Writing My First Blog Post — and Realising Nobody Was Watching

How it started on a random evening

It was a regular evening like any other day. I was travelling back home from the office in a private shuttle and had started to doze off. Suddenly, my phone buzzed. It was a Google News notification about some random article — I don’t even remember what it was about.

As I was scrolling through the article, something caught my attention. Ads were showing up on the page. That immediately made me curious. How do ads appear on a website? Does Google pay websites for showing ads? How do bloggers actually earn money?

Those questions stayed with me. Before I even reached home, I had already Googled it. The answer came straight from Google itself — bloggers earn money by monetising their blogs.

That single line stuck in my head.

During dinner, I felt restless. I finished eating as quickly as I could, opened my laptop, and searched for how to start a blog. Like everyone else, I landed on countless guides explaining sign-ups, platforms, and setup steps. But one line kept repeating everywhere — content is king.

At first, I assumed content was something you could just copy from the internet. It didn’t take long to realise that wasn’t how things worked. Copyright, plagiarism, originality — all of it mattered. More importantly, trust mattered.

To understand why quality matters, I started looking at things from a user’s point of view. When you search for something like how to make a paper rocket, you open the first article and quickly judge whether it helps you. If it doesn’t, you leave and move to the next site. Google notices this behaviour. When users stay longer and come back, it signals that the content is genuinely useful — and that’s what eventually helps pages rank.

Writing without a plan

I left it there and got ready to sleep. But sleep didn’t really come. My mind was full — not with deliberate planning, just random thoughts and half-formed ideas about what I could write.

At some point, I woke up, sat at my desk, opened my laptop, and started writing. I didn’t try to structure anything. I just wrote whatever came to mind.

By the time I stopped, there were around a hundred lines on the screen. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t ready to publish. But it was real. No copy-paste. Just raw experience.

That was my first draft.

What I needed at that moment wasn’t perfection. I needed direction. Writing for the first time gives you content, but it comes out unorganised — and that’s completely fine. Structure and flow can be fixed later. The important thing is getting those thoughts out before they disappear.

Hitting publish and waiting

After giving that raw content some basic formatting and direction, I uploaded it to the CMS and published my first-ever blog post.

I remember hitting publish and waiting. Not for anything specific — just waiting. Days passed, and I struggled to come up with new ideas. But I decided to slow down. One post at a time felt enough.

I set a simple rule for myself: publish at least one article a week, sometimes two if ideas came naturally. Writing stopped feeling like a race and started feeling sustainable.

When I checked analytics

By the time I had published around ten to fifteen articles, curiosity got the better of me. I opened Google Analytics and Google Search Console to see how things were going.

There was nothing. Zero views. No clicks. No impressions.

That moment killed my motivation.

But after a while, I understood this was normal. New sites take time. Indexing takes time. Trust takes time. Publishing alone isn’t enough — you also need to help search engines discover your content. That’s when I started learning about indexing, Search Console, and backlinks.

If you’re new to this stage, my guide on how to promote your blog helped me understand what actually moves things forward.

What I did next (that actually helped)

• Fixed the basics: created a simple internal linking loop between my first 10 posts, added a clear about page, and checked my sitemap in Search Console.
• Added structure: rewrote long paragraphs into headings and bullet points, and linked to my own related articles (like how to create a blog and choosing a platform).
• Published consistently: one solid post a week with a clear keyword target and at least three internal links and one external citation.
• Asked for feedback: shared drafts with two friends for clarity and accuracy, which surfaced obvious gaps before publishing.
• Patience plus promotion: each new post was shared on one forum/subreddit and one social channel with a short summary, not just a link drop.

If I were doing it again from zero, I’d also keep a simple checklist for every post: keyword mapped, meta description written, two internal links added, one external source cited, and images compressed. It keeps quality predictable even when motivation dips.

A simple publishing checklist for beginners

Run through this before you hit publish:

1) Search intent check: Does the title answer one clear question a reader is asking? If not, tighten it.
2) Hook and outline: First 150 words should set the promise, then every H2 should align to that promise.
3) Link scaffolding: Add at least two internal links to relevant posts (or planned posts) and one external citation that backs a claim or data point.
4) Visuals and alt text: Use compressed images with descriptive alt text; avoid decorative images that add no meaning.
5) Meta + schema basics: Write a human meta description, verify the URL slug, and ensure your sitemap and breadcrumbs update.
6) Readable formatting: Short paragraphs, bullet lists where helpful, and a clear CTA pointing to the next logical article.

If you need a starting point for your next steps, go back to how to create a blog for setup basics, or jump to on-page SEO for bloggers to polish what you have.

Why nobody watching was actually a relief

Knowing that nobody was reading my posts turned out to be a relief. After investing so much time, that sounds strange — but it made sense.

The silence gave me space. Space to improve my writing, analyse my content, and fix mistakes without pressure. There was no audience to impress and no fear of judgment.

Slowly, when traffic starts showing up — it always does — feedback comes naturally. Sometimes through comments, sometimes through behaviour. That feedback helps you improve even more.

This is a slow process, but it’s a proper one.

If you’re still at the beginning, you may want to read my earlier post on how to create a blog from scratch or continue with choosing the right blogging platform.

And that’s something I didn’t understand when I wrote my first blog post — and realised nobody was watching.