FanningSparks Completes 7th Lap

And just like that―it’s time to celebrate FanningSparks’ seventh lap around the track!  Seven years of researching, writing and photographing stories to share here on the blog.  I’m grateful to you and the 231,000 other visitors who have found their way to this blog over the last seven years. 
This is the 368^th blog post―one published every Tuesday morning since March 2018.  Revisiting the Top 24 Photos from 2024 provides some insight into the subjects addressed during the blog’s seventh year.  Topics shown in the below image are flower hammering, dolphins, printmaking, rope coiling, bubbles, beachcombing, dairy farm visits, vintage carousels, flower farm visits, park visits, t-shirt repurposing and Christmas market visits in Germany, Czechia and Austria.

Please join me for a look back at the accomplishments and highlights of FanningSparks’ seventh year. 
FanningSparks Recognition & Feedback

One of the most gratifying aspects of writing this blog is hearing from readers.  Occasionally, readers will contact me via the blog’s contact form.

For instance, Corrina Sephora, a metal artist featured in my 2020 blog post Making Art Together, recently reached out via the contact form.  I had the pleasure of working with Corrina and her team on the Gateway Willow Tree Arch, a graceful, 11-foot-tall willow tree with sweeping branches and dangling leaves made from stainless steel (pictured below), as part of a community art project.
Corrina reached out to thank me for the “beautiful and thoughtful” post and to let me know “it was a joy to find your article”.  She also mentioned she is a contender for a new public art project where she has proposed a community aspect. I was thrilled to learn my blog post will play a small part in her proposal.  Corrina wrote: “I just forwarded your article to the head of the committee to share with them… Maybe it will be the thing to sway them to choose my project!”.  Good luck, Corrina!

A few months ago, I received a note from a reader named Maggie when she recognized the below photo on Pinterest.  I’d shared the photo on my Pinterest board after publishing the blog post Growing Carpets and Coats of Moss. 
Turns out, Maggie’s mother, Danielle Rector of Twig and Blooms in Madison Georgia, created this garden treasure!  Danielle generously shared how she made it: “I literally upholstered it with soil & moss. I used a large needle & fishing line & glue in some places.  I had it almost a year before the squirrels completely destroyed it.”

The final anecdote I’d like to share involves a photo of a Bottlenose Dolphin.  I originally shared this photo in the blog post, In Search of Wild Bottlenose Dolphins, and then again in the blog post, Top 24 Photos from 2024, with this explanation: “I used iNaturalist to record my observation and identify it properly.  The iNaturalist community confirmed it was a Common Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncates).”  Since then, zoologists had “decided to adjust the taxonomy for Common Bottlenose Dolphins by splitting off a subgroup, called Tamanend’s Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops erebennus).  These dolphins are found almost exclusively in estuarine environments.”
I’m thrilled that my photo was selected as the main photo for the new iNaturalist species listing!

FanningSparks Blog

Visitors By Year
Now, for a quick look at some data. 
This graphic, showing FanningSparks Visitors by Year, illustrates a steady increase from only 3,000 people in the first year to an impressive 86,000 people in the last 12 months―totaling up to a mind-boggling 231,000 visitors since FanningSparks was launched in March 2018.

Weekly and Monthly Visitor Trends
The average number of people who visited the blog per week and per month is also increasing every year―as shown in the FanningSparks Visitor Trends graphic below.

Moving on to take a closer look, the How Are Active Users Trending? graphic shows the number of visitors per day, week and month over only the last 12 months.  The top blue line, for instance, shows the number of visitors per month between March 2024 and March 2025.  On average, 7,800 users visited the blog every 30 days but the trend line shows a number of ups and downs during that time. 

FanningSparks Top Posts

Another data point worth considering is which content visitors view―in other words, which blog posts are the most popular?  Shown below are the ten blog posts viewed most frequently during the last 12 months.  The most popular posts tend to be the same year after year with just a little juggling between positions.  A noteworthy exception this year is the addition of the Sculpture for the Home Garden blog post coming in at number eight.  Links to the blog posts are listed below the graphic.
1. DIY Bluebird-Approved Birdhouse Tutorial 
2. Maker Apron – DIY Tutorial 
3. DIY Turkish Mosaic Candle Holder Tutorial 
4. Strawberry Tower Planter – DIY Tutorial
5. Flat Plane Carving with Harley
6. Lessons Learned from my First Barn Quilt Block 
7. 6 Fascinating Facts about Sable Island
8. Sculpture for the Home Garden
9. Hello Marvelous Photo Embroidery – DIY Tutorial 
10. Lucet Cordmaking – DIY Tutorial 
It’s also helpful to narrow down the window and consider only the blog posts published in the last 12 months.  This reveals a blog post about yarn bombing, Taking Yarn to the Streets, to be the most popular blog post published in the last year.

FanningSparks Social Media Platforms
Pinterest
It’s difficult to tell for sure but it appears many of the visitors coming to the most popular FanningSparks blog posts (as listed above) arrive from Pinterest.  Every photo I share in a blog post is also pinned (ie shared) on my FanningSparks Pinterest boards with a link back to my original blog post.  So, if someone finds a Pinterest photo that interests them and they want to learn more about it, they can easily click to the associated blog post. 
Shown below are the five most popular pinned images on the FanningSparks Pinterest boards. Pinterest only keeps data for the last six months so the comparison isn’t entirely accurate but, since three of the top five pins are also in the top ten blog posts, I assume a correlation exists.

At a broader level, the FanningSparks account on Pinterest is very active―the number of people following the account has grown to a remarkable 2,500 followers.  I’ve pinned nearly 5,500 of my own photos to my four primary boards: MAKE, TRAVEL, NATURE and DECORATE as well as repining a number of photos by others to my curated special interest boards. 

Facebook and Instagram
Every week I announce the latest FanningSparks blog post on Facebook and Instagram.  Special thanks to the 122 Facebook users and 217 Instagram users who follow these accounts.

Here’s a look at the FanningSparks follower data across the various platforms.  On the one hand, there’s a slow, but steady, increase in the number of Facebook followers, Instagram followers and blog subscribers (those who have signed up for weekly email notifications).  On the other hand, the number of followers in Pinterest has been growing quickly ever since Pinterest introduced the ability to follow four years ago.

Search
The final data point I’d like to share comes from Google Search.  Every time someone searches for something via Google Search, the words they’ve entered (aka the search query) and the results they clicked are tracked.  Not surprisingly, the topics users searched for most frequently led to the same blog posts as those that were most popular. 
For instance, over 2,500 users came to the Strawberry Tower Planter – DIY Tutorial blog post after searching for “strawberry tower”, “diy strawberry tower”, “strawberry tower planter”, “diy strawberry planter”, “strawberry pyramid planter”, “how to build a strawberry tower”, “strawberry planter plans” or a number of other variations of the same terms.  It was the fourth most popular blog post during FanningSparks’ seventh year.
Thank You
In conclusion, the FanningSparks blog has completed another successful year thanks to you and your fellow readers who have taken the time to visit the blog over the last 12 months.  Thank you so much!