There is a real question in this.

Month after month I watch people post graphs and numbers and percentages and photo site comments. After the big six, the income is an insignificant dribble for most of us.

There may be a new site someday that will make the big six the Magnificent Seven. 

Why does anyone keep uploading and feeding the doomed sites that are providing a return of 0-1% of the earnings? Wouldn't it make more sense to invest that time on one of the paying sites, instead of spending it where there's little or no return?

One more photo on one of the top sites, can equal or exceed a whole month at one of the Morbid-Micros, for the whole collection.

Part two of the question. Assuming that I have photos up on dormant and non-preforming sites, do I just leave them or should I attempt to close my account?

I can see that having pictures up that will never reach payout, doesn't do much, but if they are gone, they will never have any chance of selling. It also seems to do no harm, having photos up, where no one sees them?

Do I want to give money to site "X" for that lonesome download, or should I be removing and deleting my images? Removal protects the images from distribution dilution.

Delete the photos and close account, or ignore them? What do you think?

I voted to remove images and leave the site, since it can be addictive checking if there is still a sale.

I couldn't vote because on one site I deleted all my photographs and my account and on the other I've left them there but stopped uploading.

Exactly why I don't waste my time with them. I only consider a site that has a ranking on Alexa equal or higher than BigStock. I always wondered why people here waste time on sites such as Featurepics, etc. I get a nice healthy monthly income with only up to 276 images on my 7 sites... what's an additional $3 (or worse) per month from LO?

Good topic - I have been asking myself the same questions today.  I think I will be deleting my portfolio from one underperforming site and keep uploading to the other. 

The difference being that one of the sites is relatively new and could build momentum, where the other one has been around more than three years and the always-slow sales continue to freefall.

My theory on it is this (and I'm going to expand on this at a later point) - if you're maxed out on "microstock time" then it makes sense to dump the low performers.  If you're sitting at your computer writing posts, thinking of stock ideas, etc. why not be submitting too? 

For instance - my WORST performer, by far, is Canstockphoto.  I have had 73 images up with CanStockPhoto for over 3 years.  I just made my first payout.

That's horrid right?

Think about it this way - uploading 73 images, today, takes me under 1 hour.  I got $50 for that hour although I didn't collect on it for a long time.  My thinking - this is an investment for a long period of time.  $50 per hour is worth it to me.  And keep in mind - that's CanStockPhoto.  My worst performer by far.

SO, if you're going to shoot the images, IPTC them for the big 6, and NOT dump them, what are you giving up?  It takes me only a few minutes to submit to CanStockPhoto - if I dump another 200 there, in say 2 hrs, that'll be $100+ over the next 3 yrs. 

On the other hand - if you're maxed out on time, and you can't possibly do as much uploading as you want, you HAVE to dump the lowest sites first.  That only makes sense and that's the rationale behind anyone "dumping" sites.  To me, I'm not maxed out - I have more "stock time" than "stock ideas" right now.  So I upload everywhere because it's profit for me.

Darn, coming from someone who complains about polls that don't have enough valid options, I should have included "Wait for the payout and then dump the place." 

To answer the Featurepics question from above, I only upload Editorial photos to Featurpics, and only the ones that I'm not uploading to Alamy.

Let me explain it this way. The first tier editorial and travel photos will go to Alamy, exclusive. The others that I think are good, but not worth resizing, will eventually go onto Featurepics. They will do nothing if they are just sitting on a CD in my file. I'll take a shot at a sale?

SS, IS, DT, FT, StockXpert, 123, BS, SV, LO and PM. That's ten (the usual suspects) and originally I was going to limit myself to eight. Possibly a bad decision on my part to say ten is my limit. If something doesn't change soon, Panther is gone and Crestock is in.

It comes down to just what others have said. How much time do you have and how much of that time do you want to invest? Someone could just hit the big six, or less and not be missing much, until their portfolio reaches a few hundred. By that time, they would know which photos sell best and save time when uploading to new additions?