I Wish Views Mattered...

That's a lot of views! Congrats on passing the million mark. Your work is outstanding by the way...All the best

It really annoys me that our visitor views include bots, it means the statistics are useless.

I sort of agree, but if your views are not in the millions, like in the hundreds, and you have been here for a while...thats a problem!

I'd disagree Newwwman. I've been here since 2009 - my view count is only 320k and I still do alright out of FAA. I'm not sure what that says and perhaps I'd have even more sales if my view count were higher, I'm just not prepared to spend every waking moment pushing on social media though. My choice, but I don't see it as a 'problem'.

I noticed your greeting cards are priced at $13.95. That seems excessive. Keep in mind that "landscape" is the top keyword provided by members - so its the most competitive subject.

They do matter. The more traffic I get the more I sell. So I like to see that number consistently and significantly go up.

Greeting cards should be thought of as little prints. People frame them. I've seen cards priced much higher than Jeff's selling regularly. If you can get it, go for it! If not, then maybe consider lowering. Mine are 11.95 each and I sell tons.

Obviously for someone to buy your art they have to see it. Therefore views matter. The odd thing is that often times I have sold work to a buyer whose location doesn't match the IP location (understandably) but also the time stamp bears no correlation either.

I agree with Sharon 100%.

BTW, my cards retail for 15 and they sell fine.

Jeff - how are your cards selling?

As far as the views go, Jeff has an extremely popular blog for people looking for travel advice. Not really people in looking to buy art. Pricing needs to be in the "impulse" range if its a item they are not intending to purchase.

....

"peaked in Aug through Nov" Because its mostly from your New England foliage blog i.e. people looking for travel tips.

...
My suggestion would be to take your top 12 foliage shots (location non-specific) and market the heck out of them. Get them pumped in search, produce a calendar with them etc.

Write a little book on foliage photography tips or locations and put it up on Amazon.

my cards retail for $18.95 and they sell just fine. cheaper to ship a card and frame it.


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

And yet the fact that some established artists sell at a higher price has no bearing on Jeff's audience or search standings.

It's not the number of views that is useful though, it's being able to identify how traffic is arriving at each image. Being able to identify where viewers came from (not location , but which site drove them to you), which search terms they used and where they went, etc is of use to your marketing. The absolute number of hits is of very little use other than to show that the images are actually being seen, whether by real people of bots. I have sold several images in the past with fewer than 20 views, yet many of my "active" images have never sold.
It has to be right place, right time, I guess.

If your marketing is only reaching bots you'll get no sales, bots don't buy art. That's the problem with such an ambiguous number, we have no idea if any actual warm bodies are viewing our work. A high view count could just mean you do a lot of tweeting and nothing more. I could send out 100 tweets a day which would give me at least 1000 "views" a day but the chances it would result in any sales are quite low. A high view count only means you are using social media, not that you are using it effectively, so the view count number is only a rough indicator of how hard you're trying, not whether anything you are doing is working, therefore I don't pay much attention to it.

I think that's the point that Jeff is making, David. "Views" is perhaps a misnomer. We used to call them "hits" in the old days as they only mean the page has been accessed, not "viewed" in any meaningful manner.

Jeff,

How many of the 5,999 actual users/visitors have bought anything?

What is the ratio?

Dave

I agree with David. I may be wrong, but my first experience via twitter was not pleasant, exactly because of that. For me, simply too artificial and for now I chose not to continue.
Moreover, my first and only sale so far (maybe it was random, maybe not) happened when I had only 20 views and nothing on social network.

Not always, but bots usually leave a trace. They usually visit groups of 3 or 4 images, sometimes 2 or even all your gallery at the same time. If all these views occurred at exactly the same second, there he is! Of course, something that you can monitor for those with only 543 views (my case). Difficult for those who have thousands.

I do not know how many views you need to sell, but I know that for every sale, there must have been at least one view.

Jeff,

Many of us have to specialize for our audience. You have me digging through my useless data. No sales plenty of data.

The difference between my website and my AW is that many of the people who are artists here have seen my work and my AW, while
my website was introduced later and the same people have seen the work just wanting to see how I did my website. That along with
the fact that it takes an extra click to see my images from bridburg.com, so the bounce rate is higher and the time on site is lower.

