I know this is probably a very common concern among sellers here but I’ll bring it up anyway: is anyone else noticing a huge drop in views, gallery clicks, purchase clicks? I haven’t posted new work in about 5-6 months (didn’t realize it had been so long). I just posted 3 in the last 2 weeks or so and have been seeing half or less than half of the “averages” for all three posts. Now, it could totally be the work and I’m not trying to solely place blame on the site at all (also I think these are the slowest months for online commerce sites in general) but the numbers are pretty shocking to me. I mean most of the pieces are super colorful and grab your eye. One them was even bid on on eBay so this makes me think it’s not so much the work. Curious to hear others’ experiences, thanks!
There are lots of topics by frustrated artists in the marketing topic: http://arttalk.dailypaintworks.com/c/the-business-of-selling-art/marketing you might want to peruse.
I was wondering where the average views come from. If they are real time or historical. I am experiencing the same thing.
It’s the same thing for me…I’m suspecting it’s a seasonal thing. I think we’ll see a real leap up in terms of views as we approach the holidays!
Not here. Number of views is high or higher then before BUT…no sales! I never thought I’d say this but I’m doing better on Ebay. Can’t remember my last sale on DPW and I list new work regularly. Seems every year it gets worse then the year before. Lots of looky lous…no buyers! 
I promote heavily on Ebay groups and on twitter…wherever I can but no buyers on DPW.
Personally I have found that every time I get busy with some project other than DPW and go a month or so with out posting, I have a serious drop in sales when I start posting again. It takes about a month of very consistent posting for my sales to go back up. I had been distracted this summer by a Plein Air Event that I help put together and just didn’t find time to post, so now I’m trying to consistently post again. It takes patience to post and not see much action but continue to post. It happens every time though. I’m doing the Strada Easel challenge this month, just to get my motivation up to post, and it is also a way to get more different audiences looking at DPW and my own work. I include the link to DPW on my share to Strada Easel 30 day competition. Today is Day 17 of the Strada Easel Challenge. Get creative when it comes to sharing on Facebook to get more people looking. I also post on Instagram and Twitter.
I have been on here for about 4 years. I started out with much lower prices and have gradually increased. My beginning goal was to sell in order to buy more supplies to allow me to paint more-- selling my homework! I am selling better this year than last year; i think the key is consistency. I have rarely missed a day posting. I also post daily on Instagram and often on my blog. Those are free options.
Although I have sold work this year, the last sale on DPW was about a year ago, almost to the day, in fact. I tend to accept the fact that I am likely to sell fewer works because I am outside the USA and therefore have to add on international postage costs which push the prices up a bit. However, I do try to ensure that I don’t make a profit on that postage, but I have no control over exchange rates. Like others, I don’t expect to make a living from what I do, but any sales are turned back into more materials to keep me painting.
I am testing out a theory about the numbers of views, and so far my theory seems to be holding up. Since changing my painting routine and tackling a part of DPW that I have shied away from in the past, my viewing numbers have shot up, as have the gallery views. Whether that increase will eventually result in sales remains to be seen because the views may simply be from other artists and not potential purchasers.
Sales do happen here, judging by the stats pages…we’d just like more of em, of course.
I’m keeping the faith. These things go in cycles.
I know I’m a year late in responding to this post but I’m now seeing exactly what you’re talking about. I just posted one that I like very much (that probably means nothing) and it has only about 1/3 the views of the average. It’s a bit shocking. What am I doing wrong?
I have found, as well, that the more consistently I post, the better my sales are. If I’m posting regularly and getting regular bids, and then take a break (for a week or more), it’s as if people just forget about me, and whatever auctions were going get NO new bids. I think by posting I am reminding people to bid and buy, even if it’s for older work.
Also, I have found that summers are always slow. This summer is no exception, though I also haven’t been posting as frequently as I would like. If I were smart, I would pre-post for the times I am on vacation, so that things regularly come up! Oh well. 
Vana - don’t judge your views against the Average. I think the average views for a day is getting skewed by the people who are re-posting an older piece. In other words, if the piece showed 6 months ago & had 50 views, and then is reposted tomorrow, it’ll carry those 50 views into the average for tomorrow. David can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve done quite a few advance auction setups like Carol suggested and was amazed that a date 7 days from today already had a lot of average views. I just hate to see any artist get dismayed that their work isn’t getting enough views.
