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v16ben

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Not sure if this is the right place for this, but it is something I've been curious about for a while.

People say that posting your photos to groups on Flickr will attract more attention. I used to do it a lot and it seems to work.

However, I've always wondered which of the groups I use actually lead to the most views on my photos.

Is there a way to find this out through Flickr or a 3rd party app?

I use Statsr.net every now and then, but the group views seems very out of date. Any other suggestions?
 
I'm not sure there is via Flickr. The groups that seem to attract the most are the 'award groups' with all the silly glittery badges, you end up with 30 identical copy and pasted comments.

Personally I steer well clear of these groups as I would rather see 1 genuine personal comment than 30 copy and pasted ones.
 
v16ben said:
Not sure if this is the right place for this, but it is something I've been curious about for a while.

People say that posting your photos to groups on Flickr will attract more attention. I used to do it a lot and it seems to work.

However, I've always wondered which of the groups I use actually lead to the most views on my photos.

Is there a way to find this out through Flickr or a 3rd party app?

I use Statsr.net every now and then, but the group views seems very out of date. Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

Go into your stats, in the bit that says "referrers" click on "Flickr". There you'll see where the visits came from.
 
I tend to only select a few groups that are very active and that i'll populate multiple times. I find if you are busy in the groups then you get more views. Having said that i have seen some photo's with monsterous amounts of views and wonder how they do it.

The most interesting part of the stats for me is seeing images found through search engines like google, yahoo and bing.
 
Some groups have an inherently high viewership due to the popularity of their subject, or the popularity of the guru leading it. The Strobist group always gets lots of passive views due to the sheer number of members and a very wide interest in the subject of the group. Some tags are also inherently searched more often than others.

If you have a Pro account you can see where your views are coming from on a daily basis, if you've some groups producing strong view counts they will stand out in the Flickr referrals. You'll see them as direct views from Group pool pages, or links from other images in that Group pool. It takes a bit of practice to understand them.

But, if you're struggling to find anything meaningful in the stats and can't pick out individual groups.. you need to ask yourself if you're dumping too much into too many crap groups at the same time. I haven't looked at your stream so this isn't judgement on your images, but it's not unusual to find people uploading every shot they take and dumping everything they upload into forty dump'n'run groups, when being more selective and relevant with three or four groups would be a far better approach to take.

Some groups are set up to farm views for your ego spinach statistics. If you want hollow high view statistics look for any of the P1C3, P1F5, P1A3 type groups and go along with their rules. I don't have any time for this type of group myself.

In terms of Flickr, if you want views, favourites and comments, the old adage that you get out what you put in is the truth. And being an active participant in three groups will get you more useful feedback than being a non-participant in fifty groups.


(Martyn, there's a breed of group that are farming views very effiicently to gain Explore, and once in Explore they're dropping out of these groups completely so you only see the stupidly high view count, very few tags and no groups - I can only assume this is the reason why there are so many BJD images in Explore the last couple of months)
 
To look for genuine critique is another

Especially when starting out, it can give you a feel for what works / what doesn't.
 
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I have no idea how to play Flickr. I just stick a few pictures on there from time-to-time so I can easily show friends and family if they ask.

I did join a group and added a few pics to it but I'm not entirely sure why.

Flickr is useful but I don't think I'm winning.
 
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Nick_1981 said:
To look for genuine critique is another

Especially when starting out, it can give you a feel for what works / what doesn't.
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A fair point. But Flickr users rarely post negative critique. Joining a group might help but even then people generally post just positive comments.

Your best bet in that respect is to post images on a forum like this.
 
ryanyboy said:
A fair point. But Flickr users rarely post negative critique. Joining a group might help but even then people generally post just positive comments.

Your best bet in that respect is to post images on a forum like this.
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Genuine critique is rare on the internet, wherever you look. It's just as rare here as it is on Flickr, unless - as with Flickr - you know where best to place it and who to ask for it.

In part, I think this is due to the popularity of photography. It takes 20 seconds to upload an image, so a lot of people tend to upload twenty at a time. But it can take 20 minutes to post decent critique, and faced with twenty images few people will start that task.

Post less, post better would make it far easier to give and receive useful critique.


Incidentally, Flickr has one major advantage when it comes to writing critique and a decent length commentary on an image - the ability to add notes on the image itself.
 
ryanyboy said:
A fair point. But Flickr users rarely post negative critique. Joining a group might help but even then people generally post just positive comments.

Your best bet in that respect is to post images on a forum like this.
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bang on the money :thumbs:

i rarely even tag any of my pics... flickr is just a place to store my pics offline as far as i'm concerned.

i just got invited to a group from Celladon...

'The group is composed of subjects: photography, art, and over time has developed a Christian theme, so if photography or art interests you but Christianity does not then you might not want to join, the choice of joining is of course yours! There is no way we will remove your membership if for example you are atheist or if your belief is not our belief.'

thanks... but i'll leave it this time :thinking:
 
Flickr i've found generally consists of either the 'indie girls' taking as many pictures of themselves in the woods wearing poka dresses, or around stately homes doing all kinds of poses. If it's not this then it's the holidaymakers who take pictures of anything and everything daily.

There's very little middle-ground for creativity, and forget about taking one of the best pictures in your life as it'll barely be recognised (unless you take the trouble of spending hours uploading it through groups and re-posting it onto web forums anyway.)
Flickr is good on a social-basis aspect, but in terms of a serious photographer wanting to gain some credibility in the field then it lacks on this aspect. Not to mention the time flickr 'accidentally' deleted 4000 photo's from a pro-users account that was unretrievable.

That aspect alone made me shut down my own account, as if the owners aren't reliant enough to have simple recovery methods then they aren't worth spending hours and hours of my time.
 
ryanyboy said:
A wrong answer. Flickr is not a way to boost self esteem - in fact it's more likely to make things worse.
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That depends what images you post and in what groups. Some groups are very shallow and every photo gets a positive response. So as I said, to assist with low self esteem.
In fact there is very little negative or even constructive critique as it just isn't that sort of place so not sure what comments you have had that would make things worse exactly?
 
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