So the commission from the image packs will be a flat rate of 20%.

Awful.

Too bad I already deleted my portfolio at Fotolia a week ago. This would have made for a more dramatic exit. I'm behind you guys 100%.

Well since someone bumped this topic, I suppose I'll update you on what I'm doing. It's a sad story really.

I decided to go exclusive and started deleting and disabling my images from the other agencies I submitted to. All is well until I get to Dreamstime. I was aware of the 6 month hold before hand but didn't think a whole lot of it since I hardly uploaded anything in the past year so surely I wouldn't have a problem. (hahahahaha)

So I have disabled 99% of my portfolio off Dreamstime, down to 7 images remaining and then bam, can't disable anymore. After looking at their 6 month policy more closely (I foolishly didn't do so before hand) I realized you could only disable 30% of the files you uploaded in the past 6 months. Turns out, I uploaded 9 images in the past month. I could only disable 2, leaving me with 7. The 2 I had already disabled were not the most recent uploaded files so I went ahead and enabled 1 of them so I could disable my most recent ones. HUGE mistake. The 6 months start over again when you enable a disabled file.

OK I thought, surely Dreamstime will understand my situation and disable them for me, after all it is only 7 files. (well 8 now  ) As you can probably tell by now, the answer was a big fat no. I even specifically contacted Achilles and offered compensation with no luck.

Needless to say I was pretty pissed off at this point. I had already deleted my portfolio from Fotolia and Stockxpert so there was no going back. A day later I decided that it would be worth it if I just bought the "sell the rights" extended license for my 8 files. The lowest you can set the price for that is $250. So I would essentially be giving Dreamstime $1000 to remove 8 files. (50% commission back to me)

I tried to buy one. It went through fine, the image was disabled right away. 12 hours later I get this:

We noticed that you purchased one of your images with sell the rights
license. Regardless of the reasons for this purchase, we strictly
forbid contributors to buy their own images, especially with the sell
the rights license.
We have refunded you the transaction and cancelled the purchase. Feel
free to contact us should you need further details.

So now I'm just out of luck. I went ahead and filled out the paperwork with Istockphoto to secure my next canister rank for when I can go exclusive. Also re-enabled my portfolio on Shutterstock and the other sites that I could. I'm not going to bother re-uploading to any sites so I'm going to take a bit of a hit financially.

The way Dreamstime handled my departure is completely different than every other agency. I understand that they are just following the ToS that I agreed to, but that didn't stop other agencies from letting me go. Hell some of them even OFFERED to pay out the remaining balance on my account despite it being below the minimum payout.

I had initially thought this 6 month policy was in place to cover the cost of reviewing and hosting the images. Now I think it is to make it more difficult to go exclusive to another agency. Why else wouldn't they accept $1000 to let me go? If they want to combat Istock exclusivity perhaps they should make their exclusivity program more appealing.

In the end it seems I'm just going to have to wait the 6 months. If exclusivity to Istock ends up not working out for me, Dreamstime is one agency that I will absolutely NOT be going back to.

So let my experience be a lesson for you all:
1. Don't be an idiot like me.
2. Don't expect Dreamstime to be accommodating to your situation.
3. If you have any thoughts of going exclusive to Istock, stop uploading to Dreamstime ASAP.

If there is any silver lining to this story, it is that I am more motivated to upload new content to offset my loss of income.

They will probably sell a ton of them, but for me personally, I'd take a laptop with a keyboard any day over a tablet.

Sales are up. Might end with a BME.

Well, right now I am leaning towards going exclusive. But I am a big chicken and don't want to commit to it. I'll just keep thinking about it for the next few days I suppose.

Well, with the new canister levels taking effect in just over a month now I need to either commit to being exclusive or commit to being independent. So here is my situation and I hope you will share your opinion on what I should do.

First off, I'm just a small fry doing this as a hobby. I started in 2007 and haven't really uploaded much in the past year. I do still keep up to date with whats going on and will certainly upload more in the future. I don't make a whole lot off microstock but as a college student the extra couple hundred dollars a month do make a difference. (no student loans!)

I am just a bronze canister on IS with ~800 downloads and am unlikely to obtain silver for at least another year. (assuming I do go exclusive and am grandfathered into the current levels) Over the past year the percentage of my earnings coming from IS has consistently increased and is currently at around 40%.

What I am trying to decide is just how much my earnings will increase if I do go exclusive. If it doubles then that would be a 20% loss over being independent. I know it is impossible to estimate just how much the increase will be but perhaps some of you who recently have gone exclusive can shed some light on this. Some of the recent changes IS have made have likely widened this gap (vetta, 2010 pricing) and I will take that into account.

My biggest problem with IS is their hatred for raster illustrations. Getting them accepted is incredibly difficult. And because of that, I only have 64 images online at IS compared to 300+ at most others. (Admittedly 50-100 of those 300 are crap that I made in 2007 when pretty much anything would sell at SS) You might ask why I even bother uploading raster illustrations and the answer is -- the ones that do get accepted sell great. Yea yea I know the reason they sell great is likely because they are picky so there is less competition. Even so it is still frustrating getting constant rejections and having to send scout requests.

I do submit photos as well though, and I don't have a problem getting them accepted. I would submit more photos but as a college student I don't have the money to travel and I'm not too fond of studio work. OK I'm lazy too but that should be a given. 

So that is pretty much where I stand. I love IS for the professionalism and earnings potential. I hate IS for their raster illustration policy.

Fortunately because I have uploaded so little in the past year, I shouldn't have a problem deleting/disabling my portfolio from DT and BigStock in time. (I already missed the deadline for requesting an extension to the February 24th cutoff)

So what do you think?

I mainly use Opera and love it. Firefox is backup.

I would try Shutterstock. You will need a bit of coaching first before you submit your initial 10, so be sure to post asking for advice. Really the nice thing about Shutterstock is the instant gratification. As a noobie, you will get downloads almost immediately after your files are accepted. On Dreamstime it's much more likely that you won't get any downloads for the first month. And that could discourage you from doing anything more with Microstock.

I haven't uploaded anything new there but I still make more from them than I do Bigstock, Veer, Featurepics, and 123RF. I got a payout a few weeks ago, it took like a month but it did eventually come through.