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For photography teachers: which tutorials and reviews bring students.

A photography educator sells editing and camera courses online, and a few times a year a field workshop or a tour with a deposit and a balance. Tally ties each course sale and deposit to the visit behind it, so you can see whether gear reviews, tutorials or videos bring the students.

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01How they sell

  • One-offCourses on a camera system, editing or a genre, and deposits and balances for field workshops and photo tours.
  • SubscriptionA membership with monthly assignments, critiques and the full course library.

02Payments it reads

  • StripeCourses through Stripe Checkout, and tour deposits and balances as Checkout payments or invoices on the educator's site.
  • Lemon SqueezyCourses bundled with presets or raw files sold through Lemon Squeezy, with orders and refunds read.

What Tally can't read

  • Commissions from camera-shop affiliate links aren't read, though the clicks out are counted.
  • Tour balances paid by bank transfer or to a local operator aren't read.
  • Courses sold on a course marketplace's own checkout aren't read.

03Where buyers come from

  • Gear reviewsReaders of a camera or lens review often buy a course for that camera; the page breakdown shows which reviews lead there.
  • YouTubeEditing walkthroughs send viewers through tagged description links, often weeks before they buy.
  • InstagramPhotos with a link in the bio send visitors through the in-app browser, named in Readable Direct.
  • Past studentsWorkshop alumni come back for a tour, which repeat rate by first source makes visible.

04What Tally answers

  1. Do buyers read the gear reviews or the tutorials?

    What they read compares engaged time and scroll depth per page for buyers and other visitors, so the pages buyers read closely stand out from those that only draw traffic.

    What they read

  2. Was this tour deposit linked to the right visits?

    Its receipt shows the first visit, the visits after, the credited one and how the payment was tied, with ids and confidence.

    Receipts

  3. How many people click through to buy a camera instead?

    Clicks on links to other sites are counted, and marking affiliate links with data-fast-goal adds them to the goals view next to course purchases.

    Goals and funnels

  4. Do online students go on to book a workshop?

    Lifetime value counts every purchase under the customer's first source, so a course buyer who later books a tour adds to the source that first brought them.

    Lifetime value

05Numbers worth watching

Engaged time
Active time per tutorial and review, which separates pages people study from pages they skim.
Repeat rate
The share of students who buy again, a second course or a workshop.
Revenue by source
Money per source, including the large tour payments that a few channels may account for.

06An example

Example

Reading time

38s

median per pageview

Scroll depth

59%

average depth, of 27,242 views measured

Read to the end

27%

of measured views reached 90% or more

What they read

29,292 pageviews · last 30 days

Open a page to see how far down people read it, and how buyers read it before paying.

  2. /pricing5,531 views78% scrolled on average58s reading time, median

    58s

    reading time, median per view

    78%

    scrolled, on average

    5,531 views · 5,199 with a measured depth

    How far down they read

    Share of measured views that scrolled at least this far

    1. 25% — reached a quarter of the page:95%
    2. 50% — reached half of the page:84%
    3. 75% — reached three quarters of the page:69%
    4. 90%+ — reached the end of the page:48%

    Buyers before paying vs didn't buy

    • Buyers, before paying149 views · 107 buyers96% scrolled on average,1m 41s reading time, median
    • Didn't buy5,347 views · 3,819 visitors61% scrolled on average,44s reading time, median

    35 views by buyers after paying are left out of both.

    Buyers are visitors whose first sale came after viewing this page; only their views before that payment count.

Reading time runs only while the tab is visible and the visitor is active; it's the median per view. A view with no engagement report counts as 0s of reading. Its scroll depth is unknown, so it's left out of every scroll figure rather than counted as 0%. 27,242 of 29,292 pageviews have a measured depth.

Fig. 1What they read on the example site. For a photography educator, compare buyers' engaged time on reviews and tutorials with everyone else's.

07Setting up

  1. WordPressAdd the tag through the theme's header so reviews, tutorials, course pages and tour pages carry it.
  2. StripePass the visitor's id in Checkout metadata for deposits; a balance invoiced later links by the buyer's email.
  3. Mark affiliate links to camera shops with data-fast-goal so they can be compared with course sales.

08Questions

  • Are deposit and balance one sale or two?

    Two payments. Each is linked on its own, and the customer's row shows both.

  • Does Tally read my affiliate earnings?

    No. It counts the clicks out to the shop; the commission is paid by the shop or network and isn't read.

  • Can I see where tour buyers live?

    The country breakdown puts revenue beside each country, from the city the IP was matched to before it was dropped.

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