Archive for the 'Making Money Online' Category

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.

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.

I R Wiener

Published
by
Shypy
on August 5, 2007
in Competitions and Making Money Online
. 1 Comment

Yup.

Although 50$ is not that big a deal, its not bad for 30 mins work. :p

So thats about 7 new domains for me, and I’m already thinking about starting a video blog and a news-aggregator website.

And while we are on the subject of competitions, I’d like to add that JohnCow.com a parody blog of JohnChow.com are haveing a competition where you have the change to win a Playstation3,or an Xbox360, a Nintendo Wii, or an iPhone. The competition has been sponspored by their web hosting provider(I think I’m gonna try and convince my host to sponsor a competition too :p)

They already have something like a zillion entries, but it’d never hurt to try ;)
Edit:

They’re closing their blog, but probably the competition is still on.