Well, I am back. I’m sorry but I had to disappear for a while for personal reasons. I spent a lot of time job hunting for a day job and at one point thought I had obtained work in another city. My wife and I even packed most of our things to move. Then the job fell through so we were back at square one. There has also been an issue here affecting our entire condo complex which has been costing me an absurd amount of time. Regardless, I am back and hopefully won’t be going anywhere again anytime soon.

I am going to do a recap of the last two months for each category. I did spend the first half of October writing. I spent a lot of time writing for a blog I started on Today.com but as you will notice I have not added Today.com to my word count or earnings charts. You will find out why later this month when I do my write-up and add them to the list of writing markets.

Here are the word counts for October and November:

October

November

Since productivity was down, so are my earnings. My earnings from Triond and Bukisa saw no decline but I make so little from either company it made little difference to my bottom line. I had another photo featured on Red Gage in October which I am very happy with. I made an extra $5.05 bonus and being featured brought a lot more views, allowing me to make more money from them. October was also the first month I saw any profit from Bright Hub’s revenue share program. I admit I was a little disappointed in October when I got my pay stub from Bright Hub. The amount made from the Bright Hub revenue share program changes from month to month depending on how well Bright Hub is doing. October’s revenue share was rather low but November’s was much more uplifting. Even though I didn’t write any blog posts in November, I did write two Bright Hub articles. I wrote for Bright Hub only because one of my channels desperately needed articles so I tried to help out as much as I could.

Here are my earnings for the months of October and November:

October

November

When it comes to photography, October and November are the start of the good season for me. On a sad note though, one of my favourite microstock agencies has closed. Image Catalog is no more. Even worse, they didn’t payout any of the money they owed to contributors when they closed. I had accumulated $20.00. Granted 20 bucks is a not ton of money, but right now every penny counts and I could have used that cash. Apart from that gloomy bit of news, I am pretty happy with how the past two months have gone. I have added no new photos and probably won’t until I find a day job. This is just a little extra motivation for me to do so as quickly as possible.

Here are my earnings in photography for the months of October and November:

October

November – Micros

So it’s back to the grind for me but with a new plan. I have decided to apply for three jobs a day. After I have applied for those jobs, I can work on writing. So far this has worked out pretty good. In the past few months I have applied for nearly 170 jobs. If I apply for three a day I will add almost 90 more to that total by the end of December. On the writing side of things, I will be focusing most of my time on Bright Hub, this blog and a new blog I am going to start over at blogspot.com which will replace what I had hoped to create on Today.com.

That’s it for now, see you guys mid-month!

And another month has come and gone. The first half of September was awesome, unfortunately the end of the month fizzled. Photo sales were not as high as I had expected, even with the new uploads. I also didn’t hit my word count goal either, although I did come close. Despite these setbacks I am happy with the improvement in writing revenue. I tripled my pay-per-click revenue and almost doubled my earnings at Bright Hub. I’m looking forward to next month’s Bright Hub check. It will have the regular $10 per article, but for the first time, it will have some of my earnings from the ad revenue share program too.

I spent a lot of time applying for both writing and regular day jobs this month. All the writing I do for cover letters are obviously not counted in my monthly word counts as they are not published anywhere. I wrote one proposal for Elance, but was declined. I will be writing more proposals for Elance in the coming months I am sure.

One challenge I have consistently run into is avoiding a website that I believe to be a scam called Freelance Home Writers. I keep applying for jobs found online, only to receive an email a day later stating that the specific position I applied for was filled, but please visit freelancehomewriters(dot)com to find other work. A quick Google search will show you that many many people have written about troubles they’ve had with this website. I have yet to find someone who has found work through Freelance Home Writers, so be wary. If you are going to try them despite my warnings, then please Google them and have a good understanding of what you are about to get into. If you have had actual paying work with Freelance Home Writers, please drop me a line.

Here are my final word counts for September, the total is 2650words short of my goal:

Location	Number of Articles	Word Count
blog	9	2955
Triond/Bukisa/Red Gage	2	507
Xomba	7	459
Bright Hub	7	7433
Short Stories	2	1877
Schvoong	1	136
	Total:	13367

And here are my earnings from writing this month:

Location	Total Amount of Articles	Monthly Income
Triond	13	$0.27
Bukisa	13	$0.72
Red Gage	13	$0.20
Adsense (Blog,Xomba, etc)		$3.80
Bright Hub	11	$70.00
Schvoong	1	$0.01
	Total:	$75.00

Last, and this month least, is photography. As I mentioned, I was hoping to have done a little better than this. Things did pick up near the end of the month, but over-all this is still a touch low for September, especially since I added a few new pictures to each site. The new shots helped a little, but I am still under my average. Besides submitting new photos, I also added CutCaster to my list of agencies and have already sold my first photo with them. I also sold my first photo ever at YaY Micro this month.

