I noticed on this board, most of you submit to 3-8 different sites, which add lots of additional work for the same image, of course the arguement is that you get the payout 3-8 times better than with one site.

However I found out that by going exclusive with DT, you get 20 cents per image accepted, plus 10% more commision, one top guy who has 89000 downloads in 1 1/2 years only have 1200 images, each image average download 75 times, so does the website actally promote their own better than non exclusive contributors?

So if you get 20 cents more per upload, 10% more commission plus extra help in showcase your portfolio, you would have made more money spending less time keying keyword by using one site, does that make sense? 

Unless you are living in the dark ages you only keyword your photos once by filling in the IPTC data although every now and again the sites fail to read this data so you have top copy and paste it in again.

Its the categories that take the time

when I say levels I mean the number of dropdown menus most a main then a sublevel

no categories
123, LO,FP,

1 level
SS

2 level
DT, BigStock,CanStockPhoto,SPM,StockXpert

3 levels
FT

what a mess
istock by the far the most cumbersome method

I would say DT have one of the better systems for exclusives especially the 20c bounty and their licencing options but certainly not the best payout.

Unfortunately DT have certain criteria for selecting photos.

I have a bit of a sign fetish which DT doesn't share they don't even have a category for signs. They also don't particularly like my illustrations in the end if I was exclusive with them they have only accepted 57% of my photos thats 43% not for sale but with multi sites another 20-30% get the chance to be sold plus for higher payouts.

I suppose if you had an image that for some reason DT accepted and most of the big sites rejected you could switch it to be exclusive and not try submitting elsewhere. I have a picture of bottles for recycling which sells fairly well at DT but I think was rejected by most of the other sites. Of course BigStock screw things up with their 3 month wait to delete photos.

I think Istock are the only ones where only the photographer is exclusive not the image.

So its a 20c bounty for every image that is exclusive to them??

Hang on

just found this amazing photographer with 1194 photos and 89,394 downloads

Their name - assignments

their website www.Dreamstime.com

I would suspect all the reviewers/staff submit their photos to this account, its not just one photographer.

Real people

Andres Rodriguez a rather successful microstocker who reached "gold" at FT 5,000 downloads has 2,543 images with DT and 16,412 downloads
Actually his interview at FT is quite interesting

Photoeuphoria 3,679 files at DT 18,237

the list goes on

I know at iStock supposedly exclusive photographers have their images pushed to the top of the heap.

I stand corrected

I don't think it would be worth for me to be exclusive of any site.  Images that don't sell in one place sell at others.

I set my best-selling image at DT - an illustration - to exclusive after I reached 20 sales there and none elsewhere.  I also set an illustration that I made specifically for a request there as exclusive and got two sales right after it was approved. 

CanStockPhoto also accepts exclusive images, do they get an advantage in searches?  I don't know if DT does that.

Regards,
Adelaide