These days there are many European as well as American websites which offer cheap gadgets from China. These gadgets are very addictive and you can not just take the hands of it at least for first couple of weeks of buying them. They may not be as worthy as the normal gadgets you would get in America or Europe if you are actually putting a lot of thought into it. But if you do a calculation based on the number of hours these gadgets work in comparison with normal gadgets actually these gadgets it is quite worthy in terms of hours and the number of dollar you pay. You must say “by and large” they are worth for every bit of dollar you have paid.

If the amounts of variety of cheap gadgets on the American and European websites are lesser to your expectations, then the best places you should look for these cheap gadgets should be the authentic Chinese websites. There quite a huge number of companies from China that manufacture these gadgets. A lot of these companies have their own websites but most these are in Chinese. Having said that most of the large companies have slowly but surely started opening websites in English as well. One most important factor you should keep in mind is to find out the amount of customs duty you have to pay for ordering these gadgets from these Chinese websites. In case you have plans to make a larger order it would make a lot of sense to contact the nearest customs office to find the amount of duty you have to pay and proceed with the order if you paying the duty. Otherwise you might well be in a state of shock when you get to know the customs duty you have to pay while receiving the goods.

When ever you are ordering for these cheap gadgets from these Chinese websites you must be aware that you do as much as research possible before buying them as Chinese gadgets do not come with much of guarantee. These cheap gadgets are not like American or European gadgets which come with adequate guarantee period for replacement or money back (in some cases).

If you are looking to buy cheap gadgets then the best answer for you would be gadgets made in China, as these are the most cheap gadgets world over.

Except for the fact that the Alexa traffic ranking system is based on information generated from Alexa toolbar users and that “A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of Reach and Page Views” plus some kind of “data normalization” which also are not explained, there is not much information about the Alexa ranking system.

In its FAQ, Alexa also stated: “Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the past three months of global traffic according to our diverse data sources, and are updated weekly.”

Given this minimum traffic tracking period, I wonder how a blog like mine ~ although barely two weeks old ~ was able to attract a traffic ranking. Is it because my blog is hosted by WordPress.com, and Alexa is biased to WordPress.com-hosted sites? I don’t think so. I know of other sites hosted by WordPress.com which have been online for many months now, yet they are still showing an Alexa “No Data” status. I am certain that some people are visiting those sites. <em><strong>(Note:</strong> The small Alexa image on this page shows “No Data” for Alexa which we could only surmise that Alexa did not like to make its traffic ranking public.)</em>

I think I will stick to metrics like unique visits, page views and the like in gauging site traffic performances. At least, these figures are easy to understand, and I can explain the figures to other people.

But I cannot say the same thing with Alexa’s traffic ranking. After all, according to Alexa, if a site traffic ranking is beyond 100,000, the figures are statistically meaningless. For a site traffic rank to be statistically meaningful and reliable, a site should be close to the top rank. Quite a tall order, isn’t it?

Alexa’s statements read as follows:

Sites with relatively low measured traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa. Our data comes from many various sources, including our Alexa users; however, we do not receive enough data from these sources to make rankings beyond 100,000 statistically meaningful. (However, on the flip side of that, the closer a site gets to #1, the more reliable its rank.)

With many websites that are not even close to the top 1,000 or even 50,000 (let alone #1), I wonder why advertising placement agencies even bother to look at a website’s Alexa traffic rank!

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