INCREASE YOUR POPULARITY NEW GUIDE

I am rewriting my guide (http://news.deviantart.com/article/52166/)in a better way to explain what I meant for every single concept, to avoid other misunderstandings. I know it is boring but I am sick of being insulted for something I didn’t do.
If you only want to be helped with DA and don’t intend to insult my article, or me just skip this part.
First of all: I am not a native English speaker, so I can’t use a super correct English/American. My English is not perfect; I learnt it mainly by myself. English is not even my second language, so if you are bothered by mistakes, do not go further reading. If you have to flame about grammar or spelling, do not comment on this news. This is neither a literature exam nor an English homework. I am sure that the contents are fully understandable despite all my errors. The scope of this guide is to help new deviants with my experience on DA, and not to write a literature piece. If I have enough requests, I can translate it in Italian, French, Spanish, and Japanese.

INTRODUCTION
This is a guide for any new user of DA (deviant) who wants to increase his page views in order to become more popular (see definitions below). This guide is not a guide to improve art skills (for this there are tutorials). I did not write this guide for myself: I don’t care that much for page views. I do not follow my advices; I act in a different way. This is not a description of what I did/do in this site, so please don’t insult me about what you assume is my behaviour because you don’t know it. I only share my thoughts. I just express my opinion in my news and I don’t say that it's the Truth.

DEFINITIONS
Page views. With the term “page views,” I don’t mean the number that you can see on the user page. I am not talking about that mere number. I use this term to indicate the rate of people who has the possibility to look at your work and to decide if they like it or not. I don’t consider page views the number of people who visit your page more than once and above all the altered number that some people increase using crack programs or fake account. On the other side, I do consider page views the visits of people outside DA that don’t have a DA account. When I write “increase your page views,” I mean “show your art to more different people inside or outside DA.”

Popularity. With this term I mean someone who is known by a huge number of persons, and not only someone who has a high number written on the top of his user page. This person can be much known in his city/country and not abroad, or be known only on the internet (not only on DA).
I consider a DA user popular on DA if he has hundred/thousand real messages inbox everyday and if he has at least 100/500 visits per day.
I do not consider popular a user who has 1000k of page views if he joined many years ago and on the contrary, I consider popular someone who has reached 50k in few months. In no case I consider popular whoever cheated on the page views number on his page. I am not saying that someone actually is/isn’t famous, but only that in my opinion and for this guide I consider him that way.
I am not giving value judgements. I don’t think that popular means better artist. I am not saying that a famous artist is better than an unknown one as well I will never say that an art student is better than a self-taught one.
I consider false popularity meaningless. This site is about art (but not only), and if you are known only for a different reason (you offend, you bitch, you flame, you advertise yourself shamelessly and you are not correct) I do not consider you popular.

Art. For “art,” I mean every expression of creativity. There are many different pieces (deviations) here and a lot of different type of deviants:
- painters
- photographers
- manga and anime artists
- writers
- poets
- developers
- architects
- journalists
- models
- critics
- artisans
- cosplayers
- computer experts
- gamers

...and more. All these typology of deviants are listed by the DA system itself, so in my opinion they are all artists. I think that every human being is somehow “art” himself, in all the different ways that he can express his personality. Even someone who doesn’t have a single deviation in his gallery could be an artist and also a popular one, maybe because he is an art/literature teacher/critic or maybe because he posts his aphorism only in other people’s pages while commenting. I don’t judge people by their gallery or by their page views and I think that no one has the right to tell someone else “go to MySpace instead.” Respect is the most important thing not only in real life but also on the internet and the fact that you can hide behind a computer screen doesn’t mean that you can avoid the responsibility of your actions.

Community. DA is a community, this means that people interacts with each other’s. A part of DA community are not only art deviations, but also forums, chats, friends, news, clubs, real life gathering and so on. To say that DA is only about art is, in my opinion, very reductive and closed-minded. At least you could say “it’s about art sharing”. Sharing with other people.

