When I started 2025, I set myself a simple challenge: write consistently and see if I could reclaim some of the audience this blog once had. In 2024, I had published just 4 posts and had only a handful of RSS subscribers. It felt like shouting into the void.

By the end of 2025, I had published 177 articles and 24 "byte-sized" pieces, those shower thoughts I write and release without extensive research. The blog received 9,158,823 views from all sources, bots and humans alike.

The spikes represent when an article goes viral.

I’ve created a visualisation for when an article spiked in February.

The Posts That Resonated

Five articles stood out this year:

• I use Zip Bombs to Protect my Server (April 17th)
• Do not download the app, use the website (July 2nd)
• How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts (September 24th)
• Why Companies Don’t Fix Bugs (April 7th)
• Users Only Care About 20% of Your Application (September 26th)

They were all prominently featured on hackernews and reddit. The leadership one appearing on Google Discovery, which I didn’t know was a thing. Some of my "byte-sized" rants also made a lot of noise:

• No I don’t want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive (September 11th)
• I can’t upgrade to Windows 11, now leave me alone (December 21st)

Microsoft should take note.

Learning to Work With the Algorithm

I initially published every other day at 7am UTC. It was consistent, but I noticed a pattern: people were sharing my links on Reddit and Hacker News around that time. right when traffic was lowest. My posts were getting buried.

So I adjusted. I gradually shifted my publication time to 12pm UTC, giving my articles a better shot at visibility during peak hours. It’s a small tactical change, but it made a difference.

The RSS Renaissance

RSS doesn’t give me precise reader counts, and that’s intentional. I publish full articles in my feed, not snippets, because I want readers to own their reading experience.

The growth here tells its own story. At the start of the year, I received 889 daily pings from around 56 RSS bots and 149 unique IP addresses. By year’s end, that climbed to 4,711 daily pings from roughly 131 bots and 563 unique IPs.

Many of these bots are self-hosted readers like Tiny Tiny RSS, living on personal devices and pinging sporadically. IP addresses change constantly, making it impossible to track individual users, which is exactly how it should be.

The most popular reader among my audience is Feeder (appearing in my logs as "SpaceCowboys Android RSS reader"). It’s open source, ad-free, and collects no user data. Feedly also showed up consistently, pinging from 3 unique IP addresses.

I do want to point out that there is no consistent way of identifying an RSS reader. The user agents vary widely. You can read more about my attempt to classify all my RSS readers here.

The Google Problem

While my RSS readership grew steadily, my Google traffic nosedived. I’ve written before about AI Overviews eating through blog traffic, and I watched it happen in real time. Search impressions increased steadily with my publishing schedule, until September, when everything flattened.

Then I discovered another problem: I had become a spam vector. Once I fixed that in October, traffic started recovering.

On Using AI

I experimented with AI to improve my writing throughout the year, and I have mixed feelings worth a dedicated post. Here’s the short version: AI is an impressive time-saver. You can accomplish a lot with it quickly. But the problem comes up when you realize everything written with AI assistance sounds the same. No matter how much you tweak the prompts, there’s a sameness to the voice, a flatness that strips away individuality. It’s not just your own writing, but that of every website.

My conclusion: AI isn’t a good tool if you’re trying to develop a unique voice. It strips away individuality. And that unique voice is what you need to stand out today. If you want people to bypass an AI summary and actually read your blog, your voice has to be compelling and distinctly human.

I did find some uses that boosted my productivity without robbing me of the creative process. More on that in a future post.

The Podcast

Yet another podcast... I know. But my goal was simple: provide an easier way to consume my blog content and allow for more free-flowing discussion around subjects I care about. For now, it’s just me rambling and finding my footing.

I’ve recorded 70 episodes on Spotify and syndicated them to Apple Podcast and Amazon Music. Soon I’ll make it available directly on the blog so you don’t have to sign up for yet another service.

Going from zero to one was already a milestone. I’m grateful to everyone who has subscribed, and especially to those who listen without subscribing. Your time means everything.

Feedback From My Readers

The most important part of this entire journey has been the emails from casual readers. The internet is full of trolls, but every single email I received this year was both encouraging and filled with practical feedback. Many readers quoted my work on their own blogs, offering honest takes that pushed my thinking further.

This is what makes it worthwhile, real conversations with real people. I hope we can keep this going.

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In 2025, I built the habit of showing up consistently and producing work I’m proud of. In 2026, my goal is to steer this ship toward something truly meaningful. If you’ve been part of this journey, thank you. And if you’re just finding this blog now, welcome. Let’s see where this goes together.

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