Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: uno99 on July 20, 2013, 05:29 pm

Title: SilkRoad Vendor Income Distribution
Post by: uno99 on July 20, 2013, 05:29 pm
SR Unofficial Census thread? :-)

Anyway, I'm interested in alot of the census figures for stuff on SR. Obviously there are things that can and can't be obtained without relying on estimation. But I wanted to see what your thoughts on some figures were.

There are alot of figures that I'd be interested in knowing, but I think the most interesting and fun out of the figures is the age old "So how much you think he's making // Celebrity Networth.com question"

SO that being said...How do you think income is distributed among vendors for these sales figures. We already have information on so and so vendor being in the top X% of Silk Road vendors, but how do you think that correlates with income?

**Note we are using BEFORE TAX INCOME not SALES** While I think both can be reasonable and fun to estimate, I picked it because ultimately its the more descriptive statistic (esp at the lower levels) and decided to stick with it...despite the SilkRoad top % Statistic being based on Sales and therefore correlating better to this as well as being easier to estimate**

Key:

$1,000,000+
$450,000-$999,999
$250,000-$450,000
$125,000-$250,000
$85,000-$125,000
$60,000-$85-000
$45,000-$60,000
$35,000-$45,000
$25,000-$35,000
$15,000-$25,000
$10,000-$15,000
Less than $10,000

ex. respond by matching the quartile to the percent of vendors you believe fit the criteria.
1%, 25%, 50%, etc. If you think only 0.01% (1/10000) vendors is taking home $1,000,000, then put 0.01% next to the $1,000,000+ option.

Curious to hear responses.

Title: Re: SilkRoad Vendor Income Distribution
Post by: StExo on July 20, 2013, 06:13 pm
90% of vendors will never tell you how much they're making, it's another thing to profile them. Even for my services to assist with them laundering their money, a few are uncomfortable even telling me despite my good reputation and feedback on the matter as well as the promises of privacy and if they're uncomfortable telling the one helping them launder their cash, I doubt you're going to get much of a response on here from them in a public manner. Also, no offence to all the buyers out there, but you don't have any idea how much vendors are making, you have a lot of wild guesses and they are pretty wild.
Title: Re: SilkRoad Vendor Income Distribution
Post by: uno99 on July 20, 2013, 06:27 pm
Yea, I didn't expect vendors to be comfortable with revealing that info. I guess what I was hoping for was for alot of the small-mid scale vendors out there to take guesses on what kind of money their lesser or higher up peers were bringing in. Yeah, even with that, I think you are right in that its alott of guess work and also that people will remain hesistant. But I don't think it's farfetched to think that a person on the bottom rung of that table I would answer a "(I think maybe 1 guy or 2 guys maybe "HAndle1" and "Handle2" make this much, couple guys make this much, and the majority make this much)" type of answer...which I think is really non-invasive and reasonable to opine on...not to mention interesting conversation.

I wanted to create the thread because among all of the other demographic stats that people might be interested in, this one is probably one of the ones that most people would be most interested in knowing despite the reservations you mentioned.
Title: Re: SilkRoad Vendor Income Distribution
Post by: Tessellated on July 20, 2013, 06:33 pm
You can estimate a vendor's gross revenue by counting how many feedback they get in a month for each of their products.
Title: Re: SilkRoad Vendor Income Distribution
Post by: uno99 on July 20, 2013, 06:57 pm
You can estimate a vendor's gross revenue by counting how many feedback they get in a month for each of their products.

Hm, yeah. I do this as well and I would imagine most of the people who browse silkroad.

It's different from having a % Distribution that accounts for the rich, poor, the mid level guys, as well as the experimental sellers though which is what I wanted. I hoped people would respond more readily. I think people are interested in the topic, as the views seem to go up at an ok pace for the number of replies, but as the guy who posted mentioned people seem hesistant/not interested in doing the estimation.
Title: Re: SilkRoad Vendor Income Distribution
Post by: StExo on July 20, 2013, 06:58 pm
You can estimate a vendor's gross revenue by counting how many feedback they get in a month for each of their products.

Only 2 people that we know of have the capacity to get that much data. The first is DPR who can do some basic number crunching to find out. The 2nd is me with my crawlers and even then there are huge issues as we've found building the thing. DPR isn't releasing those numbers, I've asked many times before my own project and the numbers I have I will never be releasing datasets for without the permission of every single vendor in the list and I doubt many vendors will be happy for me to publish their estimated revenues, let alone a whole list.


@uno99 - The difference is stratospheric, mid-level vendors are poor points to use since the growth occurs exponentially seemingly. If it satisfies at least a little curiosity, you're going to need bigger numbers than that.
Title: Re: SilkRoad Vendor Income Distribution
Post by: NorthernStar on July 20, 2013, 09:35 pm
90% of vendors will never tell you how much they're making, it's another thing to profile them. Even for my services to assist with them laundering their money, a few are uncomfortable even telling me despite my good reputation and feedback on the matter as well as the promises of privacy and if they're uncomfortable telling the one helping them launder their cash, I doubt you're going to get much of a response on here from them in a public manner. Also, no offence to all the buyers out there, but you don't have any idea how much vendors are making, you have a lot of wild guesses and they are pretty wild.
Where's your nemesis Razorspyne. your sparring sessions were  legendary, You don't seem to be around much. Come to think of it neither is he.
Title: Re: SilkRoad Vendor Income Distribution
Post by: joolz on July 20, 2013, 10:54 pm
SR Unofficial Census thread? :-)

Anyway, I'm interested in alot of the census figures for stuff on SR. Obviously there are things that can and can't be obtained without relying on estimation. But I wanted to see what your thoughts on some figures were.

There are alot of figures that I'd be interested in knowing, but I think the most interesting and fun out of the figures is the age old "So how much you think he's making // Celebrity Networth.com question"

SO that being said...How do you think income is distributed among vendors for these sales figures. We already have information on so and so vendor being in the top X% of Silk Road vendors, but how do you think that correlates with income?

**Note we are using BEFORE TAX INCOME not SALES** While I think both can be reasonable and fun to estimate, I picked it because ultimately its the more descriptive statistic (esp at the lower levels) and decided to stick with it...despite the SilkRoad top % Statistic being based on Sales and therefore correlating better to this as well as being easier to estimate**

Key:

$1,000,000+
$450,000-$999,999
$250,000-$450,000
$125,000-$250,000
$85,000-$125,000
$60,000-$85-000
$45,000-$60,000
$35,000-$45,000
$25,000-$35,000
$15,000-$25,000
$10,000-$15,000
Less than $10,000

ex. respond by matching the quartile to the percent of vendors you believe fit the criteria.
1%, 25%, 50%, etc. If you think only 0.01% (1/10000) vendors is taking home $1,000,000, then put 0.01% next to the $1,000,000+ option.

Curious to hear responses.
Do you mean those mintel reports things ? ...ask   sr  ???
Title: Re: SilkRoad Vendor Income Distribution
Post by: bluedev1 on July 21, 2013, 02:57 am
this doesn't seem fun at all.

are you an accountant or something?