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- Does Fotolia Have Photos for Your Blog?
Do you use images in your blog posts? Most bloggers like to increase their posts’—and blogs’—impact with an image, and while I’m a die-hard textophile, I can see the point. An image is certainly more eye-catching than text. Couple the right image with the right heading, and you’re on fire.
Until recently, the only image resource site I’d used was stock.xchng. While I like the site and its offerings, sometimes, there’s slim pickings for particular image types. I prefer not to use CC-licensed images myself because some CC images can be used for commercial purposes, others can’t, and the image owners may change their minds, then ask you to take the image down … to be honest, it all seems like a lot of hassle to me.
I do work with a lot of content, so maybe that has something to do with my inflexibility on this point.
Fotolia: royalty-free stock photography
Recently we were contacted by Fotolia and offered a month-long trial of the service, which boasts a library of over 13 million images. There were some images that were unavailable within the trial, but in the month, I sourced 17 images. Only once did I find that an image I wanted to use was unavailable in that subscription—and it wasn’t hard to find a replacement that was just as good.
Fotolia offers photographs, vector images, and videos. The only option I used was images. To give you an idea of what’s on offer, I ran a little search on both Fotolia and stock.xchng for the keyword “handshake”.
Fotolia returned 17,913 results, and the selection was good.
stock.xchng returned 34 results, and the selection was … not as good.
Both sites allow you to roll over the images to see an enlarged, lightbox version of the pics. Both tell you on the results page what sizes are available, and when you view a specific image, both sites tell you how you can use that image—in Fotolia’s case, you’ll also find out the cost of the image.
Costs
Fotolia uses a credit system to sell images. The cost of each image depends on:
- the size and resolution of the image
- the license you choose
- the image itelf—some images simply cost more than others.
If you’re planning to buy a stack of images, subscription plans are available which can see the images cost you “as little as $0.14 per image!”
Use and application
Fotolia offers two kinds of licenses:
“The standard license (from XS to XXL and the V license)
“This license allows you to use our images to illustrate magazine ads, websites, blogs, marketing campaigns, press articles, tv video or movies, book and book covers, documents, reports, presentations, etc. on all types of media with no limit on time or copies.
“The extended licenses (X to XV)
“This license allows buyers to use the image to create derivative products intended for resale or distribution where the value of the product is derived from the image (postcards, t-shirts ect.)
“Without limitation, you’ll be able to create mugs, t-shirts, posters, greeting cards, templates or other products, and sell them to your customers.”
This is a pretty big bonus over free stock images. stock.xchng doesn’t allow the resale of images—if you want to do that, you need to contact the creator through the site. That’s (likely) no big deal, but from an ease-of-use perspective, Fotolia makes this a no-brainer.
Image quality
Anyone who works with images knows that there are good stock libraries and bad stock libraries. Even I can tell that. Those who are really into design, marketing, and visual communication can pick very fine lines between what’s deemed “usable” and what’s not.
I’ve used a lot of images from stock.xchng over the last three years or so, and it’s pretty easy to tell the dross form the diamonds. Some amateur photographers are great and I’m always able to find something really good on the site.
While Fotolia returns many more results, and more polished images, for each search, I generally found the bulk of images to be a little too … posed. Or contrived. An image of a hand reaching out of a computer monitor, in particular, made me cringe (I think I was searching for “handshake” at the time). I still shudder when I think of it.
I just can’t get that image out of my head.
Seriously.
But let’s move on. On occasion, I did use what I felt were less-than-ideal images for want of anything better (one of these days I’m going to do my own photo shoot of a branding iron, no matter what it takes).
That’s not to say there weren’t some fabulous, fabulous photos on the site. And some of the less-polished, not-designed-for-an-ad-agency shots that I feel are more natural and speak more directly to real readers.
All in all, I’d say Fotolia had a great selection of images. I always found something I liked—and found it quickly.
Finding what you want
As a text fiend, I find search functions universally poor. However, the search on Fotolia was really very good. I had no complaints, which is saying something, and was pleased with the results I got every time, which is saying even more.
If you’ve used image sites before, you’ll know that it can take some intuiting to get the kind of image you want. So when I had to find a shot for Angela’s post on humor, I expected the worst. I’d have to say that I got some pretty unusable results on Fotolia, but with them, I also got some good results, and was extremely pleased with the image I chose. It was natural, not too posed, and comparatively low-key.
Choosing images is an extremely personal thing, though, and what I think is bad, you might see as great. All I can tell you is that I had better luck searching for tough keywords on Fotolia than I ever have elsewhere.
Is Fotolia worth it?
If you’re not earning money from your blog, I wouldn’t recommend spending cash on images. You can get good free photography through so many other sources—spend your money on something that translates directly to more readers.
