Just studied my stats over at DT and was quite amazed how things developped.
The following are charts of my revenues from 2013 and in comparison the last 13 months.
I think those pictures speak for themselves ... or as simple as that: One up, one down.
Where as the down is approaching zero ...
Furthermore inspection process takes an awful lot of time.
What's going on on DT? With supposedly over 8 Mio. customers?

There is a common theme for all microstock sites and that is

1. Fast growing collections
2. Number of contributors going up
3. Pricing pressures driving "on going special deals" and overall price reductions.
4. Constant tweaking of the search dials.

I am not sure about dt, but I think I recall that you get penalized in the search if you stop uploading.

Anyway for me personally, my sales dumped pretty hard last month and are on par to be less than last month. Microstock is getting very hard to make any money. Those agencies who jump in here and claim that their sales are "better than ever" are essentially admitting that revenue reductions are then related spreading commissions across more images and more contributors.

Mantis said everything in 1, 2, 3, 4 and stop uploading. In 2011 I stopped upload to go on vacation for almost two months (my sales were at the apex), as a result, I paid up today for what I did.

My RPI is down slightly but less so than FT, SS and (especially IS) so holding up fairly well all things considered

Lionheart - as a technical aside - clearly one graph's generally up and other's generally down, but the positioning of the straight lines exaggerates the incline of each.

Great data you have there, but since 2007 your revenue is pretty much going sideways.
I imagine you're uploading regularly, so yeah they're losing market share.

Not that I seriously have a disagreement - Lionheart - but in the 2013 graph, you skipped a high point, which would make it more level. And in the dropping one you skipped a high point which would have make it more level? Why not split them all and see and average?

Just studied my stats over at DT and was quite amazed how things developped.
The following are charts of my revenues from 2013 and in comparison the last 13 months.
I think those pictures speak for themselves ... or as simple as that: One up, one down.
Where as the down is approaching zero ...

I think that if people look at the general theme of topics here and dropping income in general, Mantis makes a good point. I'm ignoring other addition claims like stop uploading and whatever, just the four he listed.

I don't see anything to disagree with, it's just observing the facts. 1-2-3-4

There is a common theme for all microstock sites and that is

1. Fast growing collections
2. Number of contributors going up
3. Pricing pressures driving "on going special deals" and overall price reductions.
4. Constant tweaking of the search dials.

Doesn't answer the question, should anyone stop uploading anywhere. But it does point at a general Microstock Industry trend for contributors.

Thanks everybody for all your suggestions.
Generally there is a "downtrend" on all of the different sites.
However the "dropdown" in DT was the most obvious one.
This was the reason to ask this kind of strange question.

Meanwhile some long pending files have been inspected,
and - believe it or not - i have sold three files 
DT never was a top performer for me but nevertheless a solid
mid-level one. Hope they come back to old strength ...

DT is one of the few sites still showing consistent growth for me. Not sure why there is so much variety in results?

Especially when July was a good month and this month? 4 sales with 2000+ images. My only agency down (very down) this month.

Not that I seriously have a disagreement - Lionheart - but in the 2013 graph, you skipped a high point, which would make it more level. And in the dropping one you skipped a high point which would have make it more level? Why not split them all and see and average?

Quote from: lionheart on August 15, 2014, 08:30

Just studied my stats over at DT and was quite amazed how things developped.
The following are charts of my revenues from 2013 and in comparison the last 13 months.
I think those pictures speak for themselves ... or as simple as that: One up, one down.
Where as the down is approaching zero ...

I think that if people look at the general theme of topics here and dropping income in general, Mantis makes a good point. I'm ignoring other addition claims like stop uploading and whatever, just the four he listed.

I don't see anything to disagree with, it's just observing the facts. 1-2-3-4

Quote from: Mantis on August 15, 2014, 09:55

There is a common theme for all microstock sites and that is

1. Fast growing collections
2. Number of contributors going up
3. Pricing pressures driving "on going special deals" and overall price reductions.
4. Constant tweaking of the search dials.

Doesn't answer the question, should anyone stop uploading anywhere. But it does point at a general Microstock Industry trend for contributors.

OK uncle Pete, you're right. So let me answer his/her question with another question:

Does uploading to DT still make sense? That depends on your satisfaction with revenue. If "any amount of money" is okay then yes, it's worth it.  Or, do you have established criteria for uploading? If so, what is the criteria and does DT meet that baseline? If not, it no longer makes sense to upload. You have to assess the kind of work you do, the level of investment (money and time), the difficulty/uniqueness of images, your skill level (whether making 35 cents for an expensive image is acceptable to your baseline) and the growth of DT collection & contributor base.  The latter is because the competitive landscape will continue to get tougher and tougher and if your work cannot overshadow or maintain your baseline (assuming you have a tipping point) then it doesn't make sense to upload to DT.  Probably everyone in this forum will have different opinions on whether it makes sense because we all have different needs, we all use our income, more or less, differently......i.e. LISAFX uses hers to pay for college for her daughter while I tend to use mine for travel and gear. Some might use theirs for some other very low requirement reasons that don't cost a lot.