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 ( newbielink:https://www.flickr.com/photos/cysarsoriano/sets/ [nonactive])
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.

Welcome.

It's not hard to learn to take technically competent photos. It's a lot harder to figure out how to style and shoot images that sell well.

I wouldn't worry about lots of agencies to start - it doesn't matter if you get accepted to the low earners as even really good portfolios don't make much money there. Look at the top and middle tiers (and I'd skip DepositPhotos and Envato, probably Alamy too).

1. It depends on your images and keywords. You could make that in the first couple of weeks or it could take you 6 months.

2. Keywording gets easier as you get the hang of it. Shutterstock has a nice keywording helper.

3. It's not as much about the quality (which obviously has to be there) but the sales appeal. Look at the top agencies and see what comes up (searching by popularity) for some keywords you might be interested in shooting - e.g. restaurants, high tech, climbing, or cosplay (Shutterstock has over 7,000 cosplay images). That's your competition.

Good luck

Welcome.

It's not hard to learn to take technically competent photos. It's a lot harder to figure out how to style and shoot images that sell well.

I wouldn't worry about lots of agencies to start - it doesn't matter if you get accepted to the low earners as even really good portfolios don't make much money there. Look at the top and middle tiers (and I'd skip DepositPhotos and Envato, probably Alamy too).

1. It depends on your images and keywords. You could make that in the first couple of weeks or it could take you 6 months.

2. Keywording gets easier as you get the hang of it. Shutterstock has a nice keywording helper.

3. It's not as much about the quality (which obviously has to be there) but the sales appeal. Look at the top agencies and see what comes up (searching by popularity) for some keywords you might be interested in shooting - e.g. restaurants, high tech, climbing, or cosplay (Shutterstock has over 7,000 cosplay images). That's your competition.

Good luck

Welcome! You are a gifted portrait photographer. That doesn't always translate well to microstock. You probably need to figure out how to put your models into everyday situations.
Keywording is more cut and paste, than typing. Here are a couple of helpful links:

newbielink:http://www.chrisbradshawimages.com [nonactive]

newbielink:http://microstockgroup.com/tools/keyword.php [nonactive]

once i get a new camera, i know what to shoot next thanks for the help.

Welcome. Would you be willing to post links to the blogs that say microstock is easy?  I find it hard to believe anyone believes this anymore. Although I wouldn't exactly categorize keywording as difficult it certainly isn't fun or quick as you have already found out. You can make money. Even good money but not overnight and not easily. If you are going to go down this road you should commit to it for at least a few months or better yet a year or more. Otherwise you are just wasting your time.

one is kinghuman a youtube vlogger it's not $500/week but $7k /week newbielink:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To8AL5A1mC4 [nonactive]