which is pretty strange for a community driven site

IS ceased to be community driven ( if they ever truly were) when Getty took over.

I'm not criticising your thinking, it's good to explore all options. Times have certainly changed and I'm  exploring all sorts of options, and I'm not knocking your idea, just playing devil's advocate.

Didn't know anyone (other than Aeonf just now) was doing well.

There are a surprising number of people reporting a good month in September. What's also interesting is that almost none of them are vector contributors, who are almost without fail reporting falls in income.

I'm actually cautiously optimistic about the new best match, so far this week I've seen sales improving somewhat.

You can pull them,and quite a few have done so. My twenty or so remain there purely because of my laziness.

I will get an approval from istock today most probably

Nothing like being confident! Good luck with that.

but I don't think it should be free.

You don't think healthcare should be free? Why is that? I'd consider it a basic right, along with education. But of course we're all commies here in Europeland ;-)

To be honest I tend not usually look at where my images have been stolen/copied/illegally used, it's too depressing. It's a bit like owning a store, you accept 10% of your stock is lost to shoplifters, it just goes with the territory. The particular image on Shutterstock is, I consider, a blatant copy of my image. I complained to istock, who told me there was nothing they could and I left it at that at the time. I'm feeling more annoyed now so I am pursuing it on 3 sites where I found the image. I'll see if I can do better than istock.

I've found a Shutterstock artist selling what I consider to be a copy of one of my best selling images and, although I've told IS ( useless), and just contacted support at Shutterstock ( still waiting a response) I'd also like to contact the artist directly. Is there a way to do this, like the iStock sitemail?

I use a D90 and have very few rejections, with the kit lens. The trick I learnt, from advice in the istock forums, was to use Nikon's software to process the RAW files. I sometimes tweak the result in Photoshop, but rarely need to. The software is designed for Nikon's and works very well. I bought mine from Amazon, it was considerably cheaper than upgrading the trial version via Nikon.

Its about who came to us first.

This seems a rather strange policy. You'd keep on an artist who's work is not as good as someone who comes to you later, purely on the grounds of the date they joined, rather than a judgement on quality. If I'm understanding that right, that seems rather an odd way of stocking a library.

Sure! its easy to nitpick problems with all sites, really,  but for realiablillity, efficiency and yes, even revenue,  I know where I put my hat.

It always surprises me that anyone who has their work on a particular site would praise it in such a way. If I'm doing well I like to keep it quiet. You may just be enticing someone away from other sites who may compete directly with you.