My total has suddenly shot up by over 20$ so it was more than one days worth missing.

Same here.

Every month so far since January my microstock earnings have been twice what I earn at my regular fulltime job with not even one 10th of the effort put into it.  Because of personal circumstances I spent 2 months this summer without even taking or uploading a photo and other than a bit of a drop at SS my earnings have improved. If that is my case then I'm sure that there are many others with the same results and no I don't live in a 3rd world country where the wages are low.
I agree that it is my hobby but an extremely profitable one.

Wilddingo

Dude, if you want to be successful in business, you need to understand what's a business.

You form a business to earn a profit.

In business, there are standard ways to calculate revenue, costs and profit/loss.  It's quite simple.  It is of little relevance if you personally think your labor should be included in your costs or not.  In the business world, the rules are already made for you, you don't make 'em up as you go along.

Since you've chosen not to track your labor it only means that, as a business owner, you have absolutely no idea how your business is performing.  That's all.  Don't think that you're automagically sitting on a goldmine just because you decided to cook the books by doing improper accounting.

The fact that one can cruise the microstock forums and hear tales of people "making money" and "breaking even" only serves to perpetuate the myth that microstock is a legitimate business model, with legitimate business objectives, which it isn't.

It shouldn't even be called a "business model".  Any activity where 99% of participants do not make a profit shouldn't even have the word "business" in it.

What you have is a hobby:

n. pl. hob�bies
   An activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.

So, I can't even take your question regarding micros, macro or Alamy all that seriously.  Business is not about micro or macro.  It's about profit.  You're treating stock photography like a hobby.

If you've got $500 to burn, stamp collecting might be a better option for you.

I agree with you ,
although the policy of rejecting an image for having a model release for part of a body is annoying as you sometime don't know where they draw the line.

Rather a silly statement isn't it? 'Hate' is a very strong word. Why would they have locked your keywords anyway? It usually only happens when someone is trying to screw them around when they suddenly decide they no longer like the lock-in period.

Personally I think they're an excellent agency who treat their contributors with respect and have always paid the highest % of commission compared to any other significant microstock agency.

I think that they are the worst of the rejected photos.

I have also seen buyers many time on various forums say that they often blacklist people that abuse spamming and refuse to buy their images.

I think that  exactly the opposite is happening there.  It used to be a subsciption only site but now it has become a mixture of subs and  credit sales with for me increasing amounts of credit sales.

SS is becoming a subscription-only site and they need to realize that their one-size-fits-all pricing is leaving money on the table. 

I doubt IS would have accepted them if they were out of focus.

Why don't you post a few so we can see and agree with you?

My RPI at DT is considerably up on any month since March which means that I am selling a lot less subs.  Probably won't be a BME but should be pretty close which is  good for August.  SS has plumetted for me but I haven't uploaded for a couple of months.

Thanks for that Leaf, that is really interesting stats. 

Yes I realize that but as about 15% of my earnings were from US sales  I expected to pay 30% tax on that as I haven't filled in the form yet or in other words have about 5% deducted from my earnings  or am I missing something.

Quote from: fotografer on August 21, 2009, 01:33

I was amazed to find that less than 1% of my earnings were deducted.  Not sure why as about 15% of my sales were from USA and I haven't got around to filling in the form yet. I thought that even if we were in a treaty country 30% was withheld until unless we had done the paperwork.

The WHT is only on the direct Sales to US Customers, the rest of the world does not count  

You look like a perfect stock model, I'm sure that somebody is going to find you very useful.