Sounds like your SEO is aimed perfectly for those who want information. And very poorly for those who would want a print.
I have been working SM hard, but not with people who would want a print. Up until now. That in November began to change.

My AW since Sept 1, 2014,

Sessions
4,926

Users
3,882

Pageviews
12,723

Pages / Session
2.58

Avg. Session Duration
00:01:46

Bounce Rate
69.69%

% New Sessions
78.81%

My website bridburg.com since January this year,


Sessions
6,073

Users
5,317

Pageviews this does not include how on my site the user goes to my AW when seeing my galleries and images.
9,133

Pages / Session Non inclusive of my AW gallery and image offerings.
1.50

Avg. Session Duration
00:01:13

Bounce Rate this bounce rate may not include users seeing my AW Galleries and Images.
79.20%

% New Sessions
87.55%

Also people entering bridburg.com being followed by GA, who then go to my AW through bridburg.com get their own GA stats
not seen on my AW stats. I know this from elsewhere. So GA for bridbug.com does not pick up the gallery or image views that are AW tabs
on bridburg.com. And neither do the GA AW stats.

the whole idea is to get people to your page. they may not buy the thing you advertise. usually people find their way to my store and buy something else. often with few views. but if your site isn't getting bot hits - then your not advertising. the fact its going up is a good thing. bot hits - aren't all robots, some are google searches with people attached to them.

to get a sale you need 1 view from 1 person. but it doesn't have to be viewed here. it could be on a blog.

my views right now are 2,328,992 i wish each one was a sale. with an average of about 3000 hits a day. all views are good because it means searches are updated, people are looking etc.


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

Much of what we take as bots are just one server acting as a jumping off point for some group of viewers.

Not all bots are bots.

If I show some of your art to family and friends, if those friends are all around CT, then a New York city server might be picking up all those signals at once.
That is all we would see in the FAA stats.

I agree with Mike's points as well.

But boiling it down to who will buy matters.

Dave

I am curious how BOTs decide on which images to "view"..... I find it so varied. I wonder how they choose. For instance, I have one image that has been views "thousands" of times.... and others maybe only a couple of hundred. How are they selected?

I think we all know that not all views are bots, and that views from bots are good, not bad. The question is how many of those views are by people and not bots, that would be a for more useful indicator of how well your marketing is working, without knowing that we are just shooting in the dark.

Jeff,

You might want to sign up for Google Adwords. There is a keyword planner on that site that shows how traffic is flowing from search.

For instance from Aug to Nov 33k people per month on average searched for "fall pictures", but only 20 people searched for Jeff Folger.
The difference is stark. No one searches for "fall prints". At least as results in the planner when searching your name.


Dave

bots look at everything for the most part. but i think it centers around how well you spread your links out. as the bot see's a new link in a new place it will go to that site and re-index it. so the more people view the image and post it to facebook, twitter, blogs etc, the bot comes back each time. also each location has its own bots that it sends.

i tried adwords, couldn't make heads or tails of it. gave up when it started setting up flowcharts and stuff. not user intuitive.

people look for fall pictures because they want to update their screen on their computer or whatever. or they want to see locations to shoot themselves.

i use statcounter, wish i had it on all pages. but it doesn't show anything but a google bot, just people looking at the site, and if i'm lucky i see the search they were using.


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

Mike,

I do not use adwords. I only use the keyword planner. Gives you an idea of what people use Google to search for.

Can statscounter be added to the AW's again? Is it the Irish company you use?


Dave

i haven't checked if sean allows code, but probably not. you only get analytics for the AW which is better than nothing, but the stats are useless there.

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

so keyword planner says people search mike savad - 320 times a month or 690 depending where you look. i guess that's good. i don't know what that bar graph is supposed to represent. and related searches center around me, that fake thing is on in there though.

for jeff, his name is low, but related searches is high.

and for dave's his name is low, but is related to yamaha keyboards and impact drills. how or why i don't know.

so whatever it is we are doing advertising. our names are associated in good ways.


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

The views do matter but not in the way you would like them to.

The views are not driven by sales or even lookers, they are driven by bots. Somewhere buried in all those views are your buyers.

But again, the relationship to buyer are so obscured that they really do not and cannot give you any reliable data.

