Quote from: abimages on April 02, 2008, 14:55

So many people get hung up about this. Concentrate on the bottom line/amount of sales. IS sales produce more $$ than the rest because they generally sell more by far.

This simply isn't true.  As has been pointed out in other threads, just look at the monthly earnings breakdowns from the last several months.  Many of the largest contributors on this board rank either Fotolia or Shutterstock as #1 in earnings.  For me, Shutterstock blows iStock away for bottom line earnings.  I love iStock, but their dominance is overstated.

It may or may not be true but calling on self selective panel of a relatively few reporters is not going to help find the answer, especially since by nature that group is mostly made of multi site contributors whilst we have established that over 50% of sales at iStock are from exclusives.

Well, I think IS DOES have the highest earning power (despite the upload limit). I know that is not true for you Andresr and for you Leaf, but I believe it is true for most who are a longer time in microstock. But I can be wrong of course. And must admit that you can charge higher prices at FT is not a good point I made, you are right.

I agree, I didn't say they weren't, I believe they have the biggest share of the whole microstock market and if you are successful there then you have a winner. However this doesn't mean it is the easiest site to succeed. There are many facts that come into play with that particular site such as exclusivity, limits, tough reviews, plus they have the highest quality image bank in microstock so the level of competition is higher than anywhere else.

I wasn't talking about myself in my previous post it was a general comment , IS doesn't do well for me (compared to others) because I like my photoshop compositions and they hate them plus the 35 image a week limit doesn't help, I have 6000 images on my hard disk waiting to be uploaded there. Also a year ago I deleted 1200 images which were not selling as a test for best match positioning.

Despite all that I am the second non exclusive highest earner at the moment over there. The biggest seller on the site is a non exclusive member, Yuri Arcurs who is almost getting twice as many dls as Lise Gagne.

PS: I have been in micro since the end of 2004.

I agree, I didn't say they weren't, I believe they have the biggest share of the whole microstock market and if you are successful there then you have a winner. However this doesn't mean it is the easiest site to succeed. There are many facts that come into play with that particular site such as exclusivity, limits, tough reviews, plus they have the highest quality image bank in microstock so the level of competition is higher than anywhere else.

Yes to suceed on iStock is not so easy. I have the feeling, if an image suceeds it can be very successful (much more than on other sites, but a lot have very low download rates and a lot never will get downloaded. I have that problem. One image out of a portfolio of over 200 images earns about 25-30% of my income there and the top ten probably 90%.