Eat Like Bourdain 5-Year Report
[CASE STUDY]

You know those story trends on Instagram where they say “you in 2026 and you in [year]?” While I don’t participate in those (they’re just farming data for AI to create better, more convincing deep fakes!), I do love to look at where I am and where I was at a certain point in time. Take, for example, 2021, when the pandemic was still going strong, and everyone was wondering if this was the “new normal.”

Thankfully, it wasn’t, but some of the sites I started during that time – to try and offset the losses I’d experienced when travel wasn’t an option for people. One of those sites was Eat Like Bourdain, and after working hard to “finish” the site between its launch (June 2021) and the end of 2023. Since then, it’s become a cornerstone of my site portfolio, and one I’m eternally grateful I started.

Now 5 years on, it’s time to check in (again) on this site and share what’s working and what’s next. Read on for a look at the one site that has (still – *knock wood*) not been impacted by Google updates!

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. Today, I just do annual updates, even for new sites, since it’s so hard to gain traction in that first 6-18 months.

Here are the current ages of my active sites, and a link to the case studies I’ve written about each one:

• Valerie & Valise – 12 years
• Space Tourism Guide – 8 years
• Discover Sausalito*
• Follow the Butterflies*
• London on My Mind – 5 years
• Great Plains Travel Guide*
• Jordan Traveler – 5 years
• Eat Like Bourdain – 5 years (this post!)
• Alaskan Cruisers – 1 year

*I shut down these three sites last year; 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 06/01/26)	254
Publishing Cadence	Updates: Daily/Annually New Posts: Rarely
Monthly Pageviews (last month)	105,037
Highest Ever Pageviews (30-day max)	161,895 (August 2025)
Email Subscribers	1,344
Monetization/Amount Earned (total)	~$109,00 (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 possible.
• 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 2025 (including when I wrote my 4-year recap), there was a jump again, likely thanks to increased interest in Bourdain and the new biopic about his early life.
• In the last six months, traffic dropped a little but seems to have stabilized, probably due to erosion from AI Overviews/decreased search traffic – but I think there will be a boost again when the Tony movie is released.

Okay, now let’s talk about what it all means…

Strategic Takeaways

I can hardly believe that it’s been five years since I launched this site – but I am truly grateful every day for the foresight I had in doing so. This site has become the lifeline that supports all of my other sites; while V&V does still earn more, this site has had more stable traffic and income over the past three years, allowing me to budget and trust I can keep going for another few months at a time.

This brings me to my first strategic takeaway, which is a little different than my normal ones: if you are a content creator reading this, start socking away money, live within your means, and keep a business budget. Your hobby blog/social media stops being a hobby the minute you start making money – it’s a business, and you need to treat it that way.

Similarly, don’t jump from your day job until you have a stable income from your business. It’s feast or famine no matter your niche or business model, so make sure you’re confident in a baseline of income each month/quarter or you have 6+ months of “salary” saved up. That’s what this site has given me, and why I can still be here.

Looking at the goals I set for this site in the past year, I had two:

1. Write 5 Enthusiast Stories – I didn’t share this publicly, but in the past year, I met with and signed to a book agent. She liked the idea of an Enthusiast book featuring the stories of places Bourdain ate, and I wrote 5 blurbs for the book proposal… then she dropped me as a client due to a change in her role. So technically I did complete this goal, even though it’s not the format I had in mind when I set the goal. I so wish I could commit to this idea, but I just haven’t had the full creative enengy, enthusiasm, or money I would need to make it happen.
2. Figure Out Facebook – You wouldn’t think this wouldn’t be hard, as I’ve had good success with V&V on Facebook. Weirdly though, I just get ZERO traction here. To be fair, I haven’t spent any money on ads – and that is something I run as a baseline for V&V. So maybe I should set myself an annual budget and try again…

And that leads me to…

What’s Next for Eat Like Bourdain

As you know, I love setting goals (and checking in on them, like through these case studies and my quarterly accountability updates). Even though I’m not hugely focused on this site, I do want to set some goals for it.

1. Try a $750 annual budget to grow community & traffic on Facebook. I’m setting a really specific goal here, to see what happens. $750 is not insignificant – but it is only $2/day, so we’ll see what I can do with it! (ETA: I started a page follows ad before I hit publish – stay tuned!)
2. Try to get another book agent. This is so tricky – I kind of stumbled into the agent I had and felt very fortunate how easy it was… but I don’t know how I’ll replicate that. Maybe pitching the publishers I already know? We’ll see…

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!