Views To Sales Ratios

i find there is no solid ratio even though math works out as if there was one. as a ratio it's 1 sale for every 1090 views. but it's not steady number. and i get like 2000 views a day, which is why ratio's never really work out.


---Mike Savad

Thanks Mike
I appreciate there is no 'set' ratio, it's more a question of trying to get a feel for rough figures, e.g. whether it's one sale per 50 views or per 50,000 views. 2000 views a day is pretty impressive, I guess being active on the site and having a lot of images up there helps. Even so that's very good visibility.

Colin

i also have 2400 images up, that helps too. i have to make a new daily tally of people coming in, i stopped doing it when i passed a million hits.

---Mike Savad

That is very impressive Mike. I guess it shows what can be acheived when you work at it.

There isn't any real ratio. I have had works sell that have had only a few views and barely any favorites/likes/comments. And I have works here that have tons of views and interaction but have never sold.

Mine was ~ 400views/sale and it was very consistent until I started promoting on Pinterest. It is now more like 800/sale but I get more views.

22k views sales, Well yes I am bad.

Mine is ~1100 views to one sale which isn't bad.

Last time I did the math, mine was somewhere around 1400-1500, but as JC pointed out, it depends on the quality of the views. I could probably get a lot more views if I promoted in more places. But, the number of buyers that came from those views would be fewer, so my ratio would likely go down.

like right now its tax time, and people are waiting to see what the result is. i know people are looking and i even saw a shopping cart and others looking at prints. but not many sales. i think not until after the tax thing and it starts getting warm again will people start to buy again.

---Mike Savad

10,700 views. 6 sales. You can't really judge who's looking because of bots. If the locations are precise (for example, Princeton, NJ vs. New York), then you can estimate how many "real" people are viewing, I suppose.

Mike how on earth did you see someones shopping cart?

If you want a lot of instant views, Twitter and the bots almost immediately visit.

Abandoned carts is a number I'd like to see. That would tell you that something is wrong with the image or the check out system. For example why do we have distractions in the form of two buttons in the shopping cart?

"Upload your own images"
"Import from Instagram"

If I have gone through all the trouble to market my work, get a buyer to place the item in the cart, why would I want to then send them look for their own images to upload?

67% of online shopping carts are abandoned on average according to a recent study looking at online shopping.

http://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate

i have statcounter (limited to the front page and a pain to install) and it shows me about 10% of my views. since not everyone goes to the main page. and every so often is see what they saw and then see shopping cart. worse is when i see shopping_cart=remove or something like that. most of the time i do see a sale about a week later. i'll see how they found me in google, or that they saw a framed print of something and the like. i wish we had statcounter for the whole site - it would make this so much easier.


---Mike Savad

Thanks for the info folks.

Being able to separate the real viewers from the bots would be immensely helpful as that would give a good handle on what proportion of browsers end up buying.

I believe it's not that difficult to eliminate the Bots. Other sites do it.

I've been an FAA member for about the same time and have only amassed 139 views at this point. You must be doing something right Colin.
It looks like I'll have to try a little bit harder to make that elusive first sale!

"I believe it's not that difficult to eliminate the Bots. Other sites do it."

Yes. There's a list of known bots:


http://www.iplists.com/

Hi Richard

I think being fairly active on this site and cross posting on facebook and twitter helps.

The ratio is not static but dynamic.
You upload new images - ratio going down,
you got sales - ratio is going up.
I have over 1400 images and ratio about 1 to 2000

Thanks Viktor
Do you find you have to work at promoting them to get the views? Is 1400 images up leading to reasonable sales?

Mine was ~ 400views/sale and it was very consistent until I started promoting on Pinterest. It is now more like 800/sale but I get more views.

JC,

When you say views / sale, you do not specify size. So some of those sales in the ratio could be smaller size prints or even cards?

Did you ever wonder if your ratio getting worse since putting your images on Pinterest could have something to do with the fact that those who might have normally purchased an 8x10 or smaller from you are now just taking the image straight from Pinterest and printing it themselves?

Also don't forget a lot of people who print off their own printer at home, do not care about the same quality end product we may care about here, so that 900pixel image might do more than we think, especially with some of the great enlargement software out there now?

A 50% drop in sales per view is quite a large change. How much is that costing you?

Just a thought. Maybe that 900pixel image can do more damage than you think? I have seen you say many times on the forum that you do not worry about people taking the 900pixel image.

-----------

EDIT - it could just be "more views" as you say, but if you are now promoting those images on Pinterest, the images being viewed there would not affect your view stats on FAA.

It could also just be time of year and bad economy too.

This is interesting. Mine's about the same as those above - somewhere between 1 and 2k views to a sale.

Thanks Aaron

It's beginning to sound like a ratio between 1;1k and 1:2k is fairly standard. Be good to hear some more views on this.

Thanks Marian

I guess these things take time; patience was never my strong point :)

I like your watercolours and digital art, some cool images there.

Colin

Thank you, Colin! I'm glad you like them. I also visited your page and believe me, it's not pleasantry exchange, but I really liked your work too. Let's be patient, my friend! This site is awesome, but we need to be active and optimistic :)

At this point I've probably made about a dollar or two an hour not counting the time it takes to actually got out and take the photos. Just editing and posting them. At this point it is a terrible investment. I made a big fat zero for the first 6-8 months. Last year probably averaged out to be about $50 a month. This year I'm at about $500.00 per month so far. ( So next year should be 5K a month and the year after that 50K a month!)

While I think I have a nice collection and some very good shots, for most any of them there is going to be someone on here who focuses on a particular park and has better shots than I do. Photographing national parks isn't exactly a unique thing to do either so I anticipate a long slow road.