For instance.

A large number of my sales come from images that have very low number of views, in some case less than 100. If I sell that image three times, and that has happened, the average is one in 33 views. Now put the images in the mix with an image that has 2000 views and zero sales. And you get an average of 700 views to one sale. But how reliable is that average?

So you look at that average and you say okay that is my average, I will get one sale for every 700 views. But wait, your next sale is that image that has 2000 views and no sales. That changes the entire picture. Now the average has dropped by 25% to a 525 averages But look at the numbers more closely.

What you are averaging is one print that has a 3 to 100 views average with a print that has a 1 to 2001 views to sales average. So the reality on the 3 to 100 is on in every 33 views while the other it is 1 in every 2001. Neither one is even close to you over all average when the two are combined.

When you multiply that by your total number of sales and count the total number of views for the entire gallery, the number is more radically blown out of proportion, making it unreliable simply because on each additional sale the numbers can and usually do change radically making the numbers unreliable.

What the views will measure to some degree is the response to your advertising, but with no respect to success as far as sales go. Everyone already knows without ever looking at their views that you have to attract lookers to generate buyers.

Advertising is what is generating sales. Bots are generating views and distorting any meaningful from being learned.

Now all that said, I would be pleased as punch if some numbers cruncher that has a better understanding of all of this then I do, which probably wouldn’t take much, would come in here and prove me wrong and tell us how to get something we can actually use out the data we are getting.

Mike,

There is the average searches per month, and then the low or high is how much you have to pay Google to use the keyword to advertize against.

I have no idea about impact drills. And a few days ago Harold and I were discussing AA so now I have email ads about going to Rehab. LOL sober 22 years.
My spam folder gets those.

I looked up keyboards yesterday and started doing reviews of them.

Dave

Floyd,

lies, damn lies, and stats.


Dave

"That changes the entire picture. Now the average has dropped by 25% to a 525 averages But look at the numbers more closely. "

My average is one sale for about 12,500 views. lol

"lies, damn lies, and stats. "

I love this Dave, and then there is the one that goes "Figures don't lie, but liars do figure".

Floyd,

I worked as a paralegal after college, just briefly. The lawyers figured out that I never passed a bar.

I read a motion one day for a case. The math did not add up at all in the motion. Later that evening walking down
a hallway with the principle of the firm that wrote the motion and three other lawyers I got the idea to explain that the
math did not add up.

Two things happened. One I was told legal math does not have to add up and usually does not.
And two I was almost fired. Actually it went into the process of letting me go. They had meetings.

Meanwhile as those meetings were going on about how I was not licking their boots, I was hacking the computer system.
I found another principles memo asking that I be laid off.

I was ill-equipped with my undiagnosised auditory at that time to be a lawyer. I was even more ill-equipped to kiss their butts.

And I was drunk every evening on my first paychecks and hung over every morning.

Nothing was going right. Misery.

Being an artist, if I do not sell for the next five to ten years I still would be good to go. There are no promises in this life so you take
your happiness as you find it.

Dave

After 4 months at FAA and getting a grip on the drill of views, social media strategies, etc., I have amassed a basis to evaluate certain methods. Beginning January 1, I will start a 3 month strategy and testing of a minimal social media interaction. This will be interesting to see the results but I do not expect any conclusions until this time next year.

WOW! In a little over 3 years I am at 326,000. You have a great bot following! :) Merry Christmas. May the Bots Be with You and may the Bots be ever in your favor.

Useful number crunching bots and all.

OK, I make a sale every 500 views site wide. That includes bot views. (Now that Wilmington is not hitting me 2000 times a day anyway.) My average revenue per sale is $70 which has stayed remarkably stable over my four years plus here.

That means 500 views = $70. That means each view is worth 14 cents to me. Thus, if I wanted to make money using Google ad words the break even spot for that is 14 cents per click. Now, in theory, a real person view that is actually searching for something they want will be worth more than 14 cents because that 14 cents/view include bots and a real person is worth considerably more.

There ya have it, useful info bots and all.

JC, that is way over simplifying the issue. I just don't think that it is as straight forward as that. I wish it was. Have you done the exact same math 3-6 individual months in a row? Did that $500 - $70 hold up?

