Assuming that microstock is a serious business, I guess that total earnings is the only criteria which is important at the end. When reading microstock forums, it is clear that everyone is basically interested by how much he/she earns.
However, to know whether you are successful or not in microstock, I think you have also to take into account how much effort you can put in building your portfolio and how old you are in this business.
In order to take all those points into account, a very good measure of your success is the average monthly earning per photo in your portfolio. It is a good indicator of the "quality" of your portfolio, whether it is a small or a big portfolio.
If you try to analyse the situation of the most famous and successful microstockers, you will see that they probably earn $10-20k monthly with a portfolio of around 4-5k photos. These are just guestimates of course.
So, top earners have a average monthly earning of $3-4 per photo.
I think that this is a good indicator of your "success": if you have 100 photos in your portfolio and earns $500 monthly, you know that you have the skills needed to become a top earner... provided that you put enough effort to build a 4k portfolio with the same quality.
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