Microstock: Update and Random Comments

Some my recent activities relating to MicroStock and ideas floating around in my grey matter:

• Approx 68 hours left until my first image is reviewed.
• The search function at Dreamstime is working for me again, and the word of the day is intimidating. Yes, I knew Dreamstime has a few million photos (currently 3,668,371 from 44,500 photographers) but until I actually started searching and see the competition, I didn't really comprehend what that means. To put it narrowly, a search for snowy egret yields 235 images. Some are worse than my image, but many are better; think about it -- how can you compete with over 200 other images?
• I'm not too convinced my egret image will be accepted... See above point.
• I received $5 in my account for linking Dreamstime. That was pretty easy money.
• Yesterday I spent over 10 hours tutoring and driving between sessions... on Labor Day. How'd most people's day off get to be my busiest day in over six months? But I made way more than I will make in microstock in the forseeable future.
  
• I've started searching through my archives for stock-worthy images. I've chosen out maybe 100 images so far (about half-way done) of which maybe 20-30 will be submitted. I'm really liking Bibble Pro for the job though -- tagging can be done within the program so I can save a lot of time (hypothetically, we'll see when I start uploading). The goal is to upload a bunch to Dreamstime, then the ones that succeed will be part of the pool I draw from to go through the multi-image application at other sites.
• I just bought a second SB-20 on eBay today for $25 (inc. shipping). It's no secret I think the SB-20 is the best used flash deal out there (see my review)!
• The motivation for the SB-20 was to allow me to try out Zach's white seamless tutorials... which has really inspired me and I think I can pull it off in my garage with not much trouble. But I need that second background light!

That's it for now!