Click Pix for Cash: A step by step tutorial!

Let's start by examining expectations a little. Being able to easily store and link to a few pictures and make a little bit of change when you use them requires one level of effort. Collecting, uploading and posting pictures purposely for the intent of making an income is another matter entirely. I'm going to assume that you (like me) are in it for ease and a few bucks now and then since the process is largely the same in either circumstance.

What kind of pictures ya got?

Of course, the pictures need to be in a digital format. JPG and GIF are used most often. Most hosts don't like other, more esoteric formats so I won't discuss using them.

More important is what they are of. Are they pictures you took? Are there any discernible themes to any groupings of them? Is there any special use that a given group of pictures will be used for (i.e. eBay listings)? These are important questions to think about a bit because you will likely be offered the opportunity to make galleries or folders of pictures so having some element of organization to your picture files will prove to be quite helpful in the long run. Of course, what am I talking about - you already have your pictures organized don't you? What was I thinking??

Which host to use?

Now that you have your pictures in order, you'll need a place to put them. There are several providers that will host your pictures AND pay you for the clicks. Three that I'm aware of are Shared Images . com (which I know nothing about save for the fact that they offer an upload from URLs), URL Cash(these folks also host some porn so be aware that your images may appear with nikked ladies) and Share A Pic. I have founded my little image blog empire on the ShareAPic platform and found them to be reliable and helpful. Jordan, who runs the place, has always been responsive and they have a "Clean Content Policy" that keeps your files in good company. Since this is the host I use and the class of the industry in this field as far as I'm concerned, I'll be using them as the basis of my continued descriptions.

Shameless plug!

If you do not yet have an account with a paying photo host, I'd be honored to have you sign up with my referral. I will receive a very wee bit for your page views for which I'll be thankful. Please click on the ad link below to get started.

There are 2 basic ways to upload your pictures to ShareAPic - onesies and twosies or bulk upload. Let's start with making a home (gallery) for them to live in.

Make a Gallery for yourself

After you've signed in to your new ShareAPic account, you'll see a tab labeled "MY Galleries" - click on that and the next page is where you can create your first gallery to house your pictures. It's very straightforward. Click in the box and type in a name (1) then click "Add" (2) and the new gallery will appear in the list below. Viola! You may wipe the sweat from your brow now..
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Uploading just a few pictures manually

Now we're rolling. You can now click on the name of your new gallery (1)



which will in turn take you to the page where you upload your pictures at last.



I'm going to bet that if you've gotten far enough with a computer to be creating Squidoo lenses, you probably know how to use the browse function to search for the files to upload. Since you were so well organized before you started,I'm sure you'll have little trouble finding your picture files and selecting them for upload ;-) So go ahead and grab a few and upload them to your ShareAPic account. When done, it should look like this:



And there you go - you now have pictures uploaded to an online host who pays you for clicks. Good so far, but...

"But what if I have a lot of pictures I want to upload/"

Jordan and the team at ShareAPic have thought of a solution for that too. And thank goodness. After uploading 30-40 pictures 5 at a time, you risk carpel tunnel serious enough to inhibit 12 oz curls and that's unthinkable!

ShareAPic provides some software they call their "Mass Uploader" It is a separate piece of software that needs to be downloaded and installed but once done (+/- 5 minutes) you life will be much easier. You'll find the download link about halfway down the right side of the first page you land on after logging in (the "My Stats" page on the tabs at the top). Click the link, download and install the program. It's easy - no more complicated than what you've installed elsewhere.

Once it's installed, open it up and it'll look like this:



Start using the Mass Uploader by entering your username and password (1). Once you're in, the Galleries field will be populated with the names of any galleries you've already made (2). One especially nice feature of the software is the ability to create new galleries on the fly by using the (you guessed it) "Create" button. This will ask you to give your new gallery a name and it will then be created and be there waiting for you with the pictures you're about to upload into it when you log back onto the ShareaPic website. MUCH easier than making a new one on the web then going back to the software uploader! Finally, click "Add Files". This will bring up a browse window where you can navigate to your neatly arranged picture folder we mentioned above, select the pictures (files) you'd like to upload and say oK. Once you've done that, your screen should look roughly like this:



Once you've added all the files you want (1) be sure to click "Check all" (2) then let 'em fly by clicking "Upload Checked" (3) and off they go. The process itself can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes or more depending on how many pictures your adding to your galleries. Grab a beverage and it should be done when you get back. Go ahead... you deserve a break.

How do you put pictures somewhere? Why simple: Linking! How do I do that, you ask? Well ShareaPic has provided an answer that makes linking extremely simple for the uninitiated and convenient for the seasoned linking pro. Here's how it works...

At this point you should now have a gallery of pictures available to you on ShareaPic. It will look something like this:



See down there at the bottom in the drop down (up?) box where it says "Get complete link code for selected images" and "Get single link code for selected images"? That's what you want to do.

Try this - select on of the images in your gallery by checking the little box below it then scroll down and tell it to "Get single link code for selected image". You'll be taken to a page where you can copy pre-formatted links to paste where ever the heck you want. The page looks something like this:



The links on this page will have you covered for 90% of the times you want to post up your pictures somewhere. For the other 10%, we'll need to find another Squidoo lens. Let's start with the link in the box for "Clickable thumbnail for your MySpace, eBay auction, website, etc." These are full bore HTML links to allow you to post your picture anywhere you can use HTML. The locations in the title are pretty suggestive of places where they work well, but they are hardly all of them. Here's a quick example of using an HTML picture link on a blog - lets put Mr. Spock on a Blogger blog.

