I have been uploading for about 9 months now on Dreamstime and have a portfolio of 290 images at the moment. This will reach 300 + in about a week since I have many more pending files. My average earnings for the last few months are over $100 and I even had had one month of $145 with 260 images online at the time.

BUT... I want to stop being exclusive since I am seeing that people are making double or more profits compared to Dreamstime on Shutterstock. I emailed them asking to stop my exclusivity and got a very friendly response and she asked me why I wanted to stop being exclusive. We corresponded and she told me that I could expect a 60% drop in income and sales.

I searched for similar topics but I did not find an answer on what to expect in sales going down. Is there anyone that has stopped being exclusive at Dreamstime that can tell me what to expect? I can not imagine that it will be 60%!?

Thanks!

I personally have not been exclusive anywhere but it only makes sense that your income will drop because exclusives get a higher percentage of sales as compared to non-exclusives. Also, the agencies have a tendency to place exclusive files ahead of the pack, so if you go non-exclusive, I believe that you might expect your images to lose placement, resulting in lower sales.

IMHO, exclusivity never seemed like a good idea for most contributors. Sounds like you jumped on the bandwagon early on...too bad you didn't find this forum sooner, everyone could have given you lots of feedback on the pros and cons. Water under the bridge...I am sure others will come along today and share some more info with you though.

edit: baldrick beat me to it

My first month after leaving exclusivity on DT I saw a 50+% drop in sales and RPD.

BUT

The immediate sales I saw on Shutterstock, added to the DT sum made for one of the best months I've ever had. Sales on Fotolia, depositphotos and 123rf have started to build slowly but once they kick in as well I think leaving exclusivity will be the best thing I could have done.

Thanks for the quick response! I appreciate it!!! If 60% is real then for me it would be an option to stay exclusive. I am curious what others have to say.
Thanks again!

Disclaimer: I have no direct experience with DT or SS.
However I do know that not everyone does well on SS; but at the moment SS is seems to be on the ascendant, and it's a bit intimidating to post on here that you're not doing well there. Previously, that was the case with iStock.
As has been said above, it depends on your port, and possibly on the phases of the moon or whatever luck you need to get your files positioned well in any agency's search.

Exclusivity is crazy.  Drop it and don't look back.  All eggs in one basket is a recipe for disaster, or at least, for leaving a lot of money on the table.

EDIT: I can't see your port, so I can't answer a key question: do you have enough unique stuff that would make  you stand out and get downloaded without the added promotional benefits of exclusivity?  A copycat or someone with a stale style, focusing on overdone subject matter, etc. may actually get downloads he/she wouldn't normally get because some sites boost the visibility of their exclusives.  Not that you're this type of contributor, but if you are, it's possible that losing DT exclusivity would be giving away the only thing that made you stand out.  I'll assume you're not this type of contributor and this doesn't apply to you.

As long as you can sell at the top sites (apply at iStock and SS as recommended by others), you will soon surpass your DT income. It makes absolutely no sense to me to be exclusive at DT - it's been a perennial #3 (at best)

Thanks guys!!! This really helps!!!!

I aplied for Shutterstock before and got accepted first try so that is not the problem.

@ gemmy: "Too many similar images" Yes i get this very often and I don't alway's understand it since it makes no sense sometimes and I see images online that are soooo close to each other that do get accepted were I would think they are way to similar.

You can see my portfolio here: http://www.dreamstime.com/Twindesign_portfolio_pg1

I am still a bit affraid of leaving exclusivity but I realy think I should give it a go. The $ is why I got in this in the first place. I feel as if I am in save waters with Dreamstime and that feels kind of good but I think I have to leave being exclusive at some point.

Thank you all for your great advise!!!

I am still a bit affraid of leaving exclusivity but I realy think I should give it a go.

Look at the ranking in the right-hand pane of this site. According to that, people generally make three to four times as much from SS as they make on DT. In my own case, it is usually about double but I seem to do better than a lot of people on DT. If you lose 66% of your DT income, you need to make twice as much from the other sites as you do on DT .... and the chart says that most people achieve that with just SS. Add in iS and you should be well ahead of where you are now.

