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Hi everyone!

As you may have heard, Deviantart now includes the tracking codes necessary for Google Analytics to work, and people with premium accounts now can use Google Analytics.

You probably have one of the following reactions:
Hurray!
Yay!
What the heck is that?
Looks like a lot of work.
Don't care.
Oh no! PRIVACY CONCERNS!

If you have privacy concerns, btw, I have another journal entry that deals specifically with those, which you can find here: ( Analytics privacy concerns )

Maybe you even set up an account immediately on hearing the news, then looked at it and saw something like this:

Which looks completely useless, right?

First thing you need to know: Google Analytics takes time to work. At LEAST a day, but really you should give it at least a week. I'll explain that more in a bit.

Second thing you need to know: It is free to make a Google Analytics account, takes almost no effort to set up, and they don't really collect much new information about you from using Analytics.

Google ALREADY has information about what searches people are making and what links they click on. Making an Analytics account only takes that information and puts it in a format that you can view more readily.

And yes, you do need a Google account to sign up for Google Analytics.

So... What is Google Analytics and why should you care?

Google Analytics is a marketing tool. It's useful for self-promotion: Getting viewers, getting watchers, getting customers, and (therefore) possibly leading to sales of your work.

First, a question to you: How professional an artist are you, and how professional an artist do you want to be?

If you never want to sell your art, and you don't have a big ego and don't care if many people look at your profile/art, and you are just on Deviantart for your friends or a sense of community, then you probably aren't going to use Google Analytics that much. Could it still be useful? Maybe.

If you are extremely professional and CONSTANTLY sell your art, and your sales team / Public Relations team handles this kind of thing, you probably aren't going to use Google Analytics. Although they probably do.

Anywhere in-between, you may find this useful. Many, many artists who self-promote their artwork in order to gain sales (or comments/criticism/feedback/love) can benefit from using Google Analytics.

What can you use Google Analytics for?

Google Analytics can:
1) Suggest what to do to get more visiters to your page.
2) Suggest where to advertise your art.
3) Suggest where to stop wasting your energy.
4) Let you know what aspects of your work are drawing the most traffic.

The most obvious thing is that you can see which OTHER website is helping you promote your art the most.

Do you have Twitter account, Facebook page, Tumblr, stumbleupon, reddit, etsy, etc. accounts? WHICH of those gets you the most traffic? If you're directing people to your deviantart page, which of those sites is helping you do that the most? If you're directing people to your ebay/etsy page, which site is helping you do THAT the most? What is getting your viewers to your "prints" page?

Maybe one site is not helping you AT ALL but you're spending a lot of time on that site trying to get customers/watchers! Analytics can tell you which are the most helpful, and then you can decide which ones to devote your energy to.

You don't even really need to do much to make that happen. Just sign up for Google Analytics, let it run for a while (weeks, not minutes), and then look at Google Analytics for the list of websites that viewers came to your page from.
Btw, that "semalt.com" site that viewed my page seems to be some kind of company that's competing with Google Analytics, but that site is extremely suspicious and personally I wouldn't give them any information whatsoever.

Do you hold contests or other promotions? Maybe you post journal entries trying to gain attention, or send out email newsletters. Does it matter what time you post those journal entries or send those emails?
Use Google Analytics to track your traffic, and then try sending out your emails on different days and at different times. Are some times/days giving you more traffic? Then you can focus on sending things out at the most useful times!

For an example, if someone sends me an email on a Monday morning, I'm MUCH more likely to ignore it than if it is sent on a Thursday afternoon. Why? Let's say I don't work on the weekends, and don't check my email box as exhaustively those days. Work emails would tend to overwhelm my box on Mondays, with messages about anything that my coworkers did over the weekend, or things they thought of, and so on. So emails that I would read just for fun have to fall into the garbage bin. On Thursdays, I'm caught up on work emails, and maybe I'm getting tired from a long, hard workweek and want to relax by reading about some art!

What aspects of your work attract your viewers?
Let's say you draw pictures of anime characters in the nude, using mixed media (colored pencils and your saliva). And sometimes you draw them riding dragons, and sometimes you draw them riding motorcycles. Just... Just for an example, pretend for a moment that you do that. Also, sometimes you set those drawings on fire and then take pictures of the ashes.
How do people first find your website? If most of your viewers come to your page by searching for "nude anime dragons" then obviously it's that subject that's drawing the most viewers. If your goal is to get lots of viewers, then maybe you should draw more dragons and less motorcycles!

Side-note: Yes, doing that is what people sometimes call "selling out", and yes, you should draw what makes you happy. But if drawing dragons and drawing motorcycles both make you equally happy, and you like getting viewers or making sales, then focusing your work on dragons would probably be a good thing to do.

