My top ten blog posts of all time

I seem to mostly be over this horrid flu, having lost at least 3 weeks to it. This post, about my top 10 blog posts ever, was intended to be done around Jan 1 since that's when lots of folks look back on what's been accomplished in order to help plan what's coming up.  So, almost 2 weeks late, here it is.

Top of the heap with 1096 views is Quilt labels.  I wrote about how to use word and clipart to make pretty quilt labels in September of 2008.  This is one of the posts I'm planning to redo sometime this year as I think it needs updating to what I'm doing now which uses gimp and my photos instead of Word and clipart.  Still getting lots of views, mostly due to links from other blogs and websites. 

#2.  http://lizcopeland.blogspot.com/2009/12/december-baking-and-gluten-free.html  The most popular of my non-art blog posts.  Because who doesn't love cookies?  Especially for the winter holidays.

#3.  http://lizcopeland.blogspot.com/2011/10/stamp-carving-or-another-way-to-make-my.html
This is the other blog I'll do an update on.  I did much more stamp carving after this article and I'm planning on using some of those stamps this year for etsy store products.  The photo below shows the large size of the carved stamps that I used to make several pieces of art so I'll talk about carving those stamps and show my new uses of them. 

#4.  The first blog post about news sources and where they sit on a spectrum of ideology and accuracy.  It was done recently, 12/1/16, and has been viewed 192 times.  (For context, I get 300-400 views per month so that many in essentially a year makes this a very popular blog post.)

#5.  http://lizcopeland.blogspot.com/2010/11/shows-entry-tracking-system.html  One of my most technical artist business posts is still very, very popular.  And I'm still using the same system so I am confident in its utility.

#6.  The second blog post about news sources, done 12/14/16.  Some quibbling about exactly where sources rank but in general, very similar to the earlier one.  

#7.  I am still not sure why Virtual Vacation in Chiliwack was so much more popular than my other virtual vacations posts but it was.  It's been 7 years (and a bit) since I went to Chiliwack and now that I live closer, I'm planning to go much more often.  

In 2012 I did several art experiment posts.  #8 was about experimenting with discharge paste and #9 was some dye experiments.  I was looking to do a fabulous gray and tried some things out.

#10 was about upcoming shows in Edmonds which is pure history at this point.

So what did I learn?  Six out of the 10 were art related which is a little bit higher than the percentage of posts I do about art.  So I guess people like hearing about my art, at least the experiments and how-to's.  I had already decided to do more of that type of posting so I'm happy to have the data to support that decision.    

Some other things I got by looking at the statistics blogger provides is that regular posts mean higher traffic.  (All together now "Duh".)  And links to other blogs/sites matter.  Again Duh.  My goal for this year is to focus & practice in my studio and part of that will be blogging about what I'm doing.  So here's for meeting goals in 2018!