MicrostockGroup

Why would you want to become exclusive at a middle-tier (for earnings) agency? From a financial point of view it just doesn't make sense at all.

Because I know many photographer do well at IS, but never heard somebody success at fotolia . So, the first choice to become an exclusive contributor is Istockphoto?

Actually, I am exclusive to fotolia, and my stock income is about 80 percent of my total income. That it doesn't make financial sense to most other microstock contributors but does to me and a few other Europeans is due to the fact that fotolia is the market leader in Europe, and I get evidence for that every single day. I haven't seen much growth this year, I must admit, although my port is growing constantly, but I have always had steady sales from them, even when everyone is suffering the summer slow down. And of course, being in Europe, I get paid in Euros.
There was a best match shake at the beginning of the year that no longer gave new images a push in the search as it used to, but since august, new images do pick up.
Not that I trust them at all, but my leaving istock as my second best agency, more or less forced me into exclusivity, and I do have a significant plus in income. To cushion the risk (can you say that in English? ) I'm planning to shoot quite a bit of RM next year.
Being independent doesn't make sense without contributing to istock, which for me would have meant to watch them helping themselves to 84 percent, - somehow, I simply cannot bring myself to do that.

Pheby!  yes I can see your point and there is nothing wrong with exclusivity, it worked for 30 years in the trad-agencies and without problems. Just that on internet based micros with gazillions of images, pseudonyms, the lot, excluysivity is an edgy concept.

RM! yes indeed, I have shot lots of it so far this year, both RM and RF and I tell you, RM sales are increasing by the hour, at least from my experience, might be that many buyers, especially creative buyers are getting fed-up with all the ups and downs of micros, slow processes, interfaces full of bugs and glitches, not to speak of dreadful search-engines as, IS,  etc.
I mean the only three, major micros working really are SS, DT and FT.

My plan is the basically the same, much, much more RM,  still uploading to the other three micros.

good luck.

Why?

Make it triple or quadruple, since the search engine plays a very important role if you have a varied portfolio. There is always the "good enough" image vs the "best". A buyer (or most) won't wade to page 99 of the search results if an image on page 1 is good enough.

Personally, I think exclusivity is a bad idea.  Every agency with an exclusivity plan has screwed its suppliers either once or multiple times.  Fotolia has reduced royalties and raised the goalposts several times.  iStock has done worse.  And now we have Dreamstime giving partner agencies commissions that come out of our pockets.

Better to simplify your upload workflow.  With a little creativity and some handy scripts, I can submit to ten agencies without much more effort than it takes for one.  And beside the financial benefits, I'm not stuck with the next agency that tries to play with my royalties.

It's 80% of your income and you are only silver you must live on a tight budget considering the living-costs in Germany!
I would say 'to reduce the risk' and I don't think you can use cushion in that sense in English but I'm German too so it's likely that I'm wrong.

Good for you!  I'm on a higher rank than you but couldn't even half of my rent paying with their money, therefore I was wondering. But they also paying me in Dollars