Valerie & Valise 12-Year Report
[Case Study]

It’s almost inconceivable, but somehow I’ve been blogging for 12 years now. I started my first official* blog, Valerie & Valise, on October 21, 2013… and now it’s somehow 2025, I live in Cleveland, am married with a kid, and am still going! (*I had been running a personal diary-style blog for over a decade before this.)

Valerie & Valise has and always will be like a child to me; I built it with my own determination and grit and stubbornness and passion… and it’s been a bumpy road these past few years as I’ve learned to exist in a new space and relationship to the site that set me free from traditional employment and then was almost entirely destroyed by forces outside my control.

After switching to my standard ‘case study’ format for this recap two years ago, I’m back again to give you a structured look at what I’ve learned, what I’ve concluded, and what I’ll be trying next when it comes to V&V in its 13th year. I hope I’ll be back in 12 months to report how it has all gone – I’ll at least be back to report if I’ve decided to finally call it in.

Until then, here’s the latest installment in my first and most beloved blog now that it’s been going for 11 years.

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, and 12-month marks. Then I switch to every six months for the next year; you can expect reports at 18 months and 24 months. If a site reaches its two-year mark and I plan to continue writing, I’ll either continue semi-annual or switch to annual reports. Given the ages of all of my sites, I publish annual reports about each of them currently:

• Valerie & Valise – 12 years (this post!)
• 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

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

(Links will take you to the full list of reports about that site!)

Fast Facts

Here’s a glance at the stats for Valerie & Valise at the 11-year mark.

Date First Published	October 21, 2013
Articles Live (as of 10/01/25)	546
Publishing Cadence	whenever! 🤷🏻‍♀️
Monthly Pageviews	43,244 (Sep. 2025)
Max Pageviews	365,602 (Aug. 2023)
Organic Traffic % (last six months)	53.85%
Email Subscribers	12,349

Before going further, I want to make a few quick observations:

• Traffic has continued a steady decline this past year, pretty much directly tied to the drop in the amount of organic traffic my site receives.
• My percentage of organic traffic dropped again, from the 80%s two years ago to 64% last year to just 54% this year. Last year, I said this was because of my efforts to grow non-organic traffic, but that’s actually not true: all traffic sources have dropped in the past year, but the % of organic has dropped faster than others. I’m just bleeding traffic everywhere – organic the fastest of all.
• My email list is smaller again this year, down from around 15,000 last year. I did a mass-unsubscribe earlier in the year to help reduce my costs.

History & Status of Valerie & Valise

In years past, I’ve shared the following chart to explain how my traffic performs each month, year over year:

While I don’t have a traffic chart dating back to 2013, I thought the table above was the most helpful: it shows V&V over the years, and gives you a sense of how seasonal my site is throughout the year. Most years, the trend line was higher than the year before – 2022 (teal) was higher than 2021 (purple), and 2023 (orange) was higher than 2022 (teal), etc. That all changed this year, in 2024 (the black line).

As a result of the black line, I created a new chart last year; here it updated with 2025 data:

This chart stacks the months into yearly buckets, showing the seasonality (the bump in the middle of each column) and the growth (or lack thereof) in certain years (the height of each column relative to one another).

To help make sense of these charts, here’s how I’d break down the history of V&V:

• Before 2017, I was fumbling in the dark; I had limited knowledge of SEO and didn’t get much traffic – it wouldn’t even be visible on that chart above even if I did add it!
• From 2017-2018, I began mastering SEO; you couldn’t see it right away, but I started to make real strides in growing my traffic.
• From 2018-2020, I had gone full-time and was flying on my blog; along with freelance work, I was able to be fully independent from a traditional job.
• In 2020, I felt the impact of the pandemic as a strong headwind.
• From 2021-2022, my site didn’t grow, but it certainly recovered as people began traveling again.
• 2023 was the the best year ever on my site, as the final impacts of the pandemic on travel behavior clearly ended and people were enthusiastic to explore the world again.
• From late in 2023 through 2024, traffic was basically in free-fall.
• So far, 2025 has been a year of relative stability, but at an insultingly low traffic level. My traffic is lower now than it was in even 2019 or 2020 – it’s lower than during the middle of a pandemic that disrupted global travel!

By far, the most frustrating thing about all this is that I did nothing wrong to deserve this penalty, and nothing I have done has improved the site’s performance. Google has algorithmically punished my site as part of a series of updates (late 2023, early and mid 2024, and early 2025), and there seems to be fuck-all I can do to fix it.

Strategic Takeaways

Each year that I sit down to write this post, I duplicate it from the previous year/report and update or add new sections accordingly. For several years now, I’ve been referring back to the takeaways from previous years – and that still rings true this year.

Here are the takeaways from past years that are still relevant if you’re a blogger today – whether you’ve felt the impacts of Google updates in the last year or not:

• Diversify your income beyond “traffic-based” revenue streams like advertising and affiliates (Year 7)
• Build your audience off-algorithm too (Year 7)
• Too many places are still focused on vanity metrics (Year 8)
• The only constant is change (Year 10) – this is true for life in general!

You can read the corresponding past report for more context, but they’re pretty self-explanatory.

