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

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.

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.

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.

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.). 

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

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. 

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.

$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...

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. 

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.

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.

Quote from: Smiling Jack on July 10, 2008, 18:35

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. 

i won't be unrealistic to expect an earning similar to what i made in my prime in business before the crash in the 90's. but since my expenses and expectations are lower, i would be glad to have it pay my housing while i use my own savings to travelling once again, like i used to be able to do .
i think lisa calls it best : "sustainable earnings".

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.

My portfolio is above 1000 pics (in least on key sites); and I once again proved my own statement about efforts - I was able to produce more pictures per months in the last 3 months; and February was my BME, and now March beaten it!

So my next  (current) goal it to keep the growth. And I still don't have a long term goals

I'm doing $150 per month right now
My goal is to multiply that by ten to $1500 per month.
If I get there, then I can entertain thoughts of lifetime goals!
One step at a time.

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. 

Maybe a good goal would be to earn enough to pay for a maid? I sure wouldn't mind someone cleaning around me so I could get more time to work with my pics.

I'm much more modest than those of you that do this for a living. My goal for this year is to get 100 pics online and earn enough to reach payout on DT. Then the next goal will be 500$ and 500 pics, hopefully within 2010. After that only the sky is the limit. I certainly can see myself doing some kind of photography/art when I retire in 30-40 years. I love my daytime job too, so I have no plans to spend all my time with photography.

To be full-time on photography.

Would be nice. And then the next goal would be:

To be part time on photography....


... but earn full-time money 

To earn as much as an entry-level position would pay in my previous profession.  It's taken me 3 1/2 years, and I'm almost there!