The recent files (and the best sellers which sometimes ony have 1 dl in total) look like editors' picks so what you say seems pretty likely.

As I said in another thread, it's a moveable feast on DT lately - you roll the dice and depending on what reviewer you get you will have a different outcome...

On the one hand I guess it legally depends on the allowable use for the licence that was purchased (if any).  On the other, perhaps the cow or it's owner should get a cut from the money you make on the photograph?

Indeed Mike, I've said it before, DT (and SS in my case) need to work on their reviewing, hire more qualified people, not some spoiled brats who like to abuse their power of being the middleman.
The other day DT rejected a mother's day greeting card for too many on site, the card has sold multiple times before, on the actual holiday and afterwards on other agencies, it's even one of my personal favorites (I've used it myself)

Some reviewers rob us and the agency from our income, if the agencies are happy with that then do continue to sell less, good for business right!

To be honest, neither DT nor I will lose a fortune based on these rejections.  The real problem is that if you have widely different standards then you really have no standards.  IS are ridiculously picky but at least they are consistent.   The odd reject from SS generally has some basis in my case and if they say there�s a technical or lighting issue it is usually with a weaker image.  Up to recently I would have said the same about DT but, lately, it seems to have nothing to do with the technical quality of the image.  Over the weekend I had 4 accepted that included one weakfish image and one rejected.  The images (apart from one of those accepted) would be virtually identical in terms of quality @ 100%.  I know this was a different reviewer based on it going under review much earlier and coming out later.  If they have decided to raise the bar that�s fair enough but if it�s heads you win and tails you lose, that�s just unprofessional.

Unbelievably, behind IS last month and so far this month with almost 20 times the number of inages    It also seems lately that acceptance or rejection is pretty much a lottery and depends on which reviewer you get.  Nothing wrong with high standards, even ridiculously high standards but the standard should be pretty much consistent or it looks like the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.

The pennies do add up.   My partner program sales in April were equivalent to 34% of my regular revenues, which means that in terms of total downloads they outnumbered the regular sales.  Unfortunately, my total revenue is only about half of what it was a few years ago.   Istock is competing with itself, and the low priced sales are contributing to the cannibalization of regular iStock earnings.   

I just regard them the same as sub sales on other sites but with the occasional nice surprise

Definitely my best PP month - the single $24 sale looks out of place among $0.28s 

If you are who I think you are, you have a very high performing portfolio on DT.  I don't for one second believe that there is any substantial difference between the big sites in terms of buyers so a strong performing port on one site is likely to do the same on the others.  Someone who quits exclusivity on DT to go to just FT and below will probably lose money or just about break even but, if you add SS and IS, you should see an overall increase of the sort of magnitude I mentioned.  My own experience is that return per image on SS is double DT and FT combined so approx double what I would get as an exclusive on DT alone.  IS is 50% higher again but doesn't transate into cash because of a tiny port.  These numbers seem fairly typical based on what people say here and the earnings rating on the top right.

Deleted.

Quote from: Elenathewise on May 07, 2012, 10:12

My recent batches accepted during last month are not selling at all on SS.  They do sell well on all my other agencies. What's your experience - do new files have a chance of making it on SS these days? I still have very nice overall sales there, but it's all my old portfolio...

I find it is simply getting tougher everywhere for new images to attract early sales but that's hardly surprising with 20M images now on-line. SS is still the easiest place to get those early sales though (unless your image gets selected for the 'New Images' slot on FT which almost always guarantees multiple sales).

On the bright side images will be "old" for longer than they are "new"    I'd much rather have sales longevity than a few quick sales and then nothing

Apples are really nicely designed but I'd rather spend money on processing power and RAM than on a label

Submitted 2 over the weekend and already rejected 

They are all 24/7 operations - are there actually some of them that don't have 24/7 technical cover even on an on-call basis with automated monitoring?