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.
If you haven’t heard of Amazon Mechanical Turk, I highly suggest you check it out so you are aware of one of the more interesting pieces of web technology out there today. Basically, it’s a web service that allows you to programmatically allow humans to perform small bits of work for you. An example would be integrating your blog with MT (Mechanical Turk) in such a way that each new blog comment was reviewed by a human and he/she decided if it was spam or not, and marked it appropriately–all of it happening automatically.
What makes the whole thing interesting is that these “turks” are performing these simple actions for extremely small bits of money. Say, $0.01 - $1.00 per action. This whole concept is one type of Crowd Sourcing.
I’ve been kicking around a few concepts for websites that make use of this small army of dedicated servants willing to perform mundane tasks at a cut rate. I’ve become rather addicted to playing around with different types of actions and seeing the kind of results I receive. Once you fund your account with even a few dollars, you can start creating “HITs” (Human Intelligence Tasks). I think my addiction stems from the quick results. Within minutes, results start to come in.
Most recently, I’ve been asking different types of questions just to see the responses I get. For a few dollars, you can get a couple hundred responses within an hour or two. The downside to using this system for surveys is the demographics of the respondents are unknown (unless you put questions in your HIT about the respondent).
The coolest use of this technology I’ve seen has to be the search for Steve Fossett using Amazon Mechanical Turk to let hundreds of people pour over updated satellite images searching for signs of the plane wreckage. This particular HIT was unpaid and I did about 12 of them (I didn’t find anything). Regardless of the results, this was a very creative use and practical application of the technology.
If you have a great idea on how to use Mechanical Turk or other Amazon Web Services, enter the $50,000 Amazon Web Services Start-up Contest.
One of my favorite parts of being a web worker is stumbling across a truly good website that you’d never heard of before. This happened to me yesterday by way of Douglas Karr’s Marketing Technology blog. A fellow named David Airey has been blogging about graphic design for 1 year now and is celebrating his success with a ton of prizes.
First, let me say that if you are into graphic design at all, you need to check out his blog (and, no, my writing a positive review doesn’t get me an extra entry into the contest). Contests like this are great because it will get him more exposure, but from what I’ve seen so far, I would have subscribed to his feed even without the contest (had I found him another way). To earn an Alexa ranking of 24,654 in a year’s time is quite impressive.
About the contest… There are 3 main prizes and many smaller prizes. The “gold” prize winner gets a logo design from David, a custom Wordpress theme design from Nate Whitehill, a personal marketing plan from Maki of Dosh Dosh, one year’s hosting from I Love Typography, and a signed copy of Blogging Tips by Lorelle VanFossen.
Some of the other notable prizes are:
Even after the contest is over, I highly suggest you check out David Airey’s blog.
I have to admit, I’m a sucker for gadgets. Especially ones that use super secret complex algorithms to generate numbers that protect my online bank account.
Every 30 seconds, this compact device generates a new 6-digit code that is used to log in to my PayPal account. The algorithm is tied to a unique device id, so only numbers generated from my device will work.
I’m not sure exactly how small it is, but the PayPal website claims you can easily fit it on your keychain.
The cost is $5 and shipping takes about 10 days. I’ve already ordered mine and will post a follow-up on my experience with it.
Is it wrong that I’m doing this as much for the “wow” factor as I am the added security? What’s next–wireless thumb scanners?
