Hi JW,
Now for some real facts and numbers.
From a kind of newbie, like yourself.
I've been doing this for a year and I still can't make 100 dollars a month. About 70 dollars a month is the most I can get.

This is what you need to do :
Join the following sites -  Dreamstime, Fotolia, IStock and Shutterstock.
In that precise order.
Start with Dreamstime, leave Shutterstock at the end. It's your best earner but getting accepted can be difficult. Give yourself some time before you knock at their doors.

You need to learn how to correctly analyze and enhance your images.
You need to learn all about noise, colour cast, white balance and chromatic aberrations.
You need Photoshop (or at the very least an image editing software like Adobe Elements or Corel PaintShop) and you need to know how to use it.
You need a solid tripod.
Set your camera to ISO 100 at all times.
Shoot in RAW format for best image editing.

You also need to be creative and original. Forget about flowers, your garden, your dog, trees and nature. Unless they're extraordinary they won't get accepted.

It's not easy but if you love it and keep at it, you can do it!
Welcome to the world of micro and good luck

Click on any of the small icons at the end of my post. They are links to my portfolio.
Around 400 images - about 70 dollars a month (that's if I'm lucky!)
 

Really excellent advice!  If you follow this you should be able to meet your goal. 

FWIW I think it is a bad idea to bother trying to copy Andres', Sean's, Yuri's, or anyone else's concepts.  Putting aside the fact that it is unethical, it is not the road to success in micro for several reasons:  It's highly unlikely you will come close to their level of proficiency with their subject matter.  Not to mention that everyone and their cousin is already copying the top sellers so your images will just be drowned in the flood of similars. 

Look for underserved niche areas - something unique to your life or your area.  What are your hobbies and your job?  Are you an expert on duck hunting, or swimming, or cooking?  Do you work in a factory, or a hospital, or a restaurant?  Do you live in an interesting location?  Shoot the culture where you live.  Shoot things you know and understand intimately.  Shoot things you may have access to that other photographers can't easily copy. You will have the "home team advantage" and your images will have authenticity that will set them ahead of the pack. 

If you want a great way to learn how to lots of different things, join flickr or some other commentary type site, or a local photo club.  The trek from "bought my first dSLR" to being successful will be long and arduous.  Are you sure you wouldn't like to buy a hammer on the road to being a cabinetmaker?

This is the way I feel too.  Microstock is no longer a place to "learn" so you can move on to bigger and better things.  This is serious competition, and finding holes in image libraries is getting harder and harder.  Do you know how hard it is to get noticed in a sea of 10 million images?

I say - learn first, then decide if you want to take the stock route or the portrait route.  If you are new to photography you have no chance to survive in microstock.  It takes too much skill and ingenuity for someone lacking experience.  It's really akin to saying, "I'd really like to learn how to play baseball.  I think I'll join the Angels minor league team."

He's slowly turning into Brother Bear.   

I think these days realistic expectations for a newbie with limited photographic experience is to maybe cover some of the cost of your equipment. Certainly not your time. I make 120 -200 dollars a month as an exclusive on istock with  small portfolio (a bit under 400 images, 1/3 illustrations, 2/3 photos, and I haven't been uploading much for two years). But most of the stuff which makes the bulk of my sales  I uploaded in 2006/2007 and wouldn't be accepted these days. At least with istock images seem to have a relatively long lifespan of sales - despite my laziness/lack of inclination to do the sort of photography or illustration that can be turned out in bulk for microstock, the dollar amounts of my sales still hold up remarkably well. So I'm now starting to see some more sensible returns on the investment of time that I put in three or four years ago.  That is apparently much less true at the subscription sites. And with the mass of images that get uploaded each day now, I suspect that it's much harder to get that sort of longer term return as images just get lost in the search.

 It's hard to generate sales now without investing in props and models and decent lighting. Or have some knowledge of illustration or 3D  and an investment in the appropriate software plus some idea of the  what stock sites will accept and what buyers want.

 

try to browse through all website popular images.. and you may get some ideas what is considered sale-able.

it is quite strange people like to verbally attack a newbie or a new agency.. i don't verbally attack people in real life so i don't do it here. I know in real life buying a camera doesn't mean someone is becoming a better photographer than me, starting a new agency that sell cheap photos doesn't bring down my life.

That sounds about right. And I forgot to add in the time it takes to organize images, pick them, upload, keyword, etc.

That's why it confuses me when I see people say "It's a hobby. I just do it to earn some money for a dinner once a month" or "to buy some camera equipment once or twice a year".

A part time minimum wage job at $8US per hour times 16.5 hours is $132 per week and $528 per month.

  I  have decided to start a blog to chart my progress:

http://mymicrostockjourney.blogspot.com

  , sorry but I don't understand why every newcomers need to share their 25 cents experiences. I... don't get it

, sorry but I don't understand why every newcomers need to share their 25 cents experiences. I... don't get it

Those that can, do; those who can't, waste time writing blogs (about their nothingness) that nobody reads.

GOD! I miss this kind of allergy of new contributors, that's the microstockgroup

Oh, I think we're just ribbing him.  He seems accepting of it and willing to take comments...

sorry guys.. it was a nice welcoming

Shhhhhh... The more time he spends writing blogs, the less time he will have to make images.

For someone who just got a DSLR and is learning the ropes here are some measurable expectations.

So, on average

• About 5% of the images you shot will be sellable
• You spend 30 minutes per image in an image editing program like Photoshop doing post-processing
• You start with about a 20% acceptance rate
• You earn .25 per accepted photo per month

So let's say...

• You spend 16 hours shooting 2000 images
• You select 100
• 100 images x 30 minutes processing each = 50 hours
• Because of poor focus and other issues you find only 80 are usable
• You submit 80
• 16 get accepted (20% acceptance rate)

So�

• You�ve worked 66 hours per month and 16.5 hours per week
• You�ve earned $4 for the month and $1 for the week (.25 per accepted photo per month)
• Based on a 40 hour work week, you�ve earned .02 cents per hour for your efforts

You�ve also spent hundreds or thousands of dollars for cameras, lenses, software, lighting, training, etc.

And countless hours learning stuff in forums, Googling, etc.

This isn�t meant to be negative or pessimistic. It�s meant to set expectations for novices. I�m sure for a lot of people here if you ran the numbers you would probably come up with similar figures. 

I checked back on this to see how it ended up. I was off by $1.

He has 16 images approved and made $5. I said 16 and $4.

http://mymicrostockjourney.blogspot.com

So for the novices wanting to know what they can expect to earn just getting started, there you go.