I just thought I'd start a thread on this, as I noticed it mentioned in another thread as an incidental thing.

I LOVE the Shutterstock map, and have done since the day it arrived.  One significant thing I've noticed is that I used to get regular sales from Japan, and it is notable that there have been no sales there at all since the awful tragedy there.

Even apart from providing an opportunity to more carefully focus efforts towards countries where our individual ports show good sales, examples such as the Japanese one also give me pause for thought for the plight of different nationals at different times.  It stops it from being 'just about numbers' and makes it so much more.

I'm very grateful to SS for this feature, and as another forum member said, I wish all the agencies provided such information.

Indeed, I am not very popular in Japan either. Surprisingly enough, my European content gets downloaded in South-East Asia quite frequently.
What puzzles me more is one spot in Western Africa, which looks like it could be Senegal or Gambia. For some reason my stuff is quite popular there, most of my African downloads come from there, even ODs from time to time... My sales in other parts of Africa are negligible.

I think the default when they don't know where the download is from is offshore west africa. (or maybe the account has multiple locations or something). Otherwise there is a huge ad shop in the Canary Islands. It is interesting to see where the sales are from, but I am not sure what to do with the info.

Have to agree or my famous American's and Chinese food shots are very popular in Africa? I never understood that and assumed there was either an agency or default location. I don't recall a Japan sale ever, but I don't really concentrate on where, it's just a cute little map to me. Christopher Columbus just sold in Australia? 

Indeed, I am not very popular in Japan either. Surprisingly enough, my European content gets downloaded in South-East Asia quite frequently.
What puzzles me more is one spot in Western Africa, which looks like it could be Senegal or Gambia. For some reason my stuff is quite popular there, most of my African downloads come from there, even ODs from time to time... My sales in other parts of Africa are negligible.

hacker proxy? : P

I have some happy returning customers with SS accounts. They come back regularly and buy from my port and sometimes they also tell me, if they buy a larger set of images. Each time the map showed their exact location. So it's working.

Quote from: Snufkin on September 19, 2011, 12:27

Indeed, I am not very popular in Japan either. Surprisingly enough, my European content gets downloaded in South-East Asia quite frequently.
What puzzles me more is one spot in Western Africa, which looks like it could be Senegal or Gambia. For some reason my stuff is quite popular there, most of my African downloads come from there, even ODs from time to time... My sales in other parts of Africa are negligible.

When this map thing first came out I looked at it every now and then out of curiosity, I was amazed just how many of my images were downloaded from Accession Island - well I was until I found out that there's a telecommunications relay thing there, mentioning it to a friend who's in the know about these things he explained that someone in the UK could download an image from a site who's offices are in the US but have back up servers in Australia and according to the SS map the download could show up as having come from Russia. i.e. it's a pointless worthless widget. I haven't taken any notice of it since except for when I read this thread, having just checked it appears I'm still the worlds most popular photographer on a tiny little island in the middle of the Atlantic !!

That's funny:) I agree the data is quite meaningless - I would, too, rather have a simple table based on country of registration to see which part of my sales come from North America and which part from Europe, stuff like that. It's a cute-looking gadget but I really wish they didn't spend money developing that sort of stuff but brought more buyers to the site instead. I produce images - agencies sell them, that's all, it should be as simple as that. Some basic stats can be delivered in a very cheap way in simple format, if needed.

Well I'm glad to know that some people enjoy the visual representation anyway.  For me it's a refreshing change from looking at lists of numbers (although I don't deny that the numbers are also important, I'm essentially a visual thinker).

Was it just me, or did North America start buying en masse for everyone yesterday?   I haven't seen such a thoroughly splattered day in that region for a few weeks.

BTW, I've never shot anything that would be specific to Japan.  The images that have done welll there were subjects that are common to most countries.  'Nation-neutral', you might say.

Sad to see more bad news for Japan today.  It seems never ending right now.