I wrote my own service mymicrostockupload.com to make the upload work. The agencies are sorted after there earnings statistics. So I upload new pictures only to agencies were I�ve earned more as 50$. The others will be delivered when they are reaching my limit. The reason of this is that some agencies are selling one picture in one year but for a good price. But I stopped uploading to deposit I have read to many bad news of this one.

I know this has been touched on in other replies, but do look carefully at any partner deals, whether they'll give you a list of partners vs. consider it a secret, and what the compensation is on partner sales. You also want to know if you can delete images yourself or if that's a function reserved for the agency.

If I made $50 from a new agency in royalties - say over 6 months - I might be encouraged (if those sales are growing over time) or furious (if they were partner sales and the buyer paid $500 of which $450 went to a distributor and the agency and only the leftover crumbs to me).

Veer - as an example - has partners (they won't give you a list but when you find a site you can generally work out where the images came from) who charge higher prices than Veer (by quite a lot) but you as a contributor get just your "standard" royalty as if the buyer had purchased from Veer. I don't like the notion that I'm getting ripped off and so is the buyer.

Most of the agencies from which I have deleted my portfolio have handled things professionally, but albumo was a nightmare (and I had passed the one year lockin). I was changing my descriptions to say that this agency was refusing to communicate and please buy my images at dreamstime.com just to get them to delete my portfolio! All things being equal, I prefer the option to delete my own files in case an agency won't respond.

Don't compare uploading anywhere to uploading at iStock - only Veer even comes close to the pain in the butt that iStock was (Veer/Corbis also has the millstone of a controlled vocabulary around their proverbial neck).

This thread has been a good read. Thanks for all the thoughtful responses!

Do any of you use uploading services that automatically upload at the flip of a switch? I'm exclusive to iStock so I'm not sure how it works, but I find it hard enough (dull enough) to upload just to one agency, let alone 12 - 13.

I use Filezilla though its not a flick of a switch all sites are much easier than Istock except Panther and veer. If your prepopulate IPTC then most sites are not too horrendous - depends on your boredom threshold though

You can't police the internet, and you can't control what happens to your images as soon as they hit the web and are downloaded at least once.  There is no real control, but there are still at least some honest business people out there.  Honest buyers?  Now we are talking a totally different topic.  Buying a regular license, and using it as if it were an enhanced?  Sharing their downloads with their peers?  Let's be real.  If you're afraid of all of these things, go become a basket weaver instead.  They WILL happen.  It comes with the territory, just like theft comes along with owning a retail store.

Strange analogy, retailers put all kinds of measures into place to reduce the chances that their products will be stolen.  Uploading to shady sites with opaque terms and dodgy partners puts your images at more risk than uploading to more trusted sites.  Sure you can't stop ALL violations but that isn't a good argument against stopping many violations.