Download stats for Power users?

Tomkirk23Tomkirk23 Registered Users Posts: 55 Big grins
edited March 25, 2008 in SmugMug Support
Hi -

I am a SmugMug "Power" user. Can I get stats related to photos downloaded from my albums?

Thanks,

Tom Kirkpatrick
kirkpatrick.smugmug.com

Comments

  • synaturesynature Registered Users Posts: 191 Major grins
    edited March 24, 2008
    Tomkirk23 wrote:
    Hi -

    I am a SmugMug "Power" user. Can I get stats related to photos downloaded from my albums?

    Thanks,

    Tom Kirkpatrick
    kirkpatrick.smugmug.com

    Yes, please, pretty please with sugar and honey on it bowdown.gif

    This is the only aspect of smugmug that I find below par compared to the other places. The graphs are fine at first, but very quickly become much too tedious for useful analysis.

    Stat counter and analytics are great for what they do, but neither provides the kind of direct information smugmug uses to produce the graphs.

    Brandon smith
    synature.smugmug.com
    Brandon Smith
    http://redwoodtwig.com
    Sony A7r4 with a selection of Rokinon Cine primes that I'm really enjoying learning how to use.
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited March 25, 2008
    Thanks for posting :)

    What am I missing - does O, X3, X2, XL, etc #s not give you what you are looking for?
  • synaturesynature Registered Users Posts: 191 Major grins
    edited March 25, 2008
    Andy wrote:
    Thanks for posting :)

    What am I missing - does O, X3, X2, XL, etc #s not give you what you are looking for?

    Well, now that you mention it, when I hover over one of those graphs that has O or X3, that part of the text is cut off.

    But my real problem is having to scroll through what amounts to 20 or 30 screen fulls of graphs arranged in some kind of logic that was explained somewhere on here but is not helpful to me. If I rearrange my galleries so that the graphs come out in the order I want, it will screw up how I want people to see them.

    Perhaps because in my day job working on databases and computer applications that present statistical data, I expect to be able to see the numbers first and the fancy graphics second. The business analysts who look at statistics are always more interested in the numbers first, and only use a few graphs when they are pitching something to a boss who doesn't like numbers, or who doesn't want his time wasted.

    But my time is wasted when I have to spend at least 30 minutes trying to get a picture of how my photos are doing. With a spreadsheet where I can sort by various columns, I, and most people with any kind of business training, can make sense of things in five or ten minutes at most.

    That's issue number one -- being able to reasonably quickly make sense of the photo views of my galleries. Issue number two is historical stats. The first several months on here I saved the stats page at the end of the month. But when I started looking at them after a year I realized it was a totally hopeless task to attempt to get a picture of what had gone on for the year.

    I do use statcounter, but there the information needs to be translated, since there is only the gallery or picture url, not the informative title or caption. And to get more than 500 log entries costs a bit more than I want to spend when I'd have to spend huge amounts of time to translate that to useful photo viewing info, particularly when it's sitting out there on the smugmug servers somewhere.

    As near as I can tell, all of the other photo hosting sites provide cumulative view counts on each image. I'm probably wrong, there are so many of them, I'm sure some don't.

    As for what I'm looking for, it's not the ones with the highest number of views, those are always the pretty scantily clad models and I can discount the high number of hits there. But, for example, a woman was talking to me the other night and mentioned a landscape one that she really liked. I'd be most curious how many medium or large hits that one has had. I hadn't thought of it as a great picture, but maybe it has potential for printing and framing and selling. If it turned out that in the two years it's been up there were only a dozen medium or large hits, then I doubt I'd go to the trouble. But if there has been 40 or 50 over that period, then maybe it would be worth it.

    I'm still a few years away from the point where photography will become a major source of income. But part of making that transition is going to be having a handle on the business end of things, and easy to work with stats are critical to that.

    Thanks,
    Brandon Smith
    http://synature.smugmug.com
    Brandon Smith
    http://redwoodtwig.com
    Sony A7r4 with a selection of Rokinon Cine primes that I'm really enjoying learning how to use.
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