David Condon Finds

Starting a new blog is exciting in a very particular way. You’ve written your first proper posts, and hit publish with the quiet hope that something will happen fairly quickly. Your heart and soul is poured out in those first few lines, and your words feel as honest as you can make them. Those first few posts usually feel great too. They’re often better written than you expect, more thoughtful, more structured. You add internal links where they make sense, you avoid fluff, and you genuinely feel like you’ve put something useful out into the world. I have already written a broader post about my blogging journey from complete beginner to a slightly more experienced writer . This post is a little different. It is more of a one-year check-in: what has improved, what still feels slow, what I have learned, and what it is really like trying to keep a small blog moving when Google has not fully decided what to do with it yet.

I use Amazon affiliate links on some of my blog posts. Not on everything, and not just for the sake of it, but where a product fits naturally into a post and may be useful to someone reading it. Over time, Amazon affiliate reports used to give me one very useful piece of information. They showed me what products had actually been bought. That might sound like a small thing, but for a small blogger, it was extremely useful. It helped me understand what real people were buying after clicking through from one of my links. Not who they were. Not where they lived. Not their name, email address, full basket, or private details. Just the product. And losing that kind of information makes Amazon affiliate reports far less useful than they used to be. What Amazon Affiliate Reports Used to Show In the past, if someone clicked one of my Amazon affiliate links and later bought something, the report could show the product that was bought. That did not always mean they bought the product I recommend...

When I first started blogging properly, I had no idea where it would lead. At the beginning, the goal was simple enough. I wanted to help my main website gain a bit more visibility, answer useful customer questions, and maybe give Google a clearer idea of what my business was about. What I did not expect was how addictive the whole process would become. Once you start watching Google Search Console, checking impressions, average position, clicks, indexed pages, and little movements in the right direction, it is very easy to get pulled in. A small improvement can feel like a breakthrough. A dip can feel like a disaster. A new post can feel like the thing that might finally push the site forward. And for a while, that excitement kept me going. Reaching the 10 Point Average Phase One of the big moments for me was seeing the blog move towards the 10 point average position range in Google Search Console. That might not sound very exciting to someone outside the world of blogging, but ...

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. 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...

The days just after Christmas have a strange kind of calm to them. The rush has passed, the chaos of the lead-up is over, and for a few days the whole country seems to slow down, or even stop, at the same time. Shops go quiet, inboxes settle, and even the dog seems to think it’s time to take it easy. For me, this week has always felt like a mini reset that arrives automatically every year, whether I plan it or not. It’s not quite the New Year, and not quite the old year, just an odd little gap where life pauses long enough for you to catch your breath. The Pace Finally Slows Down St. Stephen’s Day 26th December is the first day I notice the difference. There’s no pressure to be anywhere, no deliveries coming in, no customer queries waiting. No Christmas dinner to eat and no gifts to give out. Even my workshop feels different. The tools stay quiet, the lathe stays off, and I’m not rushing from one job to the next. The office PC isn’t whirring constantly under my desk, or groaning unde...

This is a follow-up to a post I wrote back in June 2025,  Why I’m Still Blogging – Even If Google’s New AI Might Bury My Posts . When I wrote that original piece, I was full of stubborn optimism. I knew Google’s AI Overviews might take clicks away from small websites, but I still believed there was value in genuine human writing. I believed real experience, personal opinion, and honest small-business stories still had a place online. A few months later, I still believe that. But I’ll be honest, it has not always been easy. That early “few months on” stage is only one part of the journey. I have since written a broader post about what it is really like starting a new blog, dealing with slow progress, learning from mistakes and waiting for Google to take notice: Starting a New Blog: The Highs, Lows, and Reality of Waiting for Google to Care . The AI Overview Hangover Let’s be honest, AI Overview has hit small independent blogs like mine very hard. Even my main website David Condo...