Sell photos on photrade | By HamWithCam
Ever since I discovered Photrade.com through their sponsorship of Blog Indiana, I’ve been admiring the service and slowly starting to use it. My main interest in the service is the ability for bloggers to find great photography and easily place it on their blog or website. Many bloggers just grab images from Google Image Search or where ever they can find them without consideration for the legal implications of using photos without permission. With Photrade, the permission is built-in.
On the other side, photographers (professional and amateur) can profit off not only your free usage of their photos, but the integrated marketplace allowing their photos to be licensed/sold at prices they can control. All photos can be watermarked with a custom mark that helps protect everyone’s photos. If someone wants to purchase the right to use your photo without the watermark, Photrade facilitates that purchase in an automated way.
I believe this new service, which is just now in beta, has huge potential. Below, I humbly submit some feedback from what I’ve experienced so far.
- I love the ability to search for blog post images and easily post into my blog. I would love stronger integration the way flickr lets you make blog posts about a photo directly to your self-hosted blog.
- Please, please, please release an API. I think a killer application for Photrade would be a Wordpress plugin that would let me browse Photrade’s database of photos straight from my “Create New Post” screen. Then, just a button click drops the photo into my blog post.
- It would be great if the framing and links that accompany an embedded Photrade photo could be customized. I’d just like to see the style, spacing, and fonts be a little better styled (or give me control).
- The uploader works pretty well and it is fairly fast (as they claim). However, it would be great if they could add some kind of counter letting me know how many photos I’ve uploaded and if any had any errors. Also, once the uploads are done, there is nothing prompting me as to what to do next.
- A more detailed, expanded view of all my photo view activity and their earnings.
- And last but not least… I can’t wait until the Flickr integration is complete! That is what is really keeping me from using Photrade to full potential. I have a pro account at Flickr and use it for ALL my photos. Being able to import photos directly from Flickr would make Photrade my 2nd favorite photo app (maybe my first, depending on the size of my next royalty check!)
Of course, the site is still beta, and is still amazing. I highly suggest you check it out: Photrade.com
While I love Firefox, I’ve lately been using Safari (for PC) and finding it to be a guilty pleasure. For one, it sure seems to load pages much faster. It also displays text in a way that is very pleasing to the eye (ie. websites just look and read better). However, there is one simple difference that I’m really starting to take advantage of and it can really save time: default feed rendering. 
Default Feed Rendering, you say?
It likely won’t show up on anyone’s top 10 list of killer features for ANY browser. However, I’m finding the simple and useful way that Safari handles feeds to be very satisfying. I’m talking about how your browser displays an RSS or ATOM feed when you load it directly in your browser (as opposed to a seperate feed reader). An example of how this can save you time is by visiting the Smaller Indiana homepage. If you wanted to get a quick overview of the most recent activity on the site without spending a lot of time clicking around, just click the blue RSS button on the far-right side of the browser’s URL box. This will give you a dropdown list of all available feeds to view. If you click on “Forum - Smaller Indiana” you’ll see a nicely formated view of recent forum posts with some very nice filtering features.
As you can see in the above animated graphic, you’ll see a cleanly formated listing of recent posts. You’ll also get a very handy set of tools on the right to search and filter the feed dynamically. One of my favorite tools is the ability to reduce the amount of information displayed in the feed. For example, sliding the “Article Length” slider over to the left (as the animation demonstrates) will give you an email inbox-like view of the forum posts. This is an excellent and fast way to see what’s new on any website.
While feed readers are very effective at allowing you to subscribe and consume many different websites. This integrated feed display in Safari allows you to quickly and easily cut right to the latest content on any website or blog at supports feeds. Both Internet Explorer and FireFox also provide default views of feeds. However, neither are as robust as Safari (oddly, IE comes closest).
No, no, I’m not getting a divorce! My marriage couldn’t be better. And, in fact, as I’m writing this now, it would probably be a good idea for me to share with my wife exactly what I’m doing. The last thing I need is for her to stumble upon me writing or researching Indianapolis divorce lawyers!
