Watching Your Views is a Waste of Time

FAA Views and Visitors

One of the questions that comes up most often from new member and some old is about the views supplied to us by FAA. Unfortunately they are not what you would think they are or what you hope they would be.

For the most part they are nothing more than web crawlers, bots, spiders, automatic indexer, ants, web scutter or one of the other names they have been called over the years. But basically they are all the same thing. They are computers that are programmed to scour the Internet for new content by the many different search engine companies. They can originate, and do, from many locations from around the world.

Every webpage in the world is visited by these bots to search for new content so it can be added to the various search engines.

The real thing you need to realize is that they are about 80 or 90 percent of all of your views. They are not human, they cannot buy a thing and do not buy a thing. Yes, someone will challenge that as say that there is no way to tell if they are a shopper or because there are people living in those cities that may very well be shoppers. And that is true. But considering that you have no way of knowing how to separate the bots from the live people, and noting to gain even if you could, it is a moot point. Suffice to say the vast majority are not shoppers.

I have a total of 12 retail stores on the Internet, 5 on eBay, Amazon and several stand alone sites. None of the counter of visitor data gathered from these sites include bot visits. For some reason FAA chooses to include the bot visits. Not sure I have ever seen any reason why, they just do. But that, imho, renders the visitor or views data nearly if not totally useless.

You will see threads go on and on about the bots and views but I have yet to see anything that I myself find useful. You may differ and should read at least some of those threads yourself so you can make up your own mind.

There is some small amount of validity that the number of views will give you a small bump in the search ranking. So some people spend a lot of time trying to get views from other members of FAA. I find this a totally waste of time. The tiny bump in the search is never going to amount to additional sales anywhere near as much as few sales will. And also know that other FAA member buy very little art from other FAA members.

To me, the time is much better spent advertising and marketing outside of FAA. That is where I spend my time. That is how I manage to sell on a daily bases. You have to make up your own mind.

Here are some other selling guides you may find of interest.

The "Work Smarter Not Harder To Beat The Big Guys" article has more about views and their value.


Selling Guides for New Members by Floyd Snyder

Advertising Your Artist Website
Response to new FAA member looking for advice – 25/75 Rule
Another Response To A New Member Seeking Help
A Few Reasons Why You May Not Be Selling
Work Smarter Not Harder To Beat The Big Guys
50 Effective Tips to Help You Sell You Art