Q2 2025 Check-In: Accountability on All My Sites

It’s hard to believe we’re now halfway through 2025; the year has certainly been flying by, but I also feel like it’s just getting started. In fact, as I write this, I feel like I finally got my work mojo back after two years – pregnancy, postpartum, and Google garbage – and this will be the last depressing quarterly check-in for a while. Google, of course, has not given me back the traffic they took away after they stole my content for their garbage AI tools, but I finally feel creative again, and that internal drive has me looking more hopeful again.

I’ve now been writing these quarterly accountability check-ins for more than two years (you can see Q1, Q2, Q3 & Q4 of 2023; Q1, Q2, Q3 & Q4 of 2024; and Q1 of 2025 if you want to look back), and I find it extremely helpful to do so. While I don’t know that anyone reads them, I hope these inspire you to set some goals for your site, and to check in on them regularly.

As of 2025, I’m using a modified stoplight system to assess my progress on each goal. In total, I have 16 areas of focus across 3 high-priority and 5 low-priority sites, and here’s how they’re doing:

• 🟢 (success/achieved) = 6/16 = 38%
• 🟡 (in progress) = 5/16 = 31%
• 🟠 (ongoing but not going well) = 1/16 = 6%
• 🔴 (failure/so far) = 0/16 = 0%
• ⚫️ (abandoned) = 4/16 = 25%

Having five options feels a little bit too nuanced, but I like being able to share that I’m working on things that aren’t going well – I think it’s important to acknowledge that too, as part of these accountability reports. In any case, let’s dive into each site so you can understand more.

High Priority Sites

This section focuses on the four sites I’m currently focusing on the most; they’re the ones I have as ‘favorites’ in Asana and have at least a few articles (new or updates) scheduled in the coming months.

Valerie & Valise (October 2013)

V&V passed the 11-year mark in Q4 of 2024; I’ve now been working on these goals for almost six months:

• 🟡 All-In on Facebook – I was doing pretty well on Facebook through most of the spring, but fell off a lot when I started traveling. I’m bummed about this as my ‘on the road’ posts tend to do the best, but I really couldn’t find time to do them. I also struggled with Instagram stories the same way. Crafting social content takes so much time!
  
• 🟡 Stay Committed on Email – As with Facebook, I struggled a bit with email as I started to travel at the end of the quarter. I did not take a summer break as I have in years past, but I also haven’t been as consistent as usual – something I want to recommit to in Q3.
  
• ⚫️ Finally Figure Out Pinterest – I gave up on Pinterest back in… I dunno (why is it SO hard to see when a pin was pinned???), but honestly, it made exactly zero difference in the overall traffic I was getting from the platform – or even in my “monthly views” stat on Pinterest itself. I am glad to have this off my plate after 2.5 years of hard work and little payoff.
  
• 🟢 “Paywall” My Blog Content – I recently discovered some tech issues with my paywall that showed that while it has been dropping off in success, it’s still working: I’m getting new email subscribers each month and I’m occasionally making some money. I thought about turning it off, or at least just turning it into a ‘freewall’ (removing the paid options), but for now, I’m leaving it as-is. At the one-year mark (October), I’ll do a big assessment, make any changes, and report it all here.

London On My Mind (January 2021)

I still can’t explain why London On My Mind has recovered (at all) when so many of my other sites have continued to take hits from Google and lose traffic. I’m not complaining, though – every site that isn’t completely dead is part of the portfolio that allows me to keep going!

LOMM turned four in January, and I set some new goals for the year:

• 🟢 Keep Calm & Carry On – I haven’t been ‘carrying on’ as much as I hoped in Q2, but I am still keeping annual posts updated and occasionally sharing other new content. I have a list of new posts I want to write, which I’m going to turn my attention to in a few weeks here in Q3.
  
• 🟢 Keep Readers at the Forefront – It’s hard to know how I’m doing at this from a reader perspective since my audience and community for LOMM are quite small, but I think I’m trying to create the best info for them.
  
• 🟢 Finish my Neighborhood Guides Project – I decided to scrap one of the guides I had planned, but have successfully published 11 other guides (need to update that page!). I had originally intended to take the articles that I consolidated into each of those guides and turn those into ebooks, but I’ve had two ebooks in my store for a year (or more?) and have sold one. Ever. That’s not worth my time!

