Great news..
I was about to give up on PM, not too long ago... But suddently I reciewed a mail from them, stating that I have had my first sale... One poster, earning ME some EUR 8,71 !

So regardless the killing pain of uploading and editing details, I've decided to give them one more chance as well.. 

/Flemming

This is interesting, I also got a sale out of the blue after having no sales for a while.

Ok, I know it's April 1, but I mean it. 

I doubt they will die, they have I believe not that bad a reputation. I think their support (for buyers) is great. Talked with one very friendly person of customer support. They are far better than the start-ups you are comparing them. They are very established in Germany as far as I can tell.
For contributors you may have some points its not the most user friendly site. Also the reduced commission from 50% to 30% if you have the image at a cheaper agency is not very loved by contributors. In contributor relations they can improve a lot.

But there are people who do very very well with them. My more or less "educated" guess is that there are some top photographers who earn several thousand Euros/month with them. Currently I am not doing that well with them, although a lot of my images are up in the search result. But I had pretty good months at PM beating some of the major microstock agencies in earnings. I doubt that the problem is with the keywording. But I in general notice that it seems that you need the typical high quality people images, lifestyle, business images to be successful on this agency. Most of the average microstock contributors might have a harder time there.

I have steady sales on Panther, in spite of the fact that I have only part of my portfolio there. It is very time consuming to upload and submit images. I wish the upload system was simpler. Andy, what exactly are you improving? When is new system expected to be online? Is there place to submit feedback and feature requests?

Well, personally, I like PM very much. I was already able to make one payout and now heading for the second one. The review times ache me quite however... Do anyone know how long do I have to wait now? Have been already waiting for about 2 weeks 

How about the sales.  Are they bottlenecked?  Maybe you need to add to your staff??

I like Panthermedia as well.

What's the goal here for those detractors having a portfolio with only a handful pictures and sales at other top agencies ?

Personnaly, I do the upload as quickly I do at FT...

The reason some of us only have a handful of images on Panther is because it takes two weeks to get two photos reviewed. Uploading them is no problem.

Second because of the 30/50% I'm only sending my best to Panther at the semi-exclusive 50% rate. I think they have good potential for good earnings if someone is selective about what they send in. In other words, I won't be sending in the usual "other" microstock images to Panther. If there's a bottleneck it's because of a huge influx of new images, which is good for Panther, not so good for people with only a "handful of pictures". 

This just came and for some people it's going to be wecome news. For those who don't like Subs and Websize, it's not going to change much. They have opt. out buttons for each photo. No problem for me, I have everything IN.

http://www.panthermedia.net/tellmatic/files/newsletter/nl_20090416085441_p.html

"PantherMedia has represented the Federal State of Bavaria as one of the most successful start-up enterprises during the FounderChampions competitions of the 25th German Days of Founders and Entrepreneurs in Berlin, from March 20th to March 21st, 2009."

They are growing. I say give them a break to adjust to the success.

Enjoyed the Meet The Team link also.