That's one of the crazy things in this biz.  One site will be the greatest for one photog and the pits for another,  the next site, they experience the opposite.  All part of the fun and mystery!! LOL  -tom

my experience with 123 has been frustrating at best.  Sales lag behind all 'established' sites  ( I don't count LO or NLS) with 3 in june, only 3 this month so far.  The downloads mentioned with the pictures doesn't match the downloads in the stats.  To this day, I can't figure out how much I made there.....somedays I sit forever and ever waiting to log on.... and I haven't uploaded there in a loooooooong time.... the reason is..... I got tired of waiting a looooooong time for review and posting.... I am not happy with 123.  As soon as I can get around to it.... I'll be pulling out.     -tom

"My football, my rules"...     you don't go into another man's(woman's) house and tell them how to live.  when in rome.... do as the romans...

          there's a million of them that apply...

It's the nature of life and ...this biz. The same can be said of rejection for  "not stock material= not commercial material" ... and yet on other sites, I sell it by the hundreds...  it's their site, their choice.
    If pulling your pictures is a statement of your principles,  I respect that. You did the right thing. 
      On the other hand, I respect the rules of the individual sites I hope will sell my work.  I am happy with StockXpert.   -tom

Always been my hobby.  A year ago, I started uploading to the micros for fun. That opened a door for me into doing assignment work for magazines/book publishing. I still don't feel like that is work, to me it's having fun and getting handed a lot of money for enjoying myself.  My wife, also a hobby shooter, has a modest business selling cards, prints, mugs, etc, using her and my photos online. Microstock itself is less than 40% of money earned in our photography 'hobby'. The majority of the photography money comes from the assignment work.
     I am still in my day job of 34 years, my wife works in real estate. The money from photography is our 'pin money'. -tom

Seems like such a simple question, but I'll be damned if I could find a simple answer anywhere.   

wylwi --- thanks for asking!!!   I too have not bothered with Paypal, but now must since I'd like to give the folks at corbis a chance to send me money (LOL wishful thinking).
    I read the Paypal site and didn't understand a darned thing on it... appreciate you breeching the subject here.     -tom

I am finding DT are more picky than iStock for my photos

I concur.

What I like about IS....  when I get a rejection, 9 times out of 10, they even send me a clip of what they object to in the image.  I'm also (like all are) invited to resubmit after correction.  I have never had a resubmit shot down. I would assume this is true for everyone..
    With most other sites your rejection is more or less  "this sux,  go away".  -tom

 Amen, Hatman.....   sound advice...  unlike the old days when you had all the time in the world to play with your photos...  if you want to make it in stock,  you need to eliminate as much as possible,  post-shoot work 'photoshoping'.   There's no time for it.
       I have totally changed the way I shoot now... doing all I can to get the best possible image out of the camera, rather than.... "oh, i'll just fix that later in photoshop".   One can't be spending a half hour painting out this or that or denoising or making horizons straight, whatever....    just ain't no time, bro!
        Of course, there will be those shots that you will want to make special,  or,  at the advice of a reviewer,  you will have to tweak if you want them to accept it. After 45 years of shooting, believe it or not,   selling in the micros has made me a better, more discriminant photog. I spend the extra seconds or minute at the shoot, saving who knows how long pounding on the keyboard and sliding the mouse until 1 in the morning.  LOL -tom

Just to stroke Leaf's ego a little, I think he is doing a great job of keeping things on the straight and narrow here, three cheers for Leaf.. :-).

Cheers, Me.

I concur!        This is the ONLY forum that I comment on now.  In fact it is now only one of two that I read (LO Odditorium is the other).  I completely enjoy MSG and have told other photogs to come here due to the 'family/friendly'  environment.  Thanks go to Leaf and all the members!
   Consequently, there isn't an active need for censorship here. The few times that Leaf has had to jump in.....   I don't think anyone could have disagreed with the need for it.      -tom
 

IS shot down a few of mine for trademark infringement...   Nike logo on the side of the socks my model had on.    I never saw the things... had to blow up to 200% to see them and remove them fully.  I also had to pull the name Hoover Dam and the dam (no pun intended) logo off a building,  it looked like a dot at fullscreen (if you're familiar with the area, the building was on the Nevada side of Lake Mead, shot from the overloook up on the canyon wall on the Arizona side, at fullscreen you couldn't even tell what it was).
      However,   they took all of them on the resubmit once I pulled the logos off.   The only thing that upsets me is that I'm new to IS and still 'base'  and the resubmits must count in my next batch of 20.  Now, I'm fanatical at 200-300% looking for junk before I upload to IS.
          But, yeah,  they are meticulous there... -tom

everythings fine from New Jersey.... 4:49 local time....   -tom

Not sure where it went, but there was actually another post in this thread that I was responding to...something about selling directly to various publishers.  It's not here anymore.

   

Sorry, bad habit...Karimala...   I run my own  forum style site. When there doesn't seem to be interest in something said, I usually delete or modify in the interest of saving space.... especially photo's, video and other large files... I tend to do that here too if there is not a response within a day, just looking after leaf, and others so that they don't have to read thru boring non-issues.  anywho,  that was me.

Thanks for the information.  I still think that some microsites are missing out on some great and saleable pix, but I suppose that's the nature of the biz.  If  an image is bad, fine, reject it.... but if it's selling like crazy somewhere else, is it really bad?

To ianhld's further point on a macro accepting what all his micros rejected.... that's my exact point.  I'm selling direct to publishers, editors, designers with none of this  'noise, artifact'  hassle.
   One further point I thought was interesting.  In a recent photo essay of my pix published in a 'town & country'  magazine, the editor asked for a series of a specific topic. Rather than shoot new,  I handed in a CD with some old pix I had shot a couple years earlier relating to the subject.  On that disk were some of my wife's pictures that she shot on her  3 meg  'point and shoot'.   My point... they used one of her 3 meg shots as a fullpage cover pic for the article.  It looked great fullpage.
I found that curious.  Of course, my wife was delighted! Her  'minipic' was the title picture... LOL
   
   
 

................i have a hard enough time keeping up with the ones I allready submit to.

amen to that.... in fact, I'm seriously thinking of bailing out of two more that give me low sales....  It's a ton of work.  -tom

Congrats, Hatman!!    I've yet to experience that pleasure!! Wishing you many more!  -tom