My Blogging Journey — From Complete Novice to a More Experienced (and Slightly Wiser) Writer

When I first started adding blog posts to my main business website, I honestly didn’t know what I was doing.

I’m a woodturner and small business owner from Kerry, Ireland, not a professional writer, marketer, or SEO expert. My original goal was fairly simple: help my main website gain a bit more visibility on Google and answer a few common customer questions along the way.

What started as the occasional blog post slowly turned into something much bigger.

Small business blogging journey from a main business website to a separate blog website, with laptop, notes and online visibility themes.

From Business Website to Blog Website

Over time, I found myself writing not only about my own business, but also about the wider experience of trying to build a small website online. That included blogging, Google Search Console, SEO confusion, disappearing search traffic, AI summaries, website ads, online visibility, small business struggles, and the constant feeling that the internet was changing faster than I could keep up with it.

Unfortunately, by adding these kinds of posts to my woodturning website, I was also diluting the focus of that site and probably confusing Google along the way. I eventually realised my mistake and had to restrain myself from writing more posts that simply didn’t belong there. Something had to change.

That eventually led me to create an entirely separate blog: David Condon Finds. I was finally free to write about the topics that interested me, without weakening the focus of my main woodturning website.

This page pulls together the key posts from that journey creating my blog so far. Some are directly about blogging. Others are more blog-adjacent, but still relevant to the blogging journey I have travelled and what I learned along the way. They cover visibility, ads, AI, search traffic, and the business decisions that came from trying to grow a blog website in the real world.

Some posts were written during low points, some during breakthroughs, and some simply while trying to figure out whether any of this blogging effort was even worth continuing.

If you’re thinking about starting a blog yourself, especially as a small business owner, I hope these posts give you a more realistic picture of the experience, both the highs and the lows. It is a tough prospect to take on but very rewarding when things finally go your way.

The Early Confusion

Blogging for Your Small Business: A Practical Guide

This was one of the earliest moments where I started realising that blogging could become more than just occasional updates on a website. I wrote this for small business owners who know they probably should blog, but have no idea where to begin or whether it’s even worth the effort.

👉 Blogging for Your Small Business: A Practical Guide

Worried No One Is Seeing Your New Blog? This Free Google Tool Can Help

One of the first shocks of blogging is discovering that publishing a post does not mean Google will magically send visitors in the immediate future. This post looks at Google Search Console, indexing, and the strange feeling of writing into what initially feels like a void.

👉 Worried No One Is Seeing Your New Blog? This Free Google Tool Can Help

Google Problems & Visibility Struggles

Google De-Indexed My Entire Blog Overnight — What I Learned (and What You Can Do)

Probably one of the more stressful moments in my blogging journey. Seeing an entire blog suddenly disappear from Google search results is not something most new bloggers expect to deal with. This post covers what happened, what I learned, and why panic usually makes things worse.

👉 Google De-Indexed My Entire Blog Overnight — What I Learned (and What You Can Do)

SEO Doesn’t Have to Be Hard: Tips for Beginners Who Just Want Clarity

At one point, I realised that most SEO advice online seemed designed either for huge companies or professional marketers. This post is my attempt to simplify things for normal people trying to build a website without losing their sanity.

👉 SEO Doesn’t Have to Be Hard: Tips for Beginners Who Just Want Clarity

AI, Bots & The Changing Internet

Why I’m Still Blogging — Even if Google’s New AI Might Bury My Posts

This was written during one of those moments where it genuinely felt like independent websites were being squeezed out by AI-generated summaries and large platforms. A slightly blunt but honest look at why I decided to keep going anyway.

👉 Why I’m Still Blogging — Even if Google’s New AI Might Bury My Posts

Bring Back Organic Search: A Blogger’s Take on Google AI Overviews

A more direct opinion piece about what AI Overviews could mean for small websites, independent bloggers, and the future of finding genuine human-written content online.

👉 Bring Back Organic Search: A Blogger’s Take on Google AI Overviews

Is My Blog Content Being Stolen by Bots? A Blogger’s Experience

The internet has changed dramatically in a short space of time. This post looks at suspicious traffic, scraping concerns, AI training fears, and the uncomfortable feeling that content creators may be feeding systems that eventually replace them.

