It's fun to look at Dreamstime on the wayback machine.

In 2001. Distributing your Dream CD with images.

Somewhere in 2003 they disappeared to resurface in july 2003 anouncing a brand new concept. The logo was still a film roll.

Dreamstime will re-open soon along with a brand new concept.
Photographers and designers using film or digital equipment will be enabled to sell their portfolio of images online. Our new concept is based on creating a powerful photo community, providing royalty free images and royalty free stock imagery or photos to DTP designers, web designers, photos for printing brochures, advertisements, magazine or newspaper ads, and electronic use on websites and Flash interactive animations.
We're looking for photographers and designers!

The rebranding took a long time, and Dreamstime as we know it opened on March 9, 2004 with 25 photographers listed on the front page.

Around July 2004 they already had 200 photographers.

Statistics October 2004:
Online files: 19296
Users: 3923
Photographers: 487

Statistics end of 2004:
Online files: 31388
Users: 7006
Photographers: 767

On March 5, 2005, the spiral logo first appeared as a dot on the i of Dreamstime.
Photoshow has 367 images online, and Andresr 601. Online files: 44656.

On April 13, 2005 the homepage was much (too?) simplified for non-logged in visitors. 55,204 images online.

July 1, 2005 has 81,599 images online.

I joined August 3, 2005 when there were 94,091 images live.

End of 2005 there were already 211,847 images online, more than 100,000 added in 4-5 months. Everybody seems to discover microstock.

End of 2006 gave 861,473 images, 600,000 added in one year. That's around the time LuckyOliver and Featurepics started, not realizing the first mice got the cheese already. Milestones can be followed from now on in the DT milestones thread on Dreamstime itself. Over 10,000 images are added per week.

End of 2007, 2,149,835 images online, 1,300,000 added in one year.

One year ago, 4 months later (April 1, 2007), there were 2,680,851 images online.

End of 2008, Tangie said: "we reached 4,500,000 images online only a year after announcing the first million". Actually, from end 2007 to end of 2008, 2,350,000 images were added.

End February 2009 was the 5 million milestone, less than 2 months after the 4,5 million. Extrapolating this over 2009 would give 3,000,000 images added in one year, and 8,000,000 images online end of 2009, 10,000,000 somewhere late Q1 in 2010.

My bet is that DT won't count photographers around 2020 any more in absolute numbers but in % of the world population with about 100 billion images online. 

Wow, that was the time, when they ask us (contributors) to participate in creating new logo! Finally they choose spiral one!

Since January I've put about 50 images on DT and SS.  On DT I got two sales in the first week and absolutely nothing since.  On SS I've had 55 sales and they're continuing at a steady rate.  Same photos.

So for me, DT has so far been a complete waste of time.  Some posters have said that if you keep uploading, things start to sell after several months to a year. 

I have to suspect that some sites heavily weight your images based on the popularity of your previous images - which probably makes sense for the microstock, but may mean that the ramp-up for a new submitter is now extremely long - if it's still possible at all. 

Same story for me: I sell zero images on DT and 4 to 7 images per day (every day) at SS since day one! Same images. Go figure... I am puzzled...

DT has been quite slow for me lately, but I had an amazing day yesterday 50% of my March earnings in just one day, no subs.

Of course, things went back to normal.  No sale today.

Regards,
Adelaide

WOW! That's pretty good.
Gives me hope! I have a rather high rejection rate and haven't made a sale in the 3 weeks that I've been at DT.
News like this keeps me there, though.
Thanks

You cannot possibly compare Dreamstime to Shutterstock. 

They are two completely different companies with two different customer bases.

Shutterstock is a subscription site, and does high volume low cost images for a predetermined (subscription rate) price.

Dreamstime HAS subscriptions, but is mostly pay as you go, buying credit packages along the way.

It's like comparing an all you can eat buffet (SS) to a sit down restaurant (DT).  The food is supplied by the same vendors, but the clientel and presentation is different

Gebbie

I began uploading to DT last November.  Currently I have just over 300 images online and 30.00 in sales, with sales now happening on pretty much a daily basis.  It took a couple months before sales started coming, but now it seems fairly steady and I still have a number of images left to upload, so yes for me I think they're worth uploading to.

That seems rather disappointing - $30 in five months with 300 images uploaded in that time? You have a very nice portfolio. Since January I have alomost $100 on shutterstock with less than 100 images, and I am doing better yet on istock. My portfolio is not better than yours. I have files on Dreamstime since January and $9.00 so far. I am not thrilled with Dreamstime yet. Time will tell.

Dreamstime don't come anywhere near that of iS, SS, FT, StockXpert for me, in fact I've stopped uploading there and am looking to get out, too many things on the site that I don't agree with from my perspective.

Dreamstime don't come anywhere near that of iS, SS, FT, StockXpert for me, in fact I've stopped uploading there and am looking to get out, too many things on the site that I don't agree with from my perspective.

Such as?
It's difficult to judge without any port link. For instance is it illustrations or photos?
There is a serious issue with keywords on DT, far too much irrelevant and wrong keywords especially from contributors east of Berlin. I have been buying lately, not contributing, and the "relevancy" criterion is miserable. iStock is much better with the new best match.