Can you actually make money on stock photography sites?

You can with a lot of 'if's involved. If you are very good at photography, dedicated enough to already have all or most of the equipment, don't mind getting paid small amounts for multiple licenses royalty free and have no other way to make money from your photography. Oh, and it is very much a game of volume, so the more photos you upload, the more money you will make. It is basically a photographic sweat shop for most of the photographers. You would rarely make a living doing it and it probably won't cover wear and tear on equipment and electricity for the lights and charging batteries. When you read the sign up for photo contributors, they say right there that they want high quality shots, no snapshots, pictures of pets, flowers, etc. What this translates to is that they are going to select among your pictures when you submit them. Anything that isn't a subject they need,is slightly out of focus or has a wrong exposure gets rejected. And these people have a good eye and will reject submissions by anyone to keep the site's quality high. If you can stand up to all that and be happy making 50 cents or 1 dollar every time someone buys your photo to use, go for it. You might be the next Yuri Arcurs. Or the next amateur photographer cussing these sites out.

Yes... it CAN be done, but it is certainly not easy or a path to fast money or getting rich. If you are very lucky, you may make some small extra pocket change once in a while. Here is a good little article about getting into this: http://www.squidoo.com/sellingpics steve