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Understand your popularity on FA
18 years ago
General
I see lots of journals from people that worry about their popularity on this site and if people are giving them enough attention. Lots of people think that if they draw porn they'll become more popular. I'm going to show you a few things that should clarify how popular you are on this site.
First off everything is ultimately a factor of the number of watchers you currently have. The determining factor for the total number of watchers is a combination of artistic skill, subject matter, total number of submitted images, humor, community involvement and finally personality. This is the common order that influences watcher numbers from increasing influence to decreasing. Artistic skill is easily the most important factor and makes up roughly 60% of your total watching population. Subject matter can add up to 25% more people and includes whether you draw porn or not. Humor can draw in watchers as well as funny things are more likely to be shared. Community involvement is a factor of how much fan art you draw of popular characters, how many trades and commissions you do and whether you attend cons and actively engage the furry community. Personality can also be an important factor as some people will forego watching people they don't like, but most people will watch anyway if the other factors are high enough.
On to the ratios:
Your total number of views, favs and comments are each also a factor of the total number of your watchers and how good the particular image is relative to the others in your gallery.
Views : Watchers = 1:2 , for every 2 watchers you can expect one view of any submission.
Faves : Watchers = 1:10 , for every 10 watchers you can expect 1 fav for a new submission.
Comments : Watchers = 1:20 , for every 20 watchers you can expect 1 comment for a new submission.
Let's say you have 1000 watchers. This would mean that an average image in your gallery will have 500 views, 100 favs and 50 comments.
If you have only 100 watchers you can expect 50 views, 10 faves and 5 comments and have the exact same popularity ratio as the one with more watchers.
These are the average ratios for an image of average quality relative to the other images in your gallery. A really nice image in your gallery will achieve double those ratios. So if you have 1000 watches and make an image that is particularly good you can attain 1000 views, 200 faves and 100 comments.
There are other methods of changing these ratios:
-Funny pic: High comment to fav ratio. People tend to comment more on funny images but won't fave them if the art isn't good.
-Risky Fetish: High view to fav ratio. Lots of people are interested in the art but are afraid of revealing their enjoyment of said fetish.
So remember
-Everything is a factor of watchers.
Views : Watchers = 1:2
Faves : Watchers = 1:10
Comments : Watchers = 1:20
First off everything is ultimately a factor of the number of watchers you currently have. The determining factor for the total number of watchers is a combination of artistic skill, subject matter, total number of submitted images, humor, community involvement and finally personality. This is the common order that influences watcher numbers from increasing influence to decreasing. Artistic skill is easily the most important factor and makes up roughly 60% of your total watching population. Subject matter can add up to 25% more people and includes whether you draw porn or not. Humor can draw in watchers as well as funny things are more likely to be shared. Community involvement is a factor of how much fan art you draw of popular characters, how many trades and commissions you do and whether you attend cons and actively engage the furry community. Personality can also be an important factor as some people will forego watching people they don't like, but most people will watch anyway if the other factors are high enough.
On to the ratios:
Your total number of views, favs and comments are each also a factor of the total number of your watchers and how good the particular image is relative to the others in your gallery.
Views : Watchers = 1:2 , for every 2 watchers you can expect one view of any submission.
Faves : Watchers = 1:10 , for every 10 watchers you can expect 1 fav for a new submission.
Comments : Watchers = 1:20 , for every 20 watchers you can expect 1 comment for a new submission.
Let's say you have 1000 watchers. This would mean that an average image in your gallery will have 500 views, 100 favs and 50 comments.
If you have only 100 watchers you can expect 50 views, 10 faves and 5 comments and have the exact same popularity ratio as the one with more watchers.
These are the average ratios for an image of average quality relative to the other images in your gallery. A really nice image in your gallery will achieve double those ratios. So if you have 1000 watches and make an image that is particularly good you can attain 1000 views, 200 faves and 100 comments.
There are other methods of changing these ratios:
-Funny pic: High comment to fav ratio. People tend to comment more on funny images but won't fave them if the art isn't good.
-Risky Fetish: High view to fav ratio. Lots of people are interested in the art but are afraid of revealing their enjoyment of said fetish.
So remember
-Everything is a factor of watchers.
Views : Watchers = 1:2
Faves : Watchers = 1:10
Comments : Watchers = 1:20
I believe I've chocked more people then attracted them, but thats just how I work. ^_^
-Submitting during peak site usage hours in the eastern U.S. gets more exposure for your art as it lands in the recent submissions list just as people are pulling up the main page.
-I notice that the ratios you discuss are a tell tale sign of how popular someone's work is. The someone with a view:watch of 2:1 is producing much more compelling work than someone eeking out a view:watch of 4:1 as more people merely pass by the latter gallery.
The ratios are very much in regards to an average piece. A piece that is below the average quality found in your gallery will have worse ratios.
Also, I wonder how many of the watches I have are due to that one animation for
Especially when they aren't wanted. Hehehehe
A gallery with 5 high quality images will get more watchers than one with 200 napkin scrawls.
I think perhaps the quality of art is a limiting factor rather than a cumulative one. What I mean by this is, that you can spam crap, and you'll quickly hit a threshold where there will be virtually no more users interested in your art. But I think that to maximise the potential involved in excellent art, there must be a somewhat comparative level of work.
Good work will get more views per artwork, but the cumulative effect of a large yet crap gallery is worth more in the short term.
Overall, seems pretty accurate and reasonable. I've recently had someone who had never met me before, tell me that I was 'an internet boom' and I think I'm still blushing from the flattery of that statement.
I draw porn cause I like porn.
:3
I need to draw more dammat.
