How To Spruce Up Your Blog With Images From Flickr

There are quite a number of places where you can get images for your blog. My favorite one is Flickr. It is free, it  is easy to use, and it is legal...

So, let's start from typing www.Flickr.com (watch the spelling). When the page opens, scroll all the way down and look for Creative Commons, as this is what we need for this post.

Click Creative Commons and this is what you would see on your screen:

There are different types of Creative Commons, and on the right side there is a description, so you can choose what you use. The least restrictive is the first one, Attribution License, which also offers the largest collection of images to download, and all you have to do is mention the author. Of course, you can read and use other type of uses, but be careful with non-commercial use, as using it for your real estate blog is commercial use.

Of course, it does not make sense to go to a site offering millions of images for free with proper attribution and run into a copyright violation.

So, under Attribution License click «see more», and here is how the page will look when it opens:

In the search field put the keyword for what you are looking. For this blog I typed «blogging» (without quotation marks). Click search and you will get your results, which sometimes can take dozens or even hundreds of pages.

Choose the photo that you like, double click it:

Right click on the image and the pop up box would tell you what sizes are available. Choose the one you want to use (in this example this image is only small, I usually prefer medium – 640 x 475). Open it. At first glance it looks pretty much like the previous page but here you see the size and you see the linked Flickr user name of the author:

Highlight it (and it may take some time before you master «grabbing» the link, and use it in the attribution (see below). At this stage you also right click on the  image and click Save As and save on your computer so that later you can download it into your AR blog the same way you download any image.

Of course, Flickr is much more than only legally «stealing»  images for your blog posts. Spend some time on this site and learn other cool things you can do here. Click on Flickr tour on the page and good luck learning. You can also become a contributor, and some AR members I know are (for example, Jenny Kotulyak, my Canadian friend). But for thhis demonstration we are done. Hope it helps.

* Image courtesy of lawtonchiles via Flickr.com under Creative Commons License

P.S. Please, read Inna's comment (#21). She adds a whole new layer, and I think it is important to protect yourself the way she suggests, especially because it is very easy to do.