If you take the entire view count over the full time you have been here, you are going to smooth those radical shifts out. But that does no make the data any more reliable especially on a monthly bases.

It didn't when I tracked it for six individual months and I could see it wasn't going to after just three. That average changed radically nearly every month. If you get a bot attack over the next three days or even an intense one like we have seen in one day, all that data is blown out of the water.

Crazy analogy for you.

You take off on a road trip from New York to Los Angeles and you set your dash board computer to track your average speed and take off.

You pretty much hold to the freeways and pretty close to the speed limits 65-70 miles an hour. But, everything you come to race track, you take the opportunity to make a 25-50 laps around the track averaging over 125 miles an hour. You do that ten or 12 times, maybe more.

When you get to LA and you check you dash board computer and it tells you you averaged 100 miles an hour. Do you go forward with that 100 mph figure and plan all of future road trips on that obviously flawed data? Or do you try to throw out all those race track laps and get more reliable data?

Race Track Laps = Bots.

Bottom line imho, is the bots taint the data to the point to where it is unreliable and I hope the new states that Abbie talked about a month of so back will no longer include them.

Okay... I will leave it at that before I get accused of dominating all the threads again. lol

I've never really tried to work out views against sales. If I did, I would be RICH by now!
All I know is that my sales are down this year to my previous years on FAA.

In 4.5 yrs on FAA, my views show at 15.5 million!! I am presuming that probably 90%+ are bots. (The bots attack my images like flies)!
Perhaps my efforts on social media are attracting the wrong viewers.... or my images are just plain 'not good enough' ?

Any thoughts most welcome :)

That 500views/sale holds remarkably stable from month to month.

The only huge skew was when Wilmington went active.

Just a point of clarification. Each Individual months or just adding the last moth to the previous 30 or 40 or how ever many?

Not questing you, just not sure my slow mind is up to speed. lol

Each month.

Kaye, your images are plenty good enough.

First thing I see, but reluctant to open up the whole watermark issue, but the watermarks are an issue.

But then I see two links in your bio that send people away from you gallery. Not sure I would want to do that. I spend a lot of time and some money to get them to my bio. I don't want to give them any opportunity at all to leave if I can possible help it.

But those are minor things I guess. Not sure if the combination add up to a bigger problem or not.

But 15 Million views... even with the bots, that a huge number and one would think there should have been some significant number of buyers in that many views.

On the other hand, it sure proves my point. The views are unreliable.

Thanks JC.... well, I guess you really were going 100 miles per hour!! lol

The only think I don't like about the bots is that they cover up other hits so a lot of the time it looks like I am only getting bots.

Sometimes what you think is a bot isn't, especially the New York ones.

That means 500 views = $70. That means each view is worth 14 cents to me. Thus, if I wanted to make money using Google ad words the break even spot for that is 14 cents per click.

JC,

Clicks on an image are more than bots towards sales.

Your break even is $70 worth of clicks, not 500 views.

If you buy for $70 clicks at 50 cents each that means you have 140 clicks. How many views is unknown because
people who are inside the system often see more than one image. You might assume the clicker was more interested
than most....or you wrote the ad wrong and people with no interest click and just cost you money.

The whole thing is like the weather in a super computer. You see the butterfly flap its wings and either you get a cool breeze in Florida
or you get a hurricane. The point is there is no way of calculating the weather in advance. It is far too dynamic.

Dave

Thanks very much Floyd for your feedback.

I have always worried about the FAA watermark, and must say I do not make mention in my description that this will NOT show on prints.
I purely use the watermark for reasons of theft having already had a few problems. I will think on this one.

I have a link in my bio which leads to a photography course, but you may be right that leaving no links means they will not leave your site.
I also have 2 video clips which are large and intrude into/under my images.... looks bad.
MY PROBLEM IS: Since the changes to AW a year or more ago, I have been unable to change my AW bio. I cannot add, alter or delete anything.
(I have messaged Abbie and sent tickets, but no help).
My bio on FAA is OK and fits in the sidebar, but on AW, my videos intrude into the middle of the screen and it looks a mess.

Any alterations to Side Bar gives the following message. (This message also shows above my draft on this page too)??
OOPS... SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT
Message (HTML Allowed): You must enter a value.

