Usually I shoot over the weekends and then slowly pp and upload during week days, or if I don't shoot I unload something from pre-stock archive or revisit previous shoots for anything useful, but I'm very not regular due to dayjob and other projects. I'm constantly procrastinating starting a plan to upload a daily self set quota.

I have a tiny portfolio but some of the photos uploaded last month or so quickly became my best sellers, selling daily, so it does work. The only pattern I see is the subject/commercial value, gotta make it a habit not to upload photos that I already know will sell maybe once a month if at all. 

I successfully broke with my grilfriend 

That's a shame, I keep my grill friends close, three of us can eat a tone of barbecue

Simply you embed keywords into photos, in metadata and they are automatically read and populated by agencies when you upload, you do the same thing with titles and descriptions.
Almost every photo editing/organizing software has this functionality.
I personally use a free Xpiks, for both keywording and uploading to different agencies.

Around 150 photos online, March - 13 sales for $7.21

Great app, both for windows and android, easy to use, stable, constant updates, quick user support, really nice for tracking sales and stats, free for now.

BTW iStock/Getty works as of recently, but of course reports the last statement from ESP.

Quote from: derek on April 04, 2017, 04:53

^ I read somewhere the important thing was the first 4-5 pages? given the default search and amount of pictures on the page!

That's one of the advantages of having stuff from small niches - if there are only a handful of shots of a subject then you have a good chance of selling on the few occasions someone searches for it. I don't reckon I'd have much chance of ever selling a "beautiful business woman with her team" if I shot it, whereas my Circassian chicken on a plate sold a couple of times in the past week - even though everybody knows what the first of those is and not a lot of people are familiar with Circassian chicken (though in a curious nod to the influence of beautiful women, the name of the dish is said to be derived from the skin colour of the Circassian beauties in the Turkish Sultan's harem) .

Logic is in place but practice has proved me wrong, my best selling photos are from such broad bussiness categories that one would think are beyong extreme saturation.

Sent from my SM-J510FN using Tapatalk

I'm just wondering how long does it take to click through all the categories for 1000 images in a batch, assuming they were already on some other agencies and keyworded?

In total I can't complain really, earnings are the same as with SS last month. But I did get a couple of 0.22, 0.21 and one 0.00!!! sale, but also I got many over 1.00, even some $4, while on SS they are mostly 0.25.

But I'm new and maybe riding a favoritized wave.

Reverse image search, I guess, using google for instance. Also, Microstockr has this feature included.

Well just like with products, people come to forums only when there are problems.

Quote from: qunamax on March 08, 2017, 09:03

Quote from: Photodune Reject on March 07, 2017, 19:10

The intention of this topic is to educate the newbies so that they don�t get the illusion that they can be the next Yuri or quit their day jobs. I will list a few milestones that I feel ruin this once lucrative business-
1.   The sale of iStock thus allowing Getty into the game
2.   Shutterstock going Public and dropping admission test for new artists
These key milestones have had a huge impact on the business to say the least.  I am Interested in hearing more milestones from you all.

I'm a newbie, what value this information has for me? I joined the game recently and I'm playing by the current rules in the current environment. I think, create, shoot, keyword and upload, try to reach the buyers.
How does thinking about how it was really great for oldtimers help me with my stock?

Maybe it could stop you from knocking yourself out, but if you'd rather shoot, upload, repeat go ahead: but don't say you weren't warned.
We've had all manner of people in here over the years who firmly believed that they wouldn't hit the wall: so long as they kept shooting, kept up the quality and kept up with trends other factors like increasing competition, unpredictable search algorithms and agencies doing the dirty wouldn't affect them. Usually it did, and very hard.

I have no illusions I could live off a stock, and even $500 a month would be enough to quit a day job, I simply don't think stock is reliable, too much luck involved.
Anyone that used to live off stock, should consider it luck that they got in early. Every industry, with some kind of technology/learnable skill involved has this tendency, it's just a matter of time.