May on stock

Another month is coming to an end, so it is the time again to look back at my stock business. It was a very successful month for me, maybe not in the scale and earnings, but certainly in the progress I made. I am selling very systematically on Shutterstock. Since they finally accepted me in middle April, I sold already 12 images. Not much, but I am still to get a sale on iStock or Bigstock. Also, I started submitting to Fotolia just in May, and I have already two sales scored.
As I mentioned before, you got to love Suhtterstock subscription program. But I really have very ambiguous feelings about them. First, I read yesterday here some critical view on the vicious cycle you can get yourself into. And it kind of makes sense. With all the troubles I had with “getting in” and being able to submit beyond trial batch, I expected them to have the hardest criteria out of all stock agencies I submit to. These are iStock, Bigstockphoto, Shutterstock and recently, Fotolia. But it happened to me today for the second time that Shutterstock accepted the whole submitted batch, and I generally get more images in there then for example in iStock. I also used to have far more images being accepted in Bigstockphoto, but recently, they seem to be the pickiest.
A grand summary- I have 66 files with Fotolia, 60 files with Shutterstock , 55 in Bigstockphoto and 29 in iStock, mostly because they are two batches behind.
That’s another thing- the review time. iStock is by far the worst, I am getting feedback in a week, sharp. I submit Friday evening, I will start getting decisions next Friday evening. Fotolia is not a master speed either. But Bigstockphoto and Shutterstock update my portfolio with new images after barely 2 days. Or less. I just got decisions from Shutterstock in images submitted yesterday in the morning.
Being on forced vacation, I am getting ready a batch of 10-15 imags a week. Good, but I thought I might do more. It is not that I am not picking up the camera, but I spend a lot of time photographing flowers for example. I don’t have spots to photograph flowers around my home, and here they are just everywhere. And I don’t submit those to stock at all.