Some time ago I developed my own method of evaluating the success of images here on deviantART. A lot of people might do this or something similar, but I looked at the favourites and then weighed them against how many views its had. In doing this I eventually determined that the average indent of impressions was (give or take) around 10%; that is to say 1 favourite for every 10 views (ratio value of 1:10). Meaning any image which had an indent ratio of roughly 1:10 hadn't done poorly but it wasn't popular either – it was just normal.

To put it another way, if this average ratio of 1:10 was a grade in school it would be similar to a C, it's a very ordinary reception.

Now, regardless of whether or not this extremely scientific and in no way fallible method holds any merit, I would use it as a rough indication of how well my own images were doing. If I went above 1:10 I thought I did well, and if the image went below 1:10 then I would perhaps think about changing some things.

nb: This system subjects itself to extreme scrutiny however, because while an image may only be favourited once it can of course be viewed multiple times by the same source – so there is a fairly large margin of error I'm ignoring here. The newer the image the more accurate the score.  Just indulge me a moment if you can while I get this story out X3


This week I tried something new, I submitted a few images from cosplay series I shot last week. It was a first for me, I've never tried to make a likeness to anime with a camera before and I have to say, the response was dramatic!

I talk of course about the image 'FMA: Ed + Winry', which became my new 'personal best' in my gallery and quickly rose to the fifth most popular image in terms of raw favourites in my whole gallery.

It then climbed to fourth, then third and now sits dominantly in second place on my statistics page! Which is just totally incredible when you consider its second only in terms of raw favourites to 'Imogen', which is my DD and was promoted on the front page!

In terms of my evaluation method, 'Imogen' wasn't even that successful to be honest. It received a below average response with my own system, just on a larger scale because of the volume of people being exposed to it. So while its had almost 480 favourites, today its hovering at a ratio of only around 1:16. Mind you, the image has been online now for three years so it's not really as accurate now as it would have been if I had taken the indent ratio after it came off the front page.

Now, at the date of writing this entry 'FMA: Ed + Winry' has received an indent value of 1:5 - That's one favourite out of every five people who viewed it! That technically maked this image the most successful piece I've ever put online in terms of indented impressions!