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Graph comments please

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hatman12:
I spent a lot of time looking at the Alexa charts after Michael mentioned them a few days ago.  Fascinating charts.

It is useful to compare the progress of individual agencies against each other; the biggest trend I noticed was that StockXpert appears to be making good progress and now appears to be ahead of FT (in terms of page view trends).  Perhaps those here who contribute to both StockXpert and FT could make some observations.

Saturation is a good word.  If these were financial markets or economic cycles charts I would interpret them as follows:

Each cycle within larger cycles tends to have five distinct phases (up, down, up, down, up) and it is very likely that the big burst of activity at the end of the last year was the final UP in that five phase sequence.  If so, we have entered the DOWN phase of a larger cycle.  The first down phase in a five phase sequence often lasts a Fibonacci ratio 38.2% of the previous cycle; if that cycle was 4.7 years then the down phase should be about 1.7 years.

Very likely that the market has reached a first saturation point; perhaps the flow of images has exceeded the flow of buyers, or agency competition is changing the market, or perhaps the buyers in the first cycle now have enough images to keep them going for a while.

If this analysis is correct, we should expect sales to remain at present lower levels for another year or so (broadly speaking) before the down phase ends and we enter the next five phase upwards cycle.

hatman12:
Oh, I should have added that any form of analysis of those trend charts has a good 50/50 chance of being a load of bollocks of course........

berryspun:
Well, I'll take you half seriously hatman  :)

Thanks for your analysis, makes sense.  More and more photographers, thousands of pictures uploaded everyday, makes me wonder each time I add a picture in this massive tidal wave.  And with the subscription system some companies may have enough on their hard drives to last for a few years.

And at the same time most of the smaller companies are not aware of the microstock resources, so I can see some potential for growth, even this year, if the sites reinvest their resources for reaching these companies with a cleverly-managed advertizing campaign.

IS has a strong client base, the graphs surprised me quite a lot in that respect.  I wonder if any of the other 4 sites will reach or cross over IS line in the near future.

hatman12:
Well berryspun IF the trend follows the classic economic analysis, turnover or activity should drop to at least 61.8% of previous peak levels, and possibly as far as 50%.  We are seeing that already.

As with any recession, people will have to work twice as hard just to stand still; in the case of microstock that might mean having twice as many images just to keep the same income.

Many here are already seeing that happen.

The worst point of the cycle should be the first few months of next year, which will be worse than the first few months of this year.  But nothing goes in a straight line and activity will probably pick up towards the autumn and Christmas, only to plunge to lower levels afterwards.

Of course those who can stand the strain of this slowdown and continue to shoot and upload will reap the benefits when the next upwards cycle begins perhaps half way through 2008.  But it will get much worse before then.

I imagine those most likely to suffer will actually be the leading lights of the industry; those who have images with 500, 1,000 or even 3,000 downloads might find that those images are the first to fall off the tree.

But these thoughts might be complete rubbish of course.....

jlye:
I prefer to trust my own chart base on earnings .. LOL

no point having a great number of hits if my photo will not sell there.

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