I'm newly independent and asked a few questions yesterday to try to get up to speed. Thank you to everyone who responded the result has been enlightening. Being brand new to most of these sites, but also being fairly successful with my portfolio as an exclusive gives me perhaps a unique perspective on this situation and I see a bit of a silver lining.

Here it is. Despite what you think, THE SITES NEED YOU! This is why.
You say the new contributors are coming in droves -- I say they are being discouraged in droves.
It seems to be very hard to get images accepted. The upload process is complicated and time consuming and when you do get accepted you get $.25 for your effort. Anyone who is new is going to upload 20-50 images and have 50% rejected if they are lucky. At the end of the 1st month they will look at their income and see it is $2.50 for the 15 or more hours they put in and decide not to upload anymore. And then there is the very big assumption that those accepted files are going to even be marketable.

The only contributors really worth anything to the sites are the ones who already have portfolios. The sites are doing everything they can to keep new contributors out of the market. Why would you start now? Unless you already have a job or it is a hobby, it doesn't make any sense. If this is a hobby then you can't contribute the quantity that the sites need to keep the product fresh and odds are your quality/marketability isn't as good as the guys who have been doing it for a while.

If you guys with established portfolios were to pick one agency and give them your 300 best selling images and leave the rest where they are it would have a huge impact on the market. 2000 contributors at 300 images is 600,000 images. Not a lot of images but they are the 600k best images in the market all in one place. Where do you think the buyers are going to go? The place with a lot of images that are mediocre or the one site with all the quality? I realize that this may be unrealistic but think what would happen if a site lost it's 600k best selling images in the same month.

The sites may not realize it right now but down the road its you guys they need.
Like I said I'm new and there is a lot I don't understand but I know this... microstock is not easy, and those of you who have figured it out are a lot more important than you think.

I changed my name when I went non exclusive based on my accountants advice. Here is my page
http://www.dreamstime.com/Crowvb_info
I am not a plant just a new guy trying to understand. You can find me on SS and 123 as well.

As a newly independent contributor (exclusive at DT From Dec 2008 to July 2011) I am new to MSG and all of the other sites. I have been reading almost everything posted in the last month and am trying to learn. But I feel like I need someone to catch me up. I don't quite understand all the chaos with this Istock thing and the current threads are very confusing to someone who doesn't have the history. Maybe someone could answer a few questions to get me up to speed?
I would appreciate it. Please pardon my cluelessness but I bet I'm not the only one.

1) Why would anyone be exclusive with Istock? Are there incentives that are so great that you wouldn't want to maximize your exposure by selling on other sites?

2) Why is the PP program so bad? Once again wouldn't you want to increase your potential customer base?

3) I get a very good RPD from DT but still most of the sales are subs. I have also had good success in the last two weeks with SS which are all subs. How is what Istock is doing with the PP different?

4) There must have been something in the past that made Istock the obvious choice for contributors that isn't there anymore... what was it?

I am not making judgements with these questions I just want to understand.
Thank you for clearing some of this up.

Thank you so much. I sent a message to support but I may have sent it to the wrong place. I will wait a few days and see what happens. I really appreciate you getting back so quickly. So far I have to say my experience with 123 has been very good. Better than average sales in the first ten days and great support. Thanks again!