Update: just checked my email used for CC and discovered I had 3 automated sales too this month. Have to add I only started uploading during the New Year recess. I also should add those shots didn't sell anywhere else and that they are totally atypical for me, a food shot, go figure. The percentage of 40% turns off a bit but hopefully they can make up by volume...

John apparently digged into a new customer base. Whatever, keep the sales coming. Better 40% of many than 70% of nothing.

Gin $1 a litre!  I'm THERE!!!

Hahaha, but milk and wine (anything imported) are more expensive than in the West. Gin makes me too dizzy but the beer is fabulous, also 1$ for a litre. Actually, producing gin is very simple and cheap. It's the taxes that make it expensive.

Infranview is PC only right?

Yes. I remember since Araminta (I think) asked one time here for an Irfanview clone for the Mac.

When I first started microstock I searched high and low for stable mac software that would do it from the finder because at that time I was naive enough to believe I could submit my shots direct from the camera (no post-processing) and didn't want to resave the jpg

Well before (2005-2006) I had a snapshotter that produced a lot of noise and I had to use PS for noise reduction. For cloning too of course, and for levels. Later, I learned that buyers are attracted by popped-up thumbs so I also added pop-up. IS doesn't like that but DT and SS do.

Now of course, I post-process every file to some degree and have been using Lightroom since beta. The only time it has not read a layered file was when I left it in Lab mode and forgot to change it back to RGB. It has improved leaps and bounds since 1.1 You should try out the 2.X.
edit: Typos and to clarify that Lightroom doesn't allow you to control your layered files other than read them. You can apply any LR adjustments to them and export as new (flattened) files.

Well for me layers are vital now. Can't work without layers, for the selective erase of noise and for the soft-layers that allow you to add a lot of creativity as to colors in specific areas. Also for cloning and isolations. But it really depends on your type of photos, and what you are used to. I'm ignorant about LR, and using it, I never could grasp why people would migrate from Photoshop to LR. Levels? Well levels are possible in PS too. If you just start, that might be different...

And when he's done maybe he could sort out world poverty and global warming.

Too late, Obama will do that.

I am one that still reports istock as my top selling site, but the bulk of my portfolio was uploaded when they still wanted non-exclusive images.

Same here. All that gets downloaded is my old crap from 2-3 years ago. My recent stuff doesn't get any downloads at all.

Lightroom can do this too.

In batch and without opening the image?

Batch-keywording sounds nice for sure 

You can also selectively replace fields in a batch operation. For instance, you can change the author or date fields in a batch without touching the other fields. In the latest version, you can also add info to existing fields, like adding one single keyword to the existing ones, whatever they are. Or adding "Isolated over white" to all existing descriptions is you forgot it.

What I still miss is search and replace, like when you misspelled a keyword, or deleting a particular keyword in a batch. Remove duplicates and counting (flag images with over 50 or N keywords or with a description length>200 or N) might be cool too. Given time, I'll try to write a plugin for Irfanview to perform these tasks easily, because almost none of the mainstream and reliable tools are geared towards stockers.

I have been uploading by FTP but right now a couple of hundreds are stuck in the queue since their model release attach procedure is terribly slow and complicated.

Anybody still uploading to Vivozoom?

I gave up for their complicated and ill-programmed model release system. As I had a look through my rejected images, I saw they had the rare talent of rejecting my best sellers both at Dreamstime and Shutterstock as not needed. That's their privilege of course, but it lead me to stop uploading. It takes two to tango.

It all depends on the glass you might have already. It has been stressed often here and elsewhere, glass outlasts cam bodies and take up most of the costs.

I get less of them on istock than SS or FT, perhaps they don't make it as obvious when one is required?  Price can't be anything to do with it because some sell for more on FT.

Correct. I got a couple of extended ones this month on SS and On Demands almost daily (Feb 09). At the contrary, my trend on DT was increasing subscription. I don't know if this trend is true for everybody but this makes SS suddenly by far my most profitable site, despite the subscription. You might be right, SS communicating and enforcing its license policy much better.

Fotolia and YAY also extract the country. For editorial, landmarks and travel, they should extract more.

As to your question, yes I fill up all possible meta info though less than before. Not for the current stock sites but for sites to come. Flickr for instance extracts all location info: city, sublocation, province, country. I also add a geotag for all shots that aren't in studio. Date/time taken, although in the EXIF, I also put in the IPTC.

I do it for myself, since it's a way to sort photos.

Or do we still have to copy and paste every time?

Oh my god! Put your metatags (descr, keywds, title) in the IPTC by the free Irfanview. All sites accept that, and you only have to do it once. Irfanview also allows to tag photos in batch.

It would just be bad business for Istock to beat down non-exclusives.

Yes, so they have somebody to bash on and discriminate against exclusives, and give the exclusives that warm feeling they are special  Imagine IS with all exclusives.