Any further help would be appreciated.
Here is my AW link so you can see the sidebar mess: http://kaye-menner.artistwebsites.com/

Thanks, Kaye :)

"Your break even is $70 worth of clicks, not 500 views"

No, your "break even" is $30, the cost of membership

When something changes on an image page: new comment, view, like, SM post, at the very least FAA's server bots have to re-index the page. I'm also thinking that at certain specific times daily, the entire site is " refreshed", visited by a bot. Just a couple of thoughts. The whole bot activity thing is a hazy mystery.

Sorry I didn't get back sooner to everyone here. I didn't think I would get this many comments...

@Edward, thanks for the comment on my blog :-) As Sharon and others say, when I used to do craft fairs, 9 times out of 10 people who bough a 5x7 card ($4.00) from me said they were framing it and not mailing it out. My 5x7s that were matter out to 8x10 sold for $15.00 and they sold but not as well as my cards... So I charge a lot for small art to push them up to an equally priced print.

@David 5,999 users over 2.8 years equals 62 sales (one this afternoon) and to break this down better.. my first year 6 sales/1 owner purchase and 297 visitors
This year I had 32 sales and 3,346 visitors and 22,292 page views (as measured by Google Analytics, so....
so 62 sales (2 were owner) and 5999 customers basically 1 sale per hundred... Not good in math but this sounds right...
And thanks Dave for telling me no one is looking for me :-( Now I feel so much better! I usually see a few searches for Jeff Folger or Jeff Foliage end up at my blog a week. in fact.. over the past year 106 people searched for Jeff Foliage very few for Jeff Folger and 752 search for "fall foliage forecast 2015" This is on page one #6 in Google when I'm incognito and I am trying to rank for this. I'm concentrated in the fall foliage and that is where I try to make a dent. I hit 288K views this year and I'm shooting for 300K

@John Haldane "These aren't the bots you're looking for"... :-)

@Kaye, I'm afraid the problem with your side bar is they took away the ability to have code in there. If it's working and you don't need to change anything on your AW you're good. but if you want to change anything you will have to remove all code except for things like bolding text and other very simple html. I was told by Abbie about this.

Clyde Butcher's gallery in FL has three cards for $5. I guess he figures they are advertising and small stuff isn't his market. Everyone who stops by at least buys something. His market is people and companies who can afford large framed artwork. Maybe later in life those card buyers will come back and buy something large.

I sell my cards for $9.95 and get it. Hard to tell if I'd get more sales at a lower price or the same at a higher price. Anyway I make the boxes of cards more attractive.

I guess its all in how you see your market - people looking to cheap out and frame a card or the higher end of the market - people looking for show pieces for their home. Takes a lot fewer of the big sales to make up for a lot of tiny sales.

"No, your "break even" is $30, the cost of membership"

Not at all true when talking about advertising above and beyond just the 30 dollar upload fees.

"Not at all true when talking about advertising above and beyond just the 30 dollar upload fees."

Hmm. $30 is your absolute break even fee for using FAA. Other costs you incur are associated with your business. Yes, you can factor in advertising budget, camera equipment, other materials, insurance, laptop, even gas, wear and tear on your vehicle and your time, etc., but that are not your break even costs for using FAA.

All this obsession with views is quite fascinating to read - yes, obviously more hits means more likelihood of a sale but we simply don't have any useful data to be able to analyze anything of value other than a simple hit counter for each image. IMHO, instead of all the hand wringing and hypothesizing, time would probably be better spent on using any and all available SM outlets to simply drive as many people & bots to your AW pages...

@Kaye, I'm afraid the problem with your side bar is they took away the ability to have code in there. If it's working and you don't need to change anything on your AW you're good. but if you want to change anything you will have to remove all code except for things like bolding text and other very simple html. I was told by Abbie about this.

Thanks Jeff for your reply above.

I have tried so many times to alter my bio in sidebar text, or even delete the whole lot.
I have tried editing it in 'sidebar text' and also in '3. About' ...... and all I get is the following message:

OOPS... SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT
You can only use the following tags in your HTML: , , , , , , ,
, and .

It seems wrong to be unable to change my bio. I wish I could find an answer to this.
I am no expert on code / html !