Writing for the web often requires a great deal of self publishing, especially if you run your own blog or news/feature website. Because of this, there is a good chance that at some point, you will be required to find images, resize them, and add them to your articles.

Nothing can fully replace having your own photographer at your side, but there are many photographers who use the web as their digital portfolios and allow writers and website owners to use their images royalty-free. Just because an image is on the web does not mean it’s a free image and you have the right to use it, and if you start making money off your blog while illegally using copyrighted images, you could be in for a world of hurt.

There are several types of royalty-free photo sites out there. Some have their own licenses, and others use copyleft licenses like Creative Commons or GNU Free Documentation License. Still others allow the users to specify the terms such as notification and crediting. The following are several sites you can use to find free images for your writing.

Where to Find Free Images?

stock.xchng – One of the most well-established free stock photo sites, stock.xchng showcases an amazingly large number of photographers. Licenses include the standard restrictions, which do not require attribution, as well as an attribution, permission, and/or notification requirement. All of the images are high-quality, and all are free of charge.

Flickr – Since Flickr itself is a photo sharing site, there are plenty photos with “all rights reserved” that are off-limits to you unless you gain the photographer’s permission. With the “advanced search” feature, however, you can locate usable photos by scrolling to the bottom of the page and checking: “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content”. If you need to use the images for commercial promotion, also be sure to check “Find to use commercially”.

A word of caution: Flickr uses the Creative Commons feature trusting that the person who uploads it will honor its terms. Unfortunately, some are prone to later change the license or upload images that they do not have permission to license in the first place. Therefore, always use your best judgment.

Wikimedia Commons – Created by the same non-profit organization that runs Wikipedia, this free image site has a plethora of usable photos and art. Because of stricter requirements for submission, Wikimedia Commons photos are all reusable under Creative Commons. Most require attribution, so be sure to credit your sources.

OpenClipArt – Although clipart may be the last type of image you want to include in your writing, OpenClipArt has some quality vector SVG artwork that may cause you to reconsider. All of the images on this site are released to the Public Domain and do not require attribution.

Google Advanced Search – Rather than an image hosting site, Google image search is a meta search tool that you can use to find reusable images. Simply click on “Advanced Search” and for “Usage rights” select “free to use or share”. Most of the images will come from Flickr, but it may also find additional ones, and best of all, it relies on Google’s speedy search interface.

everystockphoto – Another meta search tool, everystockphoto searches many of the sites mentioned above, such as Flickr and stock.xchng. Each entries clearly defines the license type, resolution, image source, and more.

morgueFile – An interesting concept, morgueFile is designed specifically for creative people looking for free images to use. The site license does not require attribution, and the collection of photos is quite impressive and high quality.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog – The Library of Congress has tons of digital images, and it would make this article unduly long to list all of the categories. If you are looking for art, historical photos, or things you might not be able to find elsewhere, LOC probably has it. Most of the old photos and art are in the public domain, but be sure to check the restrictions for each collection you use.

Now you have no excuse not to include beautiful free photos and art in your writing. Like you, a writer who shares your creations with the world, there are plenty of photographers and artists who do the same. Enjoy their work, and be sure to give them credit when they request it.

About the Author

Tavis J. Hampton is a freelance writer with over a decade of experience in writing, information services, and Linux system administration, relying on only quality web hosts like server hosting company 34SP.com.

You may also want to read: Where To Find Free Images For Your Blog
Photo credits to Miguel Ugalde

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

In yesterday’s post I have shared some light on two of Facebook’s most attractive features for bloggers, the Facebook Like and Facebook Share buttons. While the decision of which one of the two use is your own (though the general answer seems to point to “Like”), today I’m going to talk about another feature that Facebook has improved and re-released back in June: Facebook Insights.

Through Facebook Insights you can gain free access to a whole bunch of highly useful information about your users’ behavior, their like/share habits and pretty decent demographics analytics, since Facebook uses their own user profile system to provide the information (and we all like to fill in our profile info, right?).

While Facebook Insights provides analytics data for Facebook Apps too, for bloggers probably the most interesting segments of this data are those that reflect the users’ like/share/reshare habits on Facebook accounts attached domains and the Facebook Pages created by their owners.

