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

did you base this on one agency only? considering this data you made is for NON-exclusive photographs.
can i multiply this to the 10 agencies i signed up for?, say 7agencies coz 3 are duchebags

Good day !

I've been reading a lot of blogs about about this microstocks already and most of the articles i read are..
"dont give up" "its not that hard" "get 500 bucks a week" and more blah blah blah.
This is the first forum i've seen and i've been lurking and reading some threads already,
this is the only place where i people take mstocking seriously than the blogs i've read.
i've been thinking about introducing myself.,,,so here it is.

Im a portrait photographer for about 4 years already, an Automotive Mechanic by profession.
 I've been shooting cosplay,back up at weddings, and a few from my travels.
I only HAD a 60d and a few lenses and flash, i rent few more gears when i shoot weddings.

Few weeks ago my 60d died with about 400k actuations. and with a small pay i receive from repairing cars I couldnt afford anymore gadgets. So i decided to sell some of my flash and 70-200 f4 leaving a pair of Yongnuo 560's and a 50mm 1.8 just incase i could afford
a 2nd hand 5d mark1(atleast i could experience a full frame).
While surfing at youtube i saw a vid about making money from stock photos, I was thinking well, i have about 2TBytes of photos well maybe this could do.Hoping this could make me buy a new camera before i run out of photos.

btw, i've already sent some of my photos to about 9 agencies already hoping I could pass atleast 3 agencies.

Newbie Question:
1. how long before you guys made like a $100? so far i have 50 photos re-processed for stock.

2. and do you type all those keywords per image? took me about 2hours to keyword 50images.

3. If i pursue MStocking with this quality of shooting (https://www.flickr.com/photos/cysarsoriano/sets/)
dedicating about 20hours a week. would that be good enough or this Microstock thing is not for the faint of heart?

Thanks For Reading and I'll wait for your comments.
sorry for my bad english.