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[leaf]

What are your lifetime microstockgoals.  The milestone that when you reach it, you will be happy just keeping things at that level.

For me, I think if, and when .... no no... WHEN i reach the following milestones i would like to take more travel photography and not worry as much about making 'saleable' images, and perhaps spend more time doing pottery

10,000 images online
$10,000 / month
$100/day avg on shutterstock

Once all of those are met (or more importantly the first two) I will be a happy camper.

[sharply_done]

Hmm, I thought getting a nice sailboat would have been on the list.

[Vonkara]

My goal is to receive 400-500$ to be able to partly pay myself a condominium or a house on the Montreal island and stop throwing money through the windows whit an apartment.

I received around 400$ this month, but I have to wait that this happen more frequently

[leaf]

Hmm, I thought getting a nice sailboat would have been on the list.

well sure, that might happen when i reach the goal, but will be BECAUSE i reached the goal, not a part of the goal itself.

[vphoto]

$1000 a month and solving the tedious part of uploading. I hate that I have to spend 4 hours to upload 10 images to 8 sites.

[epantha]

I would love to eventually make enough money from various stock agencies to be able to work from my home and never have to drive to, or work at, another person's company ever again.

[fotografer]

That one will do me nicely.

$10,000 / month

[CofkoCof]

It would be great to earn enough money to travel/cycle/mountaineer all the time and make new pictures. But I think I should try macro for that. A more realistic goal is to make enough money to pay for a loan for a house (half way there, mostly on vectors though). We'll see how it goes.

[Joyce]

The goal to be satisfied is to have my stock earnings at least cover one major bill, so about $800-1000/month would cover rent (or about $2000/month for mortgage if/when that occurs).

Ideally, I'd like something like leaf's goals, but I like to start at something a bit more realistic to begin with and work from there.

[lisafx]

My goal is sustainable earnings.  Not sure if that is even realistic, though, with increasing market saturation/competition.   As it is now, some months I feel like I have struck gold and then a month or so down the line earnings dip uncomfortably.

Making good money in the short term is nice, but I don't feel like I can count on it to buy a bigger house with, lets say, a 15 year mortgage. 

Who knows, in 3 or 5 years we might be back to relying mainly on my husband's income, and we would need both incomes to get into a really nice house (2500 sq. foot, 4 bedrooms, fairly new, good neighborhood, etc.). 

[Smiling Jack]

To make between $500 and $1000/month.This would pay for the overhead on my aerial photo buss. and allow me to expand it.
Smiling Jack

[zastavkin]

The next (not the last,- dollar is falling) goal is sustainable 15K/month

[windmill]

My lifetime goal is to create a real portfolio with my architectural photos so i can apply/get approved for one of the real big stockagencies.

Like Getty and Corbis.

If i along the way make enough money to pay for the experience, thats OK.

[designalldone]

To make a minimum of $3000 a month, but ideally $4000 

Nowhere close to that yet unfortunately.... I'd like to earn enough from microstock to live off comfortably. Regardless, I still count myself very lucky that I don't have to go out to a full time job every day. It only really sinks in how lucky I am, seeing friends go out to jobs they don't really enjoy, getting up at 6am etc.

My goal is sustainable earnings.  Not sure if that is even realistic, though, with increasing market saturation/competition.   As it is now, some months I feel like I have struck gold and then a month or so down the line earnings dip uncomfortably.

I totally agree. BME last month, yet this month I'm considerably down so far (even though I'm putting in much more time and effort?!). I appreciate it could be because of summer holidays, but these dips aren't reassuring at all. 

[MikLav]

I don't have a life time goal and I doubt I will ever have. I like photographing, so why should I ever stop even if I achieve the goal?

I do have some goals, but they keep changing - raise my portfolio to 1000 pics, then to 5000 pics; get at least 1/4 of my income from photography etc.

One thing I know about myself (and that's a great motivation) is that there is a clear dependency of my sales on my efforts. The more I upload the more my sales grow.

[helix7]

I don't think I have an exact financial goal. Just more along the lines of the sustainable income that others have mentioned. I'd like to get to a point where I can take a couple months off and still earn a nice monthly income, despite earnings taking a dip from lack of new uploads. Like if earnings are 50% of normal during months when I don't upload, that 50% is still a nice sum. I think that's when you know you've arrived, when a bad month is still a really good month, relatively speaking.

The funny thing to me about these goals, though, is that if those who reach big goals are less likely to talk about them publicly. So most of us probably wouldn't even announce it if we reached a big goal like $10k per month or something like that.

[leaf]

you will all of a sudden just hear an awkward silence on the site

Hopefully in the future though we can see more and more people posting high earnings in the monthly earnings poll... in which case more people are meeting their goals.

[aremafoto]

$1000 a month and solving the tedious part of uploading. I hate that I have to spend 4 hours to upload 10 images to 8 sites.

FTP at night before you go to sleep...

[aremafoto]

My goal is sustainable earnings.  Not sure if that is even realistic, though, with increasing market saturation/competition.   As it is now, some months I feel like I have struck gold and then a month or so down the line earnings dip uncomfortably.
 

My goal and my feeling as well...

[Pixart]

Oh boy, do I ever need to raise my expectations   Last season I thought this might be the year that I could make 10,000 at stock, but in order to do that I would have to actually grow my portfolio - something I seem unable to do when my business is growing faster than I expected.    My earnings have stayed more or less flat for about a year.

I think that a bigger goal for me in the immediate future would be to build a dedicated shooting room where the lights are always up and there's NO TOYS to pick up.  But the chances of that happening are about as good as earning 10,000 per month. 

[gbcimages]

My goal is sustainable earnings.  Not sure if that is even realistic, though, with increasing market saturation/competition.   As it is now, some months I feel like I have struck gold and then a month or so down the line earnings dip uncomfortably.
 

My goal and my feeling as well...

Sustainable earnings, that's the key in this business. if you can do that then you can get ahead

[Bateleur]

To be able to keep producing good saleable images for as long as I can.

Even if I was earning enough to live on, pay the mortgage, and to buy a beautiful sailboat on top of all that (and I'm still hoping), I'd still want to keep making photographs.

[Marburg]

For me the goal is the same as Smiling Jack.  $500-$1000 per month in total sales (all stock sites and fine arts prints) would pay the overhead and give me a little profit to expand.

To make between $500 and $1000/month.This would pay for the overhead on my aerial photo buss. and allow me to expand it.
Smiling Jack

[RacePhoto]

For me the goal is the same as Smiling Jack.  $500-$1000 per month in total sales (all stock sites and fine arts prints) would pay the overhead and give me a little profit to expand.

To make between $500 and $1000/month.This would pay for the overhead on my aerial photo buss. and allow me to expand it.
Smiling Jack

$500 a month would pay the rent on a small studio, which would be just dandy for me. Unfortunately I'm already working nine days a week, so time for shooting stock is limited.

Translation, I could quit one of my part time jobs and only work seven days a week.