My First Week of Building in Public: A Miserable Failure (And Why I'm Thrilled)
My six-part prologue, which detailed my journey from a career break to my new life in Singapore, is complete. For six straight days, I published my story. And by every conventional social media metric, my first week of building in public was a miserable failure.
I didn’t do anything special to promote the content. I didn’t ask friends to share it or post in groups to drive traffic. As a result, the algorithm on the internet—a mechanism that rewards impact—correctly determined that I hadn’t made any. Why should it? In a world with millions of creators, a platform doesn’t owe you an audience. You have to earn it.
And that is exactly why I’m thrilled.
The Data: A Report Card of Humility
Here’s a transparent look at the numbers after one week.
LinkedIn Performance: My first post performed the best, likely due to the initial announcement, but engagement dropped off quickly. The 4th post, which I thought might get traction, was one of the worst-performing.
- Post 1: 3075 Impressions, 50 Likes
- Post 2: 1341 Impressions, 26 Likes
- Post 3: 1217 Impressions, 24 Likes
- Post 4: 451 Impressions, 5 Likes
- Post 5: 1689 Impressions, 29 Likes
- Post 6: 341 Impressions, 7 Likes
X (Twitter) Performance: This was even more humbling. With only 17 followers on a decade-old account, the results were predictably microscopic.
- Post 1: 56 Impressions, 1 Like
- Post 2: 39 Impressions, 1 Like
- Post 3: 15 Impressions, 0 Likes
- Post 4: 28 Impressions, 1 Like, 1 Comment
- Post 5: 14 Impressions, 2 Likes
- Post 6: 15 Impressions, 2 Likes
Blog & Newsletter Performance: This is where things got interesting. I had 164 users visit the blog, generating over 1,800 events. This was more than I expected. However, of those 164 users, I received:
- 3 newsletter subscribers (one is me, one is my wife, and one is a real person to whom I am incredibly grateful).
- 0 comments on the blog itself.
The Thrill of a Problem to Solve
I look at these numbers and I don’t feel disappointment. I feel an electric sense of excitement. If I had gone viral overnight, I would have probably quit already. If it’s easy, it’s not thrilling.
This “failure” gives me a clear mission. It presents a puzzle I need to solve:
- How do you provide value so immense that people feel compelled to read?
- How do you structure content so that the algorithms take notice?
- What are the systems behind successful, authentic creators?
This is a mountain I now get to climb. The journey of digging again and again until you find the gem—that is the part I truly enjoy.
So, Was It Really a Failure?
Of course not. Because getting a thousand likes was never the goal of this first week. The goal was to lay the foundation. To prepare the canvas.
In the past few weeks, while writing these posts, I learned how to:
- Set up a blog from scratch with a custom domain on GitHub Pages.
- Professionally structure my LinkedIn and X profiles.
- Set up a custom email address (
hello@shibiliareekara.com). - Integrate a newsletter subscription service.
- Add a commenting system (Giscus) to a static website.
- Implement Google Analytics and understand basic SEO.
These were all things I had only heard about. Now, they are tools in my toolkit. The foundation is laid. The canvas is ready.
Now, the real work of building the house—and the real painting—can begin.
This reflection is the launchpad. In my next post, I’ll share the exact plan and value I intend to provide, and explain why I’m still digging and what’s next.