Just wanted to throw my two cents in here.  I agree completely with your original concern.  I've thought often about more efficient ways to get things done so that the process is more streamlined and my time will start to = enough $ to make it worth it. 

As many people in this thread who said they take quality over quantity - well I think that might be great in ideal but it doesn't seem to be the way it really works.  There is a vendor partnership here on Rendo for example that sells numerous items.  They are constantly one of the top vendors and put out many different pose and scene and character packs.  Maybe as many as one a week sometimes.  They are all horrible (except for the character textures).  The scene sets always come with the same recycled textures as the ones before - minor changes.  The pose sets are almost unusable.  - Yet they all sell like crazy.

People in this thread might digress but - someone is buying those products.  and someone is buying a whole crapload of them.

Me myself - well I don't want to go down in quality at all, but I do need to find more efficient and organized ways to work so that my time is better utilized when I do work.  

Also people are always saying on the forums how there isn't much unique out there.  But when something unique is created it only sells very few copies to those few who are interested in that niche.  Swords fairies and big boobs are where it's at.  So watching top sales for a month or so to see exactly what items are selling most is probably a good idea. 

In the end everyone wants everyone to be the great samaritan of vendors.  Put in 400 hrs of work for 400$ is something that is just outright expected.  To me that's just not good business sense.

I am:  aka Velocity3d