emrys (& co)

It's honestly really hard to tell because a) itch's analytics suck real bad (in that 14/20 of the "incoming links" are just permutations on itch itself) and b) it clicked in just as two big charity bundles started up so my metrics are kind of fucked right now to begin with. I did get some followers here though so there's that!

a little hard to say, given that my only real metrics are engagement and follower count, both of which are intentionally hard to keep track of here lol. i know i got a few extra follows the first couple days it was up, but haven’t really seen much since that i can definitively link to the ad. that said i mostly just wanted to give cohost some walkin around money so i’m not really sweating it

Yeah, also hard to tell here. We got four new follows on the UAR Cohost page in the first few days, but the actual podcast download numbers seem to be the same as always (if not a smidge lower than usual). Granted, podcast metrics are kinda whatever, so again, who knows. No defined metric bump as far as I can see, anyway.

i had an influx of followers and shop sales which i can tie directly to the ad since both of those things had dried up for a few weeks before this went live. my sales have been a little more consistent, but ovbs i'll run out of customers at a point on my current offerings, if not already.
i bought a longer ad (its a pretty general one) but im already planning on utilizing them for shop updates (like running the ad a week up until the new stock drop) or more blocked out opening of commissions.

i didn't take out a listing, but i have found a lot of rad art and ordered a few prints that i wouldn't have seen without artist alley!

I have had an uptick in followers on twitch, but not by a large amount (about 3-6 more than average). I have also noticed one or two new faces poking in my chat, but I’m unsure if they came from artist alley.

Granted, I tagged mine 18+ (so it doesn’t show up by default), so maybe a non-18+ ad does better? Either way, my main goal was to help support cohost, so as long as this site stays up, I’m happy.

A couple of new followers, a burst of visitors to bandcamp on the launch day, nothing much out of the ordinary otherwise. (I don’t think it was a particularly good bit of marketing on my part, though, I just wanted to get in and give eggbug a little pocket money!)

i can't way it's brought forth anyone to contact me about work, but in fairness i'm like only one of two? three? freelance programmers up on the board right now, and i feel that it's much less likely that someone would go on artist alley looking for a programmer than looking for an artist/musician

saw a decent jump in listens on bandcamp (~40% of what i saw on my last bandcamp friday) which simmered back down after the first couple of days, a handful of new followers, and a purchase! not quite enough to offset the cost of the campaign, but still decent compared to what i usually see on my (admittedly rare) non-bcf promotional posts. it does seem like, at least currently, there isn't much of a long tail, but i imagine that's to be expected for the site's smaller userbase who will have already seen it day one and decided to click or not by that point

could've probably done better with my advert admittedly, but i'm not sure it would have moved the needle much

I don't have metrics on the site I linked to, but I've gotten some nice words about the blog and a few new readers, which feels like a success to me.

I got a fair few Steam wishlists enough to hypothetically be worth the $10 at least! Like others say, the bump only lasted for a couple of days (which is unsurprising)... It'll be interesting to see how AA stuff performs in the future, after that new-feature glow has worn off a bit.

I could see myself getting another ad eventually when I want a hit of external traffic to something

I had a pretty sizable boost in Steam wishlists on day 1 of the AA launch (3x the daily average), but no signs of a single sale being able to be attributed to it. I really love Cohost and want to support it, but I don't know if $10 a week makes sense for my situation if it isn't leading to anything.

Granted, I will say I've had a completely different experience with Cohost in general compared to many people I've talked to. I've had lots of people say that they get significantly more engagement here than anywhere else, and that if you post pretty much anything people just eat it right up. My own experience is that Cohost uuusually continues to be worse than post-enshitification twitter in terms of engagement. So between these two things I kinda take it as a sign that my work just isn't something people are looking for on Cohost.

I DID get some new followers but I think it was mostly through my doing a bit listing

It's been incredible for me, I am super grateful! I've actually had people check me out after the first burst too, which is really nice. I prepaid for 3 weeks, I will definitely continue but include a more obvious incentive for people to tell me how they found me ^^ So far it's been the most positive experience I've ever had paying for advertising (the bar is in hell, but it really has been nice, people have been very kind)

however, I am aware that a lot of that is because I sell physical goods so roi is a super easy metric to track. Also, probably the biggest factor is that Artist Alley is my first attempt to market my business on Cohost, so a lot of this is coming from people discovering me for the first time.

i ran an ad for my Etsy shop. i'd previously tried Etsy's own ad service a couple of times and never seen a single sale from it. i got a noticeable boost in orders the first few days-- i knew when it had gone live because suddenly my butt started going KACHING at the pharmacy (Etsy makes a kaching noise when someone buys something)

it definitely dropped off about halfway through the week, which i'm sure can be explained partly by a heightened interest in the first few days and partly by me probably reaching as many people as i was going to reach with my one image/the current pool of customers looking. (i've been working on some more images to rotate out when i buy ads that might catch eyes that scrolled past before.)

i made back what i spent in one day and my sales got a decent boost. i'll absolutely be buying ads again. i think the question is whether or not people will keep intentionally clicking on Artist Alley to shop-- i feel like there's a good chance of that because in general, i get more sales from cohost than i do anywhere else. people seem to come here with the intention of finding the kinds of things i'm selling.

So, my dev partner and I ran two different ads, one each on similar but mostly unrelated projects we work on together. We both saw some boosts in eyeballs for each project, but I'd say that my dev partner's ad had more success.

• She posted her ad two days before I made an attempt, so she got a lot of the "what is this new thing" crowd
• Her button directed to their Cohost primarily where the updates are mirrored to an external site, while mine went solely to an external site; that seemed to provide a large follow boost to keep track of the project on Cohost which is easier to track as likely coming from the Artist Alley post
• Her ad uses more tags than mine

There's probably some other differences like subject matter or the images we used, and ultimately there was still definitely an uptick in interest for both! But I'm definitely thinking about how I might adjust for future attempts, maybe retool my (mostly unused) Cohost to have more substance and then point at it primarily, etc. The earliest days definitely saw the most movement, it's quieted down since.

listed my fresh new album and the result is basically nil (15 views, no sales coming from cohost) - but i'd still like to try advertising some other stuff with the service and see what happens. i bought two weeks for this, maybe it'll still get a response, who knows! not so far though.