If you are making money through your site, Fotolia is worth a look. You don’t need to be making millions, either. The images I bought cost US$0.33 each, and I downloaded 17 images during the trial, so all up, Darren would have been looking at $5.61 for three weeks’ worth of images here at ProBlogger. Not bad!
If you:
- deal with a lot of content
- don’t want to have to worry about licensing and permissions
- want to spend as little time as possible making your posts look good
- want to finish looking for images so you can [insert other, more interesting task here]
…then Fotolia could provide the answer.
Have you used Fotolia? What about other stock photography sites? Let us know how you manage imagery on your sites through the comments.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Does Fotolia Have Photos for Your Blog?
Переслать - Going Gonzo, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Blog
This guest post is by Enzo F. Cesario of Brandsplat.
“We were halfway to Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”
It certainly wasn’t the line that Rolling Stone expected out of sports and political columnist Hunter S. Thompson. He’d been sent to Vegas to report on a motorcycle race, and instead sent back a manifesto on the hollow glories of Sin City, the assorted pleasures of half the psychoactive drugs common to the American vocabulary, the inadequacies of the journalistic lifestyle, and of course the death of the American dream. Hard up against (okay, somewhat past) his deadline, Thompson resorted to pulling out rambling entries from the pages of his notebook and mailing them in directly. It was unprofessional, it was sophomoric, it was gonzo—and it worked. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a hit.
Opinions vary on just why it worked. I believe it was because Thompson was writing uncensored. He wrote openly about topics that still horrified American sensibilities. In the same year that the phrase “war on drugs” would first be coined, he boldly declared the incompetence of the politicians and police who would be prosecuting it. He mused about the death of the ’60s-style revolutionary zeal, the illusion of a freewheeling town that Vegas maintains over an undercurrent of hard-won respectability and so much more. He wrote honestly and didn’t limit himself, even managing to comment that the original assignment, to cover the motorcycle race, confused and bored him.
Had he been writing the same stuff today, it would have made a series of fantastic blogs.
The world is full of dull, sterile writing. A blog’s strength lies in its ability to be personal, and its ability to update at any time. Get on, log in, pontificate, click submit and it’s there, ready for the reader. People read blogs for the style as much as for the content—they want to know how, as well as what, the blogger thinks. They may show up for the content, but they stay for the personality.
Personality is where Gonzo thrives. Asked about the format, Thompson said, “I don’t get any satisfaction out of the old traditional journalist’s view: ‘I just covered the story. I just gave it a balanced view,’” and “you can’t be objective about Nixon.”
Well, that sounds like political blogging to me. There’s nothing wrong with being fair, but sometimes you have to be able to say, “The leading candidate reminds me of the worst qualities of my math and science teachers—boring, dry, inaccessible and rambling about subjects I couldn’t care less about while ignoring the ones I was interested in.”
So put that style into your blog. You don’t have to turn it into a gin-soaked journey through your chosen topic—in fact, there are very few writers who can actually write well while inebriated (Thompson happened to be one of them). No, what I’m talking about is writing something unedited and uncensored.
Let your inner lion out to play, the writing part of you that says, “I absolutely do not care what people think about this piece,” and go to town. Write hard—present your worst opinions, the strongest way you feel about things. Don’t set out to shock, just set out to be absolutely honest in a way that people cannot mistake for soft-pedaling or going easy on the subject.
Second, don’t edit. This may sound like sacrilege to the profession of writing, but it’s a good tip when you’re writing. Get the content down, write in a stream and let your topic go where it wants to. Try the first-person narrative that makes Gonzo such a joy. Sink yourself into the story. What do you think, feel, want out of this piece? Get that feeling, those essences down on paper.
Writing honestly can be hard. “Is it brandable? Is it too different? Will it generate traffic?” I’m not going to lie: Asking “Is it safe?” is a deep-rooted part of our way of looking at the world, and there’s nothing wrong with it. We want security, and there are the legendary tales of a weird and wacky change causing someone to shoot a good career in the foot, never to be heard from again.
But far more common is the tale you never hear, of the person who writes two entries, gets discouraged and never puts down another word. Or the countless thousands who say “I want to be a writer, but” and allow whatever comes after but to keep them from ever picking up the pen and putting form to their thoughts.
So do it. Go nuts this one time, write something ecstatic or satirical. Skip the conventions for a bit and reinvent your writing, just to keep your readers on the edge of their seats. I’ve got news for you: You’re not going to write the next American manifesto, so now that you know that, you’re free to write a really fun, snappy piece of blogging content that will get your readers talking.
And maybe you can even do it on a road trip to Barstow.
Enzo F. Cesario is an expert on blogs and social media for business and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. For the free Brandsplat Report go to Brandsplat.com or visit our blog at http://www.ibrandcasting.com.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Going Gonzo, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Blog
Переслать - Blogging Takes Super Human Effort vs Blogging is Easy [Misconceptions New Bloggers Have #1]
At a recent conference, I presented on the topic of making money from blogging. At the end of the session, I hung around to chat with attendees, and ended up talking with about 30 people in what turned out to be an informal Q&A time.
