Lee has conducted an acceptance rate survey for the big five, and it makes interesting reading.  Hopefully he won't mind me putting a link to it here:

http://www.microstockdiaries.com/

Interesting that Shutterstock's acceptance rates remain so low at only 40%.  My own acceptance rate there is 97.7%, but then I am completely weird....... hell, I'd rather spend three hours in a darkened room with Photoshop than enjoy a cold gin and tonic served on the shining deck of a yacht by three Swedish Dancing Girls..........

Interesting. People must submit any ol' image they take.

Cool, on the basis of that, I don't suck. 

FYI, my acceptance ratios are:  (The survey results in brackets)
Istock: 82%  (71%)
DT: 63% (49%)
SS: 86% (40%)
FL: 83%  (not in that survey)
StockXpert: 48%  (67%)

Also, I'm quite surprised at the low overall acceptance ratio for SS, That much be quite a burden on the reviewers to chuck out over half of what is submitted...  I'd be seriously considering * it in if I were sitting on 40% acceptance personally.  Also, I'm a pretty 'average' quality photog. IMHO, or at least the stuff I use for stock is...  If I'm sitting on 86% on SS, there must be some really terrible happy-snappers submitting stuff there!  (Present company accepted).

My only glitch is StockXpert, but I think that is because I only joined recently and I submitted a whole lot of 'old' stock stuff form when I first joined IS, which would probably be rejected by all of the agencies now, but was above par two years ago.  This shows how dramatically the industry is changing.  I doubt I'd be able to get any shots from my old Powershot S5 accepted now, noise and artifacting was an issue for that camera even when using raw..  (Why, oh why don't they have raw on the current powershot?)

Interesting...

Quote from: hatman12 on July 08, 2007, 03:57
I am completely weird....... hell, I'd rather spend three hours in a darkened room with Photoshop than enjoy a cold gin and tonic served on the shining deck of a yacht by three Swedish Dancing Girls..........

Hatman, gin and tonic is one of the great elixirs of life.... what are you doing to yourself?

hatman... ever met 3 Swedish dancing girls?      Photoshop = 2nd!

enjoy!!   

man... I would have never guessed any to be that low... I'm way out in front of all of those acceptance rates.  And I always figured I'd be on the low side...  this is nice news! That is, if these are accurate...   -tom

I suspect ShutterStock has a low approval average because, being one of the more high profile microstock websites, they attract the most new photographers. Those who aren't successful there probably give up and don't try the others. Although it depends if that statistic includes the test images people submit when they apply.

Shutterstock has always been the nicest to me.