hi,

I guess it depends on the cost of living on your country. If you live in east europe, some parts of asia, south america or africa it will be more easy to make a living of microstock.
I live in germany and the costs of living are very high in my country. so it will be more difficult to earn enough money. If you are outside the USA it also depends on the exchange rate betwen the USD and your currency. so I  am happy about the current devaluation of the EUR during the past weeks 

Hard to say. Everybody is different. I've seen some people say it took a year while others have taken 5 years.  I think only a small percentage of people are making a living at this though.

It really depends on how much you need to make to resign, how well your images perform, and how many you can get approved in a given timeframe.

To gauge performance, most people earn .25 to $5 (US) per image per month (PIPM). .50 to $1 seems to be the most common amount. So let's say you're at this for a few months and with 100 images across a dozen sites you're earning $100 per month. That's $1 PIPM. Assuming your PIPM rate stays the same over time, if you needed $5,000 per month to resign you would need 5,000 images. If your PIPM rate was .50 you'd need 10,000 images, etc.

So once you know how many images you need to resign and how many can you get approved per month you should know how long it will take for you. If you submit 40 images per month, 20 get approved, and you need 5,000, it would take about 20 years.

Right now you look like you're in the .10-.15 PIPM rate range but if you just started this in the past couple of months it may take a few months for the PIPM rate to stablize.

hey PixelsAway,

do you mean the costs per image?  I think you are right.
cost depends on the one hand on the price of the eqipment. In the US for example cost for camera and equipment is about 30 % lower then here in europe. (based on what I have seen on ebay)
on the other hand you will have cost for models and travel and so on, but it realy depends on what you are shooting.

gunnar

Hi Guys,

I'm fairly new to Micro-stock, although not to Photography. I'm hoping to make the move to full-time. I'm currently in a job I don't enjoy and the thought of making a living with Photography, my real passion in life, is very attractive.

Currently I have 100 images with SS and about 50 in other libraries. Thats getting me an average of 4 sales or $1 a day on SS and not much on the others. Realistically, how long and how many images does it take to start thinking about resigning from my job and going full time? I'm just after a rough timescale here.

Hi,
i�m always friendly, so please forgive me my harsh words, but are you kidding!?
I.e. You�re at IS since 2002 and your portfolio has only 33 images.
You should upload a lot more images on all agencies, wait which ones accepted and wait which ones sales. Than you look at your earnings, deduct your whole equipment and look what�s in your bag at the end of the month. After that you can dream on from a full time job

Ooops, correction RH, Apologies, I didn't realise I'd signed up on IS all that time ago! The difference is, I'm absolutely serious now. It's taken me a while to find my path as it were :-)

Hi Steve,

jokes aside. It depends how stocky your images are. Maybe it comes very soon. I�m photographing nearly 30 years and i�m not a real stock-photographer. So my income is okay, but i can�t live without my full time job.
So i wish you a lot of DLs and regards
Ralf

BTW: If you got it, you can spend me a beer

Hey Ralf, I'd be happy to buy you a beer

May thanks to you all. I think I have enough info to go on with. I am looking in the long-term and intend to keep my submissions going. Right now, I'm getting together a shoot (in spare time at work!).

Thanks again

A typical warning for a stock market:

"Keep in mind when looking at a stock or industry's record that historic returns are not necessarily a predictor of future performance."

It may also be applied to a changing photography stock industry.

Hard to say. Everybody is different. I've seen some people say it took a year while others have taken 5 years.  I think only a small percentage of people are making a living at this though.

....

To gauge performance, most people earn .25 to $5 (US) per image per month (PIPM). .50 to $1 seems to be the most common amount. So let's say you're at this for a few months and with 100 images across a dozen sites you're earning $100 per month. That's $1 PIPM. Assuming your PIPM rate stays the same over time, if you needed $5,000 per month to resign you would need 5,000 images. If your PIPM rate was .50 you'd need 10,000 images, etc.

....

much depends on the type of stock you're shooting - if you're not shooting models and business stock, the PIPM is going to be a LOT lower.  for me, the only site that reaches $.10 PIPM is SS, the others are barely on the radar.

otoh, PIPM isnt as valid a marker for sites that have very liberal acceptance policies -- you'll end up with a much lower ratio. 

so it all comes back to what you need to live on and whether you can maintain a high submission rate.  for me, the biggest impediement right now is finding time to edit past work; shooting new stuff hasnt been a problem.

steve