MicrostockGroup

Just wondering who here is making enough $$ from stock to say that it is their primary income?  I am almost there!!
I apologise if there is already a similar post here.

I guess an income to me would be $500 per week absolute min.
I have been shooting stock for about a year and a half now, my collection is a variety of photographs and 3d images. I first started with shutterstock, I then started submitting to dreamstime and istock, I was fairly happy with the return. After researching a bit I then stopped submitting to RF sites and moved to Alamy submitting new images as RM. After about 9 months there, many images, and not many sales I recently decided to change all those RM images to RF on Alamy and am in the process of submitting them to Shutterstock, Istock, dreamstime, Fotolia and 123rf, I am already seeing MUCH better income.
My advice is to work hard, don't EVER expect to get rich fast! it simply won't happen unless your pumping out 50 high quality images a day. It will start slow. Think of it more like a job where you work long and hard now and get paid well later. I feel it pays similar to a normal job in the amount of hours per dollars ratio, it's just the fact that you don't get paid straight away.
Thanks.

Yeah I would agree that it pays a decent wage as far as $/hour is concerned.. even considering that you have to wait for the income, i think it is well worth it.

I am about 25% microstock supporte, meaning I make about 25% of my monthly income from microstock.  I am happy with that and hopefully I will boost it to over 50% in the coming year.

Thanks for the quick reply.

I ask because turning microstock into a full-time job depends on a bunch of things.  One of the most important (IMO) is where a person resides.  If a person resides in an area where the U.S. dollar is worth a lot, then it would be easier than if you live in an area where the dollar is worth less.

For example, I live in a major city in the U.S.  If I were single, then the amount you quoted ($500/wk) would need to be almost doubled (to $800/wk) in order to just make ends meet.  But I currently support a family of four, a house, and three cars.  So that amount would need to be doubled again (to at least $1600/wk) for it to work for me.  So I don't see it happening for me anytime soon...

$90,000/year... not a bad wage.

I suppose it also depends on ones lifestyle...

I am living in Norway (one of the most expensive countries to live in) and if I earned $800/week I would be doing just fine.  Mind you I don't have kids, although I do have a wife.

ha, exactly... i dream of the same.  Living cheaply in a cheap mediteranian country and easily living of microstock earnings... or maybe living on a sail boat

Slightly off topic ...


How did you do that? There is an 'awful warning' on Alamy (at least, there is when I categorize my images) that the licence type cannot be changed once you have set it.

I'm no where near, but I'm not interested in making it a full time job either. That would mean that I would have to do quite different things than rusty stuff, so I prefer to keep it as a hobby and take the pictures I like.

What's a "fair few"?  I'm seriously considering signing up with Alamy because of the control over images and, of course, the better pay scale.  But, I'd like to know what sells--what I'm in for, I guess.

Thanks.

And I'm Adelaide, from Brazil. 

Regards,
Adelaide