A Few Thoughts On Visitors And Sales...

400 views/sale.

I'm not at that level yet, but what you write about the best viewed is true. My most viewed has not sold. It gets more likes, faves and comments than anything else, but does not sale. Another one in my Top 5 is much the same, but it does get stolen off of other sites. So I have never sold it yet, but it's made me more money than some that have sold. (Pay Pal + invoice + Print Screen, or maybe that's in reverse order)

Bridge shots sell well for me. I thought one of my last sales bucked that trend... but then realized I was standing ON a bridge for that oneinstead of shooting one. Then the next sale I made had nothing to do with a bridge, so maybe it's a coincidence.

1388 views per sale, not great but then again that's with minimal marketing so not bad either.

9,806 visitors and five sales in two years. Not impressive.

Been here just over 1 year.

4700 views, 5 sales.

But, 4 of them happened in the last month... so its all a bit random :)

3 of those 4 sales, were on the same image (different customers) that has only been up for 6 months, and were all within the same week, a few weeks ago.

80,403 views with 40 sales = 2,010 views per sale

So far 0 sales for 4,341 views... Most likely 99% of those view have been from Twitter and probably these forums. It's hard to tell how much organic search traffic I've gotten.

I haven't checked my stats, but I might start doing that just out of interest. Could someone tell me if there is any reason to "reset" a counter?

Views to sales ratio is non-relevant.

.Post deleted because I went out of my way to look up this stat, divulged my personal business info and provided and analysis. And instead of a thank you I got the response below.

What is non relevant about it?

It's the topic of discussion.

4906 per sale. In reality over past year 10000's per sale.
348389 views -71 sales.

I keep a spread sheet with very accurate numbers so I can track such things closely. On FAA my SPV (Sales Per View) is 1:2573. On a different POD my SPV is 1:1235. By keeping accurate records I am able to track activity over time and determine which marking affects views and sales. What is even more shocking is that my sales totals are significantly different on each POD,embarrassingly so.

Edward Fielding may be right that the views to sales ratio is not relevant if what he means is a comparison to one another. However the SPV ratio does give you a personal benchmark and in business having something to gauge yourself against is extremely important. If you want to compare yourself to other artists selling work, then the numbers will not track, nor should it matter, however if you can keep a close tab on your own efforts and see how SPV changes over time, it is a relevant number. Some sellers may have massive views and low sales volume and others may have low views and high volume sales. Comparing each others ratios is of little import, but rather it is far more important to keep a record of how you are doing. My SPV ratio has more than halved over the past twelve months, and that is a very good thing to see and know.

As a business strategy, I actively work to lower the SPV through various marketing activities. As long as the ratios keep improving, I know I am on the right track.

By keeping track of as many statistics as possible, you should be able to see changes taking affect over time.

There are a lot of mitigating factors that can affect your SPV. If you are a high volume producer and are constantly growing your portfolio, that will affect your ratios in a way far different than a similar artist that is a low volume producer. Again, you shouldn't be comparing yourself to other artists. You should only be trying to change your own numbers, to better your sales volume relative to yourself.

For me, ALL the numbers are relevant, but that is how I run my business.

-YoPedro

I'll take one view from a buyer or 4,000 views from high school students looking for an image for their history paper.

I started in June 2011
approx. 235,000 views
approx. 200 sales

Sales to views ratio: 1 to 1175

The ratio is irrelevant to anyone else. Someone else could have worse or better numbers. Depends on so many factors - what you are doing to market, how much you spend socializing on this site, how commercially viable your work it, if you are highlighted in collections etc.

Actually views per sale is VERY relative if you plan on spending money on something like google ads.

You have to know what a view is worth in dollars and cents to know if the advertisement is of value.

At 400 views per sale and an average sales price of $70 a view is worth 17.5 cents. Thus if I could pay for click through at a price less than that I would come out ahead.

Since a click through in theory will be a real person looking for art and more importantly the kind they searched for like mine then that view should be worth MORE than an a random view which is often a bot or another artist.

Sales per view or visa versa IS important.

does the bot factor not completely put all these ratios completely out of sync, ive over 400 views and id say half of them were bots, so honestly i wouldnt read too much into it !!

Coming up on 4 years, 25,466 views 32 sales 796 views per sale, my top two views are also my top two comments and top two sellers, interesting, I wonder how many views are bots though

I've been here since June, 2008. I have 355,766 views to 430 sales. That's about a sale every 827 views. My top 5 viewed pieces are some of my best sellers. I don't really take into account the comments.

