Let's get a few things straight.
Macro is 1:1 ratio of image size to sensor size or greater, that means less than 4 x 3cm on full frame and 2/3 that on crop sensor cameras.
Now onto lesson 2, the best way of taking macro shots fairly cheaply and reliably. Reverse lens stacking!
This is when you attach one lens (lets use 50mm as an eg) then you take another lens and reverse mount it on the front of your first lens, your magnification ratio will be approximately the ratio of your 2 focal lengths.
for example, a 50mm reversed on a 50mm would give you 1:1 reproduction.
A 50mm on the front of a 100mm means a 2:1 ratio, and so forth. Finding the best combinations is a matter of trial and luck.
So why is this better? Because as long as your first lens is native to your camera, you can find your focus wide open but leave the lens set to f22. This makes precision focusing much faster and easier and gives you as deep as depth of field as possible.
Now onto artistic decisions, macro should almost instantly take you into abstract. This means composition, colour, texture and tone take front and centre. No-one cares what the photo is of, no-one cares you can see the lenses on a fly's eye, these are "Oooo, neato" moments, and nothing more. Try and create drama and intensity from the mundane (pic attached, a seed dangling from a spiders thread, the angle helps add gravitas and a sense of weight and suspense to the situation)
whilst this is by no means my best work (did this within 3 months of getting my first digital camera) it did get me a fuck ton of very easy, well paid commercial work. It's pretty much solely done with a pentax 50 f2 reversed on a vivitar 100mm macro and a cheapo yongnuo flash with wireless trigger.
http://beevision.tumblr.comGo practice more, focus on boring objects and finding interest in the abstraction.
