Thanks for the comments guys,
Its nice to be getting some constructive feedback, its unbelievably helpful.
First off, Forgiss, I agree with everything you said. Its already been proven to us over time that the more established microstock photographers can supply to basis to our collection and can in themselves attract a lot of customers. These photographers upload to a lot of different sites and have a good knowledge of the industry, so we don't want to waste too much of their time with arbitrary rejections or long pending times. I see it as being in our best interests to get those images up as quickly as possible, and to really promote the good ones.
Accepting only 'exceptional images', whilst, to me, is obviously unsustainable for a stock site starting off, it is typical of that we need to be offering a slightly different service to the rest of the industry. Since i've started, we've had relatively high approval rates, which I think we can afford to do while we continue to build our libraries up. Sales are increasing constantly and if we continue this way we might achieve sales comparative to a site like Dreamstime. To do better than this, though, somewhere along the line, we'll have to do something differently. We've got a few ideas though nothing set in concrete yet. Other sites just seem to make it more and more difficult to achieve approvals and to get exposure on queue results, I'm not convinced this is a real solution. Certainly not a good one for photographers.
Best Regards,
Josh