For Those Of You That Like Stats

Interesting, that's a lot of work. No tee time today?

Thanks again!,, I remember when you compiled the innfo in the summer.. This is kinda what I suspected again...as far as the avg amt of images needed on here to start selling well. But i think it needs to be around 1200 or so..I think that is the sweet spot. and, of course, content.

I do think that the listing of sold items is not very accurate though. I have seen it change drastically when I reloaded the page.

Heading out for a few holds. I sprained my ankle Sunday and giving it a bit of a rest.

"I do think that the listing of sold items is not very accurate though. I have seen it change drastically when I reloaded the page."

Yup, I had to start and stop a couple of time because I accidently reloaded the page.

The percentages and basically all of the numbers are going to change a bit but the accuracy with in I would guess will be within 5-8% margin of error. Which is close enough for government work as the say. !!

Paintings sell the most yet the site seems to want more photographers. I.e. photo contests, ads featuring photographers, etc.

It would be interesting to see the ratio of photographer to painter members or the ratio of new members coming on to the site by medium.

ugh, let it heal I sprained mine a year ago and sometimes it still gets sore

Floyd, you could analysis the mediums of the artists listed as "popular" on the home page:

Terry O'Neill
Anne Geddes
Michael Godard
Budi Kwan
Scott Listfield
Eric Fan

Great thread. When I first joined I was also reviewing the recently sold art, based on the date of the upload, then the amount of comments, likes and faves.
The main reason was to determine whether the artist had to promote their work through the various groups.

I also read somewhere that there are those who create a separate account to buy from their own stock. That seems a bit like an urban legend. To me, it all seems to be a bit
of a shell game. I'm still pretty new here and am enjoying getting to see everyone's work and being a part of a group. I'm still on the fence about having a facebook/twitter/instagram/pinterest and will continue to read other's experience.

Cheers to all.

Wow Floyd...what a lot of work! I was surprised that the painters out sold the photographers.

Hope that sprain heals quickly!

Thank you for gathering the info for this thread. It seems that the volume of work that a photographer or painter has in their portfolio plays a significant role in sales. More so than some of the other parameters ... comments, votes, views etc. I'm sure that the number of sales a person already has is right up there as a driving force but this adds another piece of valuable information. Thanks again, Floyd.

~Helen

"ugh, let it heal I sprained mine a year ago and sometimes it still gets sore"

About 20 minutes in and I was done.... no such thing as healing fast when you are an old dude!! lol

"Floyd, you could analysis the mediums of the artists listed as "popular" on the home page"

You right... be nice to know... it is your turn. Let us know what you find out. lol

Dang, not sure I am going to be able to leave that alone now that you brought it up! :-)

And yet again I will say that we have several sellers who have a very small amount of images here and who sell very well due to not worrying about stats here but in actually going out and selling their work.

As Sean has also stated to someone else that complied lists of data, they cannot get a good or truthful reading off just the sales page as that is only a small percentage of the overall sales on the site you actually see.

So I am not disputing all the work that seems to have gone into this but I can say that some small amount up loaders do very well (better than someone that spends all their time sitting on the forum stressing over it) and that the sold page is not an overall picture of all sales on the site.

Yup, I agree, and I made sure to point that out. There are a number of low upload sellers doing very well.

It does not take much in the way of a sampling size to come up with accurate figures. They launch million dollar ad campaigns on very, very small samplings. I would guess much smaller than the one I have here especially when coupled with the one I did a couple years back that sampled the recently sold over several weeks and the results were nearly the same.

I would hope that a person with a small number of up loads would find encouragement in knowing that it is being done and also take heed of what Abbie has said in other threads about promoting and presentation.

I also agree, you should not be stressing at all over sales. Stressing has never sold a thing.

Back to the sampling of the recently sold. I was told that everything flows onto that page so if that is true, the sampling is about as good of random sampling as you are going to get.

They predict consumer behavior on a lot smaller sampling sizes.

The ones I have a lot of experience with are political campaigns. Even with 24/7 news flow, they are actually fairly accurate on very, very small sampling sizes. Where we get into trouble is when a candidate drops a bombshell or really steps in a mess the instant the survey is released. Hate that when it happens. :-)

Why do painting out sell photos? (if they do). My guess - original paintings are too expensive for a lot of people so prints represent an affordable options. Can't afford a Picasso? Buy the print.