Messages. I do not consider messages thanking for faves, single emoticons, spam, chain letters, insults, advertising of other deviants, etc...

Critique. Offences and insults are not considered critique.

Watchers. A watcher, in my opinion, is not only someone who added you because of your art, but can be also a mere friend. A watcher can be a real life friend or a member of your family.

Favourites. You can fave anything you want. Personally, I fave every deviation I love. If you take a look of my faves, you will see a huge number of pieces: this is because I am interested in many different fields. I fave works that hit me because of their: originality, concept, colours, contents, humour, memories that they make me remember, dreams that I made, etc…. On DA, there are billions of deviations, millions of great artists that make my heart beat fast, and I like to keep their work in my faves to come back whenever I want to look back at them. This way I learnt many new techniques.

Intentions. I am not responsible of the use that other people will make of my guide. I don’t mean or suggest cheating, fool, be bad, or similar. This guide has not the scope to suggest to go fave whoring or to get cheap attention nor to be false with other people. I am honest and I encourage people to be correct. Although all my advices will lead you to get more page views, this is only a result and in no way can be viewed as the scope of them. This guide is not a substitute of art exercise, effort, applying, studying. I am not talking about improving your art because I think that it’s obvious.

Talent. I consider talented not only someone who has great technical skills, but also people who have:
- intelligence
- originality
- great concepts
- irony
- great use of colours
- potential

I think that in the world, only few people are real genius or naturally super talented, the others have to learn gradually. I do not think that it’s correct to flame on someone only because he posts his first drawing ever and it looks like a stickman. In addition, a 12-y.o. girl of course could be a worse artist that a 30-y. o. who is a professional illustrator when it comes to techniques, but I believe that in time the young girl will get better. There is no need to be mean and tell her that she sucks.


Now I rewrite some points of my old news trying to explain my real intentions. That’s why I say also obvious things:

1. Rules. It is important for a new deviant to read carefully the DA rules as policy, etiquette, and faqs. If you search there, you will find everything about technical issues (how to modify deviations, account info, etc…). There is no guide of good manners except the etiquette, maybe because DA presumes that your parents taught you, but I noticed that many people, especially on internet, don’t even know the basics. I will try to tell you what I consider important:
- Being polite is a sign of education. Civilized people are not rude. Someone on DA told me that social rules, such as using the right fork during a dinner, are stupid and only for rich people. So don’t be scared if you find people who act like wild animals. This is the internet.
- Insults and offences should not be used, in my opinion. If someone replies with an insult, it means that he don’t know other way to explain his opinion and has no other arguments. I always thought that an intelligent person is able to say anything with the highest words and also to say “stupid” to someone without even making him realize it.
- Replying back to messages is a form of respect. Some people will feel ignored if you don’t do this. Of course, it’s your choice.
- When someone is kind to you in any way, you should thank him. There are some people who are bothered by the thanking on their main page, so you could just send a note instead. It’s up to you. Be sure that the person is not bothered by this. Personally, I think that saying “thank you” is a due act and I could never feel bothered by such a kind act.
- If someone is rude to you by mistake (for ex. If he misunderstood your words), do not get angry with him but wait that he apologizes. If it’s on purpose, do not lower yourself at the same level using foul language. Always reply politely. (It’s obvious, in case someone should feel the need to point it out, that mine is only a suggestion and not an order).
- Consider the nationality of the person you are talking to, to avoid to hurt him. In some countries, for example, asking personal things such as age or wage is extremely impolite. I suggest that you keep this in mind, if you want.
- Don’t stalk people. If they don’t want to give you their e-mail address, for example, don’t insist. I wouldn’t feel comfortable in such a situation.
- Don’t reveal other people’s personal information unless you have their express consents. I tell you this because, above all, it’s against the laws.
- I suggest also that you don’t comment on people’s personal photo unless you have something nice to say. There is no need to tell someone “you are fat, ugly, nerd,” even if it was the truth. I saw many harsh comments on an obese woman’s photo and I really felt sorry for her.
- Do not lie unless it’s necessary (for ex, if you don’t want people to know your physical conditions). When you fav, watch, comment, say, try to help, or concern about someone, be honest. Do it only if you truly feel it.
- Don’t spam other people’s page. If they ask you to stop writing on their page, deviation, journal, news, please respect their wish. Harassment is not a good thing.


