Tracking Visitors

One advantage of tracking visitors of course is to see the growth in traffic to one's website or blog. Another is that I can check to see how people find me and it's allowed me to visit dozens of other interesting sites and the work of some very good photographers.

My website has now been visited by people from 109 countries, including Greenland, Sudan and Cambodia. It really is amazing how much the internet has shrunk the world - who would ever have thought that a part time photographer from Calgary, Alberta, Canada would have his work looked at by people from such diverse locations.

Had I made a book and were it a riotous success, I might have sold a few thousand copies (that's the nature of photographic books). Instead, my website has been visited by 24,838 people, my blog by 62,513 visitors - that makes my exposure anything from 10 X 20 times more than a successful book.

Of course, photographers sites are largely visited by other photographers, not people collecting photographic art, and more particularly not people who tend to buy photographs. It seems we may achieve fame but not likely fortune. Still, one must not discount the importance of one's work being looked at by other photographers - people who have looked at lots of images, who know a good one when they see it, who appreciate the work we do to get subtle things just right, and who know how to 'read' a photograph.

It may be nice to get money from someone who doesn't even know your image isn't a painting and who asks 'is it a print or is it real?', but sharing our work with fellow photographers is really very nice, thank you.