Let's discuss traffic on the biggest agencies.

I tried to compare the traffic of the five biggest agencies on Alexa and I got this:



This is quite surprising to me, as Stockxpert, which seemingly has significantly less traffic than all of the rest, makes up 19,5 % of my microstock income. Are they about to die?

iStockPhoto had a big decline in July 2008, which I think is kind of okay. This might force them to treat contributors better to stay competitive. I have only been in this business since September 2008, so I have no idea why iStock had this decline - does anyone know?

Feel free to comment on any of this

Regards
Thomas Amby

Feel free to do a search on this forum for Alexa and you'll get all the answers you want, need, or could ever wish for. Short answer, they changed the way they measure traffic which had a large impact on iStock's data.

You're correct. The iStock dip isn't visible at all on compete. What's more, all these tools measure total traffic, which is mostly random and generated by Google. Picture tourists as it seems. The buyers will probably be a small fraction. It is measured by people that install the Alexa or Compete toolbar, and only people with a lot of time on their hands or too ignorant to remove it when it's installed by accident will use it. Probably not buyers.