, bad content and ads :) Which is what I want to avoid! and hopefully, ma readers want to avoid it too :)

      If you have more suggestions, let me know (in the comments or directly by contact), I love this!

  5. I have to admit that your blog helped me get quickly up to speed with Swiss finances. I moved recently to Switzerland and wanted to learn how to do best invest money, which financial products to use, what are the benefits of the tax system and so forth. However once I got a hang of it I didn’t really need to stay in touch with your blog, only occasionally.

    My suggestions would be
    1) your audience are expats (assumptions). Target these groups with google adwords and invest in campaigns.
    2) you need to keep them coming. ETFs & credit cards are boring at some point. Get into crypto, new products, explain the risks & benefits. Constantly deliver new content
    3) someone said Instagram. I would suggest Youtube as well because the younger audience is no longer a blog person
    4) Mustachian has some nice perks with vouchers/codes. Increase your audience by offering these promo codes
    5) People want to read more about how to build a portfolio, how to manage it, what to put in there during inflation, how to diversify, etc.

    1. Hi,

      Great to hear that my blog helped you! It makes sense that you don’t need my blog forever, I don’t want that either :)

      1) Good to target them, but I hate ads :) But I can write more articles for expats, I know many of my readers are
      2) Excellent point
      3) Youtbe is something I am considering for the future, but I will need until I have much more time
      4) I actually have most of them, but I try not to play that card as much
      5) Great point

      Thanks for your suggestions! Keep em going :)

  6. Hello,

    I’d like to second a lot of what the previous post is saying – above all, I also want to encourage you to continue. I’ve been a regular reader for years, and many articles have helped me tremendously, thanks to your research and elaborated, very pleasant to read articles, always including a personal note and opinion.

    In particular, I (Swiss national) had been living abroad for a few years recently. Upon planning my return, several of your articles on banking, cards, 3rd pillar etc. were invaluable in bringing me up to speed with the developments of the marketplaces and products. They shaped many choices I was taking at the time! That is also why I recommend you whenever I get a chance. Great blog indeed, and I really hope you get the attention, uptake and popularity you are wishing for – least I can say is that you deserve it.

    Looking forward to hopefully reading you again and again!

    Thanks for all the great content. All the best & cheers,
    Stephan

    1. Thanks Stephan,

      I am very happy my articles were useful! This is feedback like this on which I am going to focus for the fifth year. More difficult to quantify, but more valuable.

  7. HI,

    Thank you for the work that you do. Your blog is my benchmark for personal finance in Switzerland. I think you are doing a very good job. For me the most useful articles are the ones where you do a review on new financial products (e.g. robo-advisors).

    I believe to grow audience you might need to switch to Instagram.

    1. Thank you very much Tatiana, this is very motivating!

      I am glad you like my reviews, I actually like doing them :) Let me know if you have ideas for future reviews.

      It could possibly grow my audience, but I hate (and sucks at) media, so Instagram is out of my league :) I will focus on things I like doing and keep helping people.

  8. Hi,
    Despite a drop in your traffic, your blog is still of exceptional quality, probably the best of Switzerland.
    Don’t get too focused on it, last year was an abnormal year and more people spent time surfing the net from home (like me!). Try to compare with 2019 instead to see and to regain motivation ;)

  9. Hello,

    sorry to hear you didn’t get the results you were expecting.

    This blog has helped me immensely navigating through the Swiss tax system, how all pillars work and how to utilize 3rd pillar. Also helped me building my investing profile (etf), picking my broker (ibkr) and it goes on and on. It helped me turning from clueless to moderately expert among my peers. I am the first one they consult when they need advice and I always direct them to read your articles. Maybe this is part of your google visits. It is very easy for someone who doesn’t know the exact url to find you just by vaguely remembering the concept ( for example “poor swiss viac” gives straight result to what the person who searched for it needs).

    I hope you don’t lose your motivation and continue providing quality content. Sometimes stuff happens outside of our control, but there are unlimited examples where consistently good content remained unnoticed till something randomly changed and it became super popular.

    Best of luck,
    Nick

    1. Hi Nick,

      Thanks for your kind words. I lost motivation temporarily only :) I am working on improving the website again and have some good plans for it. And all the comments from this thread are very motivating! So thank you!

      I will continue providing quality and for the fifth year, I will focus on helping people with better websites and articles and not focus on traffic!

Leave a Reply

Your comment may not appear instantly since it has to go through moderation. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *