My impression is that FT has two types of inspectors: crazy and dumb. Former reject everything, latter - accept everything; and lately they fired most of dumb ones....

I have photos rejected almost everywhere, and accepted at FT; but acceptance rate lately goes very close to zero (going up on all other sites)

I am very new to stock. Trying to learn, improve and find my own style. On all sites, where I started with ~50% rejection rate, I'm coming to >90% acceptance. All but fotolia, where I have recently  >90% rejects (most of them - non-technical)

The funniest rejection I had - "Areas of the image too overexposed" for isolation
Yes, I've spent some time "overexposing" the background

Guys, I think you are reading all these changes wrong. They are not just business decisions, but - my diagnosis - business decisions dictated by IT side (sure, nobody will ever admit this)

Translation from a professional point of view (not stock photo, where I am brand new)

"Sorry, guys. We just had hit our scalability limit. We thought we were linear, but it appeared that we are exponential (sorry for a lingo). We _cannot_ afford any more photos, especially taking in account our new contracts.  Our site will just fail.
The main bottleneck is our search, so the only way to S-O-A-s (other than to stop the growth) is to limit the multiplication factor - keywords. But, to be safe, we'd better do both.
We've developed an excellent software, and the fact that it does not scale is an act of God. All other sites are probably using some infernal knowledge. Hiring new specialists will not help, as we are the best of the crop, and, BTW, costs $$$$".

This is not a pure speculation, key points were verified by looking at the site behavior from the same professional point of view.

Do not take me wrong, I really like CanStockPhoto, it is a big pleasure to upload there (though not a pleasure to get close to $0 back), but... 

Uncle Gene,
digging his own CanStockPhoto future  grave

P.S. to Duncan:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0672326140 - very useful, especially if read open-minded

As comments are the way ti get anything from LO, we can play the old game and have some fun of it:
Suggested rules - go to a portfolio of a last poster, choose an image that you like and seems underrated, and comment on it. If you want to participate, please start nit with mine, but with
http://www.luckyoliver.com/portfolio/madelaide/popular

By "bestseller" I mean it sells best on _SS_ (we are in SS's section of forum), not others. The same shots rejected in other places - absolutely no questions. And yes, I can buy your explanation.

BTW, both go head to head n SS.

P.S. I admit that I'm new to the game and just trying to learn the rules

P.P.S. DanP68 - congrats with editors pick! Well deserved!

Just a little bit of curiosity. Couple of my flower shots somehow got in with original submission. 3-4 from the same set (and quality) were later rejected because of "we do not need this". But... First two continue to get couple downloads per day. Is this just a customer hunger for no/little new flower shots?
I see the same policy on several sites, does it mean that soon nobody will be able to get flower picture that is not couple years old?

Just first month, so sample is not representative...

1. SS 26%
2. DT 24%
3. CS 18%
4. IS 14%
5. FT 8%
6. CanStockPhoto 6%
7. 123 6%
rest 0%