If you're asking this, the honest answer is probably that you can't tell. Not right now, not from what you've got in front of you.
That's not because you did something wrong. It's because nothing you're using now was set up to answer it, and nobody told you that. You post, some weeks are busy, some weeks are quiet, and the two never quite line up in a way you can point at.
So here's what you can actually find out, starting this week, with no budget, no new software, and nobody helping you.
The short version
If you have nothing set up at all, three habits will tell you most of what you need, and all three are free.
- Ask every new customer what brought them, however they turn up, and write down what they say.
- Count one number every week: the one closest to money for you.
- Compare months against each other, not single posts, and expect a delay before anything shows up.
The rest of this page is why those three, what they can't tell you, and how to read the answers without fooling yourself.
Why the usual advice didn't help
Search this question and most of what comes back is written for someone else. Set up conversion tracking. Build a dashboard. Work out your cost per acquisition. Compare your channels.
All of that assumes things you might not have: a website you control, a system that stores customers, enough advertising spend to divide into, and a free afternoon to learn a reporting tool. If you're one person who posts a photo when you remember to, that advice isn't wrong. It's just addressed to a reader who isn't you.
The version that fits you is much smaller, and the most useful part of it is a question you ask out loud.
First, the part almost nobody says
Even the people with every tool switched on can't see most of what happens.
A lot of how people find you leaves no trace at all. Someone takes a screenshot of your post and sends it to a friend. Someone sees your work, remembers your name, and looks you up three weeks later. Someone mentions you in a group chat you'll never see.
That gap isn't small. In 2023 SparkToro ran an experiment where about a hundred people visited test pages from different apps, and then checked what Google Analytics had recorded. Every single visit that came from TikTok, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord and Mastodon was logged as "direct", which is the bucket analytics drops any visit into when it arrives with no trace of where it came from. Somebody typing your address in lands there. So does a bookmark, and a link opened from an email app. Three quarters of visits from Facebook Messenger had the same problem. That was one small test over ten days, not proof about the whole internet, so treat it as a strong hint rather than a law.
What it does show plainly is this. Some share of the people who look like they arrived out of nowhere didn't. Somebody recommended you, and you're never going to see it happen.
Say that out loud, because it changes what you're aiming for. Nobody has the full picture. Not the agency, not the big company, not us. The goal is to be less wrong than guessing, and to know which parts you're actually sure about.
Ask. It's the single most useful thing on this page.
If you do one thing, do this one. When a new customer turns up, ask what brought them.
How they turn up is different for everybody, so the moment is different too. Somebody messages or calls. Somebody walks in and buys something. An order lands in your inbox and you never speak to them at all. Somebody starts following you and might not buy for a year. Find the earliest point where you notice a new person, and ask there.
Word it carefully, because the wording changes the answer.
"How did you hear about us?" gets vague answers. People say "online", or "the internet", or "I can't remember". It sounds like a question from a form, so people answer it like one.
Better versions, depending on how they reached you:
- If they messaged or called: "What made you get in touch today?"
- If they're standing in front of you: "What brought you in?"
- If it's an order with no conversation: one optional box at checkout, or one line in the confirmation email, asking what made them order.
- If nobody is buying yet and people are just watching: ask the followers directly, once, in a post or a story. People answer that more often than you'd expect.
If nothing about your work involves a door, this still holds, the moment just sits somewhere else. If you go to them, ask when you turn up for the quote or the job, before you start working. If you sell through a marketplace or a booking site, the first message is your moment, and it's often the only one you get. If most of your work arrives by referral, ask who sent them, by name, and write the name down, because the same few names tend to come up again and you'll want to thank them.
Whichever you use, ask early rather than at the end. By the end they've forgotten, and they're thinking about paying you.
Then write it down. One line per person: the date, and what they said in their own words. A notebook is completely fine. A note on your phone is fine. The point is that it all sits in one place and you never have to remember any of it.
Give it a couple of months and read the lines back together. You'll see a pattern you couldn't have guessed at, and it'll be about your own work specifically, rather than about businesses in general.
