Dreamstime, iStock, and Fotolia

In an another effort to make money from a hobby, I submitted a few pictures to a stock photo website. Stock photos are licensed pictures for sale that once bought, can be used for webpages, graphic designs, advertisers, book covers, etc. Anything you'd need a digital photo for.

My publisher uses Dreamstime, iStock, and Fotolia for their book covers. I was goofing around, looking for a good picture to use on a logo, and I noticed these websites allow amateur photographers to sell their pictures. How cool! Making money by snapping some pics in the backyard!

I decided to give it a try. All the reviews on Dreamstime said it had VERY stringent acceptance standards. It is a business, and you can't sell any old crap or your customers will be unhappy. Fair enough, I get that. I'm not a great photographer so I looked at iStock next. To make an account, it wants you to upload a digital, Government issue ID photo. I didn't have one and didn't feel like getting one. I moved onto Fotolia. It asked me for my social security number when I tried to create an account. For the life of me, I can't figure out how that's relevant or why they need to know it.

I decided to take my chances with Dreamstime. It was very easy to create an account. The website is laid out in an understandable manner and has instructions all over the place. Painless to deal with. I used picnik to improve some of my photos and uploaded them for review by the Dreamstime editors. I chose 4 of my good ones and 4 of the okay ones.

After about a week, you get the results back. ALL were rejected. I mean, I really got reamed. Here are just a few of the reasons they were rejected:

Distorted pixels due to poor sensor performance, image was interpolated, poorly scanned, upsampled or JPG was not saved at the highest quality.

Poor optical performance due to low lens quality, such as lens fringing, chromatic aberrations, uneven sharpness in focus area.

Image is out of focus or too much of the subject is out of focus (DOF too shallow or DOF not justified) / Image is shaken. Use a faster speed or a tripod. Please check the files at 100% zoom before submitting them.

Poor optical performance due to low lens quality, such as lens fringing, chromatic aberrations, uneven sharpness in focus area.

Okay, well, that does it for me. I'm not making money off my vacation photos. If you're curious, here are the pictures I submitted.