Maybe more of your viewers arrive at your page by searching for "saliva fire ashes" than by searching for "anime colored pencils" but more people go to your PRINTS page after searching for "anime colored pencils". Google Analytics can tell you that.
If get lots of viewers but not many sales, maybe you should then focus on making more drawings and focus less on burning those drawings after spitting on them.
If you get very few viewers but many of those buy your prints, and you want to get more viewers, then maybe you need to spit on and set fire to more things!

Maybe you get lots of viewers who were searching for "salivating dragons who breathe fire on anime characters". That's not at all what you are doing, right? But maybe THAT is why you're getting lots of viewers who don't favorite/watch you and don't go to your prints page! You're not appealing to the people that are coming to your page!

Maybe NOBODY finds your work because they are looking for nudity, and you might sell more if you started drawing clothes on your characters. Or vice versa. Analytics can tell you that.

Maybe lots of art therapists are stumbling on your work when searching for how to use colored pencil in Jungian analysis. HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY KNOW THAT? Google Analytics.

All of that can be done easily.

Follow the steps here:
How To Set Up Google AnalyticsPremium Members can now use Google Analytics to get meaningful insight about the traffic to their deviantART Profile! Using our new Google Analytics integration, you can access comprehensive statistics about your audience, traffic, and art. Learn more about how you can benefit from Google Analytics on you deviantART Profile. Set Up Analytics For Your Profile To set up Google Analytics for your profile, you will need to allow Google Analytics to start tracking your profile: Visit the new "Google Analytics" near the bottom of your General Settings Click "Where do I find my Analytics ID?" and follow the instructions on how to set up your ...
Then wait a week or two (or three or four) for people to actually come to your site, then go back to Google Analytics and see what you find out. If you learn something new about your viewers, then it was worth the effort!

I will follow this up with another post in a week or so, explaining how to use the data that it has collected. Yes, I'm going to make you wait, because without letting data accumulate this really WOULD be useless!
EDIT: That post is now up, and you can continue reading here !

And then I'll follow THAT up with a post about how to perform experiments on improving your traffic. But the first step in any behavioral intervention is to establish a baseline, so sign up for Analytics NOW and then sit on your ass for a couple weeks.

Maybe you'll sell so much art that you can stop spitting on your drawings and then setting them on fire!

Disclaimer: I am not a Google employee, nor a lawyer, nor a Deviantart employee. I am just an artist trying to share some information with other artists.

Continue reading!

;) (Wink) — Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

Hi everyone!

As you may have heard, Deviantart now includes the tracking codes necessary for Google Analytics to work, and people with premium accounts now can use Google Analytics.

You probably have one of the following reactions:
Hurray!
Yay!
What the heck is that?
Looks like a lot of work.
Don't care.
Oh no! PRIVACY CONCERNS!

If you have privacy concerns, btw, I have another journal entry that deals specifically with those, which you can find here: ( Analytics privacy concerns )

Maybe you even set up an account immediately on hearing the news, then looked at it and saw something like this:

Which looks completely useless, right?

First thing you need to know: Google Analytics takes time to work. At LEAST a day, but really you should give it at least a week. I'll explain that more in a bit.

Second thing you need to know: It is free to make a Google Analytics account, takes almost no effort to set up, and they don't really collect much new information about you from using Analytics.

Google ALREADY has information about what searches people are making and what links they click on. Making an Analytics account only takes that information and puts it in a format that you can view more readily.

And yes, you do need a Google account to sign up for Google Analytics.

So... What is Google Analytics and why should you care?

Google Analytics is a marketing tool. It's useful for self-promotion: Getting viewers, getting watchers, getting customers, and (therefore) possibly leading to sales of your work.

First, a question to you: How professional an artist are you, and how professional an artist do you want to be?

If you never want to sell your art, and you don't have a big ego and don't care if many people look at your profile/art, and you are just on Deviantart for your friends or a sense of community, then you probably aren't going to use Google Analytics that much. Could it still be useful? Maybe.

If you are extremely professional and CONSTANTLY sell your art, and your sales team / Public Relations team handles this kind of thing, you probably aren't going to use Google Analytics. Although they probably do.

Anywhere in-between, you may find this useful. Many, many artists who self-promote their artwork in order to gain sales (or comments/criticism/feedback/love) can benefit from using Google Analytics.

What can you use Google Analytics for?

Google Analytics can:
1) Suggest what to do to get more visiters to your page.
2) Suggest where to advertise your art.
3) Suggest where to stop wasting your energy.
4) Let you know what aspects of your work are drawing the most traffic.

The most obvious thing is that you can see which OTHER website is helping you promote your art the most.

Do you have Twitter account, Facebook page, Tumblr, stumbleupon, reddit, etsy, etc. accounts? WHICH of those gets you the most traffic? If you're directing people to your deviantart page, which of those sites is helping you do that the most? If you're directing people to your ebay/etsy page, which site is helping you do THAT the most? What is getting your viewers to your "prints" page?

