About 39 percent of my port on Fotolia is exclusive. As they seem to be strongest in Europe, I tend to put anything that I assume is too specifically Europaen to sell well on istock or Shutterstock exclusive there. Also, all my Christmas images and anything that the other two rejected. For some strange reason, most of my sales for exclusive images are L or XL, so that makes it really worth it, especially as I am priveleged as I am paid in Euros. For all exclusive images, I set the starting price at 2 credits, I'm thinking of switching some of them to 3 credits though.

About 13 % of my portfolio is exclusive at FT and they earn me a good share of money. I plan to bring produce further images for exclusive use at FT - but it will be content specifically targeted to the European/ German market.

I have a couple of images that sell very well at FT and almost only there, so I think sometimes on making those exclusive.  The best thing would be not having them in subs anymore!

I was in the same situation and I ended up making my 12 or so top selling Fotolia files exclusive. It worked out good. Not only do you get increased commission, you can double or even triple the prices.

I am starting to test some exclusive images at Fotolia ...

-Mark

On FT you can choose to be totally exclusive or have some images exclusive as a partly exclusive contributor.

http://en.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors

As partially exclusive you can increase the credit price of your exclusive files once the bronze level has been achieved (I think) but your non-exclusive files remain pegged at multiples of one credit until you achieve emerald status.

With exclusive files, you can opt out of subscriptions. (The way the system works, this may not be advisable from the start). Every time someone with a subscription searches on keyword and your image doesn't come up, it receives zero points in the whole system. After a while, it gets relegated to the 'forgotten' pages.

Whether you can switch images from exclusive to non-exclusive or vice-versa, I'm not sure. Perhaps the choice has to be made at the keywording stage and before review.

Edit: Found the piece about why contributors should allow subs.

http://blog.fotolia.com/uk/guideline/microstocktips.html

"Visibility
By following the rules above, you will achieve a better visibility. But there are further tips to increase your visibility:

1. By allowing the sales in subscription you will improve the ratio sold/views for each one of your contents. When a subscription customer wants to buy your image and you don�t allow the sale in subscription, your content will be marked at 0 sold for 1 view. The ratio sold/view is an important criteria within our search engine. Images that are sold each time they are viewed receive a better visibility in the results page."

Yes, basically. You can change an image's status at any time.

From my own experience I'd recommend having some exclusive images at FT but only ones that have already gained favourable sort-order position and better than average sales. I wouldn't opt them out of subs either as all those sub sales help keep it pushed firmly up the rankings. Don't forget that some buyers sort by Downloads too and seem to think that if lots of others have bought an image it must be good.

I'd use your own common sense when it comes to similars (don't do it). The main purpose of making the image exclusive is to increase the price so it needs to be unique enough to justify it.

FT images can be turned on and off exclusive as you like - the button can be changed in 'edit data' for each images at any time, but you have to go through and do each image individually.

A number of people have reported very good results with being able to double and triple the price for good sellers, personally I played around quite a while with best sellers, but my sales plummeted, but mine are pretty generic so I think people just went ot the next image, but as said it works for some.

I like to experiment occasionally. In the past, I've stopped subs at FT........that lasted about 3 weeks cuz all sales dropped dramatically. Now that FT is downgrading the credit price to 1 credit basis price on all files that haven't sold for one year, I'm now experimenting with a 2 credit basis price on all files that are selling.........not very successfully I'm afraid to say. Haven't sold a sausage in 4 days now either in dl or subs.

Experiment about to be terminated although I had made my regular monthly sales amount by last week from some XL's and X's earlier in the month.