I started drawing in January of this year, and finally finished up my first piece in early February. Since then I’ve been trying to improve on it, and I decided to look back to see if there were any real metrics that could show I made decent progress.
The most obvious first step was to take a look at the upvotes I’d gotten:
Also, NSFW stats:
And, overall, it’s a mixed bag. Lemmy definitely has a longer running time for keeping posts alive (it helps that there’s fewer posts here), and Reddit has the issue that if your post isn’t noticed inside 2 hours, it won’t be picked up at all. There’s no real sign of definite progress on Reddit, though Lemmy does seem to see at least some uptick in this metric, though that could be attributed to c/furry growing.
So, there’s the next obvious metric, upvote percentage:
Reddit drops these metrics after 40 days, so I have no idea what it’s like for the majority of my posts. Generally though, the response is more positive on Lemmy than Reddit, but it might be a bit too early to tell if the percentages are actually meaningful, or if the community doesn’t downvote good content just because it’s not their type, and upvotes are a more meaningful metric.
And, finally, FurAffinity:
There’s not a lot of items there, either. If I post something good, I might get a fav. If I post something really good, I might get 2. Like Reddit, if it’s not noticed inside a short window, it appears to get buried. The one exception appears to be this piece, which has gotten fav’d repeatedly over time. Watches, on the other hand, appear to be entirely random–or it could be my work’s just not good enough to get people wanting me on their feed.
So, just some lessons from my time over the last year:
- Memes are faster and lower-effort to draw, but get a lot bigger response (yes, I know, groundbreaking statement of the year).
- Time and effort spent don’t equate to response. I know, it’s another obvious statement, but until you’ve spent weeks on something for nothing, it doesn’t quite sink in.
- Either a) I’ve not become a better artist, or b) these metrics aren’t the full picture, and I also suck at promoting myself. I’m hoping it’s the latter.
Regardless, it’s been a big journey, and I hope it’s only the start. I came to Lemmy from Reddit after the API changes, and overall, c/furry’s been an open, welcoming, and most importantly positive place. I love it here, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it continue to grow.
Engagement is one of those things which is a bit odd to try and capitalize on. It’s less about the content itself and more about the where and when a lot of the time. You’d be surprised just how much the exact same post would change in reach just by shifting your post time by a few hours. I never found /r/furry to be a good place to post artwork when I used Reddit. Slapping a tagline and putting it onto furry_irl was significantly more effective with user interaction and turnarond. Though regardless, virtually none of those people ever interacted with my furaffinity.
At the end of the day though, being popular has little to do with hard work and improvement as an artist. It’s much more about endlessly shoveling out content of any quality and constant self promotion. If you’re not the kind of person who wants to turn marketing into a hobby, you and I are in the same boat. Just making things we want because we can, and sharing stuff without expecting any real engagement. I might not be popular, but at least I feel free to do as I please.
Yeah, you definitely get different results on Reddit with different times. I’ve actually consulted this site a few times, just to make sure. Generally speaking, you tend to get more attention there in the early morning.
The problem with furry_irl, though, is that art posts are against the rules. For the sake of clarity, I didn’t include furry_irl posts in the graphs, but I’ve consistently had more engagement and upvotes from furry_irl than I have with /r/furry. I even got my all-time highest scoring art there with 2.7k karma, and a note that there was help for suicidal urges. I’d love to post there more often, but I don’t often draw memes.
For popularity, though, I don’t want to be wildly popular. I’d just like to know people like my art enough to know they’d like some themselves. A few people have reached out, which is fantastic. Knowing I made something someone is happy with is some of the best feelings I’ve had.
Yeah, pure art posts are against the rules, but it’s often pretty easy to turn something into a joke related to the art you’ve made. Also it could just be emotionally relatable, which is also allowed.
Yeah I feel you on that, at least in the sense of knowing people enjoy what you create anyway. It doesn’t have to do anything crazy, but knowing people want to see it from time to time is certainly a nice feeling. Art is a form of personal expression after all, and I want to share that with others freely. That is also what I look out for in others too, people who want to share their ideas and create purely because they want to. A labor of love and nothing more.