Honest month-by-month of what year one actually looks like? Not the sales-page version

Mine, honestly, from a site started Jan 2025. Numbers are outbound clicks per month because monthly views are meaningless.

M1: 4. M2: 19. M3: 31. M4: 22 (went down, panicked). M5: 40. M6: 115. M7: 390. M8: 612. M9: 580. M10: 1,340. M11: 2,900. M12: 2,100.

The two down months nearly broke me both times. In hindsight one was seasonal and one was me publishing less because I was demoralised, which is a self-inflicted loop you should watch for.

worth saying that starting in october is actually good timing. august through january is the busiest stretch on the platform. you'll get a slightly flattering first three months and then february will feel like a punch. just know it's coming

Different shape for me and I think it's worth showing because everyone posts the hockey stick.

I did 11 months of near-nothing. Like, under 100 clicks a month, the whole time. Month 12 onward it turned into a real traffic source. I think the difference is I had a very small site (18 posts) and it just took that long for 18 URLs to each find their people. If you publish more, the curve gets earlier. Volume of destinations is the lever, not volume of pins.

The part nobody tells you: your month 6 is going to be determined by what you published in month 2. There's a long lag between effort and result and it wrecks your ability to A/B test anything. Don't change your whole strategy in month 3 based on month 3's numbers. You're reading month 1's homework.

I'd add one thing to all of this. Whatever trajectory you get, decide now what number in month 9 would make you stop. Write it down. Otherwise you'll either quit on a bad Tuesday or grind for three years on something that was never going to work. I've done both.