Monthly Archive for August, 2008

Top 5 sites to find free images for your Blog Posts, Logos, Banners and Headers

Published
by
Shypy
on August 6, 2008
in Graphics and Making Money Online
. 0 Comments

We’ve all had to do it sometime in our careers. I’m talking about creating headers images and logos for our sites and banners for advertisement.

Now I know some of you don’t like to get your hands dirty and outsource all the graphics work. But since I’m less of a designer/developer and more of a traffic broker, I don’t need super high quality graphics. Hence,  I do everything myself (well, alteast most of the time).

I use Photoshop CS3 and I like to think that I’m pretty good with it(I’ve tried to use GIMP too, and no, it doesn’t even compare(to Photoshop)).

We’re thus faced with the predicament of finding good quality, royalty free images that we can use for:

1. Website Graphics and 2. Blog Post Images.

Now I am not a kind of person that’d like to pay even a couple of bucks for an image, because creating designs is not what I make a living off. Either way, there are quite a few image sharing sites that provide roaylty free images for free. Here are my favorites, in no particular order:

1. Stock.Xchng - Thousands of images - many of them of very high quality. Unless you’re working on a really obscure niche (which is usually the case), this site alone will suffice.

2. Flickr - This is one of my favorite sites. Thousands upon thousands of highly imaginative and creative images taken by some of the best photographers in the world. The only problem with flickr is the fact that you can’t use the images without permission from the owner. Just send them a polite PM requesting the use of their photo/image in your website. Be courteous and very specifil - usually they let you use their image for free!

3. MorgueFile : Similar to Stock.Xchng. This is a good resource too.

4. FreeDigitalPhotos: Thousands of royalty free photos for websites, PowerPoint presentations, newsletters, forums, blogs, school projects and homework. Our images can also be used for artist’s reference, and video productions.

5. CreatingOnline Stock Photos: Very simliar to sxc.hu. Even though this has a relatively smaller collection, you can still find some great photos if you’re lucky.

There you have it - now you know where to head off for when you’re looking for that special photo for your banner and dont want to open your wallet.

Mozilla Firefox - How to make all extensions work for Firefox 3

Published
by
Shypy
on August 5, 2008
in Firefox
. 1 Comment

It’s been over 40 days and 28 million+ downloads since the launch Mozilla Firefox 3 and it’s not a surpirse Firefox has gotten that kind of response, since it is simply the best browser out there.

What surprises me though, is the number of firefox users who havent upgraded from Firefox 2.0.0.13 just because some of the addon’s are not compatible with FF3. As you might have noticed, almost all of the more famous ones have been made compatible for FF3 and so have many of the not-so-famous ones.

So if you’re among the few who are hesitant to lose their precious addons after updating, here’s a simple solution.

It’s called the MR Tech Toolkit Firefox Addon.

Here’s how you make your old extensions work with Firefox 3:

First of all, you’ll need to download Firefox 3.0.1.

Install the MR Tech Toolkit and restart firefox.

Click on the Tools Menu -> Addons.

Find the addon that is not compatible with FF3. Right click on it and select “Make compatible”. Restart Firefox.

There you have it - MR Tech Toolkit will make most of your old extensions work with Firefox 3.

Now I never want to hear any excuse for not updating to 3.0 again.

Have fun :)

How to Download From Rapidshare despite IP Bans

Published
by
Shypy
on August 3, 2008
in File Sharing and rapidshare
. 0 Comments

Apparently Rapidshare.com has blocked certain Indian IPs. Here is the message that I get when I try to download files from rapidshare.

Call my ISP? Like they’re gonna do something about it.

Since they wont allow you to access their site directly, here are a couple of tricks that you can use to fulfill your filesharing needs:

1. Use a proxy. Not any proxy will work for downloading files with rapidshare though. You’d best use a CGI Proxy. Just google for “CGI Proxy” and you’ll get what you want. Here are a couple of good ones that I like to use:

http://youhide.com

http://url1.in

http://nocheck.in

Enter your download link in the page and you’ll probably be able to download the file at full speed. Make sure you select the checkbox that says “allow scripts” or disbale the checkbox which says “disable scripts”.

2. Alternatively, you can dump rapidshare altogether. There are plenty of reliable free filehosts out there. My personal favorites are Mediafire and SendSpace.

There you have it. Thanks to Shypy, rapidshare banning your IP range doesn’t affect you anymore.

Free Report - Overwhelming response

Published
by
Shypy
on August 1, 2008
in Affiliate Marketing and Making Money Online
. 2 Comments

So the other day I found a relatively new advertising network. I joined up, submitted a couple of my sites and thought their payment scheme was really cool. That prompted me to write a 3 page report on how you could make a quick buck from the site in question.

In the beginning, I thought about selling it over at the DP Marketplace for 10 bucks apiece. I did some math. If I sold it for $10 and managed the thread really well, showing the door to the freemongers(review copy please?), etc I’d manage to sell 15 copies at the very most(and that’s being optimistic). That would make me about $150. Now that’s not bad, but well, I had other ideas in mind.

Here’s what I did - I gave away the report for free. And not just anywhere, I posted it on the freebies forum. A mad flurry of incoming and outgoing PMs later, I’ve given the book away to atleast 300 people by now.

And you can get it for free too. Click here to download.

Oh, and by the way have you guys seen the Harry Potter 6 Trailer? Looks like a so-so movie - I’m not too impressed.