Agency Based Discussion > General - Top Sites
Graph comments please
michaeldb:
--- Quote from: sharpshot on April 28, 2007, 00:50 ---...I think StockXpert could give istock a hard time. They offer a good deal for the contributors and for the designers. The site is fast and easy to use. They have had good sales since I joined last August and I have made more with them than with FT/BigStock.
I wonder if more people will drop istock exclusivity if a few more new sites take off? It might have been wise to be exclusive when there wasn't much competition but I don't think it is worth doing now.
--- End quote ---
Very thoughtful comments. I echo yours, and add mine:
-StockXpert doesn't have the puerile high-school-clique/snotty-peebert culture you find at IS. StockXpert is run more like a business. Some IS exclusives who have the need to belong will probably remain loyal to IS no matter what, but business-wise imagists (as Kirsty Pargeter, Rinder, Andresr do now) may choose to reject IS exclusivity.
-And StockXpert sells vectors, in a sensible way. And uploading vectors at StockXpert is much, much faster and easier.
-And, in spite of constant denials by the rulers at IS, the new search system there looks more and more like a total, permanent disaster. They seem to have shot themselves in the foot with it, and refuse to admit that they are losing blood.
litifeta:
Using ALEXA rankings is not a real acurate way of gauging traffic in this biz.
For a start, the traffic is monitored by those using an Alexa toolbar, which only works on IE6 and above.
Alexa does not work on Firefox or Macs. And, I would think the majority of designers use Macs ... what do you think.
Alexa is a good gauge of where traffic flows, but from a sales point of view, I reckon it is a waste of time in any publishing industry stats.
michaeldb:
--- Quote from: litifeta on April 30, 2007, 22:48 ---Using ALEXA rankings is not a real acurate way of gauging traffic in this biz.
For a start, the traffic is monitored by those using an Alexa toolbar, which only works on IE6 and above.
Alexa does not work on Firefox or Macs. And, I would think the majority of designers use Macs ... what do you think.
Alexa is a good gauge of where traffic flows, but from a sales point of view, I reckon it is a waste of time in any publishing industry stats.
--- End quote ---
You're right, of course. But the Alexa charts seem to have correlated very,very well with my microstock sales for the last (almost) two years. And also with the sales anecdotally reported in forum posts by stockers with large portfolios.
The populations which Alexa samples have the flaws you mentioned. But in their favor, the samples are huge. In statistics, as I recall, the larger the 'n' the more reliable the correlations. The huge size of the population may wash out some of the shortcomings of the sampled population and add to the validity of the results.
Anyway, the Alexa charts are fun to look at and I do not think they are comopletely without validity. They may be, until microstock sites start making public their sales data, the best clues we have as to what is going on with downloads in the industry which we are part of.
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