1) Open your gallery
2) Click the checkbox for the picture you want to use (Mr. Spock)
3) At the bottom of the page select "Get single link code"
4) Click the link. This will highlight the entire code allowing you to copy all of it easily (don't cut it out - you may want to come back to it in this session).
5) Go to the page you want to paste the code into. In this case, I'll use a Blogger html gadget. Simple - just paste the link into the gadget window:



then click save. Easy!!



See - that's wasn't too hard now, was it? You can now post your pictures anywhere that accepts HTML and that's literally millions of pages on the web. That ought to be enough, but in the words of Billy Mays, "But wait - there's more!". ShareaPic alsp provides specialized links to allow posting on forums and boards that use a language different than HTML. The language is different but the process is pretty much the same. It's like this:

1) Open your gallery
2) Click the checkbox for the picture you want to use (Mr. Spock)
3) At the bottom of the page select "Get single link code"
4) Click the link in the "Clickable thumbnails for forums/boards" This will highlight the entire code allowing you to copy all of it easily (don't cut it out - you may want to come back to it in this session).
5) Go to the page you want to paste the code into. In this case, I'll use a favorite ecommerce board, Auction Sellers Motivators to show adding to a forum. withuin your forum, click to post a reply, write your comments then punctuate your points with pictures:



Then click "Post" -



and there's Mr. Spock again! See - simple and painless. Don't you just love that?

Post several pictures at once

Need more than one picture? No problem. Just use the "Get Complete Link code" link for several selected pictures and paste that in your location. When you do, the end result will look like this:

So, there you go!

You now know how to post pictures all over the world wide web. What happens next is the good part. When folks see your pictures posted on a webpage or forum, if the stars are aligned right, they'll click on them and when they do - you make money. They'll be taken to a page where they can see the image full size and will be offered the same links you used to post them elsewhere themselves. That makes you even more money! Gotta love that!

My father, himself a Clio-winning marketing guy, taught me early in lifre that the more you throw at the wall, the more sticks. Good advise that advises that you post pictures every place you can. You don't make money if no one sees your pictures. Besides posting pictures to illustrate your forum posts, one idea I've found that works well is a picture blog. Google's Blogger is simple to setup and gives you a wonderful place to showcase your pictures AND an easy link to ALL your pictures for use all over too. I have pic-blogs at Emotipics.net/ and AlbumArtPics.com.. Please feel free to check them out and maybe get some ideas for your pic-blog. And do click on pics as much as you like, of course! Don't forget to search Squidoo for other ideas on how to share your picture links or the link to your picture blog. There's a world of good information here. Use it!

Here are some general suggestions to make your experience a little easier. They are in no particular order. I hope they grease your skids a little.

Several small galleries are better than one huge one.

Try if you can to keep your gallery sizes to fewer that 100 pictures. Smaller galleries load faster and are easier to scroll around and select pictures to get link codes from. I have one gallery that's over 400 pictures and although it's eminently usable, it takes awhile.

Sign up for Bidvertiser through ShareaPic..

ShareaPic offers you the ability to become a publisher with Bidvertiser - a service kinda like Google adwords where you can make more cash serving up ads on your sites. It's quick, easy and automatic once you're signed up. Click the link below to learn more AND get a FREEBIE.

$20 in FREE Clicks for everyone from BidVertiser - Click Here!

Make sure you're happy with the names of the galleries - you can't change them.

I made a gallery with a short,quick name just so I could quickly start posting new pictures. A month later, I wanted to feature a link to the entire gallery (yup, you can do that too) and the name was just too confusing to post. I already had several links posted from the gallery and found that if you change that name, those links don't work anymore - that's very bad. If you find yourself in that position just make a new gallery and link to that. The ShareaPic folks don't care how much room you use, they have lots.

The "Click to Enlarge" trick.

Astute observers will note that I used Photobucket to host many of the pictures in this lens. That's because ShareaPic provides thumbnails which are small and don't enlarge too well. I wanted you to easily see what I was talking about so I hosted them there. You probably CAN do the same thing with the direct ShareaPic link, I just haven't tried it yet.

Since the thumbnails are small, they may be hard to see in detail. If you encourage viewers to "Click to Enlarge" you'll make more money - get it?

Be persistent - be patient.

It takes awhile to get enough links around so that you see clicks everyday. The longer you post links, the faster it happens. The more you post links, the faster it happens.

There's a tab on your account - My Stats - where you can see how may clicks you've accumulated and how much $$ you've made. Before long, you'll be checking it everyday. It's good fun to watch it grow.

Use your site yourself.

Be sure to bookmark your own site(s and use them yourself as a customer would. Don't just post them up and forget about them. Bookmarks make access quick. Familiarity with ALL your pictures increases your ability to place your links well. Seeing your effort from the customer's perspective spawns innovation that makes you unique. And ultimately, if you won't use it, why would anyone else?

Will you get rich overnight? Probably not. But over time you will accumulate money for doing very little. I like that.

The initial hurdles of uploading, creating galleries, building pic blogs and/or posting links will take several hours but once done, you can update and keep your pictures and links fresh in just a couple hours a month. And you'll get better at recognizing opportunities to use your links and they in turn will perform better for you (more clicks!). You'll begin to save pictures to populate your galleries. You'll know where pictures fit and that all translates to clicks. If you so choose, browse the forums at ShareaPic and you'll find people who have millions of hits over a years time. That's some pretty good cash! Learn from them.

I now raise my glass (filled with beverage financed by picture proceeds) and toast to your upcoming success with this.

Cheers!