👉 Is My Blog Content Being Stolen by Bots? A Blogger’s Experience

Blogging & Real Business

What Blogging Taught Me About My Own Business (And My Teaching Too)

One unexpected thing about blogging is that it forces you to think more deeply about your own work. Writing about woodturning, teaching, customer questions, and business systems actually changed how I looked at my own business.

👉 What Blogging Taught Me About My Own Business (And My Teaching Too)

Google’s AI Is Killing My Views — So I’m Slashing My Ad Spend

A more honest look at the frustration many small site owners are currently feeling. Less visibility, fewer clicks, rising costs, and the growing question of whether paying for ads even makes sense anymore. This was my cause and effect phase. If you found yourself in the same situation, you probably felt like doing the exact same thing.
👉 Google’s AI Is Killing My Views — So I’m Slashing My Ad Spend

Why I Removed Ads From My Website — And Why You Probably Should Too

At one stage I experimented with ads on my main website, hoping they might generate a little extra income. What I discovered instead was that they made the site feel worse, distracted visitors, and ultimately weren’t worth the trade-off. When it came time to decide whether or not to add them to my blogs, this is what I ultimately chose to do.

👉 Why I Removed Ads From My Website — And Why You Probably Should Too

Why I Kept Going

Why I’m Still Blogging — A Few Months On

This post was written after the initial excitement of starting a blog had faded and the slower reality had kicked in. The traffic wasn’t exploding, Google wasn’t showering me with visitors, and yet I still felt drawn to continue writing. The toughest part for any blogger is to try and power through this phase and keep writing your content.

👉 Why I’m Still Blogging — A Few Months On

A Few Months Later

The strange thing about blogging is that progress often happens so slowly you barely notice it.

For months, it can feel like nothing is happening at all. Then suddenly:

older posts begin climbing,
Google starts testing pages higher,
internal links begin helping other posts,
and small clusters of content slowly start building authority.

I’m still very much on that journey.

But compared to where I started, staring at almost invisible traffic and wondering if anyone would ever read what I wrote, things do feel different now. The site is gradually climbing in average rankings, more posts are finding their audience, and the blog itself has become something much larger than I originally intended.

Not perfect.
Not easy.
But genuinely rewarding.

I hope to follow this post with a one-year update soon, because the next stage of the journey brought its own lessons.

As I approached the one-year mark, I became a little disillusioned with the pace of progress and took my foot off the gas slightly with new posts. My main business was also starting to get a little neglected because of the constant writing, and something had to give.

That, in itself, became an important lesson. Blogging can be rewarding, but it also needs to fit around real work, real customers, and the business that started the whole journey in the first place.

I think that one-year reflection may end up being one of the most useful posts for anyone starting a blog, especially if they are also running a small business alongside it. Please stay tuned.

Final Thoughts

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this, it’s that blogging is far less about quick success than people think.

It’s about consistency, curiosity, patience, experimentation, and occasionally writing about something simply because you feel it’s worth saying.

You do not need to be an expert to start a blog.
You do not need perfect SEO knowledge.
And you certainly do not need to have everything figured out.

You just need something genuine to say and the willingness to keep going long enough for people to eventually find it.

And sometimes, they do.

Thanks for Reading,

David

About the Author

I’m David Condon, a small business owner and blog writer based in Tralee, Co. Kerry. Running my own woodcraft business means I’ve seen first-hand how much confusion there can be around shipping times, delivery dates, and what “business days” actually mean. That’s why I wrote this post — to share a bit of what I’ve learned and hopefully save you some frustration.

Every so often I step outside the workshop to write about wider business topics like this one. If you’d like to know more, you can follow the link in the Note from the Author section below or visit my About Me page to learn more.

💬 Note from the Author
This post was written specially for David Condon Finds. If you enjoyed it, you might also like my other projects:

Phoenix DVD Blog – where I write about DVDs, Blu-rays, and life as a collector
David Condon Woodcraft – my main site focused on woodturning and handmade Irish pieces

If you’d like to support my writing, you can do so through the Buy Me a Coffee button below. It helps keep these side projects going — thank you!

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