interesting to know Christo, having had a look at what seems to do well on the micro sites I'm kinda yearning for some proper lighting equipment... early experiments with desk lamps and tissue paper as diffuser are better than onboard flash but still a bit fiddly...
anyway I just had my first rejection from Shutterstock, seems 6 were ok but that ain't enough... I'll try again with a better selection in a month I guess...
really I'm still building my portfolio and will have much more time to dedicate to this in the coming months... so far I have 32 online at Alamy, 15 at Dreamstime, 10 pending at BigStockPhoto... not much yet but at least I've made some sales =)

should there be a kind soul out there with a properly calibrated monitor and a spare moment perhaps you could take a quick gander at my alamy page and let me know how the photos look in terms of brightness/darkness/saturation...? there might be a slight difference between the newer ones and the ones on page 2, I've been struggling to get consistency reproducing the same colours on the web as on my computer with that site..

cheers in advance for any feeback, here's the link:
http://www.alamy.com/stock-photography/54D0238E-74C4-4228-99EB-7B0DA36AAF1E/1/Adam%20Edwards.html

Adam Edwards Photography