It is wonderful to see this site growing steadily month after month.
I have been thrilled recently that three people have contacted me within a week requesting to use images for varied reasons. It reminds me of the better aspects of olden times and heralds, in my mind, the coming of age for this phoenix site.
Well done to everyone involved!
Thank you Dan, I really appreciate your message.
But still: we have a loooooong way to run here at RGB to get me the kicks of download, I get from sxc.
In 2012 I will reach around 9,500 downloads for the year. That is for more than 1,000 images.
At SXC one image (http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/nRiXSNM/Christmastree+with+ornaments) took more than 5,400 downloads in 14 days. That is more than half the total download from RGB during the while year. The same image was downloaded 34 times at RGB.
Så lets get RGB even more into the centre of the worlds downloadtraffic! ;-)
You are right John, but that is not the whole story.
SXC is a dieing site and it is slowly degrading. RGBstock grows and SXC is getting smaller.
SXC is still ten to fifteen times bigger then RGB but we are slowly catching up. (see the figures on www.alexa.com)
RGB is counting the downloads much more accurate then SXC. SXC count a lot double or triple and we do not. The number of downloads on SXC if far too optimistic.
The total number of images online at SXC has been pretty stable at a little under 400,000 since September 2009, varying between 391,052 (5th March 2010) and 397,685 (today) - thats no more than 2% difference. I have no way of checking how accurate their counting of either the number of photos online is (do they remove photos from that count when folk delete their galleries?), nor of the number of downloads for specific images that are reported.
Anecdotally, I am getting fewer images accepted there now, and acceptances are taking much longer than they used to.
Since 1st September 2012, RGBStock has moved from 73,104 photos online to 76,637, up about 4.5%.
RGBStock is growing quite fast :) This year I have on average two times more downloads per week, compared to 2011 (max. 821 download per week - three weeks ago). Max. on SXC was 10,000+ downloads in one day (three years ago). Now on SXC I have two, or maybe three times less downloads than previously.
Any SXC user who contacted me via e-mail is routed to RGBStock because here I have my main gallery :) We need more advertisement and then RGBStock will be growing even fast.
Great work and keep going :)
#28: They do reduce the download count when images are removed. I have sold a number of image on sxc (customers have paid to have the images removed from the site, and they have signed contract that they know the image has been there). When I remove the image, the download is reduced with what the image had.
Yes, the download count does reduce. I remember that. But I note that the total number of images has never reached the 400,000 plus that it was once. Such a shame. i really liked the site when Peter owned it.
I think RGB will grow progressively. We will soon have the first 100,000 members. The numbers are amazing.