I pose that question because I do a lot of photography that is not in the general realm of photography that most others do in the microstock websites. I for instance specialize in city and architectural photography, and I have done travel photography, as well as photography of cars and airplanes. I also have done photography of major events like an immigration protest and celebrity appearances.

I'm really questioning the sales / profit potential with the microstock websites of photography in the types of photography that I normally do.

For instance, city photography and travel photography generally includes company signs and logos and other signs no matter how in the distance they are, like for example skyline photography. If I were to prepare a skyline photo to submit to the microstock websites, i'd have to remove every instance of a company sign or logo, and that takes some time. With L.A.'s skyline (since I live in L.A.) its nearly impossible to take out the logo on top of its tallest building without making an objectionable appearance change since it sits over a major architectural detail of the building.

Architectural Photography doesn't have much sales potential since few people would need to use architectural photos of specific buildings. The only way to sell well is to make generic architectural shots like the ubiquitous looking up at the blue glass corporate building photo.

Travel photography can be profitable but in several places, like L.A., there are quite a lot of copyrighted tourist attractions, and tourist attractions that you'd need to take pictures on private property. In L.A. for instance, lots of tourist attractions, you'd have to sell photos editorially, which eliminates 80% sales potential for each photo. Selling photos of Universal Citywalk and Studios is out of the question (shutterstock deleted my photos that I successfully uploaded earlier), as well as anything to do with Disney (you'd have to sell it editorial and even, shutterstock deleted one of my pics later on.) Photos with the Hollywood sign can only be sold editorially, as well as of Mann's Chinese theater and the Hollywood Walk. Even then, Shutterstock is not approving of editorial photos as easily anymore, and photos of many other landmarks of L.A. that normally sell in traditional stock photography websites are basically banned on microstocks, even shutterstock.

Other cities have trademarked buildings that the traditional stock photography websites would accept but that get the microstocks scared (there's court rulings that show that a trademark protection on a building can't apply to photography of a building at all angles, except in a way that would cause trademark confusion.) Photos of city districts like Times Square, for instance, would be banned in most microstocks. Many tourist attractions are also sculptures that also get the microstocks scared.

Aviation photography is not very profitable in microstock because much of the need of aviation photos is for the airline name themselves, not just the airplane, and that would be considered a trademark violation in the microstocks, except shutterstock which pays jack anyway. Traditional Photography websites don't seem to have a problem with this. Plus, lots of photographers already get hundreds of dollars per sold photo in airliners.net

Car photography can be sellable but one would need to remove all instances of the logo, and that can be easy, but I've heard of istockphoto and other microstocks be real picky about accepting car photos due to possible (but probably not legal) copyright infringement due to the car design. The traditional stock photography websites have no problem with this.

I live in L.A. and there's plenty of opportunity to take celebrity photos, but come on, the only microstock I could sell it to is shutterstock because of editorial usage, and they'd give me jack there anyway.

And for other types of editorial photography, speed is crucial and speed is one of the worst aspects of microstock photography, plus editorial often involves people and thus need to be sold under an editorial license, of which only shutterstock offers for microstocks.

A lot of these problems are because the microstocks only sell Royalty Free photography, while the Traditional Stock Websites sell Rights Managed and Editorial photography, along with Royalty Free photography.

So see, can one really say that microstock photography is good for all types of photography, or right for all types of photographers?

I think you answered your own question. No there is no real potential market on the Micro stocks for the sort of work you NORMALY do.

But when taking photo's of the things you do shoot, think outside of the box and do a few extra shots of something you normaly wouldn't shoot. Say the textures of the buildings, the brickwork etc.

Close ups of bits of cars !!

If your working with digital it's no extra expense to try out a few experimental shots.

If you only want to shoot the same stuff, then the answer is to sell it elsewhere.

I sell some of my non micro-stock stuff on Alamy