I'm just gonna log this here, but also on FA, and DA.
Just a comparison of analytics between here, Furaffinity, Pixiv, and Deviantart, just to show which site really is the best for sharing your art and knowing how much people actually have seen it, let alone enjoyed it enough to like/favorite the pic.
The pic in question is this one: So far after ten hours, Deviantart hasn't registered a single view, though my pageview count has increased by 3 since I posted Azmune's pic. No favorites, no downloads registered.
On Furaffinity, it's a much different story. It's been viewed 19 times, and Favorited once according to its analytics and once per user per 24 hours, I've apparently gotten over a thousand profile page visits.
On Pixiv it's also a different story. 23 views and possibly still climbing. I'll edit this entry after 24 hours on each platform has gone by.
On Newgrounds, the same picture has only gotten 4 views (unless you can inflate the views one view per interval, in which case, it only has 1 views, because I refreshed like 3 times, and it had 2 views when I viewed my own pic.
On Twitter A single tagged post of my art has apparently gotten...
255 Impressions (Literally just Passing Views of the tweet)
22 Interactions of which there was...
8 Likes
3 Replies
5 Media engagements (Probly number of times someone maybe downloaded or maximized the pic itself)
and 2 each for Retweets (Shares), Link Clicks, and Detail Expands.
I'm doing this to simply prove a point. That point just may eventually be: Deviantart is the worst site for growing as an artist.
It would seem Twitter is shaping up to be the Best.
Even the pic with no Tags, and only one RT by myself, got 75 Impressions and 7 Engagements, with 2 replies, one of which being myself in response to someone else. Twitter is still the best without tagging people with more active audiences who like your post and reply to it. (thank you so much Purity Sin, Holy Shit!)
Simply seeing the pic and looking at the page doesn't really help an artist at all.
Over the course of 7-ish discord servers, I've gotten word about my pic 8 times in the form of replies and reactions.
Even if someone simply tells you "Hey, I like your post" helps an artist more than anyone can really tell. It's motivating, and it's confirmation that the 6 literal hours you put into a picture, even one as simple as the one up above, someone DID see it, and you didn't just drop it into a virtual ocean for it to sink to the bottom immediately.
I'm not doing art for the attention, I do it because I want to, but any smart person will pay attention to analytics if they want to make a living with any virtual occupation.
However, so far, Furaffinity, and Pixiv is also a good option. Newgrounds is shaky honestly.
If I'd posted on Artstation, I most likely would've gotten Newgrounds numbers like i did with my Elanif pic, which I got more views on NG with. Those two platforms seem to be roughly the same in terms of potential to get any eyes on your art.
Just a general look of things for someone who posts inconsistently and you can't really say has been given some form of a dedicated audience like many other artists already have to otherwise make such an observation like I've made, less useful for the average artist who is only doing their best.