MicrostockGroup

I think it would be interesting to know what are the weakness of each agency.

Those that I hate the most are Dreamstime for their arbitrary rejections and Pixmac for their extremely low comissions and for paying us in credits that will expire after one year.

Cheers

gu

http://stockillustrator.blogspot.com/

+1

Totally agree^^. 

All the sites can be frustrating at times (and sometimes its cathartic to vent), but what job doesn't have frustrations?

If I truly hated any of the sites I would not be contributing to them.  Life's too short...

I hate FT, for their:
* sketchy top-secret partner programs we can not know about
* sketchy credit values and non-transparent policies
* incredibly rude helpdesk
Even with all the happy sales reports about them i'm still very happy i ditched them.

Agree with the above.
I'm also quite fond of the FT promotions where they ask you to give away the farm for "increased exposure".

They will be missed. 

Also think Hate is a bit strong.  There are some that I trust less than others ... none that I really trust.  Some seem to "spin" the truth to the point of being a lie.  Some make "stealing" your images sound like it was your fault. 
I guess Race is right, however.  We all have the option to "opt out."
So far I have "opted out" only at FT.

Exactly. In order to play, you have to decide which ones you can semi-trust and go with it. Otherwise, you don't play at all. Thank goodness for free choice.

Thinkstock.  I hate Thinkstock.  And many of you do too.

Let's not make a whole discussion on the "hate" word... I think everyone understood what I meant. The question is not why I hate and keep uploading or why in my blog there are links to Dreamstime.

What I'd like to know is what you don't like about each agencies and so on... Let's not make a drama on all this...

Apart from random rejections we all vent about occasionally, my only consistent peeve in microstock is the acceptance emails from fotolia that just give you the image ID....

I keep a spreadsheet of images, and I have go to to the site an figure out what the ID relates to...

Given that it's a pretty minor issue 'Hate' is way to strong, but if I were to drop a site it'd be Fotolia for that reason, as they are also my lowest earner now that StockXpert is tits-up.

Cheers, Him.

I for one am happy to answer the original question.  And no I don't actually 'hate' the people running these agencies.  This is what forums are for: opinions, positive or negative - right?   If you want to join other happy contributors in singing company songs, the agencies have their own forums for that sort of thing.

IStock is the one that bugs me the most, by far: incredibly long review and appeal times, weird and inconsistent rejections.  Just too many hoops for not enough money.  And even though I understand the reasons for the CV, it's a pain in the rear and so far the implementation has been greatly lacking.

i have to agree with stochostic here. most sites don't really bother me that much, for what i get in return more than justify it.

however, at is it's a combination of different things that makes it an unpleasant process to submit your work. submitting your images one by one is truly time consuming and you have to be so careful about your keywords. i feel like i have to reduce my brain power to it's lowest common denominator (if love can't be associated with a heart shaped thing, then what is? this was Perry's complaint.) due to their weekly quotas, it's really important to have a high acceptance rate. so it's doubly frustrating if they're being declined. then the resubmit process is also annoying. if it's not one thing then it's another and you've wasted your quota. their review period is sooooooooo long. all of this for 15 uploads a week.

their requirements for an el license is much more lax, so making it less likely to have el sales (compared to ss for example, 500,000 vs. 250,000 for print or circulation requirement).  it's insulting that independents are getting so much less commission. the list goes on. it's not hate, it's just annoying (if someone asks).

OK, if you want to know thoughts on agencies, here are mine:

Fotolia - not helpful in terms of rejection reasons.   Not enough sales.
DT - Nice agency, but every time my sales start growing well, they change the best match and my sales drop
Shutterstock -  Love them.  They keep it simple and produce great sales consistently.
iStock - Upload limits and CV are tedious, but sales are great and staff are incredibly helpful and pleasant.
CanStockPhoto - I really like CanStockPhoto, but sales are sporadic.  Fotosearch sales are a great bonus though.
BigStock - Nice people.
123RF - I've never really interacted with the staff.  Very long pending queue at the moment.
Veer - lovely staff.  Little bursts of good sales.  I do hope they'll pick up.

My favourite agencies are Shutterstock first and iStock second.  Shutterstock make it so easy to generate good sales. iStock is the most challenging, but has been worth the effort.  I would say that Fotolia is the one that most often made me wonder whether it was really worth the hassle over the first year.