I too have had no successful uploads with either Istock or Dreamtime in recent times, but I had put it down to the fact I have not bothered loading anything to them since early 2008. Until I read the review.
Ironically, Alamy recently emailed me, a personal email not automated, asking why I had not submitted anything in recent times.
While Alamy is not a microstock site, it is an on line image library. The differences are in their pricing, high end, and their licensing, territory etc.
The reason i say this comparison is the image count on Alamy is way up in the millions as is Istock etc.
I do see a difference in content as well, the microstock sites are, if we are all honest with each other, pretty much limited in content and style. I don't mean this in a derogatory way. It is just that there is a very strict, and limited, format that the micro sites want complied to and surely there is only so many telephone head set wearing girls or people leaping for joy in a field you can have.
Also with the big sites, holding so many million images, the designer will not trawl through the site looking for fresh meat, he would get burned out, and regardless of protocol or fairness or any other such thing, a search delivers the most popular images simply because the sites want a virtual guaranteed sale at a quick speed.
Basically, I am thinking there is nowhere left for the major microstock sites to go. There is no new take on the same image type anymore and even photo editors are starting to drift away from stock sites. Sad but true in my opinion.
Full? Probably yes. Burned out? I think possibly close to it if not already there.
Time to look again at the small independent sites? Yes, if they have a variety of options beyond the micro while still keeping it as an option. In fact, I know one very small independent site with less than 2000 image files that has just signed a senior picture editor from Time.Inc as a client, now that must surely suggest some sort of change is in the wind eh?
I am thinking that micro has photo shopped itself to death now and it has moved on from the fresh innovative idea from the late 1990’s and is, at best, just about to enter a mid-life crisis.
As my dad always says, “nothing is forever”