Where MakerWorld's boosts go

MakerWorld members can give a model a boost, and each model shows how many it has. Most never get one. In our sample, 61.1% have zero. The ones that do usually get a few: the median boosted model has 3.

In our sample, boosts sit mostly on the models that also have the most downloads.

We studied 1,004,137 public models from MakerWorld and Printables, two of the biggest sites for sharing 3D printing files: 327,759 from MakerWorld and 676,378 from Printables. Every number here describes those models, not every model ever posted.

How the boosts are spread

The models we studied carry 1,712,420 boosts between them. Rank the models by boosts and the top 1% hold 52.7% of that pile. The top 10% hold 87.4%, which leaves 12.6% for the other nine models in ten.

Below the top it thins out fast. 12.2% of all models have exactly one boost, 19.2% have two to nine, 6.6% have ten or more but fewer than a hundred, and 0.8% have a hundred or more. Of the boosted models, 31.5% stopped at one.

Boosts and downloads

38.9% of the models we studied have at least one boost, and those models hold 93.1% of all the downloads in our sample.

Age muddies that, since an old model has had longer to collect both. So take only models six months to two years old. The median boosted one has 86 downloads. The median one without a boost has 9. Split that window in two and the gap holds in both halves: 74 against 7 at six to twelve months, 91 against 11 at one to two years.

Age still matters, though. 30.7% of models six to twelve months old have a boost. Among models one to two years old it's 49.8%.

What the link shows

Boosts and downloads go together in our sample, at every age we checked. That's all the numbers show. They can't say whether boosts bring downloads, whether downloads bring boosts, or whether something else brings both.

If you upload, an empty boost count is the normal case. Zero is where 61.1% of the models we studied sit.