Eat Like Bourdain 4-Year Report
[CASE STUDY]

One of my biggest jokes is about how past-Valerie does things to help present-Valerie – though when past Valerie helps, she’s present-Valerie thinking about future-Valerie. In any case, this present-Valerie – the one writing this recap – is very grateful to past-Valerie for coming up with the idea of Eat Like Bourdain and working so hard for 2.5 years to make it happen.

Started on a whim in 2021 (when I found another site sort of doing the same thing but very poorly…), ELB has become the only site Google hasn’t (yet) destroyed with all of the updates in the past two years – and it’s now my biggest earner too. I say at this while I sit at the antique writing desk (the same style as Tony’s) that this site was able to pay for. Thanks, past-Valerie!

Now ELB is four years old, and very much a mature site. I’ve completed all of the destination guides I wanted to write (including two new ones I had skipped before, but finally finished), and the site continues to trundle along at a healthy traffic level. Read on for a recap and what I plan to do next.

What are these Case Studies?

As a reminder, I do case studies for almost every site I’ve created, at the 6-month, 9-month, 12-month, 18-month, and 24-month marks. If a site reaches its two-year mark and I plan to continue writing, I’ll switch to annual reports; currently, all of my sites are more than two years old! Here are the current ages of my active sites, and a link to the case studies I’ve written about each one:

• Valerie & Valise – 11 years
• Space Tourism Guide – 7 years
• Discover Sausalito*
• Follow the Butterflies*
• London on My Mind – 4 years
• Great Plains Travel Guide*
• Jordan Traveler – 4 years
• Eat Like Bourdain – 4 years (this post!)

*I shut down these three sites recently; read more about that decision.

Now let’s dig into the specifics of Eat Like Bourdain and my plans for it.

Fast Facts

Here’s a quick glance at the stats for Eat Like Bourdain at the four-year mark.

Date First Published	June 8, 2021
Articles Live (as of 06/01/23)	249
Publishing Cadence	Updates: Daily/Annually New Posts: Rarely
Monthly Pageviews (last month)	144,428
Highest Ever Pageviews (30-day max)	144,428
Email Subscribers	995*
Monetization/Amount Earned (total)	~$70,500 (total)

*I dramatically downsized my email list a few months ago, to save money since email is not a particularly effective traffic channel for me with this site.

History & Status of Eat Like Bourdain

As with last year, I’ve added more vertical lines to help you see how each case study milestone looks quite different:

• From 0-6 months, I was stuck in the Google Sandbox that “doesn’t exist.”
• From 6-12 months, the site started to grow, showing good signs that it was worth my time. I put my foot down on trying to publish guides as fast as possble.
• From 12-24 months, the site was a “rocket ship” (as I called it in those recaps!). I brought on other writers to help me finish the guides as fast as we reasonably could.
• From 24-42 months (including my 3-year recap), the site traffic has been pretty stable, and I finished up all the guides I originally planned to make the site “complete.”
• In the last six months (through this recap), I’ve lately seen a little jump again, thanks to increased interest in Bourdain and the new biopic about his early life.

While I don’t think this increase in traffic will continue indefinitely, it is nice to climb closer to 150,000 monthly pageviews when the rest of my sites get less than that – combined. Okay, now let’s talk about what it all means…

Strategic Takeaways

I don’t have a lot of new insights from the past year of running this site, as it’s been mostly on maintenance mode (aka keeping all the guides updated annually). I do want to highlght the point I made in last year’s update again though, since I still think it’s true.

A broken clock – aka Google – is right twice a day. For the most part, I think Google is either willfully ignorant or purposefully unhelpful for creators right now. They can’t explain why so many small publishers got hit, why nobody’s recovering even when we follow their advice, and why no sites can grow above a certain level anymore. At the same time, they told us that the best content on a specific topic will be surfaced to readers and do well in the algorithm, and that’s exactly why Eat Like Bourdain hasn’t been hit by any of the updates (or has recovered quickly without anything on my part).

So while it’s stupid to say, if you can make your site the best possible resource on the internet about a specific topic, you can probably still do well with Google traffic.

Also, I set two goals last year, so I guess I should give an update on those:

• Enthusast, v3 – My podcast idea is still simmering in the back of my mind, but I officially marked it as “on hold indefinitely.” I am currently trying to unstick myself on it by approaching it in a different way (literally a different format!), and hope to report literally any progress at all in my update next year.
• Instagram/Social Community – I did a much better job at this, getting – if not consistent, at least engaged – on Instagram over the past year. My account has grown to 2,500+ followers and regularly gets good tags and reshares. Nothing viral, but I genuinely think I’m an anti-viral kind of person, so that doesn’t surprise me.

And that leads me to…

What’s Next for Eat Like Bourdain

As my only thriving site, ELB is very precious to me: it’s literally the only reason I’m still in the game at this point. (It earns more than V&V now!)

Obviously, I want to keep it going, even if it’s not growing, so the basic strategy is to keep updating guides, and occasionally adding new posts too – restaurant guides, round-ups (like this one or this one), and a few other ideas.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, let me add two others:

• Write 5 Enthusiast Stories – My new format for Enthusiast – at least to get un-stuck about it – is to try writing it as creative, travel-inspired essasys, then convert those into podcast episodes. I sketched out a 5-episode arc for season 1, “The Rust Belt,” so I’m going to try and start tackling those before the end of 2025. Wish me luck!
• Figure out Facebook – I’ve got the ball rolling with Instagram, and I think that Facebook could be a really good insulation against potential Google updates that hit ELB in the future. (I genuinely believe the axe is coming for us all.) I need to just dedicate time to this, so hey, let’s set it as a goal!

I love that this site still has the feeling all of my sites used to: it’s not super active, every day, slogging it out work to get traffic, and I can still be creative. I hope that continues as the site moves toward its five-year anniversary.

Do you have any other questions about this recap for Eat Like Bourdain? Let me know in the comments; I’m happy to share anything that I forgot to include!