Update

We've finished our move from old home to apartment to new home, and we're finally all unpacked. Just a little more work to do in the garage:


Only problem was, this week has been super hot, so shooting in there was not an option. That plus model #1 started Kindergarten... Gotta work on model #2 as soon as it cools off a little!

I did some shooting in the living room over the past few weeks, and submitted some images here and there...

My results: Today I hit $100. Small change for some, I know, but a happy milestone for me. Reaching another milestone also gives me more incentive to keep going. I'll post a full sales update at month's end.

Status update...

We've moved, and are halfway through our stay in temporary housing while we wait to close on our new house. I did bring a good portion of my "studio" gear with me, and had a pretty good week of shooting/uploading.

I also watched the lynda.com course on Access 07. And just spent a few hours playing with pivot tables, which totally rule. Here's what I ended up with, my history of microstock to date:
Time, numbered 23 to 29, is by week. As in, the 23rd to 29th week of 2009. Sorry for my crappy labeling of the axis.

Crestock and Canstockphoto are not included, as I didn't see the point entering in the image acceptance data for sites that haven't sold any images yet. If they show me some earnings, I'll add them to my spiffy new relational database.

Some observations: Two sites I added late, Shutterstock and StockXpert, are kicking butt for me, relatively speaking. Fotolia took a long time to kick in, but is looking good of late. IStockphoto and Dreamstime sold a couple of images early on, then nothing since, although I am still building my portfolios everywhere.

Basically, there's a table of agencies, a table of images, a table of accepted images (date, agency, which image), and a table of image sales. Getting it all set up was a lot of typing, but now when an image is first accepted, I add a line to the images and the acceptance tables. (Subsequent acceptances reference the already-added image.) And each time an image sells, I enter where and for how much. Then I can track sales in all sorts of interesting ways. Like, for any image I pick: Which sites accepted it? At which sites did it see sales? What is it earning per week/month/agency/whatever? Very interesting, but overall I think it's better to focus on just taking better pictures, and more of them...

We'll see how it goes.

Midnight Oil

Hopefully, the neighbors won't start to think I'm nuts.

Yesterday I was up on a 10' ladder, surrounded by bees, sticking my camera into a bunch of cactus flowers...

And then last night, just after midnight, I was out in the middle of the street with a big camera on a tripod. Taking pictures of my house in the dark...