I just ventured into stock photography last month, so I can only offer my little bit of experience. I’ve uploaded about 500 photos at this point, which took about 10 hours of work between renaming files, uploading, tagging, titling, categorizing, etc. So far I’ve made $6.00, or about $0.50 per day.
Obviously that’s not much money, but it feels passive at this point since the work is done.
I plan to have the portfolio expanded to about 5,000 photos by the end of the year, and venture beyond Shutterstock to some other websites. It’s not much income, but I have all of these photos on my harddrive already, so it’s not like I’m spending any time shooting specifically for stock.
If I can get an extra $5,000 per year selling stock photos, then that covers gas, electric, trash, internet, and cell phone for the year.
Or, put another way, it replaces what would require $125,000 worth of investments at 4%.