Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Flickr as source of income

How to Get Paid for your Flickr Photos

Source : http://blogs.photopreneur.com/how-to-get-paid-for-your-flickr-photos







Photography: Peter Faretra


It’s
happening. In fact, it’s been happening for a while. But it’s happening
quietly, and outside a few forums on Flickr, people aren’t really
talking about.

Photo users are browsing Flickr and they’re not just taking
Creative Commons-licensed images (or stealing protected photos).
They’re contacting photographers and offering to pay usage fees.


The amounts might not be huge, which is probably one of the reasons
that the sales aren’t making headlines, but they are being handed over
at the end of email offers and modest negotiations. Taylor Jones, a relatively new band photographer, mentioned to us in an interview recently that:


“I’ve sold a few images thanks to the site…”


then added:


“…nothing serious though.”


as though having someone hand over cash for images they’ve uploaded to Flickr happens all the time.


Upload to Flickr, Get Published

Photo users are buying images for all sorts of reasons but perhaps the
most common is the one that photographers tend to find the most
satisfying: they need pictures for books and publications.


Terry McCormick’s
image of the world’s largest steam train, for example, was bought by a
manufacturer of model railways and appeared on the cover of the
company’s catalog; Peter Faretra’s photo of diving gannets (shown above) was bought by the publisher of a wildlife book. Denis Callet’s picture of a lake was used by a media company producing a history book.


The ingredients in all of these sales include:


  • Careful tagging so that buyers can find what they’re looking for;

  • Clear descriptions so that they know what they’ve found;

  • And, of course, a professional quality picture shot at a high enough resolution to be reproduced commercially.

It might help too if the photographer’s photostream includes a few
Creative Commons-licensed photos to bring in users looking for free
images. The lower-quality shots they can have for nothing; professional
quality images they would have to pay for.


Selling Photos as Prints

Of course, it’s not just publishers who are reaching into their wallets
on Flickr. The site’s forums occasionally include questions from buyers
asking how they can purchase prints from Flickr members.


Again, it’s clear that you’ll need to display the sort of images
that people would actually want to own, but it’s a good idea too to
indicate that the images in your photostream are available for purchase.


Flickr doesn’t want big “For Sale” signs everywhere, and unlike many
photography sites, it doesn’t have its own click-button print-ordering
service. So just mention in your profile that your images are available
as prints and suggest that anyone interested in buying them should drop
you a line.


As long as the photos are good enough, you’ll be in with a chance of making a sale.


Marketing the Flickr Way

But to increase the chances of making a sale, you have to market. Like
anywhere, it’s not enough to put your goods on offer — however good
your photos might be — and hope that photography-lovers with
bucketloads of money spot them. You have to let people know they’re
there.


On Flickr, that doesn’t mean spending vast sums on pay-per-click advertising.


It means investing time in networking. As Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, probably Flickr’s most successful member, put it:


You can’t just put your pictures up and leave them there. You have to drag people back to your photostream.


That happens by leaving comments on other members’ photos, joining
groups and participating in forums. It means doing all of the things
that Flickr was created for: being part of a community and exchanging
information and advice as well as image views.


Become a popular Flickr member, and your name will become known among buyers as well as other photographers.


There is still a tendency among photo users on Flickr to expect
photographers to hand over their images for free — and a more worrying
tendency for photographers to agree. But shoot good images, upload them
to Flickr and let lots of people know that they’re there and available,
and your Flickr popularity can translate into sales.


Check out our interview with Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir here and tell us whether you’ve sold a photo on Flickr.


Technorati Tags: , ,


Now that people are making money using flickr, it can become a major hit for Y!




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Social Site Rankings

Social Site Rankings (September, 2007)


Erick Schonfeld


2 comments »




Did you know that Imeem
is the fastest-growing social site in the U.S (up 1,590 percent in
monthly uniques). And that AIM Pages is growing slightly faster than Digg
(345 percent growth versus 323 percent)? Well, at least according to
comScore. I asked comScore to do a ranking of social sites in the U.S.
and then I reordered the list by growth rate. Here it is:


social-sites-by-growth.png


Here are my takeaways. MySpace is still growing at a healthy 23 percent, despite its size. But Facebook is coming on fast, with 129 percent growth. Notice also the strong showing by Bebo (growing 83 percent) versus the lackluster U.S. growth of Hi5 (3 percent) and the decline of Xanga (negative 55 percent).


In blogging platforms, Blogger is beating Six Apart on
both absolute numbers (32 million visitors versus 13 million) and
growth (55 percent versus 44 percent). In the doldrums territory,
you’ve got Windows Live Spaces (with a one percent decline) and Yahoo
Groups (four percent decline). And in the
you-ought-to-seriously-think-of-shutting-this-down territory, there is
Lycos Tripod (23 percent decline), MSN Groups (36 percent decline), and
Yahoo 360 (’nuff said).


Here is a more comprehensive list of social sites ranked by total
number of visitors. It includes sites where comScore could not
calculate a growth rate because it did not have enough data for
September, 2006. Some sites that stand out on this list, having come
out of nowhere in the past year, include Wordpress.com (with 11.9 million monthly visitors), Freewebs (with 6.6 million), BuzzNet (with 4.4 million),and Kaboodle (with 2.5 million).


social-sites-sept07.png

Source : techcrunch



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Getting credit card Details through Google


http://www.alistercameron.com/2007/09/29/google-search-uncovers-credit-card-details/

Gives details how to uncover whether your credit card has been hacked or not.


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