...
Statistically 400 data points from a random sample gives a very accurate prediction. Even less can give a general idea of what the trends are.

Floyd

Thanks for sharing your information. Since we receive little or no actual data on which to base our marketing decisions, your work is especially appreciated. I am not sure yet what, if any, conclusions I can draw from it, but it is appreciated none the less. A marketing strategy that consists of simply "not" worrying about data seems overly simplistic and not very effective.

Welcome Nancy! I think it is only natural for people to try to come up with their own stats when none exists, if they think they may help. Of course as mentioned in my OP, as long as they are done with the right motive. I hope I have conveyed that.

Thanks for sharing that info Floyd.

Welcome kind sir!

I have answered that question several times and have no problem answering it.

Of the 4600 images I have, about 1/3 of the are my own. The rest are both dead, public domain and live artist that I have official dealerships or personal contracts to sell their work. The ratio of sales is about the same as the ratio of mine own uploads and all the other uploads.

My images include images uploaded under the name of both Barbara and Floyd Snyder.

Point of clarification. The Living artist with the exception one artist, maybe two, I am selling Signed and Numbered, limited editions and not POD images. The other two I am selling open edition lithos and none POD images.

Because I am trying to quite all together and I have pretty much cut back on all marketing of FAA images. I have several other outlets I sell through, none of them POD and the marketing is pretty much on automatic pilot. I have an account with web.com and they do a lot of it and I use Constant Contract for diret mail. None of it, or very little is aimed at FAA.

I have about $250,000 (retail value) of both limited editions and open edition in my mini warehouse. I have zero cost bases in my inventory so it is all golf money when I sell from that inventory. I also dropship for three of my largest suppliers. There is no work in the dropship but there is nice money in it. I have a serious golf habit. My wife has the habit as well. I think I could probably save money if we were hooked on coke instead of golf. lol

I keep adding images to FAA. When I give it up, I am going to leave it to a local nonprofit that supports art for kids. Hopefully in the schools.

Thank you for the work you did and sharing with us! Great work done...

Floyd,

What is interesting is not the exacting raw data, exact or not because of how things do not show up in the feed, but
instead who is marketing and how.

Painters are often in galleries where they have a built in marketing campaign.

Photographers less so.

Digital artists maybe not at all.

So this begs the question how well can someone do with just marketing for free on SM?

Dave

I am a stat nerd. I love stats. Stats can be extremely useful or they can just be more data and interesting but not helpful.

The stats Floyd posted are quite useful to me as far as an answering questions from people on the forum standpoint. As far as how useful they are for me to increase my own sales not at all. It is kind off like when I say the site as a whole is increasing sales and doing very well but Floyd points out that means nothing to an individual seller.

Well, it does and it doesn't really. It can show you that what you are doing CAN work, but you still have to figure out how to actually make it work for you on an individual basis.

the only problem with stats is - you don't know who is buying their own work. there could be scores of painters that don't know they can print elsewhere or trust this site to do all their printing for a gallery show. where as photographers may do it locally for that. and as pointed out the sales page is a sample and even when reloaded, unless you kept track of all the names and images, its really easy to count some things twice or even thrice.

but those stats, most of that i can't use anyway, since i don't paint and even if i did it would really depend on the painting.

and of course, the ones that were called paintings - were they painted? or was it a digital painting? or something marked as a painting when it really was a photo etc.

the amount of stuff a person has doesn't really count in an equation though, because if i pared down only the images that sell over and over and made a new store, i would have a very small number. i have many images that never sell at all. however the selection is still nice to go through.

and in the terms of painters there are some that can produce very fast and therefore have a lot.

and there are also people who did actually erase their images and pared them down.

the stats are fun to look at watercooler style, but beyond that i can't see how chasing these views help a whole lot.


for your ankle try Arnica Montana or Ruta Grav products, they are homeopathic things that work pretty well. not too expensive, i carry them in my photo bag when i twist something or get a bruise.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Interesting stat I heard about Fantasy sports - 91% of the winnings go to 1% of the participants. Most people play for fun while a few quit their jobs and do it full time. I'm sure its the same with a lot of things.

