I just did an analysis of the top 500 iStock contributors in terms of career downloads. This 1/200th of iStocks contributors have 46% of the company�s total downloads. Only 70% of these contributors are photographers. 30% list themselves as Designers, Illustrators, IT or Other. Is the demand for illustration relative to photography growing?

Shutterstock says they licensed 16 million vector illustrations in 2011 which represented 32% of all the images they licensed. Most of the people commenting on this site seem to be photographers. Are we hearing from designers and illustrators? What do they think? If customers are tending to use more illustration and less photography how should that change what you shoot?

This has been discussed numerous times!

Illustrators sell more but spend more time on making images whereas Photographers make less but spend less time on images.

Also remember at SS designers are being limited because SS doesn't want many more BG's or Fractals because they have so many already.

Of course this may also apply to who you are because there are Photogs who sell very well every month as well as certain designers who sell well as well!

It's all about your style.