Why It Feels Like You're Posting Into Silence (and What to Do About It)

How the internet has changed for creators, and the small routines I lean on to stay in the game.

Sunset - Santa Marta, Colombia 🇨🇴

Are You in the Quiet Place?

You know the one.

That place where you spend hours, days, sometimes weeks on something you’re genuinely proud of - a piece of writing, a product, a painting, a video, anything you’ve made, only to release it into the world and hear…….. silence.

Or you’re relentlessly publishing notes or social posts, knowing at some point something must take off, but in the meantime the best you get is the whistling sound of tumbleweed rolling past in the wind.

And bit by bit your soul gets sucked out just a little bit more, until you start to wonder if it’s even worth it anymore.

The motivation wanes, and you gradually slow to a grinding halt.

I get it. It happens to me too.

I call it The Quiet Place.

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Ok so now I’ve suitably depressed you just a little, let me take some of the responsibility out of your hands! 😁

Here’s What We’re Up Against in 2026

Here’s some rough stats of what we’re competing with these days:

• TikTok users upload an estimated 34 million videos every day.

• More than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. The equivalent of over 80 years of content every 24 hours.

• Substack has millions of paid subscriptions across the platform and tens of thousands of creators earning money from their writing.

• Instagram users upload millions of Reels daily.

• Facebook barely shows your posts to the people who already chose to follow you.

When I started on Facebook in 2010, organic reach for a business page was around 16%. Today it’s under 2%. A post that would have reached 5,000 people in 2012 might reach 80 today. Same post, same effort, but a completely different world.

So it’s not that you’re not resonating. It’s that people don’t know you exist yet.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting you get out there and become the next Gary Vee. I’m betting there’s a very low percentage of us here who’d want that kind of exposure even if it was handed to us on a plate.

But there are really only 3 routes to growing an income online:

1. Grow your own audience over time and sell products or services

2. Leverage someone else’s audience to sell products or services

3. Pay to grow an audience (ads/paid collaborations) to sell products or services

Most of us fall under bracket 1. Some operate in both 1 and 2, though usually only after you've built enough of an audience of your own to be worth partnering with. And bracket 3 only really makes sense if you've got something proven to sell, or investment behind you, so you're not haemorrhaging money before the audience materialises.

So to all of us in Bracket 1, the only way through the quiet place is through it, and consistency is the name of the game.

Which means showing up even when no one’s watching. Posting, sharing, creating, and staying the course, even when you’re convinced no one is paying any attention.

Why Bother?

Look, I know the fears, because I have them too.

• What if it doesn’t work?

• What if no one ever listens?

• What if I’m just not interesting enough?

• What if I don’t resonate?

• What if I can’t compete, create enough or ever be seen?

• What if, after all this effort, I find out I’m simply not good enough?

But, what’s the alternative?

You don’t try? You don’t give the thing you care about your best shot? You spend the rest of your life wondering what might have happened if you’d just kept going a little longer?

Not me. And I suspect, if you’re still reading this, not for you either.

So if you’re in the quiet place today, posting into what feels like an empty room, don’t take the silence as a verdict on your work.

Take it as the shape of where we are in 2026.

But Knowing and Doing Are Two Different Things Jo!

I get it! Understanding why you feel invisible doesn’t necessarily make it easier to keep going.

You can know, intellectually, that it’s the state of the internet and not you, and still wake up flat, demotivated, and ready to pack the whole thing in.

Because the real enemy in the quiet place isn’t the algorithm, it’s what the silence does to your own head, day after day, and the slow, sapping habit of measuring yourself against a world that isn’t measuring you back.

And it may surprise you to learn that even after 16 years in the game, I can still feel that myself.

So recently I’ve built myself a way through it. A simple set of habits that keep me showing up, keep me creating, and keep me out of the comparison spiral that grinds so many good creators to a halt.

It’s the single biggest reason I’ve been able to keep going, publish daily, and stay (mostly) sane while doing it. So let me walk you through the 4 key habits I've built to protect my energy and keep me creating, no matter how quiet the room.