27 posts, roughly 827 combined dev.to views, 18 comments, and exactly 0 search clicks -- still, two months in. Those are the real cumulative numbers, not the encouraging subset of them.
| Metric | Two months in |
|---|---|
| Posts published | 27 |
| Total dev.to views | ~827 |
| Total dev.to comments | 18 |
| Search Console clicks, ever | 0 |
| GA4 visitors, most weeks | 0-10 |
The number that actually moved: engagement, not reach
Eighteen comments across 27 posts isn't a lot in absolute terms, but it's eighteen more than a blog with this little search visibility has any right to expect, and nearly all of them are substantive -- actual technical back-and-forth, not "nice post" filler. That's the one metric this project has produced organically, without buying it or gaming it, and it's the one I'd point to if asked whether any of this has "worked" so far.
Checking the new post template against real numbers
Two posts have gone out under the new structure (concrete number in the title, a real table or chart, an explicit admitted mistake) since adopting it a week ago:
| Posts | Total views | Total likes | Like rate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before the new post template | 25 | 796 | 11 | 1.4% |
| After the new post template | 2 | 31 | 5 | 16.1% |
A like rate more than ten times higher sounds like proof the new format works. It isn't proof of that -- it's two posts, one of which is specifically about blogging income and other bloggers, a topic that's naturally more shareable among the exact dev.to audience that reads this blog. Small sample, favorable topic, real but not yet separable from format. I'm tracking it anyway, because the only way to know if it holds up is to keep publishing this way and watch whether the gap survives contact with a more ordinary topic.
What two months actually bought
Not search traffic -- that part is still proceeding at the "3 to 6 months is normal for a backlink-free domain" pace this project researched before starting, and nothing this month changed that math. What it bought is a small set of readers who show up in the comments and correct things, a publishing pipeline that hasn't broken in six weeks, and, as of this week, a real (if unconfirmed) early signal that the index requests from two weeks ago might be doing something. None of that is a growth story yet. It's a foundation that's still there after two months, which is a lower bar than it sounds like, but one plenty of side projects don't clear.
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