The group was largely new to blogging and as they asked questions, I realized that there are a lot of misconceptions about blogging and (particularly about making money in this space).
Interestingly, the questions I was asked that day indicated that the misconceptions were all not of the same type. In fact, some had completely different misconceptions of blogging. The truth sometimes lies between the extremes.
Copyright Antony McAulay - Fotolia.com
Today I want to tackle two of the misconceptions that I heard at the conference from attendees. They relate to one another, but probably come from opposite ends of the spectrum.
Blogging is easy: it’s just writing!
One of the shocks that await many bloggers once they emerge after their first blog’s launch is that there’s a lot more to blogging than just stringing together a few sentences and publishing posts.
Blogging is much more about generating content.
This becomes apparent to most bloggers pretty quickly—usually within the hours after they hit publish on their first post and wonder when the readers will come and start reading and leaving comments.
The realization usually dawns around then that marketing your blog is something worth learning about.
Other realizations come thick and fast as readers do start to engage with you, and you learn that building interaction on your blog and fostering a sense of community are also core tasks that you need to learn about and do.
The list of things that a blog can benefit from is almost endless:
- marketing
- community management
- editing
- design
- server management
- search engine optimization
- staying in touch with what others in your niche are doing
- ad sales
- affiliate management
- bookkeeping/accounting
- networking
The list goes on and changes as your blog grows and goes through different parts of its life cycle.
Yes blogging is about writing (and that in itself is not always easy), but there’s a lot more to it for most bloggers than that!
Blogging is too hard
Okay, so you might be looking at that list of tasks that a blogger needs to get their head around and wonder if you’re cut out for it. If that’s the way you feel, you are not alone.
Many people look at the idea of starting to blog and feel completely overwhelmed by it and unable to tackle it because it’s either beyond what they feel they are capable of, or it seems like too much work.
Others get a week or two into a new blog and give up for the same reasons—they see what’s ahead and for one reason or another feel that it’s beyond them.
The reality (at least in my experience) is that while it is a lot of work—and it’s a lot more than just writing content—it is not completely beyond most people to be able to grow into the roles needed to operate a successful blog.
I say this because I did it, and I see myself as a very ordinary person. My “credentials” for becoming a full-time blogger were not the most spectacular.
- Before I started blogging I had had 20 jobs in ten years, none of which were in anything to do with the online space and most of which were fairly manual/physical jobs.
- My only qualifications were half a degree in Marketing (which I failed half of the subjects in) and a Bachelor of Theology.
- I’d received a ‘C’ in English in my final year of high school.
- I was incapable of making text bold on my first blog for several weeks—I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when it came to anything technical!
I don’t tell that to build a “rags to riches” story (I had a good life and was a happy chap), but rather because I didn’t have any of the skills or much of the experience that I listed above when I started out.
I either learned them or developed relationships with others who did.
On a slight tangent, a few weeks before my first son was born I was chatting with a friend and starting to get a little panicked about my abilities as a father.
I was projecting forward years ahead about whether I’d be able to raise a kid going through primary school or, worse still, if I’d be able to parent a teen. My friend’s wise words were: “You’ll have 13 years to grow into the role of a parent with teenagers.”
The same lesson is true with blogging. While a successful blog does call upon those who run it to do a lot of different things, when a blog is born there is a smaller list of tasks at hand.
There’s time to grow into your role as a blogger.
In my own experience of blogging, I feel I’ve grown up in my skill set as my blogs have evolved. At each step along the way there are challenges, but in time you learn, adapt, and discover what you need to know to overcome them.
Blogging is lots of work, but it’s not unachievable
If you’re starting out in blogging, or are considering jumping in, do so with the knowledge that there is more to it than stringing a few sentences together and hitting publish. It takes a broader focus than just writing and is a lot of work. However, do know that while you may one day need to expand your skill set and throw more time into it, you will have time to grow into your blog.
On a side note, I find it interesting that some who write about blogging (and who marketing blogging products) sometimes present blogging in one of the above ways. There are some who talk about blogging (and market their products) as if its the easiest thing in the world—like you just have to flick on a switch and a successful blog magically happens by itself.
On the other hand, I’ve also heard others speak about blogging at conferences as being beyond most normal people, building it up as something that can only be done by people with amazing skills and almost super-human dedication.
The truth is somewhere between.
What was your experience of starting out blogging? Did you have one of these misconceptions? What advice would you give new bloggers who are thinking in one of these ways?
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Blogging Takes Super Human Effort vs Blogging is Easy [Misconceptions New Bloggers Have #1]
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