I am a little bit surprised that microstock people patronize Flickr users exactly like stock photographers do them. There is much more variety on Flickr than in microstock which means there from bad snapshots to art and everything in between.

Until somebody invents non-subjective means of reviewing photographs it always be like that. I stopped wondering why I got image sold one site and rejected on the other. It's just a way it is and I got better things to do that trying to figure it out.

All these start-ups expect that only greatest photographers would enroll so they would have easy job selling their works. Reality is that these guys already are selling on other well established sites and they do not care about another low earning one. So it's catch 22, they are not getting greatest images until they really take off and they cannot take off since they are rejecting everything else and do not have enough to attract potential buyers.

You can tell the truth and give advise on this one Sean, it will take someone new, until 2014 before they could have 3000 photos up on IS, as a non-exclusive. If every photo is accepted and they submit the Max. 15 per week, for 3.8 years.  

An exclusive would take less time, but first one must qualify by having 250 downloads, which should take about half a year, to reach that level at 15 photos a week. Then only another year and a half, 100% acceptance, and there's your easy money for 3000 photos. It only takes two years for an exclusive.

Nico_Blue started in Oct 2004 which is about 4 1/2 years. That's 12 accepted photos a week...

That's exactly why I am not trying to hard to upload there. They made it too ridiculous to even bother with them.  I stick to my top 5 performers, earning something is better than feeling hopeless all the time with IS.

Forgive me if this is a stupid question - I don't know FLickr very well... but don't people post their photos at higher resolution?, and without watermark? I have thought about putting shots up in the past, but was worried about people helping themselves to them. And if not - if they are low resolution files, then how does Getty do the review properly? How does it work?

It's pretty simple. Getty asks for high resolution images to be submitted for review. For me many images they asked for very 800 pixels wide on Flickr.

That's really interesting, my bestseller is 3% of my total sales while top 10 are 18%

Fast work usually means lower quality work. They must be paid by image reviewed so they click thru images lake crazy :-) On the other side of spectrum are IS and BS they got slowest reviews, are they best?

Choose up to 5 used mostly

Today I also noticed they got 5Dmk2 vs D700 comparison:
http://i.gizmodo.com/5160540/canon-5d-mark-ii-vs-nikon-d700-review-shoot+out

I guess you don't mean that it is virtually impossible for everybody?

There are few things which might be considered:
1. I am not professional
2. I do not have very "stockish" photographs, I do mostly landscapes and occasionally I take pictures of my family. I guess it's easier for commercial photographers to get in especially when they got access to studio equipment. Still I sold couple thousand photographs on other sites. If IS does not want to sell them they got right to do that.
3. I almost do not perform any post processing. Try to shoot at ISO 100 and maybe sometimes do some corrections of exposure. I only use Lightroom  for editing so there is no way to make isolations and any more complicated image manipulations.

I started uploading last year so establishing any portfolio on IS is virtually impossible. After half a year of trying I gave up and focused on other sites. IS got 1 upload a month, too much hassle with their workflow. I wish I could send them DVD and forget :-)

Too bad, I just ordered from Amazon yesterday. I will have to wait couple weeks for shipping :-(