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Some people are interested in the level of earnings possible through Shutterstock (and microstock in general). Rightly so. I can only speak to my own experience and say that it would not be easy to make a living at it. In fact you won't even make much side money at it immediately, because you will need to build up your portfolio. The key is that once your portfolio is online, it can sit there generating income for a long time into the future.
Personally I've made almost $2000 in a little less than 2.5 years at Shutterstock alone. Obviously not enough to live on, but given the little time I've been able to invest in it, I am impressed and plan to build my portfolio further (especially experimenting further with vectors). Click the articles below for more information on what I've learned about microstock.
More info:
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Shutterstock is opening a new program for its editorial photographers: Shutterstock on the Red Carpet. They will help you obtain an official press pass for an event if you agree to sell the photos exclusively on Shutterstock. Click to read the press release.
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You don't even need to have photographs to make money at Shutterstock. If you sign up for an account, you can refer photographers and stock photo buyers and get a referral fee for each sale. Each time a photographer that you referred makes a sale, you collect $0.03 and when you refer a buyer, you get 20% of the sale (which could be $30-$50 or more).
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 Shutterstock also allows you to sell images on an editorial license , meaning that purchasers will only be able to use the images in editorial formats (e.g. magazines, newspapers, etc). This is useful for images that you have taken which are of specific interest (famous people, places, current events...) and may not have model or property releases.
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 In a new (and relatively untested) market segment, Shutterstock is now allowing submissions for a site that will sell royalty free video clips to local news stations, documentary producers, and the like. If you can produce video footage that would be useful to these types of projects, it could be well worth your while to upload them to Shutterstock.
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 Shutterstock also allows you to sell your vector illustrations on their site in the same manner as the digital photography. This means you can create imagery in Adobe Illustrator, Freehand, Xara Xtreme, or Inkscape (free download). You earn 25¢ per download from their subscriber base, with incentives for referring buyers or sellers to the site.
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 You may have heard about the microstock model that is gaining traction in the stock photography world. If you've got a digital camera--or a film camera and a scanner--you can submit your digital photographic images for sale at Shutterstock. Shutterstock will inspect them and if they pass the quality control, they will store them in their online library which their subscribers search for imagery. For each download you will earn 25¢. This doesn't seem like much, but if you build a substantial collection of images, it can add up. They also have various other ways to add to your earnings, such as a per-image sales site and a referral program.
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