Thank you, Nan, for those words of encouragement and for the explanation.
I find that the more I post the better my sales rate is. Also it helps a lot to post to facebook as well.
I’m a little bit concerned about the decline of the average views in total. I started out here last December; average views were in between 150-200. (See picture below). I reckoned the decline in the following months (during February - September the number of views dropped down from 150 to 75!) were influenced by the Holiday Seasons. However, even now the next Holiday Season is getting close, the average views are still going down; dropping below an average of 75. My own numbers being even lower as, I guess, somehow abstract paintings are getting less attention.
I can hardly believe this is a ‘seasonal thing’ any more. So it seems there’s a serious problem in the promotion of DPW. Even though promotion of DPW is not ‘our task’, I realize all of us (the artists) will benefit higher numbers of views, i.e. visitors, as such I would like to know what all of us can do to help increase these numbers.
I only joined in November 2017, so I don’t have a lot of perspective. I see that my views keep rising over time, so I assume that views accumulate as people view my work in my gallery. It seems that the more I publicize my work, the more views I get. I just started reposting some older work on front page and that seems to result in more views as well.
I print out little handouts for publicizing my work. I do a 4-up on regular paper with one or two small images and the url to my gallery on Paintworks. That seems to have helped my views a good bit. I hand them out at open studio events and leave them laying around for people to look at.
Like all my other venues, it seems that the more active I am on line, the more attention I get. I do not do social media. Just websites and a blog at the moment.
It has taken me a year to get 2 sales through paypal here, so hang in there.
Eduard, I posted this previously, but I will add it here again.
As far as your own views, that I would monitor & see where your view counts rise & fall, and with what images and what activities. I have seen my own view counts increase when I participate in the contests or challenges. Also, posting every day does increase my traffic (and often my sales).
And I do agree that we can all help to increase traffic on DPW by sharing, posting links, etc. in our social media & internet sites that are outside of DPW. Good Luck & please, don’t despair!
Hi Eduard (and others on this thread) - the graph you show here is very interesting. First of all, it is a testament to your productivity!
I am just wondering if the averages for older paintings do not automatically increase over time simply because those paintings have been around longer and statistically are more likely to be clicked on. Remember a very popular painting in Pinterest, linking through to DPW, could attract people to a certain artist’s site and from there they click a few times on paintings that are a year old.
I am not sure exactly how the averages are calculated, but if it is from clicks that originate from artists galleries (as opposed to just the front page), the the older average would most likely be higher for the reason stated above. A similar mechanism is most likely at play with your own paintings’ popup counts.
This means it only seems as if the average views are decreasing over time but in fact this is due only to the paintings having been around longer. I think this “downward sloping to the right” is mentioned in the Help on Traffic. In any event, maybe that helps?
Looks like David just made an update and average numbers were simply removed from statistics. Probably he’s got tired to explain the meaning of them, but whatever the reason is, now there is no possibility at all to somehow compare performance of my artworks to the other artists’ paintings.
Well, probably those averages were too complicated for interpretation, but there is one piece of information that I would appreciate to have: a number of visitors to the “What’s new” page. This way I would be still able to see how my paintings attract viewers. Let’s say, my today’s piece got 20 new views total. Looks sad, especially if I knew that there were 2000+ people visiting the main page, but if there were only 200 visitors, then my painting might be not that bad, and the problem is rather in low number of visitors. I remember that at some point a total number of visitors to the site was shown on the main page, but then David removed it because the script slowed down the site performance. Maybe there is a different way to show this info? Add it to statistics, for example?
Hi Irina and others. Yes I also noted the change in the graph with some disappointment and my thoughts were along the same lines. The average may just be a trouble maker! But also I much preferred the scatterplot to the bar graph. On my iPad the bars overlap so much most of the information is lost. It may be that David is still experimenting with a new graphics library or something. Let’s keep watching.
I akso agree with your need to know the number of visits to the what’s new page. Or just some sort of relative indicator of where one stands in relation to the norm. Another thing that may be useful in the table to the left is to see which paintjngs have changed in number of views from say the previous day. That is, which oaintings are attracting attention.