*starts watching her own pictures for similar trends*
And I just realized something else that helps get you noticed. Your avatar ;3
/rubs the squishy belly ^-^
Ive seen that if you do a comission for someone, and he/she posts the pic with a link to your gallery, only the 1% of his/her watchers will add you to their watchlist
Or is this within a very short time period after the image is submitted?
And browsing through my own records, your ratios seem to hold true for the most part. The exception being flash animations/games, those get a ton more than just pictures.
Westaur got more faves than anything else I've done definitely not for artistic skill, but for reasons like its humor value, or because people could actually relate to it. Some people are fans of taurs. (Though my other taur pic got few responses)
But it IS true that your image will get twice as many views if its rated blue-mature, and even more still if it's red-bordered.
Ecleptic artists may find things extremely different tho, depending on alot of factors, but I'm just stating the obvious indeed X3
226 Nek0gami 21 w7568
153 Zaush(adamwan) 8 w6801
115 Dragoneer 8 w4562
114 Furball 7 w4289
106 maxblackrabbit 10 w5379
104 Meesh 10r w4987
102 Moonstalker 8 w5936
91 blotch 13 w6744
84 Zen 11 w5543
80 striderOrion 9 w4358
78 lilglenndoggy 5r w3102
74 Kandlin 7 w3007
-my oh my.... if this was the stock market, i woulda made a shitload of money investing in Blotch ;J meanwhile some old time favorites are starting to fizzle out, tsk tsk tsk
- i didn't think you'd be interested in this stuff ;D my main interest is what the hell maximizes that wonderful sweet spot of the "fuzzy interest factor"
- Favs/View 10:1 respectable.... 4:1 Obscene
- Popularity of a submissions depreciates like any a^-t... it's amazing to me...
There's just..... so much more to it! >< argg..
-also.... i really wish you would show your work, show your scribblings, show your doodles and notes, show where you get these statistics from? what submissions have you monitered and kept observations of.. etc. maybe i have no life, but i do keep track of this stuff.
you're also a writer... and unfortunately, it's not the most effective or powerful medium and that makes it particularly difficult. I really don't mean to put you down.
-the flip side... people who genuinely are not bothered by their lack of popularity... i must say i envy them deeply.
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/wetherby/
here's a pure example of WIN.. starting from virtually scratch, virtually new identity... and she has some of the strongest "pings" i've ever seen, with the most obscene 4:1 Favs/View ratios...
Got me thinking about how often I see some artists bitching that some other artist is getting more attention than them because they do more porn or how that only their porn material seems to get noticed while their more artistic works get unnoticed. The only thing that really bothers me over this is that these people often comment that the other artist is not as good or that their own porn pieces art not drawn as well as their more serious works. It pisses me off because the only thing that seems to account for artistic skill to them is detail when subject matter is as important.
No matter how crudely done or in high detail something is, it is is simply subject matter people do not care about they are not going to give it as much attention as a subject that intrigues people. Also a little irritated that anytime artwork has a slightly mature theme or simply shows a naked body people instantly call it porn and don't seem to consider it having artistic value.
Just because the artist wanted to make something look sexy or show the natural beauty of a naked body does not mean it has any less artistic value. Hell, the pieces I love the most are the ones that art attempting to be both artistically stunning and at the same time have nice sex appeal.
Straight up smut does not interests me as much, no matter how well drawn. As well I do not give a crap about people's scenery pieces. Not to mention that a great deal of these high detailed artist leave their character with hardly any emotional appeal to them, always dead eyes and expressionless faces. Sure they make look more like what a real bipedal humanoid would like like if they existed, but I enjoy a bit of cartoonish feel to furry artwork over super realistic. Though, some can be too cartoony for my tastes as well.
^^; Stupid inability to edit posts. Hope that was the only typo I made.
Now how do you factor in the one where.. you've been drawing clean art for years and then you draw in a ballsack and peen0r one day on a whim, and you get 200 extra watchers/+fav's. Does that count?
I see you didn't factor in time spent on a pic in relation to popularity. Boy I wish that was the case. 20 hours should garner a lot more than I get. :P
Don't forget drama factor, if your art is drama bait, places will cross post it and organize their "friends" to come and make comments. They're just usually UNWANTED comments.
Don't get me wrong, there are fun in the galleries to be sure since it's hobby and all, but I wonder why people get so caught up in the popularity game. I mean do you really show mom and people who REALLY mean something to you "Hey look I drew shitting dicknipples and got 1000 hits for it!" ?
Popularity means absolutely nothing--just how much people 'enjoy' your work, sometimes in more ways than one O.o There's nothing to be gained from the number of watches views comments or favs that your work gets.
The important thing is to enjoy what you do with your work.
But I see where you're coming from. I'm happy being a run of the mill art lover. So, I'm set! Keep up the great work :3.
Sorry. in my case it's not a matter of popularity, it's a matter of where anyone really gives a crap anymore
One thing you have to factor in is also relations with other artists, as occassionally that can also affect the popularity of the watching artist. Also have the random factor of impulse favs.
Also, if something becomes a meme, it typically gets an insanely amount of views and faves compared to everything else you do, because the main mode of propogation is not the message center, but other people's favorites list. But that's another ball of wax :V
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
80% of your watch traffic will come from 20% of the user base. This is why drawing porn is attractive -- those hardcore 20% will come back.
Your ratios are probably a bit closer to reality. :)
In marketing & PR, they say that if you do something good, 3 people will tell other folks; but if you do something bad, 11 people will tell.
But it does sound very logical! I think that personality has more priority in popularity though, But that normally gets recognized through community involvement.