28,000 views, 4 sales. 7,000 views to sale. Gotta work on getting more quality views because that ratio is not where I would like it to be :)

Pinterest shares are probably more relevant.

JC - Sure if your views are only coming from Google Ads. Isn't that separate? I.e. you get tracking info from Google Ads?

P.S. I've had a sale with five views.

Bots don't matter because they are consistent.

Now, how you market on social media will also determinebyour bot count too. Twitter things? Your bot count goes up. Pinterest? Yupp, that too.

Since my views per sale include bots then real people views should be more valuable than the value which includes the bots

Parker - I hear ya. I'm aiming for 1:1 ;-)

The value placed on a view from me is on a general view which include bots and other artists.

In theory, if the google clixk throughs are people looking for art the view should be more valuable than a "general view" that I use for my base value.

Would be interesting to see if different types of artwork attracts different view/sales ratios. Could be that it takes more views to sell a photograph. At least that would be my guess.

Pinterest is hard to read.

NO idea if my efforts there lead to sales. My most shared image, think multiple shares daily, has sold once and it was a small print.

Hard to know how effective P is.

I feel Pinterest is very unpredictable. I have an image with 1,200 pins and no sales. But I guess that is how the social media goes. Sometimes you reach the right people and other times you don't.

I have just under 350 thousand views btw.

Aside from the one that went viral my top viewed image is second or third on my best sellers.

My top seller has 1/4 the views but more sales.

i stopped doing views to sales, anything divides into anything. some weeks i have no sales at all. others its a landslide with just a few views. they don't mean much to me. if i could break down the internal views (we log ip's that should be possible). known bots, and just add up the rest, then i could get a real ratio.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Views to sales might be the best metric available. It's not great because you don't know the source of those views.

Without the source it's a decent directional metric but not good enough to make any financial decisions with as far as paying for advertising.

I think it's hard to determine the value of views vs sales,especially if you are actively uploading images a lot,which attracts more bots than actual buyes.

I'll take a closer look once I'm back home,

Rich



rs

The spectrum has two extremes.

At one end of the spectrum you do nothing at all and generally get no real results.
Even if you do get a couple of views per day, you have not hit your target audience in all likelihood.

The other end of the spectrum you fill the sales channels with what I call litter on Twitter.
If you litter Twitter enough your followers will mute you in large numbers.

Pinterest is really interesting. Pinterest is pent up buying. Pinterest might as well
change its name to Windowshopping.com. Nothing would change.
The ultimate retailer's dream is a shop where no one knows the prices, everything can be bought
at any time for years on end, and storage of consumable ideas is the norm. We have Pinterest.

Cracking Pinterest for males is a little tougher. Art is not the highest priority on Pinterest. Jewelery,
cooking, the fall fashions, etc.....all rank higher than art. But art does rank.

Then again not all males are the same, some of us make art women prefer. I think some 80% of
Pinterest users are women. As I said it is window shopping at its best. The Alexa ranking is high.
Of course some women have an edge with Pinterest, but many do not. Perhaps the sales/week ratio
matters to each of us far more.

So if you are doing more than nothing you get bots. Bots might be half your total. As JC is saying if you
advertise to a market that wants to buy art, then your view to sales ratio is twice as good roughly as you circumvent
the bots.

My ratio is one sale in something like 2700 views. Definitely half of those views were bots. Maybe even more were
bots.

My views per day have increased. That to me matters. Like I said if you do nothing you get nothing.
That ratio is at 3478 views/36 days......96.6 views per day. I have more unique viewers now. I can tell
because the bots hit your images over and over again in the same minute from the same location.

There are words for what we are all looking for. It is not exactly the view/sales ratio. It is the views to days ratio.
Or the views to weeks ratio. We want to compress the sales process time wise. When you buy a bond you buy
the bonds duration, but that does not apply well to this business model.

My Mona Lisa was uploaded on a Monday morning and sold on a Thursday morning, 4 days. I have one sale
for 36 days. Not good. That would work out to 10 sales per year at that rate.

Of course if you knock off the first two
weeks where I only had two pieces of work up and no people outside of my family, friends, and FAA members all of whom
were not going to buy any work in that period, later I have two or three sales coming, then my sales to days ratio is 1 in 21 days.
Or 17 sales per year.

I am focusing on my art and my marketing. I expect to improve my numbers considerably.

Dave

500 ish views to sales....which on one hand I think is pretty successful, but I still think its difficult to impossible to garner enough real information out of it to base real business decisions on it.