Maybe one site is not helping you AT ALL but you're spending a lot of time on that site trying to get customers/watchers! Analytics can tell you which are the most helpful, and then you can decide which ones to devote your energy to.

You don't even really need to do much to make that happen. Just sign up for Google Analytics, let it run for a while (weeks, not minutes), and then look at Google Analytics for the list of websites that viewers came to your page from.
Btw, that "semalt.com" site that viewed my page seems to be some kind of company that's competing with Google Analytics, but that site is extremely suspicious and personally I wouldn't give them any information whatsoever.

Do you hold contests or other promotions? Maybe you post journal entries trying to gain attention, or send out email newsletters. Does it matter what time you post those journal entries or send those emails?
Use Google Analytics to track your traffic, and then try sending out your emails on different days and at different times. Are some times/days giving you more traffic? Then you can focus on sending things out at the most useful times!

For an example, if someone sends me an email on a Monday morning, I'm MUCH more likely to ignore it than if it is sent on a Thursday afternoon. Why? Let's say I don't work on the weekends, and don't check my email box as exhaustively those days. Work emails would tend to overwhelm my box on Mondays, with messages about anything that my coworkers did over the weekend, or things they thought of, and so on. So emails that I would read just for fun have to fall into the garbage bin. On Thursdays, I'm caught up on work emails, and maybe I'm getting tired from a long, hard workweek and want to relax by reading about some art!

What aspects of your work attract your viewers?
Let's say you draw pictures of anime characters in the nude, using mixed media (colored pencils and your saliva). And sometimes you draw them riding dragons, and sometimes you draw them riding motorcycles. Just... Just for an example, pretend for a moment that you do that. Also, sometimes you set those drawings on fire and then take pictures of the ashes.
How do people first find your website? If most of your viewers come to your page by searching for "nude anime dragons" then obviously it's that subject that's drawing the most viewers. If your goal is to get lots of viewers, then maybe you should draw more dragons and less motorcycles!

Side-note: Yes, doing that is what people sometimes call "selling out", and yes, you should draw what makes you happy. But if drawing dragons and drawing motorcycles both make you equally happy, and you like getting viewers or making sales, then focusing your work on dragons would probably be a good thing to do.

Maybe more of your viewers arrive at your page by searching for "saliva fire ashes" than by searching for "anime colored pencils" but more people go to your PRINTS page after searching for "anime colored pencils". Google Analytics can tell you that.
If get lots of viewers but not many sales, maybe you should then focus on making more drawings and focus less on burning those drawings after spitting on them.
If you get very few viewers but many of those buy your prints, and you want to get more viewers, then maybe you need to spit on and set fire to more things!

Maybe you get lots of viewers who were searching for "salivating dragons who breathe fire on anime characters". That's not at all what you are doing, right? But maybe THAT is why you're getting lots of viewers who don't favorite/watch you and don't go to your prints page! You're not appealing to the people that are coming to your page!

Maybe NOBODY finds your work because they are looking for nudity, and you might sell more if you started drawing clothes on your characters. Or vice versa. Analytics can tell you that.

Maybe lots of art therapists are stumbling on your work when searching for how to use colored pencil in Jungian analysis. HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY KNOW THAT? Google Analytics.

All of that can be done easily.

Follow the steps here:
How To Set Up Google AnalyticsPremium Members can now use Google Analytics to get meaningful insight about the traffic to their deviantART Profile! Using our new Google Analytics integration, you can access comprehensive statistics about your audience, traffic, and art. Learn more about how you can benefit from Google Analytics on you deviantART Profile. Set Up Analytics For Your Profile To set up Google Analytics for your profile, you will need to allow Google Analytics to start tracking your profile: Visit the new "Google Analytics" near the bottom of your General Settings Click "Where do I find my Analytics ID?" and follow the instructions on how to set up your ...
Then wait a week or two (or three or four) for people to actually come to your site, then go back to Google Analytics and see what you find out. If you learn something new about your viewers, then it was worth the effort!

I will follow this up with another post in a week or so, explaining how to use the data that it has collected. Yes, I'm going to make you wait, because without letting data accumulate this really WOULD be useless!
EDIT: That post is now up, and you can continue reading here !

And then I'll follow THAT up with a post about how to perform experiments on improving your traffic. But the first step in any behavioral intervention is to establish a baseline, so sign up for Analytics NOW and then sit on your ass for a couple weeks.

Maybe you'll sell so much art that you can stop spitting on your drawings and then setting them on fire!

Disclaimer: I am not a Google employee, nor a lawyer, nor a Deviantart employee. I am just an artist trying to share some information with other artists.

Continue reading!