I think shutterstock is going to overtake istock in total images very soon   It will be exciting to see how long it takes, or how much effort istock puts into being the king of the castle.

So anyhow ,I thought i would start this thread to keep track of the progess.  As of today Istock is in the lead

Istock: 694,548
Shutterstock: 650,696
differance: 43,852

A few weeks ago, I created a spreadsheet to compare some of the microstocks.  At that time, the #s were as follows:

iStockphoto: 656,000
Shutterstock: 600,000
Difference: 56,000

Please note that I rounded the #s for simplicity, but it shows that Shutterstock is definitely adding more images.  Could it be because iStock is more finicky now?

Ya, Istock as over 27000 in the queue as well..

Any way we can tell the size of the queue at SS?

no you can't tell the size of the cue at shutterstock, but it is virtually nothing. If you submit pictures they are reviewed by the next day, if not sooner (like within the hour)

I think the reason is twofold
Shutterstock takes more images
Shutterstock is working harder at reviewing images .. oh and perhaps one more thing.. shutterstock doesn't have a max upload limit.

They also accept editorial stock, which can help boost their #s.

My guess is, that Fotolia too will sooner or later have more images than Istockphoto. They really gained ground the last 3 months.

Quote from: leaf on March 23, 2006, 14:11
no you can't tell the size of the cue at shutterstock, but it is virtually nothing. If you submit pictures they are reviewed by the next day, if not sooner (like within the hour)

I think the reason is twofold
Shutterstock takes more images
Shutterstock is working harder at reviewing images .. oh and perhaps one more thing.. shutterstock doesn't have a max upload limit.

Another options -- they're less picky 

yeah that is what i meant by 'takes more images' ... at least we agree

We do, sad to say.  It's still at the top of my list so I'm not complaining. 

sad to say? are you looking for a roudy discussion...i could try to be more dissagreable.

Quote from: leaf on March 24, 2006, 07:06
sad to say? are you looking for a roudy discussion...i could try to be more dissagreable.

  The "sad to say" is more about the "what" than the fact that we agree. 

I have hear you can be quite disagreeable when you put your mind to it 

Well in the last few moments of British Summer Time 0.40 BST 26-03-06

Lets make it a three horse race

ISP 698,077 with 26,419 waiting
SS 653,025 with ?? waiting
F   486,637 with 11,468 waiting

So 45,000 between the first two. I seem to remember Fotolia broke the 400,000 mark at the beginning of the month (They had 100,000 in November) though their 20c bounty for photos has been revoked so I guess their growth will slow down a bit now.

wow, i didn't realize that fotolia was up so high.

yeah that .20c bounty sure made people upload i think.  They also had a .40c bounty in january (for uploading over 400 images.. and other amounts for less than that)... that was a good deal.

allright new update


Shutterstock: 662,127
Istock: 705619

differance 43,492

not much change, but shutterstock has caught up by 400 images

And Fotolia 496000

Shutterstock -  694,660
Istock -  734,947

Differance 40,287

And Fotilla 552,000
Bigstock 317,000
Canstock 182,000

Couldnt find Dreamtime

Dreamstime - 336,366

It seems as Fotolia is grwoing the fastest, On March 28th approximately 210 000 difference, on April 13th 182 000 difference. That means they come 28 000 Images closer in half a month, 56 000 in a month. That is about 1860 a day. That means in approximately 98 days they have about the same amount of Images.

Lets do the same calculation for SS vs IS. SS comes closer with approximately 210 images a day. That means SS needs about 192 days..

Another week, another tally.

Shutterstock: 715,940
Istock: 754,578

Differance: 38,638

will be interesting to see who breaks 1,000,000 first.

But what I'm more interested in is their sales 

Does anyone know what the sales figures - or total amount of downloads are for the respective agencies?

::are

I agree as a small site with a higher sales ratio would be a better bet to submit to.  However, this is probably "commercially sensitive information" and very unlikely it will be published.

I don't think the sites themselves are going to give that out :S

however you can see sales percentages in this thread for individual users.  There will probably be another thread like that at the end of this month.

http://microstockgroup.com/forum/index.php?topic=94.0

Just collected these numbers for something else

Thursday 27th April

iStock            758,109
Shutterstock  720,384
Fotolia           603,231
Dreamtime     350,000+
Big Stock       332,000
Can Stock      191,512

I have been keywording images and need a break... so i thought i would update this again

Istock: 772,840
Shutterstock: 735,155

Differeance: 37, 685