I know it is not exactly fashionable these days, at least that people would admit around here, but are many people still choosing to go exclusive at IS?

And if one ignores the loss of sales (potential or real) at other agencies and takes into account the impending wallop to commission rates, can a bump in sales be expected after going exclusive?  In terms of $$$ and number of downloads (not that the number of downloads really matters if the $$$ are coming in).

I have been disappointed with some of the rejections from IS lately but by sticking to the kind of shots they prefer it is possible to get a high acceptance rate.  Sales are good, enough to not be discouraged yet.  Corporation seems at times to be run by dull minds (*cough* devious Machiavellis) at the behest of an evil market-dominating empire, but I am hopeful that their customers and important suppliers will thrash them until they discover their innate business sense.  The places where they need to improve have been discussed endlessly, but I will summarize: (i) better commissions, (ii) easier to use search tools, e.g. to differentiate by categories of the customer's choosing, especially PRICE, (iii) better IT infrastructure and more attentive responses to glitches and bugs, (iv) more fairness and transparency to outside contributors and customers, eliminating perceptions of conflicts of interest by insiders.  [If you think about it, getting (ii) to (iv) right is the key to winning on (i)]

In the current climate, last month is a long time ago and last year is ancient history - things keep changing. Not only the commission rate issues that have been discussed, but the elephant in the living room - the best match algorithm of the moment.

I've been exclusive for a little over 2 years and the first few months afterward were dreadful. They were playing around with best match 1.0 to work on best match 2.0. Once they introduced best match 2.0, things really improved for me (but not for some others; there was lots of wailing). When Vetta was introduced, there was more turbulence as moving all those files to the front of the searches obviously moved a bunch of other things back. And again with Agency and I'm sure there'll be more Getty stuff finding its way to the site in time. And I'm also sure that there'll be a trend to move the stuff on which they make the most money to the front of the best match results (look at the Thinkstock searches which for a long while - I haven't checked lately - put all the wholly-owned Getty files up front).

It's hard to say with certainty, but I believe that if I were still independent now I wouldn't choose exclusivity at this point - broken promises have completely undermined any sense of trust. You just don't have a clue what you're signing up for any more. That may seem odd given that I'm currently planning to keep my exclusivity - assuming I hit my redeemed credits target for a 35% rate in 2011 I will. Different issues to look at in choosing to stay for another year vs. signing up.