JC while I agree with your premise to paying for advertising in the sense that the real people that follow those will beat your value, click through percentage and conversion percentage are two completely different things, both of which require numbers way above and beyond what any of us are dealing with to be accurate metrics to base business decision upon, and both of them require accurate information (aka views that are not skewed).

Bottom line for me, without the ability to remove artists views, and bot views, the metric of views means nothing of value to me.

This is a very good thread! I never considered all the various criteria for visitors (did I say that right?!).

David, you are at the other end of the spectrum from me. If I could only be half as analytical as you! Lol

"does the bot factor not completely put all these ratios completely out of sync, ive over 400 views and id say half of them were bots, so honestly i wouldnt read too much into it !!"

I agree. Most of my views here have been from bots. The two sales I did get came from a friend who likes my work. Even my stock sales have tapered off, although I get almost no portfolio views there and have several hundred in sales between my stock agencies.

It would be nice if views translated proportionally into sales, but it's simply not the case.

Which is why I'm thinking seriously of pulling my stuff off this site. Granted, stock images don't make as much per sale as something here might, but you don't get anything from material that doesn't sell, and things just sell better with stock.

About 830 views/sale, but I also find that views and comments aren't great indicators of good sellers.

a lot of views and no sales

For me statistic 2305 /sale (246.640 views for 3 years - 2640 images -107 sales) - but I think the most visitors are FAA artists (for nowadays - 470 followers) + bots thats for sure - every time I put the work on Twitter + 20-30 views by bots + this count any time when somebody retweet the work. So seems I have a huge amount of bots...

By the way - just my observation - with Twitter I have much more views but fewer sales, so dont think it works for me so great. But anyway if put anything out it will bring the attention some when...

My stats are as follows:

I have about 800 images...in 3+ years on FAA

342,067 views at present with 414 sales, average sale about every 860 views....

http://karen-wiles.artistwebsites.com

I think for most of us with only a small number of images (

@ Phil

Pulling work off will certainly guarantee you never sell here if that is your goal.

You have only been here since July so you have not been here long enough for the work to really percolate through the psychy of the potential buyers. Most of my images that sell well took a year before they became good sellers. While I have the occasional sale right after I post something the reality is that my images rarely sell until they have been here at least three or four months if not longer.

I have a potential buyer in Helena Montana that has been looking at one of my pieces three times a day on average for the last three months. I know it is a real person because they emailed me inquiring about a discount. Even after getting the code they continue to look at the art a few times a day. It is like when you see a car you want. You drive by the lot on your way to work just taking a look at that car. You might get out and take a longer look or even a test drive. You can’t justify the price because you really don’t NEED that 1972 International Scout but man it is in perfect condition and surely it is a collector’s item and will go up in value but you know from your research that probably isn’t true. But it IS still there day after day and you look at it again and again. You don’t have the money for it today but you start thinking on how you can budget for it because you WANT it now. The more you look the more you HAVE to have it even though there is no reason in the world you have to have it but in your mind you HAVE to have it. I mean hey, you could pass it down to your son and you know it would look great with a new set of Super Swamper tires. If it is still there in a month or so I may just buy the thing because I have talked myself into a NEED for that truck.

Art can work the same way. The client sees something they like but wow it’s pricey and they don’t really need it. After they keep coming back and looking they may just talk themselves into a need or at least justify that want.

Being on a site for three months hardly gives someone time to justify to themselves that they NEED your art so be careful on giving up too soon.

Lovely post, JC

My least viewed images are my best sellers. Why? I have no idea. Also I gave up on contests because even though I would sometimes place among the first, none of those images sold either. Art is truly subjective and what I consider my best image isn't necessarily what a customer is searching for. It's all a crap game!

60 000 views /0 print sales
that is really, really bad lol (probably worst at this site)

Least viewed often means less competition.

If you shoot/paint a popular subject you may get a lot of views but you may also face thousands of other images of the same subject as competition; for instance bald eagles. Hey, it is tough to get a great photo of a bald eagle but yet thousands of people do just that. It is TOUGH to sell eagle images mostly because there are just so many of them out there.

On the other hand, you produce an image of Lake Jackson in Florala Alabama you have a very small audience that might look at that print but then, when someone from Florala is looking for art on Fine Art America and wants to buy something they will buy mine if they buy here. (You also will not find 36 inch canvas prints of Florala for $30 at Walmart so the market isn't watered down either.)