...
Volume only works if you have quality to begin with. Just adding hundreds of crappy snapshots isn't going to do much. Create quality and people notice and share it.

"Well, it does and it doesn't really. It can show you that what you are doing CAN work, but you still have to figure out how to actually make it work for you on an individual basis.'

100% true! That is why I said in the OP: not to mention that they are just very interesting and can tell us a lot about what is going on and what is happening even if you can't figure out a way to put them to good use.

"Painters are often in galleries where they have a built in marketing campaign. "

As mentioned above, galleries were not included. Only individual sellers. If you include the galleries, stock and other institutions, the upload averages will be much higher. Everyone pretty much knows these people are here and I am not sure they care, or at least I don't think they should care, how they measure up to them. I am not saying they are not a factor or in competition. But for comparing apples to apples they were eliminated.

Me thinks - A small percentage of painters pursue or are accepted in galleries. Same with photographers. Very small percentage of the people who own cameras actually do photography as a living.

"the only problem with stats is - you don't know who is buying their own work. there could be scores of painters that don't know they can print elsewhere or trust this site to do all their printing for a gallery show. where as photographers may do it locally for that. "

Not exactly sure what the point is here but for the purpose of doing what I did or what I was looking to see I am not sure it is relevant. This was pretty much an attempt to put raw data in an order to see a specific thing.

"as pointed out the sales page is a sample and even when reloaded, unless you kept track of all the names and images, it's really easy to count some things twice or even thrice.'

As stated above, the page was not reloaded and duplicates were not counted as best a possible. The sampling, combined with the past survey I did that had weeks of data included, is more than sufficient to make it a valid sampling."

Also stated above, the categories were taken from upload information digital had its own category. I looked at them as best I could to make some evaluation and nothing stood out. But for purposes of this survey it was not relevant. I assume the data was true and accurate and was not interested in challenging the integrity of the members that posted the information in their uploads.And I know you are not saying that. My original thinking was to put them in with the painters. But I seperated them thinking there was actually be more sold. Plus anyone can lump them together if they wanted.

And you menting that brings up another interesting point that when lumped together the photographers are even less dominate then one may have previously thought.

And ya, I agree that there are a lot of variables and some people don't care a thing about this sort of stuff.

Thanks for the tips on the med products. I will check them out.

"A small percentage of painters pursue or are accepted in galleries.'

Ya, that is really a pretty mixed bag. I was really surprised when that came up when I took the original survey. I was really surprised how many paintings actually did show in some of larger galleries. But then you have to figure out if they are public domain painters or not. Obviously you can recognize the big names, Van Gogh, Charles Russell, etc etc. But there are a lot of them you can't.

Than there are those galleries where a number of artist are sharing the same account. And of course there are even more unusual galleries like mine where I have living artist that are painters and I am an authorized seller of their images.

I was best to leave them out if no other reason, the sake of accuracy.

But over all I would pretty much agree with that Ed. But you would also be surprised how many people that want me to add their images to my gallery. I get a few emails every year asking me that.

"So this begs the question how well can someone do with just marketing for free on SM? "

Excellent question. And one I would like to be able to come up an answer.

The "guess" is one can and does sell via SM. I am convinced that I do. But lacking the tracking data that tells us where our sales are coming from we have no idea to what to what degree SM is selling.

The other thing is we can't ever see if we are getting direct hits because of SM or they are coming through Google search because of having posted the images in SM. According to Abbie, most sales come from Google search. If they are coming from Google search because of the bots finding them from our presence on FAA/Pixels or because Google bots found them via our SM activity. We really don't know.

I do know that since I pretty much stopped advertising FAA on SM I have only seen a small downtick in sales. I was expecting to see a larger dip. What I have seen was a much more erratic sales pattern. Four of five sales in 32 hours or so, then nothing for three days and then 3 in one day.... herkey-jerky is the best description I have come up with. Do they teach that as a business term in MBA programs? lol

What is "SM"?

Thank you for the information, Floyd. It does make one think.

Social Media

Floyd,

Thanks for the work and the information on this. Having failed "statistics 101" a few times, I still feel that this analysis is credible, since the "source" of the information is from a large group and regardless if it includes the entire sales or just a segment of those sales, and then images listed on the " Recently Sold" page, haven't been hand picked, but are also random, then the ending result is accurate.

