Miz is a feisty one that's for sure.

I don't like it. It's microstock after all, cough up the buck ya cheap *insult removed*.

Of course I may be more than a little biased because of blogging/lame websites like xanga/myspace that have been a pain in my butt with their users incessantly trying to hotlink to resources on the websites I've managed.

Seems like more than a little counter-productive when you're trying to sell web sized images and people can use them without paying as long as they don't mind the watermark.

EDIT: It should be an opt-in situation with this sort of thing rather than having to find out about this on a third party website.

You're probably already using Photoshop and bridge. The ability to add IPTC data is built in to both so you just edit the file info once and you're good to go for all the sites. If you're not a perfect speller then you'll probably want to create your info in a program with a spell check then copy it over.

After just under two months, I'm two downloads away from getting my first payout. I didn't think I would be but I'm a little excited.

As you stated, keywords have many problems as well.  People misspell keywords.  People spam keywords.  People live in different cultures and use different words (for example, subway (New York City), train, Metro (Washington, DC), Tube (London), etc).  People spell words differently around the world (for example, color and colour).  So categories that are set up like a keyword system could be very useful for buyers.

Aside from spam I don't see the others as problems. When keywording photos a person should take into account regional differences including common spelling errors and add those to their list of keywords. Unfortunately some sites limit the number of keywords, others don't allow phrases, and still others perform spell checks all of which hinders the keywording process.

For those of you who keep track of rejected images at StockXpert in a separate folder (and to have an idea of your acceptance rate as there is no written results). I noticed that they deleted a lot of files from my folder obviously they really need the hard disc space. I know most sites will delete rejected files but it was the only record - though how big is a thumbnail.

Well StockXpert rejected all my illustrations "we are not looking for such images right now" their softest rejection. So it does look good for DT or SS. I am sure iStock would probably opt for public humiliation.

I think I'm reading this wrong but, you're saying they sometimes delete your images without notice? I have a 100% acceptance rate there. Should I be checking to see if images that I've uploaded and they have accepted start disappearing?

Coming up on a year and no sales.

Culling doesn't seem like such a bad idea depending on exactly how it's done. If they only want bigger photos, I'm fine with that. If they, in the beginning, accepted lesser photos to build a larger photo base then I'm fine with culling that too. If it's just to get rid of old photos then I'm not really fine with that. I photograph a lot of seasonal material and the majority of it could be used now or years from now. Some images have a relatively short lifespan. Photos with people don't last very long; hairstyles and clothing fall out of style as well as what ethnic group/mix is "cool" changes. These sorts of things usually take quite awhile for them to become retro or hip if they ever do. Objects and locations on the other hand usually last a good long time. I mean a banana is a banana and probably will be forever so even if it doesn't sell this year it might next year and in the grand scheme of things the cost of storing that banana image has to be next to nothing.

My comment on the istock vs SS

I joined the former over 3 months ago and the later 9 days ago I have made more in 7 days at SS than at 3 months at iS even though SS accepted 360 photos cf to 198 on iS.

I'm having a similar experience. I signed up with IS and SS well over a year ago but made a decision not to upload. Can't remember why I decided not to but a month ago I changed my mind and finally uploaded photos. Results have been interesting to say the least.

After just one month and ten days I've made 25x more sales and 16x more earnings at SS than I have at IS. Approval rate is pretty close between the two, 88% for IS and 86% for SS but uploading is so much more convenient at SS and SS also approves them quite quickly. I've had images approved in as quickly as half an hour at SS with the average being closer to 24-30 hours. IS on the other hand drags its heals on approving taking on average 5 days. Whereas SS seems to do all my uploads at once IS does them one at a time and every so often just seems to skip a photo. I had one take almost two weeks to be approved even though others uploaded at approximately the same time only took three or four days to approve.