So, less views can in fact translate to more sales depending on why it has few views.

@the art - least viewed means that people are coming in and looking at your gallery and then buying it when they see the icon.

@martin you did sell at least the one, you can't help that it was returned.

you never want to erase anything unless it's total junk. i know for a fact that anything i upload today will take about 3 months to sell it. it may not sell but it take at least that long. i advertise it a few times during that time. if people like it, it will be blogged, looked at etc and eventually it will be bought. if they really like it, it will be much faster.

for a first sale on this site - never look into what your doing as to be the result of the sale. because if you don't sell your in the back of the search. however on a daily to weekly basis your work is shuttled to the front of the search totally randomly. and you usually get lucky. its a part of how the search works. i think that as long as your trying to get views for the site, the system will pick your images at random and place them on the first and second pages. if a buyer sees and buys it. it will happen more often. you will sometimes see your work high up and on a refresh its gone again. the harder sales are the 2nd and 3rd. of course don't stop what your doing, but i have found this observation to be true, and more often than not it seems to be tied into the forum - where when you post a bunch your chance increases. but its hard to observe this when the person making the sale never comes into the forum.

an active forum promotes the site btw, it keeps you at the top of the search, google scans these and it's up in a matter of an hour.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

oh and the other thing you NEVER want to do is to cull out EVERYTHING you have and start over and over. google won't index you because you don't have steady links and the buyers won't be able to come back and see the thing they saw a month ago. this really applies more to people with free accounts that thinks its a good idea to remove and replace things.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

i've been here for about 3.5 years or so
views - 1,405,656
Sales - 1119

ratio 1256 views to sales

now the thing is, its a mathematical ratio not a golden number. i can get an average of 2000-3000 views a day (i haven't added them recently so those are old numbers). i don't get a sale based on the ratio, i may get 10,000 hits or more. i've also gotten returns back so that effects the grand total, and not all images are huge posters, a few dozen are cards. some months are better than others. sept did well, oct seems to be slow on all sites. hoping for a great nov and dec and beyond.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

:)) no difence in 60k/0 or 60k/1 return

Been here less than a month and sold a couple of prints. One to someone I know so not sure what counts.

I'm not sure there's a connection to the number of views and sales. Some views are bots, right? I think it's more the quality of views and the intent behind the views. 1k people may view my work without the intention to buy but visitor 1001 may have the intention needed. I think the key is getting purchasers to the art. Haven't figured out that magic as yet. :)

I count views from the place I took the photograph to mean more than random views from elsewhere. A few weeks ago, I sold a shot of a train station in Richmond, Va. to someone from Richmond, Va. I suspect he had come in before and found it and bookmarked the page -- riding past the car lot to paraphrase JC Findley -- then came back for it. Views from small towns like Lancaster and Chester, SC mean more to me because these are where I lived for a long time and where I take/took a lot of shots. On the other hand, I've never made a sale to those places. I can't confirm tis, but I believe I have made sales from those places to people FROMthose places too, who just live elsewhere.

I like Yo Pedro's idea with the spread sheets and was thinking about doing this too. I want to look at what I am selling -- sizes, are they matted and framed? Why does no one buy canvas and metal from me? I really think railroad images look great on metal. (And they're cheaper than prints!) These are things I want to tackle.

I don't talk specifically about sale numbers. I am selling better now than I did a year ago when I began selling much more than previously. I could tell you my average, but then you could go to my profile page and do the math. As I like to say, I am selling better now than I was, but not where I hope to be this time next year.

If you have a bunch of obtuse keywords your ratio will probably be worse than if you have targeted keywords.

I agree about things taking time... I sell on another site and all of 2013 I had 2 sales (I started there early last year). This year I have 28 sales there and counting. Hopefully next year I'll have even more. And I hope sales will eventually kick in here too if I keep at it long enough (even though the competition is extremely fierce).

It's easy to get discouraged when you go 2 or 3 months with no sales and barely any real views but it takes a long time to get established.

Its not about views....its about quality of the views.

Its about $ales!

and just because the viewer didn't buy anything, doesn't mean he didn't tell his friends about what they saw.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

If I had a dollar for every time somebody told someone about my art and they ACTUALLY came and bought a piece.....well.....I would still be broke!

Angelia asked "What about you? How do your sales average to views?"