It's also the only method on this page that can see word of mouth, which for a lot of people is most of it.
Count one number, and make it the one closest to money
Followers, likes and views aren't that number. They move for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and they can all go up in a week where nobody buys anything.
The number to count is the one that only moves when a person decides to do something. Messages. Calls. Orders. Sign-ups. Bookings. New people getting in touch. People through the door. Pick whichever of those is how your work actually starts, and pick only one.
That number, going up over a few months, is what "working" means. There are more exact methods, and they cost money and time you don't have. This one is honest and it's free.
Count it once a week, on the same day, the same way. It should take you under a minute. Write it next to the notebook.
One number counted honestly for three months beats twelve numbers you look at once.
Use the free counters you already have
You almost certainly have more than you think, and none of it costs anything.
If you have a Google Business Profile, it already counts how many people called you from it, asked for directions, tapped through to your website, and what they searched to find you. That's real, it's free, and most people never open it.
Most apps you post on will show you profile visits, and link taps if you have a link. Some of that needs a business or creator account, and some apps hold the link back until you have a certain number of followers, so check what yours actually gives you. Where you can see them, those two are worth more attention than view counts, because they're somebody choosing to find out more, rather than a video playing while a thumb was moving.
If you have a website, whoever hosts it might count visitors for you. Some do and some don't, so have a look, and don't spend an afternoon hunting if it isn't there.
Here's the limit, and it's worth being clear about: none of those can tell you whether any of it turned into money. They stop at the edge of your work. Joining the two halves is exactly what the notebook is for.
Compare stretches of time, not single posts
One post proves close to nothing. Too much of what happens to a single post is luck, timing, and whatever the app felt like doing that day.
Compare a month against the month before it, or a season against the same season last year if your work has busy and quiet times. Look at your one number, and read your notebook alongside it.
Expect a delay, too. Somebody who sees you today might not be ready for two months. If you started posting in March and nothing moved in March, that isn't an answer yet.
When you really need to know one thing, give it a clean trail
Sometimes there's one specific question worth a proper answer. Did the printed flyer do anything. Was that one video worth the afternoon. Is the email list earning its keep.
Give that one thing a trail nothing else uses. A link that appears in one place only. A code people mention to get something. A different phone number if you have one going spare. Even "just tell me you saw the video" is a trail, and it counts, because you're writing down what people say.
One clean trail answers one question properly. That's a far better trade than a tracking setup that half works everywhere.
Three kinds of answers, and telling them apart
Whatever you end up with will be a mix of three things, and most tools blur them together on purpose. Keep them apart in your own head.
Some things are counted. Nineteen people asked for directions. Four people filled in the form. These are facts and you can treat them as facts.
Some things are likely. Somebody clicked a link that exists in one place only, and then got in touch. It's fair to say that probably came from there. Likely is the honest word, and you should keep saying it, because they might also have seen you last month and only just needed you.
Some things merely moved together. You started posting and more people started getting in touch. That's worth knowing and it isn't proof. Seasons change, the weather changes, a competitor closes.
If you keep those three apart, you won't talk yourself into a story. That's most of the skill.
The answer might be that it isn't working
This has to be said, because leaving it out would turn this page into a sales pitch.
Measuring can tell you that what you're doing isn't working. That's a real outcome and a useful one. It's much better to find that out in three months than to keep going for three years on a feeling.
And measuring doesn't make anything work. It doesn't bring a single person in. All it does is tell you where your next hour is worth spending, which matters a great deal when you only have the one hour.
Where we come into this
We're building PopJar. It makes content out of what a person already has: their own photos, their own words, their own work. It's for anybody making something, whether that's a business, a side thing, or no business at all. When it can't support something from your own material, it's built to leave it out rather than invent it, because a confident sentence that isn't true costs more than a plain one that is.
The part that relates to this page doesn't exist yet, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. PopJar has never matched one real customer to one real piece of content. If that changes, we'll write it up here and show exactly how it works. Until then, a notebook and a good question beats anything we could tell you.
If you take one thing from this page, take the question. Ask people what brought them, write down what they say, and read it back in three months.