I usually upload a fair number of variations of a scene from a different perspective, with different lighting or in different seasons so while there are 4,000+ photos up here, the number of truly unique scenes might be a quarter of that. Having 4,000 unique sets of keywords to be found under would be a lot better than what I would guess is more like 1,000 now.

To ramp up fast it seems like you need to bring a bunch of your own buyers, have extremely unique work or just be such a good artist that people see something you post and just have to have it. Otherwise it is a long slow road to ramping up sales.

It was certainly a lot easier sitting in a cube collecting a paycheck but at least now I don't have to have corks on all my forks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eJ0iGZ7Ms8

Thanks for that Adam.
$500 a month is worthwhile and, as you point out, the trajectory is a pretty steep climb in earnings. Let's hope it continues that way. I've just had a quick look at your website and will read the blog when I have a bit of spare time.

I notice you have a Facebook shop selling prints also. I've thought about this, but resented the way that the FB app wants to take over my entire personal FB presence in order to do so. I would be interested to know how successful you find the FB shop in selling your prints.

Colin

543 views/sale, I guess that's pretty good. Other than contests, not too much promotion. I only get maybe around 20-30 views a day. Maybe I should do pinterest...

Well, views are rising steadily but sales are not. I guess I'm going to have to learn patience.

patience is important. keep in mind this is tax month and sales started to slow as early as a month and a half ago. plus the weather is still in the dumps for many. keep pushing your work. it takes a lot longer than a month to be seen. most of my work will sit for a 3 months to a year before it's sold.

your keywords shouldn't have the word prints in it - because the site ads that on, and people don't always look for that phrase.


---Mike Savad

Thanks Mike

Are you sure about the keywords? I added phrases like 'birch trees prints' as I am trying to guess the search terms people might use on google when looking to buy prints.

Leave off prints

the site appends - photos, prints, paintings etc. so all your words if you look at them - look like - birch tree prints photos, birch tree prints i phone cases. and they get really long and silly looking. if you want to add prints just add it as a word on it's own. you only get 500 characters and you have to include both plural and singular because the search doesn't know how to do those. and you want phrases as well, it leaves you with little space left over... oh and add your name if you haven't.

the site has enough extra terms that they will find you if they look. but keep in mind that google has a sandbox period of time where you will sit until it really puts it into the search.


---Mike Savad

Thanks Isabella, Mike

Ok, I guess I need to go back through them

Mine works out to a sale for every 638 views...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz_zAmjvxlk

I'm not sure about the ratio but your work is beautiful and welcome to FAA :-)

I thought I was getting a lot of views until I realized every time I tweeted, I would get 10 instant page hits. I know now those are bots and am convinced that the page view count is not giving me the information I had hoped for. I'm approaching 1000 total views in under 3 weeks of active marketing but have no idea how many of those are legitimate. I have yet to make a sale...

Mr. Colin - I'm sorry - I forgot to welcome you aboard when I posted.
For some reason... you looked familiar around here. Outstanding work.


& Joe B. - Bots - can be better than people for views. It's getting your work out there for you, & categorized in the right spots.
In-house views don't mean much at all - you need the outside world to find you.

Thanks, Janine. And I realize that the long term goal of marketing is to build a large network of roads that all lead back to me. I know it's only been 3 weeks and my portfolio is next to empty but I'm just of the mind set that the longer it takes to land a sale, the more I'm probably fooling myself about pursuing this. We'll see...

Hi Karen - love the youtube video, is it bringing sales in do you know?

Hi Laura - thanks for the compliment.

Hi Joe - you and me both, let's see what the next month brings.

Hi Janine - thanks for the compliment. I guess you are right about bots, hopefully they will start to pay off.

1000/1

ok, first sale, so 24000/1 lol
see you at 48k view.

Well, I am pretty much still a newbie here... but my number of views is 773 per sale made---here on FAA.

I suppose it is a good thing that I rely on my income from my other businesses, and not from internet sales of my fine art prints. :-)))

“400 people pass by looking at the window. 40 of those go in, 5 buy.” --- Mike Savad

This reminds me of the three years I spent in direct sales. Yep, I spent three years as a real traveling door to door salesman. (Boy the stories I amassed in my youth!)

I made tons of money! Saw the Country, had a blast, and learned a great deal.

At any rate, the numbers we used way back when, were these:

One knocked on 50 doors, made ten “pitches” and one sale.

One was considered a success if one could do this.

I averaged two sales a day! The only reason I stopped was that beautiful girl I met in my hometown!

And then, after settling down, I studied painting, drawing, and then bought a camera.

-30-

post script: Welcome to FAA, Colin!

hm, I probably have the worst ratio on this site :D

Not even close Martin, one sale per ANY number of views means you are doing better than many.

I am not sure of how many views but a total of 636 visitors since I posted my first artwork in early January and just made my first sale today. I'm really stoked.

oh don't say that martin, i'm sure there are worse than yours, some people have been here years and have no sales at all.


---Mike Savad

Keep in mind, my ratio stays pretty consistent BUT it is my portfolio wide and not per image. The per image ratio doesn't work at all for me but portfolio wide does.

I think the ratios are all over the place in here. It takes quiet a long time for some to get consistent sales in FAA. I didn't get my first "non-friend" print sale until 10 months after I joined...and I started with a lot of images. I network quiet a bit, and have a total of 1,313,903 views (probably 95% of those are bots). With 364 sales, that's only a ratio of 1/3,600. Patience is definitely a must in here...and continue to load new work often.

I can't see any correlation between views and sales. I just sold a print that has only 52 total views in the almost 2 years since I posted it. And I'm sure many of those were bots.