I voted Crestock, but the difference is so small (a couple of percent only), that it's hardly noticeable. Crestock seems to be growing though, but subscription prices are too low.

Another agency with more or less the same earnings for me is Scanstockphoto. They are  5-10% ahead of Crestock, but my portfolio there is at least three times as big.

Epixx,

Do you consider yourself as someone with high production. I looked at your IS portfolio and you have 444 files and you have been there since March 2006. Do you max out the upload limit?

I would really like to know how many people max out the upload limit (I can see Yuri Arcus, Phil Date,...). Maybe if you just sign up and have 200-300 files to upload it suck but after a year you should have good amount of pictures there.

I am just curious. I wish I had enough time to process enough pictures to use the upload limit.

My production is much larger than the iStock upload limit, but not all the time. I'm travelling a lot, and only spend around two weeks of each month at home, which is where I do my uploads. That means that, since the iStock limits are on a weekly basis, I lose lots of upload slots.

This is actually my biggest gripe with iStock. Their whole system is based on photographers who stay at home, reading the forums and uploading as soon as there's an available upload slot. That works for some, but is a serious limitation for me.

Most professional photographers with a studio can obviously produce much more than the initial quotas offered, and since images are often made in batches over a period of at least a couple of days, adapting to small, weekly quotas, conflicts with most normal work-flows, particularly when those quotas are changed without warning on a very frequent basis.

I have btw. discussed this on their forums on several occasions. For some strange reason though, they don't seem to be willing to adapt their system to my personal needs   

I had my vectors rejected there as well. They are selling by the hundreds at SS. Don't try to understand it. They have decided on a set of rules that aren't even properly documented, or maybe my brain is just too dysfunctional   

iStock has a lot of problems. In my world, they're losing market shares, and it started long before the current technical problems. I've had sinking sales there since April, but what is even more interesting is that, when I watch my weekly sales statistics, the sales of Fotolia and StockXpert is getting closer and closer. Dreamstime is already up there om iStock level, partly due to regular EL's. Never had any of those at IS.

I don't have a clue why this is happening, and discussing it on the IS forums is obviously a no-go, unless I want a lecture in religious idioms for stock photographers.

Maybe their "community spirit" doesn't match the real world when the organisation reaches a certain size.

I had the same thing, but it inly seems to be a one day delay. My sales from yesterday just got updated today.

I'm seeing more ebb and flow across the sites now than ever. For me istock peeked in August and will beat that this month. It will likely take 2nd place and put SS in 3rd for the 1st time since I joined. Don't visit their forums as it is usually a waste of time.

I agree that there's a lot of ebb and flow now than when I started. What makes IS stand out for me (unfortunately), is that it's more like ebb and ebb. My projected result for September is around 60% of that for April, which was my BME on IS. My projected result on SS is almost four times that on IS, although the SS portfolio is only twice as big.

An interesting aspect is that we seem to have portfolios of similar size and age on IS, so one would believe that sales developed along the same lines. Apparently, they don't.

from what I could find out in one of their endless threads, this is not going to be fixed overnight. Now, they are kind of updating twice per day. Can we trust that the numbers we see are real?

This is starting to look weird. I've uploaded on a more or less daily basis recently, but nothing has been reviewed at StockXpert since 26 August. I have almost 80 photos in the queue, and for those uploaded yesterday, no thumbnails/previews have been generated.

Sales at StockXpert are picking up though   

One sale, $0.50, with 149 images online. That's a start at least   

Same problem. I use the Flash uploader. I copy/past the keywords in, but it sure is annoying.

Another annoyance is, that when I upload photos from another country than my home location, I have to change the country for each photo. Has anyone found a way around that?

iStock is an increasing headache. All their "enhancements" and changes only seems to make my sales go down. The most interesting part is that new images don't sell at all. The last three to four months, I've been uploading my maximum weekly allowance (the number that goes up and down on a daily or weekly basis, depending on the latest screw-up at iStock). Still, with one exception, not a single photo uploaded after 3 July has sold even once!

If I'd been a Certified Bad Photographer, and a regular guest at Judge Ross' horror cabinet, I would have understood it, but my new uploads sell well enough at other agencies, and some of the newer ones have even made it to my personal Top 10 at a couple of sites.

That, and the incredibly arrogant attitude I meet in their forums and in the way they generally treat contributors, non-exclusives in particular, make me question if it's worth the hassle and irritation. I guess I'll keep uploading, but I don't spend much energy on them anymore. They get the same as the others and whatever is first in the queue when an upload slot is available.

This may be an excellent chance for people to get a used Canon 1Ds MkII as pros begin to unload theirs in favor of the newest stuff. It wouldn't surprise me if the price for a used one drops below the price of a new 5D - keep your eyes open if you're in the market!

Don't count on many used Mark II for sale. 16MP is already on the limit of what some of the Canon L lenses can resolve. With 21MP, that selection will grow even smaller, except for those who use third party glass from Leica or Zess. My guess is that the Mark III will sell much slower than the Mark II, and if Nikon really launches an FF camera on the 23rd, the whole picture will look very different overnight.

Exciting times   

Looks nice, but they don't seem to have much business yet. I liked this sentence though:

"We can and want to pay out higher fees, since at Zoonar, you take over part of the work (keyword string), and because we are a streamlined operation."

Nice attitude