No, for a few reasons.

1.  The analogy you describe is one of commodity.  It probably is apt for a large amount of copycat submissions to ms these days, but I consider my stuff different.  My style hasn't been duplicated, and my subject matter is niche yet in high demand, so I do pretty well on all the sites, big and small.  I wouldn't cut my flow of pics to any of the sites, because even at the commission levels you suggest, I would lose out.

2.  It's never wise to put all your eggs in one -- or even a select few -- baskets. 

There's always downward pressure on prices - whether we're talking about wheat, milk, gasoline, oil, etc.

I'll put it bluntly....the issue is the agencies don't have the balls to raise prices and the suppliers to the agencies (US) don't have the balls to sell their product to higher paying agencies until prices go higher.  If the price leader in the industry put a foot forward and raised prices, and others in the industry raised their prices accordingly, then the market would have no choice but to pay more for images.  The problem is, every other agency keeps saying "You first!" and some agencies are lowering prices rather than providing value to their customers.

That's leaves us pointing the finger at ourselves....I don't understand why people would spend hours on end to upload to low earning agencies who pay next to nothing in commission and wait months on end for payout...and I especially don't understand why people market their images through agencies that play a shell game with relation to what commissions they pay their photographers.

This is no different than wedding photographers - go to Craig's List and you'll find plenty of crappy photographers willing to take $500 for a full day wedding shoot, then you have folks like Zack and Jody Gray that are charging thousands.  The difference is the value they bring to their clients.  Unfortunately, places like Fotolia haven't figured that one out yet.

There are a few of us that are starting to take a stand...what are you going to do to improve YOUR business?

Quote from: Ed on March 24, 2012, 17:41

There are a few of us that are starting to take a stand...what are you going to do to improve YOUR business?

I gave up Fotolia years ago, and went exclusive on IS. It was a big improvement

Believe me, I'm the first one to complain about what they did to us with commissions. But I agree with your statement (even though it was meant as a bit of irony or sarcasm), it is a big improvement.

Now that an exclusive XS photo is 3 credits, only about 1 in 40 or 50 sales earn me < $1 (either cheap credits, or an XS sub sale). When I was independent there were very few agencies that I could say that about (3D Studio being the only one that comes to mind).

It's too bad that all the agencies don't have the guts to raise prices as iStock has; several seem to have followed their footsteps on cutting commissions, though. 

The others haven't followed IS in lowering commissions, IS has followed them. FT and DT were first.
SS hasn't reduced commissions, but it has raised prices without raising commissions to the same extent, which is the same thing, and hasn't given a raise for years.
Why would the others raise prices, when they can pick up easy business by taking on disgruntled IS customers?
If I trusted IS, I would have spent the last years encouraging people to dump the others and go exclusive. Unfortunately, I don't trust them, and at this point it would be difficult for them to  change that.
To go back to what the OP was saying, there are plenty of things you can do other than just accept whatever the bad sites throw at you.  Don't bother waiting for togs to get together, come up with your own ideas and just get on with things.

For me this is a hobby that more than pays for itself so essentially I don't really care about relative payments rates because time spent isn't a factor.  I'm just making an observation that the current model is for downwards prices.  For me, SS return per download is less than half what it is on DT but return per image is 3 times greater.  Do any search on both sites and you will pretty much see the same images returned so what is driving the traffic?  The only difference I see is price and the only way to buck the trend is if each site has exclusive content, with good incentive for for making content exclusive (instead of spreading it right across the Internet) so that what the buyer is looking for is not available at a fraction of the price elsewhere.

Consider it a theoretical argument only, I don't see it actually happening 

Quote from: heywoody on March 25, 2012, 07:17

Do any search on both sites and you will pretty much see the same images returned so what is driving the traffic?

Quote from: Ed on March 24, 2012, 17:41

This is no different than wedding photographers - go to Craig's List and you'll find plenty of crappy photographers willing to take $500 for a full day wedding shoot, then you have folks like Zack and Jody Gray that are charging thousands.  The difference is the value they bring to their clients.  Unfortunately, places like Fotolia haven't figured that one out yet.

...already answered that question 

Not really :-D   I�m not talking about similar material, I�m talking about exactly the same material by exactly the same suppliers.  To use your example, it�s like Zack and Jody Gray (whoever they are) charging thousands or $500 depending on where you buy their services.