I also recieved that e-mail today and I lost a bit more money.

"Due to reasons which are beyond our control, we are sorry to let you know that $12.09 have been removed from your earnings as a result of a refund. File IDs: 2019200, 947560, 810615, 2496542, 1692446, 1417303 - reason: fraud. Thank you for your patience and understanding."

My images were downloaded and could be used by this fraudster. Dreamstime accepted this fraudulent transaction, but don't want to accept any responsibility for it. Why must I suffer the loss and they nothing?

Now that BigStock accept Editorial images I submitted a few that are also on some of the other Microstock sites. Normally I don't submit editorial images to MS (they go to Alamy), but since I have these already on MS I submitted them to BigStock. Imagine my surprise when most of them was rejected for ridiculous reasons. Here are some examples:

This image of Valentino Rossi: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-1138025-motogp-racing-valentino-rossi-phakisa-racetrack-welkom-south-africa-april.html
was rejected for "Potential copyright / trademark / privacy issue with photo (could be: copyrighted art, visible logo, license plate number, etc)"  There were several more from this event that were also rejected and yes I made 100% sure I clicked the "editorial" box when submitting the images.

This image of a Himba boy was accepted: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-1706686-a-young-himba-boy-with-traditional-cultural-decorations-kaokoland-namibia.html,

but this one: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-1706687-a-himba-child-raised-in-a-traditional-rural-village-kaokoland-namibia.html rejected for "not editorial. Recognizable person without Model Release..." 

I did send them an e-mail, but just beware if you intend to send them some editorial images. They are currently clueless what an editorial image is.

On a Canon 1.6x crop body there is currently no better zoom than the 17-55 /2.8 IS. Sharp corner to corner (even wide open) with the lowest CA that I have seen in any zoom lens in this focal length range.

Well Fotolia is also a good earner for me. Big contest between them and Dreamstime for #3 on my earnings list. They are thus important and I will not dismiss them entirely. As with most others I also have my share of ridiculous rejections. However, I think I know now what to they will accept and what they will reject. They accept 99% of my African wildlife, but I don't even bother with landscapes anymore. Seems like they don't even give them a second glance. This irritates me because I never submit a generic landscape, but always a specific place or location, which is in high demand by safari operators in the eco-tourism industry who buy these images for marketing purposes. Some of my best sellers (with a lot of EL-sales) on Fotolia are African landscapes that were accepted before they adopted this ridiculous rejection policy.  Now I just keep these images for submission later when Fotolia will (hopefully) regain some sanity and objectivity.

I honestly don't believe the problem is with Steve and the employees of StockXpert. The real problem is JI that has apparently taken StockXpert hostage in a process that robbed the management of StockXpert of their autonomy. The EULA of Photos.com demonstrates that JI have totally lost contact with recent developments in the stock industry and they apparently still believe it is the year 2002. Their plummeting stock market shares are but one of the consequences of this lack of vision.   

Fortunately there are enough stock agencies with their operating offices outside the US that do not require registration with the US tax authorities. Despite all the posts that try to convince us that registration is a non-issue, it is indeed an issue for many of us, including myself.  Many agencies know this and I am sure this is the reason why many US companies has moved their operations abroad. The latest of these is SV who relocated their offices to Ireland.

I will not register with the US tax authorities. If this means I cannot join Photoshelter it is no big loss to me. At this point in time Photoshelter is still nothing more than a "wannabee".  If they (ever) manage to become I major player with a proven record of regular sales I might reconsider my position, but until such time I will stay away from them. Freedom of choice with regard to what agencies I will join and what information I am willing to hand over to who is fortunately still my democratic right.

I also feel their "overfiltered" rejections are sometimes bordering on paranoia. They are also not very consistent. With about 780 images in my portfolio with an overall acceptance rate of 85 % I am very careful what I submit to IS.  Normally I don't have much problems with IS to get my images accepted, but every now and then I got hit with a string of "overfiltered" rejections. I suspect it is one or two specific reviewers that are too critical or uses uncalibrated monitors. Examples of their inconsistency:

Prepare three identically exposed images from the same shoot (but different positions) with a batch command in PS (RAW files with moderate levels adjustments and a very low amount of USM applied).  Submitted two of them and they are accepted. Submitted the last one two weeks later and got rejected for "overfiltered". 

Re-submitted a file rejected for "overfiltered" UNALTERED some time later just to see what happen and this time it got rejected for "overuse of noise reduction software that removed too much detail". Now how on earth can a image be "overfiltered" (meaning over sharpened) and too soft from noise reduction at the same time? I submitted that particular image to Scout and it got accepted.

Do they sell? If yes, show me that button.

No sign of my $90 either, but as others mentioned the confirmation e-mail for my payment request in May said "... before 30 June".  Come 30 June and no payment then I will start to worry.

Well for me the answer is quite clear: the subscription model of SS is not sustainable and we are now starting to see the effect of this.  Do some simple mathematical calculations. The number of images on SS are currently growing at a rate of 46 000 a week (that is 184 000 new images a month) and this number is growing each month. I am sure that the number of buyers and the number of images downloaded per month do not grow nearly at this rate.  The images that you add each week and each month (no matter how many you add) will comprise an ever smaller part of the total number of new images added, hence the decline in downloads.  By "feeding the beast" we are just contributing to an acceleration of this whole vicious circle.

The second consideration is that with a decline in the economy and increases in the prices of the subscription packages, many buyers will not renew their subscriptions. Why should they? I am sure that some of the big buyers must by now have such a vast collection of every possible image that they just have to search through their own collections to find the image they require.  Should they then require an image not in their collection they will rather go to one of the sites that offer per photo sales and buy that one or two unique images, rather that taking out a subscription package again.  

Subscriptions are bad. If I must vote for the MS site that have the best long-term potential it will not be SS. I was good while it lasted, but my own logic tells me that it will not last.

Just received an invitation today by e-mail to submit to the EVO collection. What a nice surprise and I feel quite honored to have been invited. 

Now that the elation has worn off I am thinking of my future upload strategy. Surely I don�t want to submit images that I also submit to the other MS sites.  On the other hand by submitting top quality images exclusively to EVO I may miss out on their true earnings potential, especially in view of the yet unproven success of the EVO collection.  In line with the thinking of Andres I am slowly scaling down on Microstock and working hard on building my Alamy portfolio. That got me thinking: I have both RF and RM images on Alamy that is not on the Microstock sites. Maybe I should use my RF Alamy images (not RM) and submit some of these to the EVO collection. Since the prices is much higher for images in the EVO collection it can not be considered as typical MS and should thus be OK to have them on Alamy and 123RF. What do you think? 

Seren is absolutely right.  As a non-US citizen NOT LIVING in the US you are not accountable to pay tax there. The company (Photoshelter in this case) is accountable for taxes on the income from the money they earn from us photographers (the commission that they take on each sale). I must, however, pay taxes on my income from stock in my own country of residence.  As long as they have this requirement I will not join them and I will encourage other non-US photographers to do the same and to make sure they get the message.

Yes, really sad ...  First NaturalLifeStock and now LO. This should be a warning to all the new startup sites: it will not be easy for late arrivals to make it in the Microstock world.