Agency	Number of Photos	New photos added	In Queue	Earnings
Shutterstock	146	3	0	$3.75
Dreamstime	222	9	0	$8.12
iStock	53	9	3	$3.79
StockXpert	144	10	0	$2.40
fotolia	207	7	0	$0.36
BigStockPhoto	202	8	0	$1.50
Image Catalog	180	0	10	$0.00
Feature Pics	251	10	0	$0.00
StockPhotoMedia	258	10	0	$0.00
The Photo Storage	187	10	0	$0.00
123rf	193	9	0	$5.08
Canstock Photo	232	10	0	$0.30
YaY Micro	160	6	0	€1.00
CutCaster	136	136	0	$0.50
			Total:	$25.80 & €1.00

I started getting photos ready for my first submission to Alamy as well. We’ll see how this goes over the next month. I’m not really setting many writing and photography goals for October as finding a day job has to be my main priority this month. All writing and photography will be set on the back burner until I find a something full-time.

Details:

URL: www.istock.com

Industry: Microstock Agency

What they are looking for: Royalty Free Stock Photos, Royalty Free Illustrations, and Royalty Free Footage, Royalty Free Audio

Pay: Commission

Alexa Rating: 370

iStock is the microstock industry leader. Some people make a living by only selling photographs on iStock. iStock also offer a large range of products, most recently adding RF audio files. Unfortunately, iStock does have some pretty serious problems. Their uploading process is complete garbage, they cap your uploads at a seriously low amount of files per week (except audio), and they are more picky in their review process than any other microstock agency. It’s not all doom and gloom with iStock though. Once you have your files accepted they go into a beautifully designed interface. The iStock, site from a buyers perspective, is gorgeous and that will help sell your work. iStock also has some great statistics tools built right into your profile page. All in all, if you can handle only being able to upload 15 shots a week and having to upload them one at a time, then iStock will treat you well.

Submitting to iStock

iStock is not an easy site to get accepted to in comparison to any of the other microstock agencies. You first have to sign-up, then go to Upload on the left and click the Apply button next to the type of content you wish to submit. Royalty free photography is what made iStock the powerhouse it is today. They now have over half a million photos and illustrations for sale. With that in mind, I’m going to talk about submitting as a photographer. The application for photographers consists of uploading three files for review. Make sure your photographs are noise free and very sharp focus. All three must pass the review process for you to get in. If you do not pass the first time, you can just change out whichever photos did not pass and try again.

Cool iStock Features

Here are some of the things that made iStock the number one microstock agency:

• iStock sells a lot of photos. No matter how frustrated I get uploading to iStock, I know in the end it will be worth it. They will make me money.

• Since iStock takes so many different types of media, you can create a very unique portfolio if you have the skills.

• The iStock Vetta program allows some of your photos to be sold at a much higher price.

• iStock has a great article base where you can learn tons of great tips about how to make money on the site. These tips translate easily to any microstock agency.

• iStock also has a very active forum, although it is heavily moderated.

Well, it’s time to give you guys some numbers. They will be pretty skewed this month for a number of reasons. I spent a lot of time designing and researching for this blog instead of writing. Since I still have bills to pay, I am still also desperately looking for a regular day job. Much of this month was also dedicated to learning and using social networking sites. Anyway, here are this months numbers.

I’m going to start with my word count for the month. This is as much for me as it is for you. I want to get faster each month, without compromising the quality of my writing, and this is one statistic I will use to track that.

All in all, I can’t say I’m impressed with my word count. I hope to double this in September and I think that is achievable, especially since I only really dedicated half of last month to article writing. There is also no new photography being added this month. My wife and I are looking for a space to set up our studio again and shoot. A studio setting is where I thrive. I can shoot outdoors but to really do this well, I need to be in an area that I find inspiring. This city, the city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, just does not provide for me in that capacity. As soon as we have a space to shoot in, we will start adding photos to the monthly tally.

Now on to the dollar count.

Obviously I won’t be living off this months earnings, but it’s a start. Now let’s move to photography earnings.

Agency	Number of photos	Earnings
Shutterstock	143	$30.30
Dreamstime	213	$10.53
iStock	44	$3.85
StockXpert	134	$3.10
Fotolia	200	$3.19
BigStockPhoto	194	$1.50
StockPhotoMedia	248	€2.50
123rf	184	$0.36
Canstock Photo	222	$0.75
Scandinavian Stock Photo	187	€1.00
		Total: $53.58 & €3.50

This, I am more impressed with. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not near enough to live off of either, but considering this is the off-season for microstock sales and that I haven’t been uploading new photos, I am happy with this months results. I did sell an extended licence with Shutterstock this month for an extra 28 bucks, but even without the EL I would have been happy. I hope over the next month, if we are unable to gain a space to start shooting, to at least upload five more shots. If we can gain a shooting space, to upload more than five.

We’ll see what the coming month brings. That’s it from this front, it’s time for me to start my next Bright Hub article.