Getting Facebook Insights for your domain

Attaching a domain to the Facebook Insights is a straight forward job. All you have to do is to access the Facebook Insights dashboard and follow the 3 easy steps described in the image below:

Once you’ve completed these simple steps, you’ll gain access to a set of domain overall analytics data, as well as per URL data, by request, by entering the desired URL from your domain in a classic input box. Here are some eloquent screenshots of the data the Facebook Insights provides:

Facebook Insights: Likes vs. Shares

Facebook Insights: Demographics Analytics

With Facebook Insights, your choice is easier

Now you have a better tool to help you decide which button works best for your blog: Facebook Like or Facebook Share. Although my personal favorite is the Like button, I’d recommend using both of them for a while and simply compare in the Facebook Insights dashboard which one performs better, and only take a decision after you’ve come to a strong conclusion.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

A few days back I was reading this interesting post on BloggingTips.com on how to plug an eBook on your blog and I instantly remembered all those ugly looking eBook sales/landing pages that you STILL find all over the Internet, like we’re still way back in ’98.

Do you have a good product to sell on your blog? Then why not give it a real chance. Why tell your visitors straight from the sales page that they are either stupid (“Please X, let me buy your book for only $29.99!) or that your have no idea how to make a unique presentation for a unique item!

Yes, I’m sure that almost every internet marketer will tell you how those ugly pages are effective, and how their “call to action” phrases and messages are really effective. Allow me to disagree! I hate them. You hate them. We run away the second we land on them!

A sale is not make by the number of colors and fonts you use on your landing page. It’s not made by the number of screen scrolls a user has to make in order to get to the part where the “call to action” makes him feel small and stupid compared to you, the big internet marketing guru!

A sale is made based on the quality of your products and ease of the (guided) buying process!

How can ClickTale help?

I discovered this tool (ClickTale) while working with one of my studio‘s customers and i was impressed by how easy it is to use it and how much useful information it provides:

• Record and watch actual user browsing sessions (real-time);
• Link analytics;
• User behavior: click heatmaps, scrolling heatmaps;
• Form analytics;
• and more…

Here’s a quick presentation of the tool:

So, there you go. A good user tracking tool that will give you enough insight on your visitor’s behavior and will help you discover which are your sales/landing page weak spots. And the best part? There’s also an option of signing up for a FREE account (of course with limited capabilities).

Also, if you’re looking to go pro with this tool, the guys over at ClickTale have a damn good offer of 20% off for a 6-month plan and 40% off for the annual subscription.

Go, take a look at ClickTale, test it out and say NO to those ugly looking sales pages!

This post does NOT contain affiliate links and it’s NOT a sponsored post.
It’s a post about a tool which I believe will help you improve your online sales!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

A while ago I wrote about a cool project that allows users to check how their blogs and websites stack against their competitors, Review My Web. Today, I’d like to present you with another free (and so useful) tool, from the same developer: RockinSEO.com.

Free Keyword Tracker

Yes, that’s what you get with RockinSEO. You get to track your website’s results in Google, Yahoo and the recently released Bing for up to 20 keywords, for free. More than that, for the same keywords you can compare your results with those of up to 3 competitor websites or blogs.
The results are easy to read and interpret as you can see in the following screenshots:

Track search engine keyword position

Check keywords against your competition

As you can see, the tool is really useful and simple to use, and any blogger interested in his blog’s position in the most relevant search engines should give it a try. And if you decide to do so…

Get Blogsessive’s Coupon and track up to 50 keywords!

Yes, that’s right. Even if the tool comes with a limit of 20 trackable keywords, the author, @Terry Novak has been kind enough to offer a special coupon to all the readers of Blogsessive who sign up for FREE until the end of this Friday. Use it and increase your account’s limit to 50 keywords.

Coupon code: blogsessive50

Now, go sign up and start optimizing your blog to number one!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Yesterday, Fi (Fantasy Interactive) sent out alpha invitations to their new product, Kontain.

This is one product I’ve signed up and (not very) patiently waited for its launch, as it should be pretty revolutionary in terms of user-friendliness. Basically, it’s the first Flash-based blogging platform open to world wide free public access.

Here’s how the folks at Fi describe Kontain:

Kontain is a free destination for users to media blog and share photos, videos and audio with friends, family, colleagues and even beautiful strangers. The core of each user's experience is media-driven and Kontain takes the everyday concept of blogging to a wider audience by making it easy for users of all demographics to "kontain" and share their life online. Simple enough for Mom and Dad, yet flexible and sophisticated for a web veteran, Kontain aims to be the Internet's premier destination for user-generated content.

The Alpha launch features (which would soon be backed up by a lot more features that are currently under development) as listed on the Kontain website are:

• Easy to Kontain your life
• Upload Photos, Videos and Audio
• Explore Kontain’s most popular
• Search the media way
• Personal dashboard
• Ratings and Popularity
• Commenting
• Basic privacy settings

A look into what’s in development shows us high resolution media uploads, galleries and collections, messaging, groups, subscriptions, stats, possibility of having your “kontainer” embedded on other websites, multimedia comments, rich(er) text editing, notes over multimedia and many more features.