2. Watchers. Personally, I watch back everyone who watches me as a sign of gratefulness. I do not watch people because I want something in return from them. I watch back my watchers because I want to know them better and to help with their work. Some other people at the contrary watch only people with a great gallery. In my opinion, not watching back is rude and I feel disappointed when I realize that someone doesn’t care if I watch him or not, but I never complained. Everyone is free to do his own choice. Nevertheless, please remember that in your watch list you can add friends without receiving their deviations/journals/news/polls. It’s called “friends list” because you should add your friends.


3. Famous people. Many people considered famous, but not all of them, usually are very busy. Think about it: they receive even 10k messages per day, how could they reply to every single comment? They have also a real life. Some of them will never reply back to you. I am not saying that they are snob/evil/cruel or what else you could think just to flame at my guide. I read some journals, such as Spacecoyote’s one, where they said that: they don’t read all messages; they are bothered by stalkers, people who ask to teach them, to have gifts, requests, art trades; they were insulted by people who didn’t get a reply. All I am saying is that you shouldn’t feel disappointed, offended, sad, upset if you don’t get what you want from them. I am not famous but I receive one hundred of message everyday, and it’s really difficult to keep it up. Of course, obviously, many famous deviants will talk to you.


4. Favourites. A favourite is a deviation that you add to your main page in a special gallery called “Favourites”. You can put every deviation you want there, even your own work, in the different collections you can create inside it. No one has the right to tell you what you can or can’t add to faves. If you want, you can fave a billion of deviations because the system doesn’t have a limit. Here are some examples of different collection I saw browsing around:
- nudity
- hot guys
- fan art
- favourite character drawn in different styles or crossover
- photos
- colours
- traditional art
- best of the best
- animals
- worst shit I’ve ever seen
When you add a deviation to a collection the author will be notified and will read the title of it.

5. Languages. This site is American. The majority of the users understand English quite well. In the public DA forums, it’s forbidden to use a language other than English.
I suggest that you write in English also in your journals, deviations comments, and descriptions and in the notes, you write to other people, unless you know that they understand your language. Mine is only a logic thoughts and not an order, of course: for ex., I am Italian. I have 315 watchers, and only about 10 of them understand my language. If I make a journal in Italian and I submit it to all my watchers, 300 persons won’t understand a single word. What would be the point then? If I have to communicate to my Italian watchers, I prefer to send a note, or at least I make a bilingual journal with the main point translated in English, so that the other people won’t feel excluded. Of course, if you don’t know English or almost all your watchers speak your language, there is no problem if you don’t write in English. To make things easier, I suggest that you force yourself to learn English.
I consider rude people who write every single journal in, for example, Indonesian, when all their watchers don’t understand it.

6. Comments. The comment system is very helpful to interact on this community. The more you comment, the more people you will know and vice versa. This is quite obvious. Of course I am not telling you to go comment whoring. Comment only if you feel it. Above all, you don’t have to give comments just to gain page views, please comment only when you have something to say. I suggest reading the very helpful Leodadominico’s comment guide, featured on the faqs, which helps you to learn how to comment properly. Some people get annoyed if you comment only with two words, other people appreciate the constructive criticism, but not everyone. Remember that every person is different. Personally, I appreciate even a single word. You don’t need to write a poem to comment my work, I appreciate that you like it even if you don’t comment. For me, a fav is a compliment. Please, if you see the writing “critique not desired”, respect this.
I think that it would be nice to comment back to everyone who commented your art, especially people who spent a lot of time doing it. This is just my opinion; many people just reply with a thank you or don’t reply at all. You will decide.
Please remember also that normally people don’t like that you advertise yourself on their page and deviations.

