I've been using iMatch by Photools.com for all of my file and asset management since 2002. Today I have over 210,000 files in the database system. I use virtual categories (collections) to identify each step of processing and submission workflow for multiple agencies. The price is right. The initial startup may be a bit steep to get familiar and getting your current work indexed. Indexing includes many file types, documents, video, PDF, not just images. Incredible features are available to help your work flow. Does not have image file editing (I use Photoshop).

For most beginners with DAM (Digital Asset Management) software, I suggest Adobe Lightroom. I have not used it. It may be a bit cumbersome for some work flows but there is a large community of users where you can get help solving problems or addressing concerns. If you are on a Photoshop subscription, Lightroom is probably already included. Check it out.

I was just in the forum. It was accessable via login. However we seem to be missing some discussion categories. Maybe a data restore is still in progress?

I made some decent money on iStock 10-20 years ago with cities, travel, tourism, landmark, location, type photos. This issue of the keywords and Controlled Vocabulary is but just one bullet killing such sales. I'm under the further impression iStock doesn't really want this kind of work in their collection. Over the years there have also been some concerns with logos and trademarked names in skyline shots - another changing bullet in their upload checks. Lifestyle, business, commercial, and such, is now desired by iS. They think location images would be better in some other Getty collections - but I'm not a Getty contributor (other than some past work that iS sent up the chain). So now I submit this kind of work, rights-managed, image exclusive, editorial, to another agency.

Filled in and signed, here. There was discussion on the iStock forums that sounded legit.

Macrium Reflect has a free software version for home use (if you are a small user). I use it to record backups. I cycle 3 external USB 3 drives. Two drives are always stored in a media rated fire vault (although would be better to be stored off site). I have 190, 000 photos in my database and run a full system backup, with verify, about once per week. Start it when I go to bed and it takes 11 to 13 hours. A couple of my drives are 8TB so can store more than one backup copy on those drives. With 3 external drives I have maybe 6 - 9 backups in historical storage. A person can never have too many backups in too many places. Consider a plan that covers the possible events of weather storm, fire, or earthquake, that takes out your working building and neighborhood.

I fill out the poll after the iStockPhoto information is available - approximately the 20th of the month. Because of people like me, the running numbers for the current month are only the most helpful when the month closes and locks in all entries.

iStock has finally discovered a point where low sales prices produce low royalties that discourage the contributors. Now they need to find the point where higher prices damage volume sales (to near zero sales) enough that contributors are again discouraged. Somewhere in the middle is a price where royalty rates times sales volume is the best income for contributors (and likely iStock also). However, even at that point, we still don't know if the contributor income is enough to sustain his business.

Remember this is only for Video in the Exclusive Signature and Signature+ collections. I suspect there are not many of us fitting these categories - hence the incentive to get on board.

The costs of photographing near your home is much less than the cost of transportation, hotel, food, at some far away location. So the photo sales income must be much greater, for your travel shots, to be able to make up for the extended costs. If the weather is lousy during the week of your distant travel, you may have wasted the expenses. At home you can grab the camera and head out an hour before a promising sunset, on most any day of the year. Your limited time destination photos will have to compete with photos produced by a photographer who lives in that location and has quick access to good light around the year. Your photo skills and compositions will be very similar both near and far - traveling likely won't improve that. With the very low incomes from stock photos these days, I think controlling expenses (working near home) is a key to a business plan.

So, raising your photo skill set may be more effective than travel. Approach your location as a tourist and be sure to cover the top iconic scenes, significant buildings, historic landmarks, unique events, and compelling daily scenes. Try to create unique compositions and unique lighting situations. Get single images that tell a whole/main story. Get images that only tell a part of the story (supporting images) of details and fine descriptions (the bridge on the road to the castle can be an example of craftsmanship and hard work in an article about the main castle).

Where do you find your images being used? In my case publications around travel, tourism, and textbooks. Internet searches by your name and/or agency can help the research. Likewise, Google image searches, using your high selling images as a source. Do some serious reviews of your market and what image styles and locations do you see being bought. You have to have some focus of shooting towards your market and those buyers. What do those buyers want in an image for which they pay money? Outstanding colorful images competing in your stock sales site may not be filling the story line needs of your buyers. Yes, it is wise to meet or exceed the technical and composition quality of your selling competition - but don't get hung up there without focusing on your buyer base needs.

A human interest element may be helpful within your images. Having family or friends, as models near home, is easier than hiring models and clothing at a distant location.

Your job is to find your own particular niche. Perhaps it is a location, a type of subject, a photo style or genre, lighting, compositions, models, food, or specific combinations of the aforementioned. You are looking for some combination that sells relatively well and does not have a lot of photographs from which a buyer would choose. The Eiffel Tower likely has more photographs available than there are buyers - even though there are a lot of buyers - who don't want to use the same images as other buyers. A very small town historic monument may not have any image buyers so a couple of photos are more than enough for a library if they can be captured with low expenses. If that small monument happens to gain national news attention, say, gets toppled in a protest, then a rare sales gold mine may just happen in the roll of the dice. In the end analysis, you are regularly trying to supply useful images to buyers where you are one of the limited number of suppliers. Finding your own niche takes building a library, review of your sales, creativity, testing ideas over more sales, owning your own research and processes, and business plan income and expense controls. I can't say that I've mastered the niche. But, I've had a few niches that ran well for a time and then dried up due to agency policy changes and buying market changes.

*** OLD THREAD ALERT ***
From 2011.
May be a valid discussion again today. But likely better to start a new thread.

We can see how far iStock languished when under the control of Getty. Getty didn't understand and continue the Internet community of the site. They didn't well grasp the community influence on the business plan. Getty ran iS just as any of their other collections and in the way they wanted to do the business in an old school way. I'll bet Unsplash will suffer a similar fate - existing, but not at the former level.

In my early days, starting in 2003, iStock was the only agency that would carry clipping paths through the JPEG images. For images sold resized they even resized the clipping paths for a few years. Clipping was an added value for customers who wanted items on a page with close surrounding text and who wanted images to drop into other pictures. Unfortunately, iS subject policy changes has killed my niche of clipped subjects, so in 2020 I don't know the current value of doing the work of clipping. I also don't know if any agencies carry the clipping paths through the JPEG files today. You may just have to try some and watch for a year to see if they have better selling than  your non-clipped images. Submit both so you have a like subject reference point.

5600 current images. Slow to grow my portfolio. 12 month moving average is $0.30 to $0.22 Per Image Per Year. This COVID year appears to be trending down. The many year long term trend is still fair to decent. I'm not making big money but I'm also not ready to bail out of Alamy. This portfolio is all editorial and RM. These are images different than I sell via microstock (commercial and RF).

I went iS exclusive back about 2003. Been exclusive since. 2008 through 2011 I made very good money. From iS I paid about half of 2 kids in private college, all photo gear expenses, and some photo related short vacations. This year I already have 3 months where I've missed the minimum $100 balance to receive a monthly payout. I'm at 30% (well, for now). I can't imagine it being beneficial to a new contributor starting in Exclusive. Albeit the percentages are better than Non-Ex, but you still need to be well into the sales chart to get a useful percentage return. With the number of images now on the site there is very little chance any of your images can become a regular seller - which is very much needed at these low prices. With the percentages changing almost every year, that carrot on the stick is always too far out to attain a new payout percentage level. Changing the levels is how iS and Getty adjust how much money they keep from the sales and how little they give to contributors. It is a hamster wheel with no end and very limited ability for new people to grow in the ranks. Only go exclusive if you have a niche of images already selling very well and you can keep feeding that niche with expected good repeating sales. Even then, the search engine can change and kill your image sales.