I tried my hand at alamy at about the same time I’m guessing you went online with istock (september ‘05). I only put about the same amount of images up and my return has been $1000 less. I have made enough to get one check (3 sales) that was around $400. And that was last May. Not thing since.

Now, I don’t know what this tells us, exactly. It’s hard to draw any truly meaningful comparison because our images were different (and I’ll concede that your images do look more commercially viable–mine were a lot of flotsam) but it does seem that istock is a quite lucrative option on the whole. Certainly not the “complete ripoff” so many have complained about.

I admit, I was opposed to the “idea” of being paid low rates for images, albiet with a larger number of sales. But my thinking is starting to reverse. It seems that sales have been weak for many of late, macro or micro, and I plan to throw a few at istock to see what happens.

-Michael