This post is the first in a multi-part “interactive case study” on domain flipping. By interactive I mean I’m seeking your advice on what steps to take and will give updates as this project continues. I have very recently acquired the domain name IndyDivorce.com. There is no website attached to it. However, I feel like it could be rather valuable for a local law firm.
Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t endorse divorce. However, the opportunity came along to snap up a domain name with the potential for high appeal to a select market. This is where this project begins.
I basically have 3 options:
- Find an interested party to directly purchase the domain.
- Turn it into a simple directory website listing local divorce lawyers in Indiana (and perhaps some articles on alternatives to divorce!) and eventually charge local lawyers a fee for an upgraded listing.
- Do what YOU tell me to do.
What do you think? The point really is to “flip” this domain like you flip a house. I want to buy low, fix ‘er up, and then sell for a decent profit while still delivering a great value to the final customer.
I was reading the latest headlines on CNN.com earlier today when I came upon a story about a plane carrying 10 skydivers that had crashed. 3 of the people on board were currently missing, but presumed dead. As I’m quickly scanning the details of the story, I notice the flash-ad next to the story is depicting a person free-falling in the air, hurdling towards the ground.
Take a look at the story, and then the ad to the right side of the page:
Now, I know this wasn’t on purpose. But, it brings up an interesting issue of what happens when unrelated ads are put randomly next to content that causes unintended connections to be made.
This is the first post in a multi-part series on low-cost, high-return methods of hyper-local advertising.
Call it targeted advertising. Call it audience demographics. I call it hyper-local. One of the nice side-effects of this rush to create (and join) a myriad of social networks is all the user meta information that is being collected. The very premise behind most social (and even professional) online networks is connecting you with others like you. This, inherently, requires the user give up some key information about themselves. Seemingly innocent bits of descriptive data that marketers big and small drool over such as where you live, what college you went to, what professional industry you’re in, or even what kinds of things do you look for online. Increasingly, these bits of info are being used to sell hyper-local advertising opportunities to… anyone.
Sure, demographics-based marketing has been around forever. The key trend happening today is the combination of companies amassing this data in large quantities and then turning around and selling targeted advertising opportunities a la carte. Let my first example show you what I’m talking about.
Example 1: Facebook
With 39 million active users, Facebook has the potential to provide a wide range of options when it comes to advertising. If you visit their advertising section take a look at “Flyers.” Flyers are small ads that appear on the side of the page for users of Facebook. Facebook refers to them as self-serve advertising because you can put together a highly targeted ad in relatively short order. You can isolate your campaign by network (such as a specific city or university), and also by demographic data such as gender, age, undergraduate, graduate, etc.
What makes this advertising method so useful is the price point and the low barrier of entry. In a matter of minutes, I can put together a highly targeted ad and pay as little as $5.00 to distribute my electronic flyer to 2,500 Facebook users. Or, you can go much bigger and pay $200 for 100,000 flyer impressions per day. Facebook now offers a pay-per-click model that lets you set a daily budget and a top amount you’re willing to pay per click.
Example 2: StumbleUpon
Even at 1/10th the size of Facebook, StumbleUpon has a similar targeting scheme that allows you to really zoom in on the types of users that you want to advertise to. Their advertisers page gives you access to all the categories of pages that their users “stumble” through. They also tell you how many thousands of users are active in each category, which is helpful in trying to decide where to focus your campaign. Once you select a category, you can then further drill down and select users by country, state, and even a limited list of major cities. You can go one step further by specifying a gender.
You simply fund your account with as little as $5 and you can begin your campaign. StumbleUpon will automatically insert your specified URL into their user’s stumbles in the category you selected. An additional feature of StumbleUpon is access to how users have rated your site (thumbs up or thumbs down). This is great for a couple reasons. First, it allows you to better judge how effective your landing page is. Also, if your site gets enough thumb’s up, it can potentially make it into heavy rotation in the normal StumbleUpon system (for free).
Next time, we’ll look at a couple other hyper-local advertising methods and review some tips on maximizing the effectiveness of your campaign.
