I'm doing well there, especially with an extended licence this month. From what I see, they're thinking through their strategy thoroughly. Being relatively new and having a small team must help them be more responsive as well.

I have 32c per image at LuckyOliver so far this month while my average across all agencies is 21c. Though, I'm giving them my best images first. 

What do you say Bryan, time for another graph of LuckyOliver sales growth?

Don't overlook ProStockMaster as a tool to make the uploading process almost as simple to upload to 8 websites as it is to upload to 1.

Combine that with embedding your details in the IPTC data and your upload process is a snap.

Together, these two technologies almost eliminate the "time poor" factor.

The forgotten reason for exclusivity is community. Can you ever see Lise Gange or Hidesy dropping their exclusivity??

I concur. This forum rocks! There are lots of forums one could participate on out there. Each microstock website has one and there are other independent forums too. This one has real community. People look out for each other and are pulling in the same direction.

It's the only forum where I participate too.

The blog link at the top of the page on the US site links to blog.fotolia.loc/us

loc?  How can such a mistake be possible?

Right on Hatman!

It's now been 12 days since the "upgrade" started and we still don't have an upload facility. 

In the statement from Chad posted here they said they hadn't slept since the upgrade started, which at the time was four days.  I wonder how much sleep they're getting now with their site still crippled after almost two weeks.

I agree with your suspicion about them being under-resourced. I can't think of any other explanation. In situations like this when you have a mission-critical issue you do whatever it takes to get it fixed. There is nothing that can't be fixed in 12 days.

Boy, would I like to be a fly on the wall in the CEO's office over the last 12 days.

Oh, did I mention it's now been 12 days?

I had a chat with a marketing guy at Corbis / SnapVillage this morning. Here's some of the responses he gave to my questions and some of your questions that I put to him:

Empty database. Yes, they didn't put any Corbis images in because the 'spirit' of SnapVillage is user generated.

The word "snap" is very deliberate. Yes, it's associated with "snap-happy", "snapshots", etc, but it has multiple interpretations. They are creating a "fun" and "quick" brand, and the name conveys the "openness" of their model.

Yes, they will keyword and describe for you. Yes, they realise this a lot of extra work for them. They see it as a test of how good their processes are! 

Here's the message they pushed across to me:

They're very interested in feedback from the market. They're open to changing many things if they get the right feedback.

This is "content collection mode" for them. They have a lot of extra funtionality almost ready, and they promise to continually post updates about upcoming functionality on their blog.

iStock is down, but so are all the others. June & July are commonly reported as bad months. They were for me last year and this year is not looking any different.

However, your percentage drop at istock seems drastic. My istock results have been in a slide the last three months (including this one) but I'm still only marginally down on last month - around 20% down.

Me third! I was rejected and immediately contacted them. I asked why these shots that have sold hundreds of times on other sites (I included links) weren't good enough for StockXpert.

I got a great response! They looked at my portfolio on another website and told me exactly which images to include in my application. I was subsequently accepted.

They are a good site. It's a delicate balance for them (and all microstock agencies) to keep contributors happy with high acceptance ratios and at the same time keep the buyers happy by accepting only the best images. 

The support you're getting here is spot on. It's not personal, and being rejected doesn't mean you're a bad photographer or graphic artist. Some people get upset and rant and rave. Some even boycot and bad-mouth the offending agency. You'll live a lot longer if you take the advice given here and shrug it off. Don't make it mean anything about you - just keep plugging away for as long as it's worth your while.

Over the last few days I've had some of the images Crestock rejected suddenly jump from the rejected page into my portfolio.

I'm happy about it, but it does seem strange. 

Anyone else had this experience there?

Macrostock will never die because large companies are happy to pay higher prices to ensure the images they use are not seen elsewhere.

Microstock has created a new market with the people who previously wouldn't pay high prices for stock. This new market only partially overlaps the existing macrostock market, with those in the overlapped portion happy to sacrifice image exclusivity for a much lower price.

The remaining portion of the macrostock industry - predominantly organisations with valuable brands and big marketing budgets - will never defect. Yes, macrostock photographers have lost a portion of their market, but it's a portion that wasn't relevant for their services from the beginning.

Try browsing to www1.fotolia.com

If they're using hardware WSDs (website directors) to do the regional redirects this'll bypass them and go directly to one of the US servers. I can't test it to see if it works as I'm not in Germany. 

I'm currently in the UK and get the fotolia.co.uk address initially, but clicking the Fotolia US link at the bottom of the page gives me fotolia.com

Wow! How did you find out that about Yuri? Seems like that's the piece of the microstock vs macrostock debate that's been missing - the bit to tip the scales.

To me, the macrostock (a.k.a old-school photography establishment) argument has always been the microstock is for hacks and amateurs who can't get into the big houses. If a microstocker is now turning them down in favour of staying put - and there's fiscal justification for doing so - then we have a whole new debate on our hands!