In your case I would stay exclusive, you have very high ranked background pictures on IS, such backgrounds don't get easy accepted these days and if accepted it's hard to bring them up in searches.

Thats what I would have said.

Stay as long as possible, in my opinion your port is not competitive outside of istock. (Im sorry to say, and maybe I am not right).

Another advice would be to leave your microstock port idle and work on other things.

Do you want to grow your portfolio and/or branch out a bit with the type of content you do? If so, definitely dump the crown. Otherwise, in spite of iStock's pitiful performance and borderline larcenous behavior (the Microsoft and Google giveaways), you might be better to just ride out whatever you can squeeze out of your existing files there.

You have a small portfolio with a pretty limited range of types of images and some of them may run into trouble getting accepted at SS and DT, at a guess. The DT issue would be similars and at SS, LCV (limited commercial value).

Looking at your portfolio your income appears to be heavily dependent on a relatively small number of images.

exactly, I would stay iStock exclusive unless you are planning on growing intensely your portfolio

Looking at those numbers.. I wish I knew about microstock back in 2005...

exclusives have favored placement in search results.. It's not only about starting early..

I have a blog with some comparative income figures from when I was exclusive plus my last two years as an indie.

http://stockcube-stockcube.blogspot.co.uk/

Am I way off the mark when I look at your figures and interpret them as saying that you're earning less per month as an indie (partly because the other agecies aren't accepting your iStock images, as it seems like you have a lot fewer images in your other sites as you have on iStock), but you have peace of mind not being reliant on iStock?

Or one other interpretation might be that you've chosen not to put all of your iStock portfolio with all of your agencies (for whatever reason, e.g. splitting what images you send where to keep track of misuses).

Or ...?

Quote from: StockCube on January 10, 2013, 18:37

I have a blog with some comparative income figures from when I was exclusive plus my last two years as an indie.

http://stockcube-stockcube.blogspot.co.uk/

Am I way off the mark when I look at your figures and interpret them as saying that you're earning less per month as an indie (partly because the other agecies aren't accepting your iStock images, as it seems like you have a lot fewer images in your other sites as you have on iStock), but you have peace of mind not being reliant on iStock?

Or one other interpretation might be that you've chosen not to put all of your iStock portfolio with all of your agencies (for whatever reason, e.g. splitting what images you send where to keep track of misuses).

Or ...?

Sorry Sue, I have only just seen this reply.  It is true that I have a lot less images for sale at my new indie agencies than I did at iStock.  Shortly after I dropped the crown I went through a series of major life events which took priority over uploading - to have spent time on stock at this point would have been the equivalent of 'fiddling whilst Rome burns' so I only had very limited time available to devote to my new agencies.  Now when I look back on a lot of my old iStock portfolio it seems like a lot of dross to me that I can't really be bothered with - they are welcome to it to be honest!  I took the best 150 images or so and uploaded those elsewhere - it is very much a case of diminishing returns after that and I prefer to devote what time I have to shooting and uploading new images instead.  I know from discussions with iStock exclusive friends of mine that their income has been steadily declining from around about the time I left iS so I doubt I would be earning much more now had I stayed. 

I don't advocate this approach to everyone, most people will want to upload every last thing they have in the hope it will make a buck or two here or there - but I offer my full stats figures as a way to show what can be achieved with a very small portfolio across multiple agencies.  Oh, and I hope to pass my old iS exclusive income at some time this year.