Not sure this is the place for this but here’s the thing.
I feel like I have come to the end with my site. Ironically this has occured to me after upgrading my pro-subscription and finally got the Google ads to work.
The site is 1.5 year old by now and I feel there is no feedback from my readers.
The open rate on the weekly newsletter is ok and that also goes for my articles.
But the feedback and sharing is as close to zero it could get, and I feel a bit done with it.
Did anybody else have this dilemma and what did you end up doing with it?
Quit?
Change direction?
What are you doing to “get” comments from them, are you asking questions that actually resolante with them in the content, is it clear popping versus other sentences within the content? Sharing is something only the truly engaged would do and only if they had people to share with, what makes your content uniquely shareable versus 15 other results on the SERP? Also for note in todays web 1.5 years you are still a baby and have little in the way of brand and so you cant expect instant success. Do you work in circles with this content and share with them your content, do you go on podcasts of similar topics? Do you make videos on youtube or other source?
Why should they share or care about you and your content, this was the hardest thing to teach myself and the one thing most site owners need to come to grips with.
I don’t know where you’re get your facts, but the average lifespan of “a blog” is less than a year, about 95% are abandoned within the first 3–6 months.
So no, a 1.5 year old project would not be considered a baby.
That said, I do have an above average open rate on my e-mails so either I suck it up and stop dreaming of having a two way communication with my readers or give up.
My niche is not a podcasting nor video making niche in regards to the things I am writing about so that be a guest on a podcast is not an option. However I will pick up my own slumbering podcast and see where it takes me.
I understand the frustration, but you’re focusing on the wrong metrics.
Comments and shares are vanity metrics.
Your above-average open rates prove people want to hear from you.
Here’s what Dan Koe of Kortex would tell you:
Go back to the basics of quality writing.
- Write like you’re talking to one person
- Share your personal lessons and failures
- Solve one specific problem per post
- Build your unique perspective through experience
Most people consume without engaging - that’s normal.
Quality compounds over time.
For systematising your content creation, start with Kortex:
• Organise scattered thoughts into cohesive content systems
• Build consistent writing habits with structured workflows
• Develop your unique voice through better idea management
• Create content that compounds by connecting ideas systematically
Don’t quit.
Master the fundamentals first.
The audience response will follow quality, not the other way around.
Focus on the writing.
Everything else is noise.
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That is kind of what I said in my post that I should either quit full stop or continue and stop dreaming of some kind of interaction above the open rate.
Point is the vanity bit is what’s starting to bug me more than anything. After 1.5 year all I’ve built is a silent community
Follow Dan Koe on Substack and join Kortex. What will giving up give you? Start over on another project!? Writing is at the heart of everything you do as a marketer, blog or otherwise.
Dan Koe mastered writing on social, newsletters, youtube et al … he didn’t just give up and his blog is doing quite fine as is his bank balance. Go all in. You wont thank yourself for quitting. Pivot maybe. You have not shared your blog or your niche, so hard to comment. Just go all in and your path will open up for you. Trust me, there is no better answer out there to your question than what Dan Koe has to say. Start writing in Kortex and follow his lead. Good luck.
I commented elsewhere that my move from WP to Ghost resulted in a 90% reduction in comments on my posts. I think this is a consequence of the newsletter format … almost everyone reads it on their phone.
However, without fail, comments appear if I write something controversial, challenging or specifically asking for “how do you do this?”. Not many, but enough to know they’re still out there reading stuff.
Or if I write something that’s just plain wrong … someone will correct me 
.
I don’t know Kortex, but collect thoughts/ideas/outlines all the time using Obsidian. Just a few words here or there, scribbled in haste, can act as a germ of an idea for a future post. It might take days, weeks, or even months to mature, but I’ll get there in the end. But there are lots of these all going on at the same time, so I manage to write something every week … that makes it sound like a chore. I enjoy writing something every week.
I’ve been writing the blog for >10 years, weekly for the last 5+ years. I write about a niche hobby, but there’s always something new to discuss … and, if I’m stuck, I look back through the archive, revive, update and re-illustrate a legacy post, and redirect traffic to that to the new one … there’s a lot of new readers, and the old ones value to revisited subject and/or have forgotten it anyway.
But the key thing is collecting all those tiny ideas in one place … and then letting your subconscious work on them, expanding them, fleshing them out, before writing it all down.
Keep going 
.
If you have a slumbering podcast then there is a podcast you can obviously be on thats not yours, blog as a singular thing has been dying since 2023 and the HCU. You have to make more eyes find you and find those 1000+ core real fans.
Im just trying to tell you writing to the black hole can’t be the sole approach anymore, find video, podcasts, pinterest, facebook groups, someplace else to also post partials get intrigue have other people share.
Also yes, 1.5 years old as a website is still a newborn, you can feel like it isn’t and thats fine but in the online world its still a baby.
That is a good point, and that is probably part of my problem. The provocative writing is sent out as newsletter and the mainstream “this is what happened here and there” just goes up on the site with the hopes that someone finds it.
Till one month ago I held a strict schedule of three days per week posting. One round up on Sundays and two articles of some sort. Obviously my readers are still interested cause other wise they wouldn’t continue to open my newsletters but the fact the growth is not there [anymore?] is really starting to get to me.
Kortex is Dan Koe’s alternative to Obsidian and Notion built with writing for creatives in mind.
So, I decided to quit. No, that is not completely true. I decided to stop my dead end project and walk down a complete other path with my now upgraded Ghost Pro subscription and functioning AdSense codes…
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