It's been a wonderful year. After years of inconsistent writing, in 2025 I published 32 articles. While I strived for weekly releases, there were occasions I wasn't able to pull it off.
Unexpected travel challenges, work overload, or family duties affected my schedule. Which is a perfect lesson for 2026. And I wouldn't have learned it if I wasn't trying to keep my weekly routine.
Why did it work this year?
Thanks to tools and mindset change. WordPress has been my default website platform for a very long time. As an experiment, I decided to try Ghost Pro, and boy, I couldn't be happier!
It's fast, reliable, and minimalistic. Most importantly, it's focused on publishing. Therefore, I spent no time maintenance and all my time on creating content. The opposite of WordPress.
The other crucial ingredient was Deep Work. I have known about the concept for years, but only with repetition I finally was able to see the results. Now, I ensure to plan undistracted 2-hour blocks in my calendar. And then focus exclusively on one task, like writing.
Site stats
In the second half of 2025, Ghost delivered the long-awaited feature. The built-in analytics. In the past, I used Google Analytics and great alternatives like Plausible, Simple Analytics or Fathom. But less is more. I don't want rely on surveillance capitalistic Google or pay for external services.
Hence, I was thrilled when Ghost incorporated clear and insightful dashboard with site stats. Within the last 6 months, nerdontour.net has had 5768 unique visitors. Extrapolating that should give me around 10,000 visitors in 2025.
The majority of the site traffic, 32% came from the US. Which aligns with the digital nomad stats, where 43% of all the nomads are from the USA. However, it's surprising that the second country is China, with 24% traffic.
I'm European, writing for all nomads, regardless of their passport and destination. Yet, it's truly humbling that my content reaches such diverse locations.
When nerdontour.net was hosted on Zenbox, a Polish hosting, with Cloudflare CDN, I thought that was good enough for a world wide reach. Only once I migrated the site to Ghost Pro, I experienced the benefit of their globally distributed hosting with built-in CDN.
Still, I wouldn't reach these nomads without great content. Among all published articles, the one about iCloud Mail was the most popular. Attracting 41% of all visitors. Which is a signal that many users want to utilize Apple's email platform. Especially with custom domains, like in my case @nerdontour.net.
Additionally, Chinese users are particularly interested iCloud Mail, as Gmail remains blocked in China. And iCloud Mail works natively across Apple devices and on the web.
Piotrek Bodera
Audience Reach
This site remains my hub, and signing up for the newsletter is the best way to stay in touch.
However, I acknowledge that social media are popular discovery channels. That's why I'm grateful to see that my regular posting has allowed me to reach a wider audience. My YouTube videos garnered 48,197 views in 2025 which attracted 46 new subscribers.
Instagram activity was even better, with 85,318 views and 454 interactions.
Yet, my biggest reach happened on Threads. It's still a novel platform, where the analytics are limited to the last 90 days. Nevertheless, I'm glad that my posts reached hundreds of thousands users.
These results were possible thanks to my Zapier automation. I utilize Creatomate to generate videos, with my voice cloned by ElevenLabs. Then the content is published via Buffer.
Nomading
In terms of my travels, it was quite an active year. Kuala Lumpur was and remains my base in South East Asia. From here I ventured to:
- Singapore
- Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nachi, Nagasaki in Japan
- Semporna in East Malaysia
- Da Nang in Vietnam
- Warsaw, Katowice, Kraków, Wrocław in Poland
- Vienna in Austria
- Eslöv, Lund in Sweden
- Copenhagen in Denmark
- Rouen, Paris in France
- Tenerife in Spain
- Sydney in Australia
Piotrek Bodera
Piotrek Bodera
Piotrek Bodera
Active listening
Lastly, I'd like to share more personal stats. Listening perfectly fits my nomadic lifestyle. Because it's easy to store audio files on my phone and to absorb myself while walking, commuting, or flying. That's why I'm a heavy user of Spotify, Pocket Casts and Storytel.
Music keeps me going. It gives me a boost when I feel down, moves my hips when I feel the groove, and accompanies me during writing. That's why in 2025 I scored 76,887 minutes on Spotify.
Adrenaline-pumping instrumental drum'n'bass type songs were on repeat in 2024, but in 2025 I discovered the calming focus of nature soundscapes. I listened so much that it affected the recommendations in my Spotify. Now, the ocean sounds come from a dedicated app Dark Noise, while Spotify remains my source of recreational music.
Conversely, podcasts are how I learn about the world. That's why I spent 18,504 minutes listening them on Pocket Casts. It was mostly the paid subscription of Stratechery, with interviews with CEOs being my favorite episodes. Tim Ferriss and Lex Fridman also produce intriguing conversations. The 6-hour episode with DHH was for me one of the most insightful podcasts last year.
Finished audiobooks
Finally, fabulously written books were the highlights of 2025. Since I already spend most of my waking hours staring at screens, listening to a professional audiobook narrator is my refuge. A way to ease my eyes and listen actively to read a book.
Storytel (like Spotify originated in Sweden) is my go-to platform, but if a title is not available, I use Audiobooks.com, Audible or Book Player. With them in 2025 I finished over 20 audiobooks. The most notable title were:
- Nexus by Harari — about similarities between AI, religious books and totalitarianism.
- The whole Demon Cycle series by Peter V. Brett — excellent fantasy recommended to me by Mateusz Urbanowicz.
- How to Be Perfect by Michael Shur — brilliant and funny book about ethics from Good Place creator.
- Apple in China by Patrick McGee — the one book to understand how Apple helped build tech-first China.
- Nvidia Way by Tae Kim — increadible story of Jensen Huang from video game GPUs to AI boom.
In short
2025 proved that consistency beats perfection. Missing a few weekly posts taught me more than hitting every deadline would have. For 2026, I'm keeping the same rhythm — deep work blocks, weekly articles, and honest stories from the road. With the focus to publish regular podcast episodes. Let's see where this year takes us.
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