12 views in a week

When I started my first blog over 15 years ago, no one read my articles.

I'd publish something, watch the view count crawl to 12 over a week, and want to throw the laptop into the canal.

There were stretches where I'd go over a week without adding anything, half-decided I was wasting my time.

The pressure came from two places. One was the humiliation of writing for an audience that essentially didn't exist. The other was money. I'd convinced myself this writing thing was going to pay for my life, and the maths wasn't working at all.

Somewhere in that mess, another blogger said something that completely changed my mindset.

He told me that for at least the first year, you can't measure your success by views.

You measure it by incremental improvement in your writing.

That means each article comes out a bit better than the last, with a new angle, a sharper opening, and a better understanding of why something did well.

So I adapted. I started focusing less on view counts and more on getting a teensy bit better with each piece.

The joy of the craft returned. Writing was actually fun again.

I noticed you end up writing BETTER stuff when you're relaxed about the outcome of any one article.

The pressure to perform actively makes the work worse.

The people who write consistently for two years are the ones who let go of that pressure early.

Most writers don't get there.

I've watched literally over forty people start writing regularly, build a small rhythm, and then disappear completely.

The pattern is almost always the same. They put too much pressure on a particular outcome (views, follows, money) and not enough on actually getting better at writing.

This doesn't mean it needs to take a year to see results, especially if you have a path. But taking that pressure off makes it much more likely you'll keep going.

My course The Confident Writer is built around this exact principle.

The course walks you through how to find the topics that energise you, build a writing habit that feels fun, and connect with the right people, without making your daily worth depend on what the algorithm did that morning.

It also includes a 50-Day Writing Challenge that gives you the exact frame I wish I'd had when I started.

The course closes at 4pm ET this Friday 3 July.

Get instant access here.

Alex