Sorry but the only thing you can do is wait the 6 months that you agreed to when you signed on with them. Many people have tried unsuccesfully to break the agreement but it's just a matter of being patient.

It's a bit late now but it might have been wise to keep images on the other sites until the six months was up, so as not to lose too much income.

BTW it's not 6 months from uploading, it's 6 months from going online. If you deactivate and reactivate again, the 6 months starts counting again.

I have no problem honouring terms of an Agreement, other agencies had no problems letting me go.

I do have a right to ask questions if you see it as complaing then that is your problem. a complaint would be me saying why in the past 2 weeks has DT taken back sales due to credit card fraud?
Another thing unique to DT....see! that's what's called complaing

Good. Actually BigStock, if you had been with them, would also have insisted on their 90-day-following-acceptance rule too.

FT take back sales from credit card fraud too __ I have had far more there than at DT. Of course DT are paying out 50% commission so it is perhaps not that surprising that they can't afford to waive fraud charges.

Quote from: djmorgan on June 04, 2009, 02:58

This will stop me going exclusive, and effect income, any thoughts as to what I can do  

Read the fine print next time. You could also set your exclusive buyout price at 1$ and then buy your pictures yourself at DT

This one is very GREAT idea FlemishDreams!

I'd do that if I am OP.

Quote

Good. Actually BigStock, if you had been with them, would also have insisted on their 90-day-following-acceptance rule too.

I was! guess what they let me go

Really? I am amazed. I once asked BigStock to disable a file that I wished to make exclusive elsewhere. It turned out that the file had been approved 85 days earlier and, even though it had no views or sales, they insisted that I had to email them again in 5 days time before they would act upon my request.

Quote

Good. Actually BigStock, if you had been with them, would also have insisted on their 90-day-following-acceptance rule too.

I was! guess what they let me go

Well, it turns out your portfolio must be quite expendable.

Quote from: djmorgan on June 04, 2009, 05:15

Quote

Good. Actually BigStock, if you had been with them, would also have insisted on their 90-day-following-acceptance rule too.

I was! guess what they let me go

Well, it turns out your portfolio must be quite expendable.

rofl. no seriously, Dan P68 could be right. Bigstock insists on 90 day rule because clients do bookmark your images and if they come back to buy in before your 90 days hold to find it is not there, they can be quite pissed off with Bigstock. At least that was the reason Support gave me for needing to hold our images for 90 days.

6 months! What a drag. 

Since their recent search changes, my sales at DT are now so low I'm seriously thinking about dropping out now in case I want to go exclusive somewhere else in the future.  I sell 10 times more on SS, and FT has pulled way ahead of DT.     

FUNNY you should say that. I feel the same way now about DT these past quarterly. They seem to be performing badly even though I am getting more approved images. Maybe I should think about slowing down with uploading new images too, as I am getting better results with FT since I started with them earlier this year. And yes, I am playing with the thought of going exclusive too.
But I want to see what Veer marketplace holds in store before deciding. And June 8 is almost here for my port to be ported from SV.

I do have a right to ask questions if you see it as complaing then that is your problem. a complaint would be me saying why in the past 2 weeks has DT taken back sales due to credit card fraud?
Another thing unique to DT....see! that's what's called complaing

Don't kid yourself.  Istock will do the same, they have reversed credits in my account.

Non the less I have no understanding for the 6 month policy of Dreamstime. It's just making life more difficult for the contributors.  It works at other agencies without this policy, why not with DT??
Anyway I rather accept this policy than not submitting to DT at all. Otherwise DT is quite a good agency.

Don't forget that 'exclusivity' at IS was basically introduced to protect IS's position against the emerging competition, notably SS, CanStockPhoto and DT.

DT later devised their 6-month policy (originally they tried to make it one-year!) as a countermeasure to protect themselves against IS's exclusivity deal.

One of the significant up-front costs in any agency is that of reviewing new images. Judging by file numbers it looks like they generally inspect 2 or 3 images for every one they accept and possibly only 50% of those actually go on to become reasonable sellers and provide a return on the original investment. I don't think it's unreasonable to insist on an image remain on the site for 6 months. After all no-one is forced to upload their work to any agency.

I forgot if you can edit the keywords after acceptance in DT. In case you can, just delete all keywords,descriptions and titles or change them to something nonsensical and just become exclusive with IS. If the pictures can not be found on DT they are effectively not for sale anymore.

I think that would take a heckuva long time to accomplish, and wouldn't satisfy the requirement anyway.

I'm now thinking seriously of dropping out of DT.  Microstock is changing rapidly and the picture could be very different even 6 months from now. I don't want to be locked in to a site that isn't generating any sales for me anyway.