7. Forums. If you want to show your art, there is a forum for thumbs sharing, made on this purpose. There you have the possibility to make more people take a look to your art directly.
You have also the opportunity to make new friends with your same interests and with whom you can talk about every topic in the forums, chat, news, and journals. Please be honest. You don’t have to search for new friend only for page views. I thought this was quite obvious but since no one understood it, I have to repeat it thousand times.
On the today page, you will also find all the new people who just joined the site. I think that they will be happy to be warmly welcomed and helped.

8. Journal. The journal is a blog where you can communicate with your watchers. You can modify it and add CSS. Some people don’t like to read personal business on DA, and they are bothered by topics different from art. In my opinion, it’s important to tell your friends how you feel and what happened in your life. I suggest that you don’t abuse it: if possible, avoid spamming your watcher’s inbox message centre, being a drama queen, seeking for attention and such.
It’s up to your sensibility to reply to personal journal (such as death of parents etc.).

9. Commissions. Commissions are pieces of art that an artist will make for you under the payment of money or subscription or online game gold and such. If you commission a traditional art piece, the artist will probably mail it to you. If digital, you will have the original file e-mailed to you.
Remember that if you commission your OC or your original concept, the property rights are yours, and the artist can’t sell the piece.
Also, remember that fan art cannot be sold in any form.
The prices are very different depending on the artist, the tools he used, the popularity etc. When I first joined DA, I was astonished by the high prices because in Italy, art isn’t usually well paid and you can find amazing artists who sell their works on the corner of a street for 5-10$. In addiction, here there is no drawing degree recognized by the Government, so the illustrators only attend a high school level academy. On DA you can see a 300$ commission by artists who attended masters abroad.

10. Deviations. You can submit whatever you want except for contents that are against the DA rules or the laws. Some of the most popular artists on DA are just people who take photos of their boobs/vaginas or of naked people; some others just draw popular characters fan art or follows the current trends. Personally, I don’t consider that art.

11. Categories. All the deviations are listed in different categories. I suggest, when you have the time, to browse them all so that you can find a lot of interesting pieces and inspiration, even in a category that you thought you would never be interested in. Don’t be snob.

12. Contests. A contest is an art competition where you are given a theme to develop and you can win a prize in return. It’s very useful to improve and challenge your skills. You can also make your own contest.

13. Tutorials. On DA there are a lot of deviation that explain you how to do something: it can be a drawing, a plush, a photo, a dress, a collage, a make up, a css, a text, etc. It’s very important that you read them carefully to improve your techniques.

14. Login. If you never visit the site, it’s unlike that many people will visit your gallery. Of course you can chose if login or not, but remember that your watchers, if you aren’t invisible, will be able to see when you’re online.

15. Art trades. An art trade is an exchange of art that you make with one or more people. You make a piece for someone else and vice versa.
A collaboration is a piece done by two or more artists. For ex, in a drawing, a collaboration is a line art coloured by an other artist.
A request is a piece that you do because people asked you, free.
A free sketch is a quick outline you give as a gift to people you chose.
Drawing gifts are also very common here.

16. Art thieves. You can’t steal other people’s art. You can’t post images you didn’t do unless you have the express consent of the author or owner of the rights. The intellectual rights are divided in two categories: author rights and commercial rights. The author right belongs forever to the person who did the piece or had the idea and he cannot give this right away in any case. The right of commercial use is the right to sell pieces inspired by the original concept. The author can sell this right so that other people will decide who can use the OC.
Remember that a photo portrait does not belong to the photographer but to the people who is in the photo.

17. Fan art. Fan art is not Evil. If you want, you can draw your favourite character giving proper credits. Generally, people will tell you that they prefer to see your OC instead. I draw only fan art I love and I don’t do it to become popular. I try to learn the original author techniques and I try to use my own style.

18. Clubs. Clubs are gathering accounts where people with the same interests interact. There are no official lists on DA because they are not created by the system, so they are just normal account. If you want, you can create yours

19. Browsing. The search button is great to find what you want by key words. The results are listed by title, description, and tags.

