Building in Public When Nobody’s Watching

When people say “build in public,” I think most of us imagine an audience watching, responding, and cheering as we ship updates.

My reality?
I’m building in public… mostly alone.

The quiet stage is where you actually learn your own pace

There’s a point where you stop looking at analytics or notifications and just… keep building. Rankiwiki still gets about 10 visitors a day, and I’m still not sure where they come from. Revenue is zero, which is expected, I haven’t added anything to charge for yet.

But despite the silence, I keep finding myself fixing small bugs, simplifying flows, and cleaning up the UI. When nobody reacts, you realize you’re building because you actually enjoy it, not because someone’s watching.

The odd comfort of tiny traffic

There’s something freeing about having so few visitors.
You can break things, restructure logic, experiment wildly and nobody gets angry. It’s like having a playground rather than a product.

A few days ago I tracked a bug caused by two users typing the same keyword within seconds.
It crashed the ranking order.
Only two people saw it, but that was enough for me to rewrite a chunk of logic.
These tiny signals keep me moving.

What I’m trying next

Visibility is a skill. I’m still learning it.
IH is great for long-term logs, but I also want to test other communities like Reddit and Hacker News to see if the idea resonates anywhere.

For now, my focus is:

Make the first 10 seconds of the site clearer
If people don’t understand Rankiwiki instantly, they bounce.

Share the journey without expecting applause
Writing these posts has become a way to think more clearly about what I’m building.

If anyone here is also in that “quiet middle stage,” just know you’re not alone.
Sometimes the silence is the best teacher.

If you want to see what 10 visitors a day looks like in product form, here it is:
https://rankiwiki.com