Q4 2025 Check-In: Accountability on All My Sites

And with that, the 2025 season comes to a end… You’ve seen the trends on social media, you can hear the audio in your head, but here we are, in another new year, and wondering, what’s next? The world feels increasingly dire – at least here in the U.S. – and we’re just supposed to… what?… keep posting like we aren’t in a dumpster on fire?

Anyway, here I am, back for my final accountability update of 2025, so I can clear the slate and look forward to 2026. 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, Q2 & Q3 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 13 areas of focus across 3 high-priority and 5 low-priority sites, and here’s how they’re doing:

• 🟢 (success/achieved) = 4/13 = 31%
• 🟡 (in progress) = 3/13 = 23%
• 🔴 (failure/so far) = 2/13 = 15%
• ⚫️ (abandoned) = 4/13 = 31%

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)

Shortly after writing my last accountability report, Valerie & Valise crossed the 12-year mark, and I set new goals for the site, even though it’s been crippled by updates in the past few years (down 90%!). Last year, my goals were (as a reminder): to go ‘all in’ on Facebook, to stay committed to email, to finally figure out Pinterest, and to ‘Paywall’ my blog content. I did pretty well on those, and set my new goals accordingly:

• 🟡 Focus on Facebook & Instagram – Increasingly, I feel like the future of my site’s growth will come from these platforms, so I’m trying to keep my energy here. I haven’t done great in the past few weeks (ending 2025 and starting 2026), but I’d love to get back to a consistent schedule for both platforms.
  
• 🟢 Ride or Die on Email – I’ve been saying it for years, but email is such a powerhouse; it’s where I get traffic and income, and connect with my people in a meaningful way (instead of the cesspools of social media). I didn’t have a specific goal for Q4, but I did set a 2026 goal to email my list 50 times, and I’m actually excited to try and tackle it!
  
• 🟡 Write What You Love; Love What You Write – As we move into the new year, this is something I’m trying to focus on: as my sites are all struggling, passion and interest are what’s going to keep me going – not traffic or income. My 2026 content plan focuses more on writing what I want to, and what I want people to read.

I only set these goals in late October, so I don’t have a full quarter of progress; I have a feeling these are kind of ‘cruise control’ goals that are worth focusing on every year going forward.

London On My Mind (January 2021)

London on My Mind crosses its five-year mark this month, but I haven’t written a new case study yet, so I want to look back one more time at my goals.

• 🟢 Keep Calm & Carry On – As we moved into Q4, I set myself a goal to write or update 2 articles per week, which is a cadence I haven’t committed to in years because it didn’t feel effective. I did it anyway, because I wanted to get some articles ‘out the door,’ and in the end, I met my goal, publishing 24 articles in 13 weeks. (Taking off the last week of the year!)
  
• 🟢 Keep Readers at the Forefront – Honestly, setting this goal was great for me this year; it helped me just do what I want and not worry so much about, well, anything outside of what I wanted to write and who I thought I could help. With that in mind, I focused on writing what I know can help people, and trying to write more of it, too.
  
• 🟢 Finish my Neighborhood Guides Project – I completed this goal back in Q2, so done and dusted!

Eat Like Bourdain (June 2021)

Eat Like Bourdain still remains my top site, the only one that’s had any growth in the past year. While it doesn’t earn as much as V&V in total, it did have its biggest income year ever, and the differences are partly a structural issue between the two businesses. So I’ll continue to focus on ELB as we move into 2026 and the site approaches its 5-year milestone.

• 🔴 Write 5 Enthusiast Stories – I have made exactly zero progress here, except in talking to a book agent who might give me the motivation to focus on this more, if you get what I’m saying… 🤫
  
• ⚫️ Figure out Facebook – Facebook has been DOA for this project – it doesn’t seem to matter what I post, it just dies on the vine. Even the reels I’ve had go viral on Instagram get single-digit views on Facebook! I’m retiring this goal because it’s stupid to waste time on things that don’t work.

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)

STG crossed its eight-year mark in November, and I wrote a recap to mark the milestone. I did not, however, set any new goals for the coming year. This site has lost 95%+ of its traffic, and – this breaks my heart to say it – it’s just not worth my time or energy to focus on, beyond the bare minimum of updating timely annual articles.

⚫️ 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; I’m currently just updating articles that need annual updates, and will add new articles if it makes sense. For now though, 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)

Okay, so after giving up on my goal (to publish 12 articles this year) in early Q2, I finally got a fire under my butt at the start of Q4), and I actually met this goal! This site is so small it doesn’t merit much time or energy, but it does make me feel creative and inspired. I’m going to keep focusing on it when I have an article I want to write and the energy to write it.

🔴 Alaskan Cruisers (February 2025)

No changes here since Q3. 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 completely failed at, since Q1. I don’t know if or when or how I’ll get the bandwidth to focus on this site in the next few months, and I didn’t set a quarterly goal about it. (It was either 1-and-1 weekly for LOMM and AKC or 2 weekly for LOMM and LOMM actually makes money so…..)

I know this site could do well and could certainly open some good partnership opportunities for me, but I’ve just been struggling to keep all my plates spinning lately. (And by lately I mean my whole life 🤣)

Sites I’ve Shut Down

As we wrap up 2025, I’ll mention one last time that I shut down several sites this year:

• 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.

And that’s it for 2025! I haven’t decided if I’ll continue these quarterly posts for 2026, but I hope these have been helpful (so far!). Have any questions about my various quarterly goals? I’m happy to answer in the comments.