The thing is, you have to get your files uploaded and accepted by those other sites. If you have a problem doing that it could be awkward.

Mactrunk ! I have no idea what type of images predominately present in your port but SS and (Now) IS do earn much more for me than DT as a non exclusive. More over some images rejected by one agency always get accepted others so i can sell almost sell my all shots taken for stock. Possible that you may face low in earning after leaving exclusivity but its also possible that you will gradually see increase in income and there may come when you will recover well from your loss you faced after leaving exclusivity. In fact you ll see a much higher earning from SS itself if your port is good enough for SS customer. How ever it totally depends on your port size and quality.
Can you tell me one thing. Do you exclusive guys in DT also face rejection with a reason 'Too many similar images' ?

This is an excellent point. I am on 4 sites now, and pretty much any batch of uploads I do, one will get rejected at 1 or 2 for some reason or another, but accepted at the others. Something being exclusive doesn't allow for.

Deleted.

Assuming same port on all the top 4 I'd guess a 3 to 4 times revenue increase over DT exclusivity

Assuming same port on all the top 4 I'd guess a 3 to 4 times revenue increase over DT exclusivity

Definitely not my experience...  Just to give an example - picking a random person who posts numbers every month: Steve Heap.  We have similar sized portfolios on Dreamstime.  My non-exclusive revenue on DT last month was 8 times his, and MORE than what he earns on SS.  Yet my images on SS are only earning me 1/3 of what I earn on DT still (note that I could only get about 1/2 my portfolio up on SS, but it is the half that counts - but even doubling SS revenue would be less than DT for me).

Obviously it takes time to get established on other sites, and you can't compare portfolios.  But I see a lot of people that state that it is clear cut:  you WILL earn way more being non-exclusive.  They don't know that for any individual portfolio.  All that is clear to me is that there are a lot of people for whom DT makes up a small amount of their earnings.  You cannot extrapolate from that to say that if they were exclusive the whole time they would have left money on the table.  Probably.  Most likely.  But not for sure.  Especially if they focused on what sells on DT.  There are people who sell images that are a good fit for Dreamstime based on image content, keywording and all the rest - for them, that may not translate into stellar sales elsewhere.  My point comparing to Steve is not to suggest that it is a perfect comparison.  Just that you can't look at one's persons numbers and say "he makes 5x more on SS alone, if I go non-exclusive and drop by 50% I'll still end up ahead on SS alone!".  Maybe his content is a better fit for SS than DT.

There are lots of reasons to not be exclusive.  Some (most?) will make more being non-exclusive.  Some need exclusivity to focus their efforts and stick with it.  I would have quit this a long time ago if I hadn't gone exclusive.  Maybe I left money on the table being exclusive, but quitting four years ago because I was only making a few dollars a month would have left tens of thousands of dollars on the table. Going exclusive focused my efforts, and that choice really paid off for me.  I can't imagine starting out with a few images a month on depositphotos these days and getting stoked about the future of microstock

Please refrain from telling people going non-exclusive is going to quadruple their income with no experience to back it up...  People can pick apart my portfolio and explain away WHY I didn't see sales elsewhere after the fact, but that just makes the point - there are no guarantees  Not everyone will see dramatic gains going non-exclusive - especially if they dramatically outsold other people on DT.

16 tons.
remember that song?

We are talking about independents and exclusives, while we should talk about independants and DEPENDENTS.

+ there are steps on ladders.
Its not so much about what you lose by not being dependant anymore, its about the possible gains and risk management.
It shortsighted to think about what you lose if you change status.
Its more farsighted to look at what you can gain. People mention the earning potential of other agencies, but that is not the best reason to not be dependent.

It is heard of before that an agency builds up a pool of dependents, and limits the acces of independents, so that a large group of the contributors to the agency "Owe their soul to the Company store". That is a good way of keeping the masses in contol, to keep the power and make sure that profit goes into their pockets.
It is also heard of before that such an agency, begin to heavily abuse its dependant contributers by cutting down commissions and other fancy manipulations, of which the dependants have no chance of escape.