Pretty low. Granted, they have been somewhat better this year since I raised my prices. I've been here 5 years. Over 1/2 million views and over 1600 works listed. And only 242 sales here during those 5 years, many of those being cards or the smallest size prints available. It seems the work I've had on here the longest is what sells. I really want to delete the older works, as I'm not doing work anywhere near those styles and my photography has evolved so much since then. However, every time I think about deleting the older ones, one of them will sell. SO...they stay. Maybe in a few years my work I've put up in the past year and a half will sell better. Who knows. I'm sure part of it is my subject matter. I don't have photos of famous places/cities or beach/ocean themed works, or work tied to specific careers or businesses, and that's the type of work which seems to sell best here from my observations. I have country scenes, lakes, rivers, wildlife and birds. So I'm sure my offerings are low on the popularity meter for FAA. (Though they do well on other websites.) I wish my work would sell better here on FAA, but I've given up trying to figure it out. I spend my days now in nature, away from the craziness of the world, photographing what I love and turning it into something beautiful for others to enjoy -- and I couldn't be happier! :)

5,319 views 3 months posting pictures and no sales. How does a person get that first sale. I work in photography

About 7500 views, 1 sale.

It's amazing to see how different everyone's experience is.

Hi Angelina ,
I've been here almost 2 years in November : 35,000 views & 41 sales = 853 views to Sale.
The only social marketing I do is FB & Pinterest, because that is about all I know how to do.

This year I will step it up - & try Twitter and Flickr.
Now that I have some inventory - I'd like to go back to just painting Watercolors. Probably should focus on getting some originals sold, as shows are just not dependable in my area.

Not a math whiz in any sense of the word but I've been here a year and half, 132 sales with 57,800 views- so by my calculations that is 437 views per sale.

A very interesting discussion. So far I have about 1300 views with no sales... I guess it is pretty bad. But after I saw this discussion, I guess it is just normal as I spend very little time on marketing. I guess I still have to wait a while for the first to come.

@andy, you have to watch your keywords and pasting them - that globe has the boat ref's in it.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comment. My intention was not to paste keywords. The globe in picture was actually taken in a vessel/boat (Friendship of Salem) and the guide told me that it is used as a tool for sailing in the past. That`s why I put boat as a keyword. So you think I should remove it? I am not very good at using keyword and sometimes not so sure what to put and what not to put. I often put the location of where I took the shot but for some of the macro/floral shot, I do find it meaningless to put a location as well...

So what do you think I should add and/or take off from my keywords?

Andy

Andy, personally because of the location and usage of that globe I would leave it in there though I am not the final authority on such things I think it works in this case.

when i think of boats i don't think of globes mostly. lots of things are found in boats. sailing maybe, because its an action word and it could use it. travel would work if its not there. i think it would be more fitting if teacher, school, education and globe related words were in there. the location - town, etc i wouldn't have in there. when i type maine i don't expect to see a globe especially when its pointing to south america. there are too many salem words.

still life,vintage,sepia,round,sphere,south america,educate,teacher,travel,adventure,tool,navigation,map etc would be more appropriate.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Andy,

I would add the word(s) Compass Rose to the keywords, as there are two that I see on the globe.

Interesting discussion. I have been with FAA for 4 years now. The first three and a half years, I did absolutely no marketing - no facebook, no twitter, no pinterest, nothing. I sold 4 items during that time and only got to about 3000 views. In June of this year, I decided to start doing more marketing - twitter, facebook page, and pinterest. I have also added new images almost daily to my portfolio and now have just over 300 images. Since I started marketing in June, I have had NO sales and currently have over 61,000 views. So, that's over 15,000 views per sale!!!!! Any suggestions?

Judy - where are your views coming from? Internal FAA? Bots? Just by being here for 4 years means you gotten a lot of bot traffic. So the numbers look worse than they are.

More marketing and more images.

the 4 things you sold were lucky images. they found you accidentally. you aren't really known on the net right now because you just started advertising.

stay away from taking entries from wikipedia, google penalizes that. avoid really dark images or buildings that lean. the dark ones don't thumbnail well. don't bring people to your facebook page in the bio. they won't leave, but they will check their own stats.

don't post your pictures to twitter, it becomes a gallery and no one will look at the work if they think its just pictures. when you hashtag mention the subject more than art and decor. mention the person who might want it.. beyond that you have to be persistent. whatever you sold make more of that thing.

enter all the contests each week. and join more groups.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Hi, I'm just a few months into FAA so only 600 some visitors and no sales yet. Am surprised by which pictures get the most views. Not necessarily the ones I would pick as favorites.

Thanks Edward and Mike for your suggestions.