I'm losing confidence in making planets with a blank template.

One factor why you are losing confidence is that you are not trying and you are not seeking information. It does sound stupid, but that is how I learned. On some on @Zenithspeed ‘s planets, I asked him how to make such things, and he would normally explain in summary. I recommend downloading other people’s planets and see how they work.

@Luckwut ok

here

Well learning to make planet from blank template is a process, it could be long or short. First of all, if you're new to making planet from blank template, don't think about making good looking planet but think as that blank template is a sandbox/canvas that you can experiment different kind of modifier combination or something. You can try testing different noise type and see how it affect the terrain or you can use that noise to make 'clouds' (which is just painted white noise).
My tips on making planet from blank template is first to define Biome. To make biome i usually add Noise (or several noise) and all of that output goes into "Biome (Value Based)" modifier. Let's say I already made 3 biome (Ocean, Plains, Mountain), then I put all of those biome inside "Biome (Value based)" modifier. Inside that Biome modifier, you must input range of that biome. If you want to see that 'range', you can use "Debug Visualize (Data)" on the "Noise" modifier. If you see colourful shape and blobs then it is working. So how the 'range' work is that the color Red is the highest value/strength (which is 1), color dark blue/plurple is the lowest value/strength (which is -1), and the color black is the 'neutral' value/strength (which is 0). So let's say I want to add Ocean biome to the lowest value/strength I could Input it to something like this (0, -1), what it means is that the Ocean biome will go from the neutral value (black) to the lowest value (plurple).
After you set all of the biome, you can just add terrain (Noise > Generate Height > Update Height) and etc etc.
Making a planet is not a 'one day' job (except if you really have lots of free time), you can expand that planet later in the days to come or call it finished.