From my short stint in the Micro world I can see that the business is far from settled. The first to succumb to the competitiveness is LO.  Judging from reported earnings here and on other forums, others must be struggling as well. Although Micro is a growth industry it seems that just putting up a site doesn't guarantee success. Like the business of Macro RF, there is so little to distinguish the various sellers. Everyone seems to try and get images up on the biggest sites and a few small ones. IS has an exclusivity option that some photographers use, giving them an substantial edge over the others. No one in their right mind would submit exclusively to a smaller Micro. The one Micro I don't understand is Snap Village; not because they picked the absolute stupidest name you could think of, but because I have to believe that they actually had money to set up a proper a site. Something that they have failed to do in a big way. If Bill Gates can't afford to set up a decent site, who can? Yet they flounder around like an ftp upload is analogous to a trip to Pluto. Come on Snap Village, quit looking like a bunch of inept amateurs and do something real or just drop it. I can't believe Corbis can't make themselves a force in the Micro market. As for iStock, they have a bizarre policy that precludes any old time shooters from going exclusive. I can't imagine why, if IS could, wouldn't sign on big name shooters exclusively. Asking to drop all previous RF images from market is both committing financial suicide and impossible. Many RF contracts that involve CDs and multiple resellers can be as long as 20 years. So even if someone wanted to go exclusive they can't drop the images from market. Of course why anyone would do that is beyond me. It just strikes me as odd that a business would adopt a policy that disallows some of best and largest producers in the industry from submitting only to them.

Sorry for the inane question but how long does it take for an image to go from the approval stage i.e. receive email from iStock; to seeing the image on your portfolio?

I was decided not to search out exclusivity and now I am not so sure. I have worked as an exclusive photographer in the past days when there were only "regular" agencies and those arrangements were good ones. One quick question. Is Dreamstime the only agency that holds things up by taking 6-12 months to pull images off their site?

Hello all, I just started out with the Micro end of the business. And as I am limited, for the time being, to 15 images/168 hours to IS, does one just look at which shots are doing best at other sites and submit the those or are there other considerations?

First there was stock photography and lots of photographers hated it and predicted the demise of photography.
Then there was Royalty Free and lots of photographers hated it and predicted the demise of photography.
Now there is Micro and lots of photographers hate it and predict the demise of photography.

What will likely happen with Micro, as happened in the first two instances above, is that the low value producers will be forced out of the market. As the high end stock producers enter the Micro market the amateur will be brushed aside. It happened with regular stock, it happened with RF and it will happen with Micro. Why fiddle with someone with a 8 MP camera submitting a few images per week or month?