I am relatively new to micro and make most of my sales on SS. I am now working on getting my portfolio onto other sites and have stared making sales on Fotolia. I have also been focusing on Istock, 123rf and Dreamstime as well.

My challenge is that I live in a very remote area with very very slow bandwidth so I don't have the luxury of being able to upload all my photos onto 16 different sites and hope for the best. I need to select which sites to invest my time into so I get the best returns.

I have heard a lot of negativity around Istock and its future and would would like to hear peoples thoughts on weather this is a site worth investing time into? Especially for a newbie? Or is there another 'smaller' site that would be more worth the time I am currently putting into Istock?

I have slow internet.... I can usually upload 10-12 images overnight.

For me, iStock sales are not great, but I do OK through their PP ( partner program).  I have never tried iStock up load, but DeepMeta makes uploading there easier than some sites... for slow internet it makes life much better.

For the future... who knows?  iStock is still number 2 on the chart.

looking at average / top contributors they seem to be back uploading, if they are making a ton of money or not I have no idea, I suppose yes or they are desperate for more and taking the chance to match their portfolios comparing to other agencies

when I started back in 2009 I got approved and it was a new experiment, had a few sales and they were 20% of my income most months so I continued uploading, in March 2012 I decided to stop uploading due to everything happening there (and income dropped a lot, last months 5-10%), now at this exact moment I really don't know what to do, shall we join the majority of top contributors or let them be happy collecting a few more? they don't seem worried about thinkstock

I see 8 of 10 people back uploading due to the massive increase to 999 slots

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 12, 2013, 09:50

looking at average / top contributors they seem to be back uploading, if they are making a ton of money or not I have no idea, I suppose yes or they are desperate for more and taking the chance to match their portfolios comparing to other agencies

when I started back in 2009 I got approved and it was a new experiment, had a few sales and they were 20% of my income most months so I continued uploading, in March 2012 I decided to stop uploading due to everything happening there (and income dropped a lot, last months 5-10%), now at this exact moment I really don't know what to do, shall we join the majority of top contributors or let them be happy collecting a few more? they don't seem worried about thinkstock

I see 8 of 10 people back uploading due to the massive increase to 999 slots

Why be influenced by what others are doing?  I wont waste any more time uploading to istock, there's so many other places to sell my images.  I think most people here would be uploading to istock with 5% commission, they would be complaining about it but still uploading.  There's no way I want to be in that group.

I am having the feeling we are very small group (these last days I have opened tons of portfolios and I remember only 4 or 5 that aren't uploading)

I just don't understand the rush that contributors have to upload everything to an agency that took them a few nights of good sleep and for sure more good stuff will follow, that isn't holding them, if the "top" contributors (I am talking about over 20k downloads) are available for this why small contributors should act as priests of the good values and thinking about the future of microstock?

@sharpshot and Luis; I honestly respect both your opinions.  I know there are problems at iStock, as well as at many of the upper and middle tier agencies. 
Please recommend to us the agencies that we SHOULD upload to rather than tell us where we should NOT upload.
I wonder if there ever will be a  consensus of opinion?
  

I feel the world of microstock is flattening (which is a great thing). In the end there will be 5-6 sites that make contributors all about the same amount of money. I'm very excited by that idea and I'm seeing it now with my images. My income is stable because of this flattening between the sites. At some point every contributor will start feeling this same effect...newer the contributor the less flattened the market is for that contributor but in time the market will flatten.........at first it will seem bad..."oh no the sky is falling SS or IS is slowing"...but no everything will flatten to become a more stable steady market place for everyone........

I feel the world of microstock is flattening (which is a great thing). In the end there will be 5-6 sites that make contributors all about the same amount of money. I'm very excited by that idea and I'm seeing it now with my images. My income is stable because of this flattening between the sites. At some point every contributor will start feeling this same effect...newer the contributor the less flattened the market is for that contributor but in time the market will flatten.........at first it will seem bad..."oh no the sky is falling SS or IS is slowing"...but no everything will flatten to become a more stable steady market place for everyone........

I don't see nothing close to that and I believe you are dreaming somehow perhaps, have you looked at your own numbers? are you saying you have the same income from agencies during all year (month after month) with very few changes?

I only see stability at SS (going up), all other are down and weak

Well, to try to answer the question, I have made 5 sales from my last 60 uploads to iS (and one of those was for 11c, most others were for less than a dollar). Of the 35 uploads I made last month, I have managed one sale, which is pretty good really as I have had a total of only two views - 33 of the 35 have not even got a single view.  So for a newbie I would say that the return on effort probably isn't worth it.  If everything is buried so deep that it never gets seen then sales are unlikely to follow.

I feel the world of microstock is flattening (which is a great thing). In the end there will be 5-6 sites that make contributors all about the same amount of money. I'm very excited by that idea and I'm seeing it now with my images. My income is stable because of this flattening between the sites. At some point every contributor will start feeling this same effect...newer the contributor the less flattened the market is for that contributor but in time the market will flatten.........at first it will seem bad..."oh no the sky is falling SS or IS is slowing"...but no everything will flatten to become a more stable steady market place for everyone........

I can't say I've seen this either. Aside from a little shuffling, these agencies seem pretty entrenched in their spots. If I was to guess why, I'd say it is because contributors reward success with more uploads and punish failure with less.

Even with the miserable % they still will produce more revenue than the mickey mouse (anything below #4) sites.