Eat Like Bourdain (June 2021)

Almost every day, I am grateful to past-Valerie who decided to launch this site and worked so hard to get it done before Google came in to wreck everything. Eat Like Bourdain remains the only site of mine that hasn’t been hit by Google updates; it also doesn’t seem to be degrading much each year, showing the staying power of Bourdain’s legacy.

It really is my great honor to work on this site, and I hope that I can continue to focus on it more in coming years. For now, here are the goals I’m focused on through June when the site turns four:

• 🟡 Write 5 Enthusiast Stories – I have a year to do this, and it just sits on the ‘maybe’ part of my to-do list, always. I did set writing one story as a quarterly goal for Q3, so we’ll see how it goes.
  
• 🟡 Figure out Facebook – I started posting on Facebook, but have seen little success so far. I have a feeling the best Bourdain content is quotes and copyrighted images of him… but maybe if I get some mental bandwidth to try other kinds of content, I’ll continue to test new strategies.

Low Priority Sites

In this section, I cover sites I’m not focusing on much; most of them don’t have many goals, so I’ve just assigned the whole project a stoplight score. One exception is Space Tourism Guide, which I shifted to low priority at the start of 2025, but for which I had already set stoplight goals before that point.

Space Tourism Guide (November 2017)

No changes here since Q1. I am focusing on Space Tourism Guide as little as possible while not letting the site become outdated. That said, I do have some stoplight goals for STG, and want to acknowledge those:

• ⚫️ Repurpose content for Forbes – I abandoned this goal in Q1 after realizing I would make even less money from my articles than on my site, so I’m not gonna do that!
• 🟢 Keep updating gear posts, monthly guides, and annual events each year – Still going steady with this one.
• 🟢 Future-proof the site in every other way – At this point, I think I’m pretty close to having all non-evergreen content (aside from those in the bullet point above) scrubbed of non-evergreen details and such.

⚫️ Jordan Traveler (May 2021)

No changes here since Q1. Jordan Traveler has shown only minimal signs of recovery from Google’s baloney, but it was never a big enough site to merit a large commitment. I set a goal of writing or updating 2 articles per month this year, and so far I have not done great at that; I published/updated four articles in Q1.

I also decided not to worry much about this goal/site as I don’t have any major plans to grow or expand it. I’m mostly keeping it on maintenance mode to help serve travelers without taking up much of my time or energy.

⚫️ D&D Community (April 2023)

No changes here since Q1. At the start of the year, I committed to publishing 12 articles this year on D&D Community. I published a grand total of one in the first three months, and have not prioritized this at all in the coming quarter.

Interestingly, D&DC does actually earn small amounts of money – a few dollars – on occasion, thanks to the affiliate posts on the site; perhaps it would do better if I committed more to it?

Also, I have done a poor job of engaging my social community for this site. All around, I wish I could make this a greater priority, but my heart isn’t really in it right now.

One idea I have been kicking around is getting into UGC with this brand. I’m not sure when/if I’ll have time to explore this more, but maybe later this year…

🟠 Global Tiki Tour (February 2024)

While I did pretty well with Global Tiki Tour in Q1, I have done absolutely nothing with it in Q2 – and I decided to deprioritize it entirely. I didn’t mark it as a black dot, because I haven’t given up… I just haven’t had the bandwidth to give it any of my energy.

🟡 Alaskan Cruisers (February 2025)

I had set some goals in Q1…

• Write one new blog post per month
  
• Migrate three (or more) posts from V&V per month

Which I have absolutely failed at so far! I’m hopeful I can focus on this site in Q3, because I think it has some really solid legs, but for now, it’s definitely not a sign of success.

Sites I’ve Shut Down

As of the beginning of Q2, I’ve shut down four of the sites I started in the past few years:

• Discover Sausalito (January 2020)
• Follow the Butterflies (April 2020)
• Soup Whoop (April 2021)
• Great Plains Travel Guide (March 2021)

I don’t have much to add other than including this section for posterity, and to reference all the sites I’ve shut down – including those I don’t really mention anymore, like True Crime Podcasts and Visit Ni’ihau. I did write a post about making the decision to shut these sites own, if you’re curious about my thought process.

Have any questions about my various quarterly goals? I’m happy to answer in the comments.