Anyone that actually "likes" math can jump in, but this is ALL I remember from those classes!!! LOL!

Rich

It's funny that you like doing statistics and you're an artist. The two traits wouldn't seem to go together.

I did nuclear spectroscopy stats for sixteen years. Some days were spent doing calculations all day long. People would shake their heads asking me how I did it.

Of course some paintings take a long time as well, so the ability to bore myself to death for long periods of time was the real skill in doing statistics for a living.

Thank you for doing this, it's not just interesting, it's hopeful as well. Thanks again.

Lisa,

As a "Stat" nut, do you agree with my "hypothesis" that Floyd's information, regardless of the "size of the group" as long as it's a random group, the end results are accurate?

Rich

Rich, I'll have to create a spreadsheet and get back to you on it...if I should make the time. (Smile)

I never give an opinion until my stats are peer reviewed (very painful scientific process that results in error findings) and blind studies that have been done to validate my work (a joyous process that validates what I know to be true). In statistics, one can come up with a few different perspectives, but a hopeful analysis is always preferable to anything else!

Lisa,

Is there an "english" of what you just said??? LOL!

No, what I'm asking an "expert" is if my hypothesis is correct. When studying a group, whether it's 100,000 or 1,000, if the study group is reflective of the overall group, random and not chosen, wouldn't the results be accurate. Understanding that the larger the group, the more accurate the results would be and vice versa,

Rich

Rich, there are many variables...would you like several spread sheets to show the stats on how that might look? I charge 90 an hour and the spreadsheet might cost a little extra if I can't make "what the customer wants to see" work.

In other words, I always gave the customer what they wanted in mathematical terms. I was taught by a PhD in mathematics And my work had to be peer reviewed.

The reason you probably flunked statistics is that it's a bit like magic, and one has to get the right figures that are being analyzed to create the spread you want others to see. It's not complicated, (you can actually pull from the group you're looking to create stats for with the naked eye) and it's what business' do to make things work for them, get funding and look good on paper. I never fully trust statistics, but we use stats to prove our work.. in every industry. You can, in fact, create any stat you want to by pulling from varying groups, but the math is another story...usually you need an approved spread sheet. One that has been checked by other professionals in your field. A statistician may have to prove themselves or their work...it's not subjective in any way like a great many statements on this forum.

So if what you want to hear is yes, you are correct, than yes, you are correct, but in order for me to prove that, refer to my pricing in the first sentence.

Lisa,

Thank you for that "final answer"!

Do you take Sears?

Rich

Something that would be interesting to know - What was the buyer looking for and why did they end up here? Lots of options out there. The reasons behind coming to this particular site are important selling points.

Looking for a certain artist? Framing options available? Price? Ease of use? Reputation? Past use? etc. lot of variables go into a purchase decision.

Floyd - how about some stats on framed vs, canvas vs rolled in a tube etc.? Next time you get a free morning.

Ed, I actually have a spread sheet laid out for that and I started to look into that. But the more I looked the more it looked like a career opportunity.

The problem was there was too much data to collect. framed, matted, glazed what kind of glazing, what kind of paper, what size and on and on...

Rich

Your hypothesis is correct assuming a large enough sample size.

Gracias! Mi Amigo!

That is what I thought, no charge, right?

Rich

My smoker is ready, how about you?

What good are these stats in the real world? Seems that mass inventory does help make sales but where in all this is fine art?

Vincent,

Information is King on the Internet and Floyd did a good job filling in a few holes that FAA doesn't provide it's Artists,

Rich

Statistics are critical for any business. All businesses have very private profit goals. A statistician can help them achieve that. It's very kind to run stats as Floyd has done, I think the most important thing is that his calcs are telling us an important thing...get a lot of work out there. Go to work and get your best images uploaded and as many as possible. Thank you, Floyd! I think that is very positive information that will work well for me.

Thank you Lisa!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Gathering stats is all fine and that
But analysis where the gold is at.

Not much analysis need here. It is pretty much straight forward.

Not like a double blind FDA study to get a new drug approved. Just the number of sales vs uploads vs artists, photographers and digital. Wasn't looking for anything else. That would take a lot more data points. Maybe some other time as we talked above.

Thanks for posting these Floyd. Happy Thanksgiving!