I'm a silver canister, so it's nice seeing my payments almost double overnight!

Hey, final update... I became exclusive today... let the money roll in!

Ha! Now they found an account of some guy with the same exact name! This is getting interesting...

I know it's a PITA, but if you really want to get that image up there get into photoshop and erase the tattoo and resubmit... forget about scout, it takes waaaaaay too long...

OK, next wrinkle in my application... flickr got back to me with my orphaned account and I was able to disable it... whew... Then I went back to istock to resubmit my exclusivity application and bam! They want me to wait 90 days... what? I was able to disable those accounts in a matter of days... why the penalty??? I'm taking this to support, but this could really screw me out of a lot of royalty money...

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but it would be nice to have a list of websites that are not the obvious Microstock websites like pbase, photo.net or Flickr that could get you when you try to go exclusive... I couldn't find any such thing...

I got rid of my photo.net images, they were really old... not a big deal. It's all about how you set your flickr account. You can set it to no downloads, but apparently I didn't do that with this account. My problem is that it's an account I forgot about and can't access anymore. Six images just hanging out there that I can't access... Nothing from flickr support yet. This may take a couple of weeks.... argh...

I thought it was overly restrictive. It was stuff I would never ever get past inspectors for stock work and it's only six images... Still nothing back from flickr yet. I might send the istock guys a note and see if they could look past this, but dealing with either of them through email is such a painful ordeal...

Wouldn't you know it... they found a 5 year old orphaned flickr account I set up! I can't figure out how to access it... now I have to email the flickr people and get the account disable... wish me luck with that!!!!

Not a big barrier to me going exclusive... they denied my application because of my personal flickr and photo.net. I can understand flickr, but photo.net I don't use either account that much, but it would be fairly simple to recreate the accounts with aliases so they couldn't find them... can someone tell me what the concern is with photo.net?

Hey, thanks... it might go quicker than I thought since I stopped uploading to SS and DT about a year ago...

Excuse me if this has been covered before, but I can't find a short description of what I need to do to go exclusive on iStock.  I'm at the silver level and my other sites don't nearly generate the same money. I need to shut down my accounts on Dreamstime and Shutterstock. Do I need to wait until they are no longer active to apply at iStock for exclusivity?

IMHO, istock hates these rastered images. Best to upload them to Shutterstock. Anything that looks like it was rendered in Apophysis get the automatic boot, while they get accepted at SS and get decent downloads if they are unique and interesting (which the above mentioned rastered images gave me a big yawn).

After being in this game for about 5 years, I think I'm just about ready to go exclusive too... I'm in SS and DT, but the money they bring in is a small percentage of what I make at IS...

Whatever they changed about a month ago has made my sale almost triple. I'm having my best month in about a year...

The best I can tell, something happened on or around January 20th... my little old portfolio is on fire! It not just one or two images, but stuff from all over my portfolio. I've had three images downloaded this week that have been sitting out there for 2+ years with no downloads. I was seriously thinking about stopping my uploads to IS just a couple of weeks ago and concentrating on SS and DT and Alamy.

It's like a switch went on around the 20th. I've had anemic sales for about 3 months and now I'm almost back to where I was a few months ago... I almost was ready to stop uploading to IS, but now I'm very happy... I hope it lasts for a while!

It looks like traffic to those websites... If you really want to see something interesting add Shutterstock to the mix. istock is trending down since this Fall, Getty has been trending down for years. Shutterstock has remained stable and trending slightly upwards. I was thinking about going exclusive at IS, but this trend looks awful... Need to upload more to SS!

Tom Hogan has an extensive comparison of the LX3, G10 and p6000 and the G10 comes off as the best by a slim margin over the LX3. http://www.bythom.com/compactchallenge.htm

I picked up a G10 recently and I really like it so far...

I have pointed out over the years that Exclusives at IS have had preferential treatment. The bar is much lower for exclusives on what is approved or not. The sad thing is that crap images like this clog up the system and will never get a download. Having said that, I'm seriously thinking about going exclusive just so I can get more images approved!

I remember when I saw risamay on IS had gotten many downloads for an Eiffel Tower stamp about four years ago and then I scanned in about 50 stamps and made some good money, but the downloads have stopped... I just did a search at IS and saw many new (after 1978) stamps being uploaded. IS better be careful! I always had uploaded old stamps (pre-1978).

I'll re-iterate that it's simply not worth your time. Unlike photographs where you think there can be too many "attractive woman using laptop" type photos, they are different. Stamps are identical. I just did a search on some of my stamps and for some there are 3-4 identical stamps. How do you choose? Now you are splitting downloads with four other people and the demand simply isn't there... Better to get your camera and shoot some stock.

I have quite a few scanned stamps in my portfolio. I think the day when you can make a lot of money off them are over. Too much competition. It was new about four years ago, now anyone with a couple of stamps is trying to get in... I don't scan them in anymore...

If I remember correctly, Miz has a little history with Shutterstock...

After a BME in April and slightly down in May, June has fallen off a cliff! Not sure what is going on... I hope they aren't fiddling with the search engine again!

I'm off for the month of May also. My first down month in a while. Last month was a BME for me and since the Memorial day break it's just been way off. It could be that summer downturn has come early this year. Here's looking towards September!