No One Reads Your Work? Relax. I Had Nearly 0 Views for 1 Year. Here’s How I Survived.

And, may I say, overcome.

A bitter pill to swallow? Hell yeah.

We spend hours daily thinking, typing, editing, rewriting, and sharing our ideas with the world, only to invite…

… Crickets.

That was me during my first 12 months. Some articles brought me 0 views. Maybe 10. My best week? Perhaps, 20.

Earnings? Haha. Well, that is a marvel too.

See for yourself.

I am one of you, my friends.

I was.

I am.

And then I started wondering

“Why in the world am I doing this? I can earn more selling hotdogs at a mobile stand!”

Are you thinking the same?

Not surprising. Earnings matter when we have bills to pay. Making $10 a month is not helping. I mean, yes, it does help to buy a cup of Starbucks latte? But.

$10 monthly for 30 hours [of work] is not a sexy R.O.I.

I bury my head and keep going.

Deep down, I think I can partake in the wealth generated from the digital age. All it takes [I am crazy naïve] was relentless improvements.

I needed to show up and do the work.

Looking back, I say this.

Fortunately, I did.

And it brought me back to the same desk, reflecting on what is possible. I was thinking about writing better, and I was pondering over digital economics.

I started thinking about,

• The number of people having access to the internet as it scales,
• The number of people performing an internet search and my work pops up,
• Having millions of folks reading my work, wanting more, and finding me for work?

I would be on a business trip daily without being on an A380. Now, that… is cool.

The ability to build a small-time business, where the digital component may scale as time passes, is unbelievably sexy.

And THAT… kept me going.

Of course, there are plenty of daily annoyances.

… As you have.

Our ability to plan for our future is a feat.

Greenland dogs are highly industrious living beings working their ass off pulling the sleight… but I don’t think they actively map out their career and retirement possibilities.

We, the apex living beings, do.

And we can zip fast and slow in the short term and long.

The shorter term we go, the more we fret over the minutiae, mechanical details, in our heads.

• Sh!t… spelling error.
• Is this ‘was’? Or ‘is’?
• Should I quote Albert Einstein?
• Maybe it is time to write something new.
• Ah! I need an Oxford Comma!
• This sentence is too long.
• Am I repeating myself?

We jump into a big pile of details and drown ourselves in there.

Trust me. I know how it feels. I’ve been there.

We lose our minds over silly small things.

I ask myself this each time my inner voice bombards me with low-level thinking.

“Is it worthwhile? You want to have a business online. The internet is nothing without words. There are no websites without words. Writing better is an inseparable piece of the future business. Right?”

And each time, I will answer right.

And then, I will get down to work.

I willingly get into the hellhole to push the grind. I mutter this under my breath when I am in the grind.

“I love this sh!t, I love this sh!t, I love th!s sh!t, I love this sh!t, I love this sh!t.”

When others were killing it elsewhere, I hung on.

Am I right to hold my fort when others are killing it on Sub$tack, on Newsbrea|<, now on X, and all this while on V0cal?

In truth, I have no idea.

I say this to Denis Gorbunov, I say this to Matt | Financial Imagineer, and I say this to Sarina Chiu.

• Same message.
• Same thinking.
• Same boring old me.

I thought about this [quite a bit]. I believe in pivoting for success, but I am a creature of habit. Jumping around platforms to push words out like a mad bunny is not my style.

I used to be that crazy bunny.

I was on LinkedIn, Twitter (now X), and YouTube.

It killed me.

I have plenty of respect for creators who have monetized their work.

• It takes platform analysis,
• It requires figuring out what works this and what flops there,
• They have done all of those while working on a day job.

I don’t know how you do it.

And I am probably not [too] interested in content creation, per se. I see content as an integral part of growing a business. If the content itself is the business, you will head to bed with a tech neck and jabbing headache.

There is no higher purpose beyond the eyeballs.

When we get to that stage…

• We drop out of the online game faster because other creators are doing better,
• We struggle to produce something because we lose algorithmic traction without,
• We tend to follow our fans or people we admire to a new platform,

… And we start all over.

This game doesn’t excite me. Plus, I will be helping the platform owners build their business(es), not mine.

So, nay.

I’m out.

And that is how I survived my first year of subatomic views. I follow the plan in my head and allow this platform to reward me based on the quality and quantity of my work.

Is that a lot of money?

I’ve only started crossing that $100 mark on my 12th-month mark here.

I’ll let you decide.

But for now, I’ll stick to my plan. I’ll change when my plan changes.

Otherwise… it is the good old me… trying to do my best writing better daily.

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Oh, oh, you can buy me a cup of black too! Thank you!