I'm curious how much time people spend each week on microstock. This would include shooting, editing, posting and keywording. I've posted a few shots so far and it seems very time consuming with little or no return for the time I've invested. It seems to me that you would be better off working for minimum wage than posting photos to microstock. I've been spending 5-10 hours a week for the last two weeks to post about a dozen images to several sites with no sales yet.

It seems to me that even the most successful microstock people are not even going to come close to $7.50 an hour. I would guess more like $0.50 to $1.00 an hour.

Maybe it's too early to expect sales from a dozen shots but it would take hundreds of hours to generate the 500-1000 shots that many photographers have in their portfolios. It would be fine if I were shooting things that I enjoy shooting but I'm not. My birds, wildlife and nature shots aren't very marketable in microstock from what I've read in the forums here.

From my experience so far I don't think microstock is a good fit for me. I guess I have to be a bit more patient and wait and see. This is also a very slow period for sales so my timing is not ideal to start posting.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Greg