Doomed to failure, or doomed to attract only the stuff rejected elsewhere.  Sorry.

Very true. There is such a thing as "too cheap".

Who knows what goes on in their minds sometimes? Just over the past few days. I had 4 3D renders of cocktails I submistted. In my mind, what was the best one , which is 2 martinis with olives against city lights with awesome reflections, a 3 hour render in radiosity, was rejected for type of photograph.  I already have an order from a local bar for this piece to do wall art with it. The other 3 "similars" (one is one martini, similar lighting, and the other 2 are champagne in a different but similarly lit scene) all went through no problem.

Otherwise, my acceptance there overall has been good. The 2 martini one though, which everyone pretty much gasps at trying to figure out if it's a real photo or digital art, perplexed me. Go figure. Will probably do a re-sub in the future. 

Good luck Unce Gene. Onward and upward.

I just started uploading a few to FOT a few days ago. There is one I just uploaded on Thurs, already approved, has one view, and already one sale! Has to be a new record for me.

It is am image of a splash on a pool of chocolate.

Just a note of encouragement for everyone out there. It does happen.

All of the agencies are tightening up. I noticed the change at IS just about in tandem with when Getty got involved. The rest are beginning to follow suit in drips and drabs.

As a former image buyer for clients, a lot from microstocks, the window dressing is of little value. The last thing I want to do is load yet another plugin. Just give me the stuff upfront, and a search utility that finds stuff quickly and easily.

Serious image buyers and designers, especially under a time crunch, really don't have time to play, or ooh and aah over a fancy slide show.

Not trying to rain on your parade or slam the concept, just my opinion from experience. Hopefully you will retain "standard viewing options" without having to DL a plugin.

My initial app submitted 3/8 accepted today. Now it's time to try and get around their upload process. Seems a bit wonky, but will get through it I am sure.

No problem to the regular account for me, but it seems since their server moves a few weeks ago I can't FTP. I only upload small batched so FTP not a huge issue for me. But I have heard others can't log in, or worse yet, get bounced to another account page. There are some notes on the site (look in the left sidebar) about using the flush dns command. Also check their forum.

UncleGene you've got a point there 

"I see the same policy on several sites, does it mean that soon nobody will be able to get flower picture that is not couple years old?..."

A better policy would be, or at least that I would adhere to if I were an editor, is that a great shot is a great shot, period. 

The reality of things though is that the flowers are readily available to most, and a very high percentage will be submitted especially by those starting out. To be competitive in the microstock model, the agency needs to offer a variety of goods with a good portion of that subject matter being beyond the bounds and/or capablities of the "company guy who has a camera". The flower shots need to be technically perfect, and should also have that "little bit extra" that makes it unique. Not bashing flower shooters, because I love to do it myself, but I only send in the very best, and even some of those are bounced, so I delegate them for greeting cards etc which I offer to some local stores and some other uses.

One of my orchid shots bounced by shutterstock last year just took a $500 prize in a competition over last summer. Oh well, I guess their policies aren't perfect! 

I have checked via my login as well. Does not show any progress, but thx for the info.

I can't guarantee this list will be of specific help, but here it is anyway, since every is always asking for lists.

http://aphotoeditor.com/2008/02/27/stock-photo-agencies/

I don't know of any micro that specializes in nature. In the MS game, nature is not their bread and butter, it is the smiling girl with the telephone headset, the blank house for sale sign, etc. Nature is a tough gig. It is easily accessible for shooters, and the market is flooded. So unless the work is unique, it is a tough sell in micros.

But perhaps this list can get you exploring other options, such as selling choice photos as RM if you find the right place and not even offering them to the micros. Do note, that some of the links are for photographers housing their own inventories. So if anyone here is thinking in that direction, there are some good examples. From these photog sites, they'll usually have their best up front, so you can get a good idea of what is selling in the market.

About the list author - he lists the mcros as "crap" - take it with a grain of salt. It's his opinion is all.

Also do some deeper searches on Goog. I shoot food mainly, and I recently came up with a smaller specialist food agency that I have marked for my own future reference.

On the link the OP supplied, there is at this writing a photo of a solitaire cut diamond with IS watermark. So apparently it is still going on.

Aren't updates to the ACR supported cameras available well after the fact?  For example, I got CS2 about 6 months ago, though my 350D was supported by it from the get go, several cameras were not, though the update done while registering brought the product up to date with all the RAW formats on the market.
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Not really. The newest cams like Nikon D3 and D300 are only supported in the ACR 4.x versions, which can only be handled by CS3. To me this is stupidity and personally I'm through with the upgrade mania. Keeping CS2, and have switched to Bibble for Raw processing. As I sometimes do retouch for other photogs, it is important for me to keep current with raw processors.

Another cost effective option for those starting out is to just get PS Elements. Current versions will support the new cams, and Elements has grown up a lot as far as features. Although I would just personally like to do what I want to do straight away instead of having to be asked stupid questions by dummied up software.

Lightroom another good option for RAW currency, although have not used it since the inital release.

As fas as having to upgrade to CS3 for features, there is little if anything new that I want or need.