I've been talking in some other posts about new contributors earnings and how very few people probably even make what's considered minimum wage where this law exists. I posted this back in 2010 about expectations for newer contributors and I think it still applies. The people who responded said it was pretty accurate. That was when the average return per image per month (ARPIPM?) was around .25 cents US. I'd say it's closer to .10 cents now.

I think the one thing that may have changed is acceptance rates. Standards we're a lot tougher back then. Now I think the average rejection rate may be lower. Even so, it would change the per hour rate only by cents.

If you do well, build up a few thousand sellable images, and get to 100% approval, over time the recurring revenue will start to boost the hourly rate.

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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, keywording, etc
    You start with about a 20% acceptance rate, 80% rejected
    You earn .25 .10 cents US per accepted photo per month

So let's say...

    You spend two days, about 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 images
    16 images get accepted (20% acceptance rate)

So for your 16 approved images�

    You�ve worked 66 hours that month and 16.5 hours per week
    You�ve earned $4 $1.60 for the month and $1 .40 cents for the week (.25 .10 cents per accepted photo per month)
    Based on a 40 hour work week, you�ve earned .02 .10 cents US per hour for your efforts

ETA: Corrected a calculation