And here are a few new ones from the past year, which are specific to my experience with V&V…

Blog Because You Love It…

I like to think that almost all of us who’ve been blogging around as long as I have started blogging because they love writing, traveling (or whatever niche you’re in), and sharing that with others. Most of us didn’t set out to create businesses or quit our jobs; our blogs were hobbies that eventually made enough that some of us could do that.

Having a blog has to be about passion and love, because there’s not much else left. Traffic is being artificially suppressed through algorithms and AI “features,” and we – as bloggers – have no control over that. We just have to write and share because we love doing so. And we have to take care of ourselves when that’s not enough to keep us going.

For example, I inadvertently did a 30-day sprint in July and August (I published 30 posts in 30 days) – something I’d never done before, and something I mostly did as a personal challenge. I loved it, but I was also totally tapped out after that.

So I didn’t really publish much in the rest of August or September, and I’m being very casual about publishing now. I work hard when I have the energy and time, and I step back when I don’t. And I never ever count on a paycheck from my blog.

…Because Google WILL Take Away Your Traffic Someday

Whenever I talk to new bloggers, they’re excited: traffic is growing, they’re looking forward to monetizing and joining the big leagues.

Not to be a downer, but the big leagues don’t exist anymore – at least not for bloggers.

I have seen repeatedly that when new blogs get above a certain traffic level (somewhere in the range of 50,000-100,000 pageviews per month), the next major update will smack them down by 60-80%. It’s almost like before that magic threshold, Google’s not really looking at you. Then you start ranking for enough keywords and getting enough traffic that the Eye of Sauron turns your direction, and you get toasted after that – because heaven fuckin’ forbid anyone get traffic from Google anymore, besides Reddit, that is.

Anyway, all this to say: if you’re a new-ish blogger reading this, start diversifying NOW. Seriously, spend as long if not longer building other traffic sources (i.e. Facebook, email, etc.) and not just social media and organic traffic. (Social media income is not blogging, it’s influencing or UGC work, to be clear.) I feel like nobody listens to me on this, but it’s my best advice right now.

Other Observations

I didn’t have a space to quickly cover a few other things I’ve mulled on in the past year, related to the goals I set, so I wanted to add them here:

• My “Pay”wall experiment was not a success. I won’t call it a failure because I tried it and it kind of worked ($1000+ earned and 350+ new email subscribers in 12 months), but it didn’t work anywhere near as well as I thought it would. I’ve turned off the wall on my site and have no plans to turn it back on.
• Migrated content is now outperforming my original niche-specific content. While I’ve preached EEAT for literal years, I don’t think that matters at all anymore (I mentioned this last year too). Some of the best content on my site now – from an organic traffic/ranking perspective – was migrated from Great Plains Travel Guide and has jack-all to do with my experience or expertise. Write whatever the fuck you want, guys.
• Email is still where it’s at. I make more sales/income and more connections through email than anything else. Whatever size traffic you have, you better be building an email list with it.
• Partnerships were a game-changer for me. Despite traffic being in the toilet, I’ve made more than I could have hoped, in part because of direct partnerships and affiliate relationships I’ve negotiated. If you have the strength in your niche, reach out and ask other companies how you can make it work better for both of you for any sales/conversions you drive.

What’s Next for Valerie & Valise

I’m writing this post about a week before my 12th blogiversary, when I’m feeling positive enough to share goals to work toward before my 13th blogiversary… next year, who knows how I’ll be feeling… While I haven’t quit this site yet, I can’t promise anything about the next year; committing to big goals feels hard, especially with how much has changed each year I’ve been blogging!

Focus on Facebook & Instagram

While I had some success with going ‘all-in’ on Facebook last year, I think I need to take the foot off the gas for my own mental health; the social media treadmill is exhausting, and gives so little in return.

That said, I think Facebook and Instagram are still the two best places for me to focus my efforts, and my goal here is less about spending more time creating on these platforms and just about focusing on them and not getting shiny object syndrome. I generally enjoy what I create on these platforms, and they do well for me and my brand. When I have the creative energy and motivation – or a paid partnership that incentivizes me in other ways – I’ll work on these social channels. (When not, I won’t feel bad about it!)

Ride or Die on Email

At the end of the day, email is really my sweet spot. I love sitting down to write my emails, and I’ve been doing it long enough that I can recycle emails from past years sometimes, putting me on a bit of auto-pilot that just makes money. Also, selling sponsorships for my email is pretty easy and enjoyable work with good pay.

My goal is to stay consistent with email this year, ideally emailing twice a week all year long. I’ve never managed that before, but I’ve also never done lots of other things before I started doing them!

Write What You Love; Love What You Write

Each time, I feel like these recaps get angrier, but seriously: fuck Google.

They destroyed my business and livelihood, but worst of all they made it harder for people to find good (accurate, trustworthy, etc.) information online.

My mantra this year is that I don’t need anything they give me. If they send me traffic, great; if not, who gives a shit? I’m still going to write the best content I can, and try and get it in front of people as best I can. That means writing articles I want to write, in the way I want to write them, with the care and attention to quality I’ve always tried to bring to my work.

I don’t know how many articles I’ll write this year, but I can tell you that anything I publish will be because I want people to read it and find value in it, not because of anything to do with Google. Fuck Google.

On that cheery note, let’s wrap this up! Do you have any other questions about this recap for Valerie & Valise? Let me know in the comments; I’m happy to share anything that I forgot to include!