Enhance Your Niche Site with Photos
One of the issues we have when building a niche site is how do you make it look “for real”? You know, you want it to look somewhat legit and not spammy. So how do you do that?
Add some images to it! Visual cues and images related to that topic of your niche site can really help improve your site. It will also help to keep your visitors on site a little longer, thereby helping to maybe draw them into clicking an ad or affiliate link of yours.
So, where do you find images to use? Here are a few of my favorite spots to get them.
stock.xchng
Also known as Stock-xchange (or however you want to spell it) is a great place to get quality photos of a wide variety of topics. Registration is free and quick. One note of caution, you really need to read the disclosure on each picture before you use it. Some authors don’t have any restrictions, some want to be notified via email with the site address it is on, and others restrict it’s usage to non-commercial sites. There are lots more restrictions and other things you need to read.
Pay attention to the details with each photo to keep from getting in hot water.
morguefile.com
Another neat site, similar to Stock Exchange, just pay attention to any requests or restrictions on the photo’s by the owner and you should be fine.
Flickr
I haven’t used Flickr for photos yet, but Skellie at Skelliewag.org has written a great writeup on using Flickr photos for your site. Read A complete guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images for more great information, and check out her site. She is really a tremendous writer and offers tons of great advice for blogging topics.
Great list of resources
There are many great sites out there with photos that you can use. Just pay attention to the details so you won’t get in hot water if you are using a photo against the authors terms.
Here is a great resource site for more links to photo sites for free stock photos.
Are you new to blogexplosion.net? Subscribe to our RSS Feed to keep up to date with our latest posts.
Technorati Tags: blogging photos, images, niche, niche sites
Elliott,
I could not agree with you more. The one thing that was pointed out to me by my daughter was that it needed more pics.
Thanks for the resources to find pics.
Along the Lakeshore News’s last blog post..To The Beach!
You’re welcome! There are so many more resources out there for pics, just remember that you need to follow the request of the photographer if you use them. Some don’t care, others want to be notified or have restrictions.
That will keep you out of any problems. Now, off to fix up my sites! lol
Where are your pictures?!!
Dosh Dosh breaks up the page of text by using images well, even when they’re not exactly related to the message.
Thanks for the tips on where to look for pictures: It is a time consuming addition to finishing a piece but makes a better product.
Don’t forget your own images. I went out with my digital camera last week to our town hall, snapped a few pics and pieced them together for my header.
Let me know what you think.
Bruce H.
Bruce’s last blog post..A few pics from the Mike Reid softball tournament 2007
Bruce, great idea! This will work especially well for your local niche site.
The other photo sites are a great resource for images for a niche site that you would develop for monetizing, but you could also do the same with them.
I loved Skellie’s Flicr guide. It cleared up a lot of the gray area about which images I could use without violating any copyrights. Skellie also included, in part 2, of her guide (I believe) a way to insert the photo credit directly under the photo in a blog post. It is a nice touch.
Thanks, Elliott for introducing me to the other two sites, I have not used them before and will have to check them out.
Neena’s last blog post..Saugatuck Nursery School Offers Programs For Vacation Week
You’re welcome! I find Skellie’s site to be a great resource for writing content and lot’s of other blogging related things.
Enhance Your Niche Site with Photos | Blog Explosion dot NET…
Creating a niche site can take some work to accomplish. One important aspect for any niche site is to use images to make the site look less spammy and more like a real site. Now I’m not talking about your local niche site that you might ha…
Here’s a little trick I’m doing on a niche blog where I’m pushing a ClickBank product. The picture inline with the post is really an ad. It looks similar to how I have OpTempo’s pictures aligned but there are fewer pictures that are rotated in and out on page loads using an ad rotator plugin. Of course, the affiliate link is cloaked by a PHP redirect. Just one of those evil marketing trick that works.
But, often the rule is that you don’t want to make a niche blog’s content too compelling. You want the pictures to push the visitor toward an ad click. Of course, this would be different for a local niche blog where you’re depending on repeat visitors and local advertising sales.
Frank C’s last blog post..Blog Review: Prince of Wall Street
Frank, great idea, and I agree that you don’t want the content to be to compelling. However, you need a little personal touch to make it appear more realistic.
I like the idea of using the adrotator plugin for that too, sounds neat, I’ll need to try it out!
Great links.
Tim E.’s last blog post..Dodd’s Lake, Innisfail, Oval Ice Race Called Off (Jan27, 08)