Using Pixoto to Gauge the Popularity of your Photos

Pixoto is a lot of fun.  On Pixoto you can post your photos and see how they rank, vote on other people’s photos, enter in challenges, and win awards. Pixoto feeds the competitive nature in photographers, trying to win awards and get higher scores on our photos.

However, I’m not sure that Pixoto is the best way to gauge the popularity of your images.  I’ve put several of my most popular photos in terms of sales and comments on Pixoto.  These images ranked just ok (mid 500s).  While some of my less popular images that were saturated and colorful ranked at 600+.

This is due to the way Pixoto is designed.  Credits are the currency for Pixoto.  Credits are needed to upload photos and enter challenges.  Credits can either be purchased or obtained by voting, earning one credit per vote.

The way voting works on Pixoto is that two photos are shown side by side and you click on the one you like the most.  With this voting method, voting can occur rather quickly.  With credits only accumulating at one credit per vote, people tend to not spend a lot of time on studying the photos.

This would explain why saturated photos and photos that really pop rank better on Pixoto.  Pixoto does still give an indication of how much your photos are like by others albeit in a one second click test.  However if your are looking for an indication of how your photos will sell online, Pixoto might not be the right choice.

I also find that Pixoto does not send a lot of traffic to my website.  This could be due to the blind voting process where the photographer is not listed with the photo during voting.

Written by Martin Belan

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