20. User page. Some people don’t care for user pages. They say that this is not important for an artist. You can choose if follow this theory or think with your own brain and use this options by editing your settings:
- Signature: you can write a sentence, a song, a link, or whatever you think it’s appropriate. I suggest avoiding insults or bad words.
- Avatar: you can make yours, as many people told me, or use one of the free avatars made by famous artists. It’s your choice.
- Webcam: you can link an image from some sites. It’s not required that you made it by yourself.
- Id: you can use a photo or a different image such as a template or character sheet.
- Description: you can talk about your interests and give some information such as your age and current location.
- Real name: you can use the space under your username to write a sentence or to put your real name.
- Gallery: you can choose what drawings to show first and what to put in different cartel or scrapbook.
- Faves: you can organize them in collections and make them random showing.
- Wish list: you can hide it or make it public. Here you gather the print you would like to purchase.
- Desktop: you can show your own screenshot.
- Main deviation: you can choose your favourite image of your gallery to show in your main page.
- Current journal: it will be shown on your main page.

21. Subscription. With the subscription, you will have a paid version of DA. You will have some different and exclusive features: css journal, thumbnails, colours, no advertising, way back, 120 pieces shown while browsing, a different message box, advanced gallery stats, and page views stats, more exposure. It’s not my opinion but what is written on DA site. I didn’t decide these things.

22. Features. A feature is a showing of someone else art in your journal or news. Normally it’s done to increase their popularity, but there are also other reasons. I do it to help other artists and my watchers.

23. Administrators and directors. They develop and moderate the site. They have a different sign near their username. Some of them, as Cosmosue, are adorable and always ready to help you in need. Some others at the contrary are very arrogant and snob and don’t care to help you. Don’t think that the help desk will always solve your problems, because sometime you will be disappointed. Sometimes they don’t follow the DA rules.

24. Outside DA. You can advertise your account outside DA, on the web or in real life. You can use other website (MySpace, facebook, netlog, yahoo answers, Google, etc) or do something in real life (talk with friends; write on newspapers and magazines, posters on walls, conferences, conventions, parties etc). Of course, you don’t have to abuse this and you always have to be correct and follow the laws.

25. Jobs. Through DA, you can find different jobs. It can be an online job, such as selling gadgets (clothes, mouse pads, buttons, pins, bookmarks, calendars, mugs, magnets, prints, art books, post cards etc) directly on DA or in another web site. It can also be a real life job, like illustrator, professional photographer, writer, model, stylist, sewer etc. You can use your DA gallery as a portfolio. I am not saying that you will effectively learn money through DA; I am only saying that there is the possibility and that I saw some people making it.

26. Popularity. On DA, I saw many amazing artists that had only 300 page views. This could be for different reasons, maybe they were just unlucky, maybe they just joined, but the results is that only few people looked at their work on DA.
It is not true that if you are a great artist popularity will come to you easily. Most of the artists just don’t care about being popular on DA or in real life: for ex, I only draw as an hobby and I don’t care to find a real job through DA, because I am studying to become a lawyer (my dad is a lawyer too). By the way, if you just post your works on your gallery and then leave them alone without login on the site anymore, it will take a very long time to be noticed, even if you are Picasso or J.K.Rowling. It’s somehow a matter of marketing.
If you joined DA just to share your art to people like you, you really don’t need popularity and page views, it makes no sense. Nevertheless, if you are here because you don’t have your own web site and you want to find a job, to make money or to become a professional, you may use DA as an advertising site. Always honestly.
Of course, all those things are nonsense if you don’t have the skills, it’s so obvious. You won’t get anywhere if you don’t apply and don’t try to get better.


27. Plz accounts. These are normally inactive accounts used for their icon, which you can post in your comments to make an image appear. For example, if you write: iloveyouplz:, you will see a cute image. If you write: iconakikorossella:, my avatar will appear. If you write: butterfly: a butterfly emoticon will show.