If it wasn't such an enormous effort to shift a few thousand images over to another agency plus making sure at least 80% of them get accepted, keywording them all, waiting for the number of sales to build up so you slip into a higher royalty class...

I have gone through such an infinte number of crappy changes with Istock that had always been promised as a general improvement with big talking of admins, but always turned out to decrease sales or site stability or both.
have swallowed every * technical site error that sent customers to competitors.
I have withstood inspectors telling me I am not able to light my images properly for years.
I was always thankful for Istock being my entrance in a world where I can make money from doing what I like.
I have never doubted to be exclusive with them and I have never felt like dropping them to move my stuff somewhere else, just because I could increase my income in any way.

But the times in which I have taken disadvantages from them and let them push and shove me around while enabeling Istock to earn more and more from my work are now officially over. We have holidays in Germany now and I'll finally pull my port and move on.

It' s not the loss of money. It's just that I feel stupid while taking all this crap from them and keeping calm and my family starts asking me, why I am still taking all this. And you know what? I don't have justifications towards them and not even towards myself anymore.

Let them earn 1.500 bucks a month from my files, now their income will decrease by that. I know noone will care, but maybe if 10 or even 50 contributors feel the same and leave, 10.000 bucks a month is an ammount someone will maybe take note of.

Thank you Istock for 4,5 great years, but the limit of what I can bare and stand has now been exceeded. You've been asking for this to happen, I hope a lot of contributors hear and follow your call and leave.

Back online now. Thank goodness for this thread or they may have never ever even known. 

Yeah, cause the number of sales are no longer a sign whether the site is running or not 

Thanks to all of you for respondig!

First, my point of question was not to decide whether I should quit my exclusivity or not. Not at least after having read in these nice forums I think I have enough of aspect to make that deciaion in near future. I know it is a long way to go, but you know what it's like, you keep telling yourself to wait another 2 or 3 months, but you are already fes up with their way of dealing with customwrs, their unfriendly forums and their ridiculoulsy weak tech stability.
Then on one day you are selling well once again and there goes the decision again for another few months.
After all there are so many things besides a shrinking income that upset me, that I would really like to start somewhere else just because I can put my attention away from all this Istock anger for some time. At the moment every login turns out in something that bothers me or that makes me want to throw my computer out of the window...

Anyway, that was not my point.

As the first reply indicated, I was quite sure that Istock would not include any issues into their exclusivity agreement, that you as a contributor could nail them to. No matter what contract you sign, it's always you to take the disadvantages and the other side has the good parts. Being with Istock since 2004 I would not really have expected them to be 'fair' here. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't maybe missing a line that deals with the priviliges from exclusives.

And yes, there were definitely promises for contributors that they would benefit from better advertising and search result piorities. I didn't make that up. Most likely they had these lines on their website or in the forums back then for a while and removed them as most people had made up their minds regarding exclusivity.

Well it won't change things, but I think that so many images of non-exclusives on top search result places might even be a reason to quit exclusivity. Maybe my images would sell better if they were pushed back to essential as they would then show up in front position of search results :-)

Mr. Nobody, I don't think the number of files can roughly say something about the money you make each month. It mainly depends on where your files are placed in best match and if you are uploading flowers and landscapes or stockworthy stuff from different subjects. I guess I tend to be one of the more stocky guys with lots of different subjects. I have got about 3000 files and up 2012 Istock paid half of our house in total which was really good money. Now with all the technical crap, the faulty search engines and the confusing collections and structures I have no idea how I can still influence my income to raise or shrink anymore.

Well, I guess it's hard for everyone. Maybe I'll go the extra mile and build up a new base at another agency or two. Let's see.

Thank you again for your inputs!