But I don't think that you can create illustrations or 3D images with a camera 

As far as I know, you are correct 

I just try to explain that I have XL and XXL pictures in my portfolio and they do sell quite well. But they are not photographies indeed.

BTW, you have some great images!

Thanks 

With all due respect, I think that this point is quite overblown.  Less than 2% of all of my sales are for an XLarge size at IS.  Most (> 85%) of my sales are derived from XSmall -> Medium sales.  A Medium size image at IS is 2 MP!  A large size image at IS is 5 MP!

With all due respect ( ), I also have illustrations and 3D pictures at XXL size and 50% of my sales (in value) at IS are L-XL-XXL licenses while none of my 8Mp photos are available as XL/XXL licenses.

Being able to propose XL downloads for my photos seems quite interesting to me.

And with the recent price increase, I think that this percentage will increase too in the near future.

As soon as you get a few $3-$4 XL or XXL sales, you don't like at all $0.25 sales for XS pictures!

It may depend on the type of picture however.

I've a 350D now and I'm extremely pleased with this body. I skipped the 400D, but I will purchase the 450D: going from 8Mp to 12Mp is indeed interesting for a microstock contributor as the commission is higher for larger photos.

You may consider purchasing the 450D instead of the 400D for that sole reason: 12Mp is enough for a XL license at IS while 10Mp is not: this is a 50% increase in earnings!

Anyway, whatever the body you choose and whatever the lens, going from a compact/bridge to a DSLR will give you an immediate benefit: noise is FAR less present with a DSLR which is a must for a stock protographer.

what is uncompressed file? what extension does it have? jpg? bmp?
I dont see anything about MBs, in Image size dialog:

In any RGB 8bits format (which is always the case when saving pictures for microstock), each pixel require 3 bytes of storage: one byte for each color (R, G, B).

48Mb uncompressed is independant of the final file format (extension): it represents 48Mb of storage = 16M pixels.

So you need a 16M pixels image (Width x Height), that's it. This is the Pixel Dimension displayed in the Image Size dialog: it must be 16M or higher.

When you save this picture in JPEG, the file size will be smaller because JPEG is a compressed format. The exact size will depend on the picture. It's usually between 5 and 10Mb. but it may be more or less. No precise rule here.

Do you are happy of your light tent? What improvement do you notice? More light, easier white background? I'm interested to buy one also...

For your 200$. Do you have softboxes? It can be very useful in case that your light tent is too small for a subject.

I also use a light tent since recently for my isolated shots and it is very useful as it is a lot easier to get a nice and subtle lighting. I just use very basic halogen lights and with the tent I get a regular lighting with soft shadow with no pain.

And another advantage is that with a tent it is a lot easier to take shots of objects with "neutral" reflections.

Alamy is macrostock, not micro: this is another beast and has its own rules.

You cannot expect to be paid 100 times micro commission without a few extra constraints

I'm new to Alamy and never had any sale yet (my portfolio is tiny), but I like this site because I feel it is another approach of stock photography.

I will try to build here a portfolio with photo that do not sell well on micro sites, not because they are not good, but because they are not aimed at microstock business.

Alamy do ask to upscale your photos using a "high quality" software (PS or better Genuine Fractal). Use bicubic algorithm.

But you have to understand that it is 48Mb UNCOMPRESSED = 16M pixels (3 bytes per pixel). The compressed JPEG is then around 5-10Mb.

Don't ask why they ask for upscaled pictures however 

You have to trust a lot the developer of this site to give him your username and password!! 

Basically it is possible to extract any information you can see when browsing on a site and then perform more or less clever statistics and comparisons. With a username/password, you have access to the sales statistics of that user.

I use this technique to extract all my individual sales from all sites I contribute to and put them in a database: photo ID, date, earnings, license type. Imagine what you can then do by putting all these figures together

This is quite an interesting analysis tool, but I'm not sure right now that it will allow me to increase my earnings however.

Vector must be EPS 8,  but there are other constraints which have to be met. Have a look at iStock FAQ which is quite clear.

For example, your vector must not contain any open path, transparency effect or rasterized gradient.

Thanks for answering, Steve.

I've opted out from subscription, but I cannot tell whether or not subscription sales do cannibalize credit sales. I guess you have more information on this point and you probably know whether subscription give you more customers or do they shift from credit purchase to subscription? But I guess you will not share this information here 

My main reason for this decision is to see photo sold for $0.30 commission which I found more and more difficult to accept as credit commission do increase on most sites.

At StockXpert you have quite high commission from the beginning, but now with the recent increases at IS, DT (new level definition) and  FT (new XS size which increase the commission for bigger sizes), I become accustomed to $2+ commission per download.

And it is thus more and more difficult to accept subscription model for me, whether it is as SS, StockXpert or DT or other smaller sites.

When reading forums like this one, it is clear that "serious" photographers do not like subscription model most of the time. There are now some (hopefully) interesting new opportunities with midstock (Featurepics) and macrostock sites (Alamy) or even print & goodies sites (Zazzle) and I guess many are investigating new opportunities. Another option being the IS exclusivity.

It is why I think that subscription model has no future from a contributor point of view. But of course there is also the buyer point of view and you have to take them both into account 

But my feeling is that within a few years, the best contributors (the one who bring you 80% of your earnings I guess) may give up with subscription sites. 

Just my 2 cents.

If you read the numerous posts concerning exclusivity, you will see that almost everybody advise not to become exclusive. This is a huge and risky bet on the future of microstock business.

And consider that Yuri Arcurs, Ron Chapple (iofoto) and many more top earners are not exclusive: there is a good reason for that I think.

The only site where exclusivity may be an option is IS, but only if you expect to quickly reach the level of Lise Gagne or Hidesy

The first value take into account only the most downloaded photos: this is the average total number of downloads for the top 50 photos.

The second value equals the total number of donwloads divided by the portfolio size.

The first value is interesting as it can be used to compare the performance of portfolio having different size taking into account only the best photos. It is IMHO a good indicator of the photographer potential.

I also have no problem with StockXpert reviewers. They do indeed sometimes reject photos because "they're not looking for this kind of image"... but I have no problem with that as I understand that kind of rejection. IS do reject a lot more pictures for that reason.

I think that you will have no problem at StockXpert with your portfolio Chode.