Well, no experience with exclusivity on Dreamstime. But I did close my account there recently because of lack of sales. I personally believe they are going nowhere but maybe others have a different view or experience.
But I would surely think twice going exclusive with them.

Once upon a time being exclusive at certain agencies was not such a bad deal. These days however I would not be exclusive with any agency.

As noted by Level6 "My attitude with these websites is they aren't loyal to us, I don't believe one word any of them say." I agree with this 100%.



 

Has anyone have experience being exclusive on Dreamstime? How it can benefit random photographers? Could it help selling more images?

I don't have experience with Dreamstime exclusivity, although I was an iStock exclusive from 2008-11 (independent from 2004-08 and 2011 on) and IMO it was never a good idea to be a Dreamstime exclusive, not even in the early days.

Today, it's a worse idea than it has ever been. They were never better than #3 in the rankings of agency earnings for most people. For a long time, iStock was #1 in earnings generally and had a good exclusive program for a while.

Sales today at Dreamstime are slow - earning in a year what a long time ago I'd have earned there in one month - so selling "more" than their current sluggish pace doesn't really amount to much, IMO.

For images I would highly recommend being independent-- spread your portfolio out. Funny how one company will sell a particular image very well while another will not sell at all. I've given up trying to figure it out...

As a Dreamstime contributor, you have three options:

1) sell your files with no strings attached (non-exclusive contributor, non-exclusive files) 25%

2) sell some files exclusively on Dreamstime (independent contributor, with some exclusive files) 27.5%

3) sell your files only on Dreamstime (exclusive contributor, exclusive files) 60%

Promises:
Dreamstime's exclusive contributors enjoy:
    60% royalties - highest in the industry
    improved search placement
minor benefits
    $0.20 per uploaded image bonus (for first 100 approved files)
    extended upload bonus for the first 10,000 approved files if downloads / image ratio > 0,1
    50% more uploads - higher submission limit
    better protection of content and models
   
I did this for anyone reading and wondering what the offers were.

The two reasons someone might consider this, 60% and placement. The rest are minimal benefits.

I'd still say no. Four times what DT returns (60% vs 15% as an example at the base rates) is still less than someone would get, if they submitted to any of these - SS, AS and IS. Meaning, the same images, would earn 6 times more from any one agency of those three. 18 times more if someone uploads to all three.

Assuming that sales of images is the same on any agency, just for the math, not uploading to SS, AS and IS would cost the artist, much more than someone could gain, by being non-exclusive. There's no reason to believe sales would be higher on DT than the other top three.

NO the benefits don't come close to what would be missed.

Nice that DT has one of the best percentages, at 25%. Too bad the sales volume is so low.

Dreamstime is the last place I would want to be exclusive. Period.

lol! there is places like mostphotos, colourbox or canstock 

How was it being exclusive with iStock. I thought about it going exclusive with them but my sales have halved there since I started uploading on iStock.

At the time, it was wonderful. But then a variety of things changed as the contributor deal worsened, investment in the business slowed (courtesy of the private equity cash-siphon that owned Getty) and customers moved to Shutterstock and other sites. In particular, how iStock handled vector illustrations then was excellent and they made really good returns for the contributor.

I wouldn't recommend iStock exclusivity today, but there are some who have been exclusive for a while who stay, sometimes only for one medium, because it still works well enough to balance out the work of getting their portfolio keyworded and uploaded elsewhere (if you keyworded your files using Getty's controlled vocabulary, you were at a disadvantage without "normal" words for other agencies).