Here are a few screenshots to help you familiarize with Kontain:

Get your Alpha account!

By the time I’m writing this post, there are still 8.500 accounts available (out of 10.000 a few hours ago) for this Alpha version of Kontain. If you are interested in this service, just go ahead and sign up for a free Kontain account.

My only worry for the time being is the SEO value of this platform and how will Google approach Kontain blogs, but I’m sure that the experience Fi has in the interactive media field will be put to a good use search-engine wise.

Kontain your life!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

One of the best learning methods is from experience, but sometimes, our own experience fails to provide us with what we need to know. That’s the moment when we need to look and learn from other people’s experience.

ReviewMyWeb.com is a fairly new website competitive analysis tool, but one that with a bit attention can turn into a very useful one.

Review My Web let’s you analyze your blog against two competitors and gives you access to a competitive report, covering:

• Traffic Rankings;
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO);
• Social Media / Blog Coverage;
• Detailed Website Analysis;

As an example, I decided to analyze ProBlogger.net against JohnChow.com and ShoeMoney.com. You can check out the results in the following screenshots.

Competitive Traffic Rankings

One thing that I’d love to know is how are these rankings calculated. It’s not specified in the report, but I have a feeling that Alexa is included, and I, for one, don’t place a lot of trust on Alexa lately.

Competitive Search Engine Analysis

This report focuses on backlinks and the current indexing levels, number of indexed pages and their quality and position. Considering the fact the ProBlogger delivers more (on topic) information, the number of backlinks seems pretty fair, against his 2 competitor, and with it, the “almost 5″ star ranking in this category.

Competitive Social Media Analysis

This report is based on the number of reactions in Google’s Blog Search and Technorati and it also provides a graph to compare your ranking against your two competitors. Again, ProBlogger’s more focused content gives him an edge, hitting a 5 star rating.

Detailed Analysis Results

Based on the about intermediary reports, a detailed analysis is generated, explaining the previous graphs and offering advice on what can be done to improve rankings in each area. Of course, this report can be better and cover more aspects, but I’m sure that with time, the application will be further developed.

Overview

My first impression on this tool is that while the intentions are good and helpful, this is only the first step in its development. There are many more topics and rankings that can be covered in order to generate a truly in depth competitive report, but that’s why I decided to feature it on Blogsessive, so that through exposure, it will get quality feedback that will lead to further improvements.

As an alternative to this tool, you can also check out HubSpot’s Website Grader.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

You’ve finally got your WordPress blog online and your hopes up. You’re writing articles and expecting readers to drop-in soon, but time passes and nothing happens. You know your articles are a good reading, so why aren’t readers showing up? That’s because you need to improve your online visibility, your WordPress SEO score.

In my past article, Better Blog SEO Plugin, I’ve presented a tool to help you easily manage your SEO needs. Now it’s time to explain how to test the results, and if the results are not as good as expected, how to update your content and SEO accordingly.

Let’s say you’ve optimized your home page and/or post page for some keywords, but still search engines refuse to index you higher and searches for those keywords aren’t providing you with any visitors. Most probably, that’s because your content is not relevant in relationship with the provided keywords. At this time, you have 2 choices:

1. Rethink your website’s keyword list and meta tags

Scan through your posts, find the most common and relevant keywords and modify your keywords meta tag accordingly. Use these keywords in the page’s title tag and for the description try to get a small paragraph that uses in a logic and readable way the provided keywords. The closer this description comes to a text paragraph available on the page, the more relevant it will be.

2. Rebuild your most recent content around the old keywords.

This option is the most time-consuming, but if you know you’ve got a good keyword list, with good search engine results (only not for you), then it should worth the effort. Always keep in mind how much competition you have for that keyword list, and how powerful that competition is. Otherwise you’re efforts will be in vain. It’s always better to fight for 1.000 relevant results and get the most of it, that for 10.000.000 results and get none.

Once you’ve done one of the above steps, the best thing you can do is to check the results with one of the following free available online SEO tools:

DomainTools.com – The Whois tool available on this domain provides users with a SEO rating of the queried domain, as well as with a SEO browser to analyze you page from a search engine’s point of view. It also makes suggestions on the things that still need to be done to increase your SEO score.

SEOCentro.com – SEO Centro provides user with a very helpful, free online meta tag analyzer. This way you can learn more about your meta tags, their relevance and also the most popular keywords found in your blog’s content.

There are of course many more online SEO tools, but these 2 should be enough to help you find your way around your blog’s SEO.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive