How to Find Free Photos for your lens

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The Dance

Think of your lens as a beautiful dance between you, the writer and creator of the content and your audience, the reader and end user. A dance should be done with a certain grace and ease. There should never be any awkwardness felt by either party. Both dancers should feel the excitement as they move together, and leave them breathless with hearts beating, a feeling of being alive at the end of the dance. Always grateful to have danced together, and hoping to someday dance again.

So how do you build a lens or website that will excite your passion, as well as your readers?

Read on and we will begin the journey my friend...

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The Journey

You begin your journey of building your lens or website with an attention grabber. An amazing photo that begins your story and leaves them wondering what else is out there (on your lens) where is this leading them, what other wonders lie in the paragraphs below.

A photo placed with each module is the attention grabber. You can allure readers to your material if each of your modules has all of the following;

1. Your module must be Visually Appealing enough to grab your readers attention. You need to convince your readers that this sight is worth not only visiting but hanging around a little bit, to learn something new, enjoy a good story, share someones life.

2. It must have unique content - no copying and pasting should be done.

3. The very first paragraph should be so captivating that your reader will want to know more.

4. The entire content of your lens should be full of great content. Don't let your audience (the readers) down. Quality lenses and website will pay for themselves with great traffic and royalties resulting from that traffic.

So let's just recap:

Your Photo's will be an instant attention grabber.

The first paragraph of every module should leave your reader wanting more, and the content should satisfy their curiousity, and leave your audience feeling like visiting your website or lens was worth their time.

The Grand Canyon
Photograph © by Linda Hoxie, all rights reserved

Use your own Photos

Some of us have access to some amazing photographs of our own. As you build your lens and you wind through the river of ideas you have for each module, if you have photo's you have taken available you can look through them and see if any will work for what you are wanting to use them for.
If you want tips on taking great photos, take a look at Photography is an Art.

There are some things that you may want to consider doing if you use your own photographs.

1. If you want to be the only one using your photo on the web, you can add a copyright and reserve all rights to the photo.

2. Although Squidoo has been kind enough to allow us to add photos to each text module or use polaroid modules, I would suggest not uploading your photos that way.

Why you say?....Traffic!

Because you can actually draw traffic to your website by using a link to a photo storage sight of your own. (Personally I use flickr.com but there are many other sight out there that allow you to upload your photo's for free and store them)

There are ways that you can use your own photographs to draw traffic to your website or lens.

A. When I upload them onto Flickr, I add a link with each photo to the website that I am uploading them onto, (in the description) so if anyone is searching photo's on the internet and lands on my flickr photo, they can follow the link to my website to.

B. When I place them on this website I always try to add an "alt" tag. For those that aren't familiar with what an alt tag is, I can explain.

Normally you would place a image link like this:

(img src="Your image url here")

the ( ) are replaced with < >

An alt tag is done simply by adding the following tag:

(img src="your image url here" alt="Description of your gorgeous photo")

the ( ) are replaced with < >

The description is the key to more traffic, because when people start searching the internet for images on google and different search engines, they are searching those alt tags.

Sunset at Porto Covo, west coast of Portugal.
Photo credit: (Alvesgaspar, public domain, wikipedia commons)

Public Domain

If you find photos on public domain to use for your website like the breathtaking photo of the above sunset that I found on wikipedia, be sure to always credit the author and the website that you found it on.

The one downfall in using these photos that have been posted on public domain is the fact that they are used by many different people and are not unique.

But honestly in finding the above photo, I just had to share it with you. Unique or not, isn't it absolutely beautiful!

Photo by Photo credit: Clouds over Cancun by Daily Venture

The Artist or Photographer themselves

When you find a photo you would like to use that was taken by another, why not see if you can get permission from that photographer to use their photo on your lens or website.

Many artist and photographers are flattered and proud of their work and love the opportunity to get more exposure. Many of them will allow you to use their work with a link back to their webpage and credit.

For example I used many of Daily Venture's free photos on my My Bucket List Lens. They allow you to use their photos with a backlink to their website. It helps both parties, they get more traffic to their website and you get the honor of using their fantastic photos, the people that visit your website get to enjoy these photo's, your content and perhaps even venture over to another great website. It is a win win situation for everyone involved.

Ahh...there is the dance again!

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Use an Affiliate Marketing Website for Posters, Artwork and Photos

The secret to amazing photos that you can use for free and even make money on if someone that visits your lens and likes it enough to purchase it, is the affiliate marketing lenses that sell them.

I use the following for my websites, they have a fantastic selection.

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The AllPosters.com Affiliates Program is a great way to make money with your website. All you have to do is place links on your site to AllPosters.com. When your site visitors click on your links and make purchases at AllPosters.com, you earn 25%-30% of the sale.

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