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Easily Find Free Content for your Blogs

By Bill French

Services for Real Estate Pros with MyST Technology Partners

June 29, 2008 12:57 PM

I was having lunch with a few of our customers last week and one of them remarked that it was a pain looking through all the free content sites for images, articles, and stories that can be reused for blog posts and articles. I had also experienced this - the Creative Commons directories are wonderful, but not as friendly as good'ol Google's format and layout. And the new Creative Commons filters in Google are excellent, but your searches include the entire web - not always ideal if you're trying to narrow your scope to professional produced images, videos, and text.

Sooo... I decided to build a comprehensive aggregation of all the great content sites that are free (or mostly free) and host it at GimmeFreeContent.com (Note: the DNS may still be propagating). This search engine is still a youngster with plenty of room for growth, but like the content it recommends, it is free to use so spread the URL.

I also have plans to add more free content directories and lots of other resources related to helping you blog faster and better. Be sure to submit your suggestions and comments - I'm sure this could be greatly improved and I'm confident many of you know of some great resources.

I've never been a big fan of using free content for blogging, but I've changed my tune after researching this arena. I was amazed to see the number of sites and catalogs that offer great images for free and open use in blogs and websites.

Enjoy. Cheers! --bf

Comments(13)

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Chris Horton

Horton's Lawn Care L.L.C. - Burton, MI

Bill- While they are ok with them being used for blogs and websites are they ok with business blogs and websites and some eventhough they have the CC's are not available for use in commercial/ business use blogs/ websites.... That is why I have still shied away from these things unless they are my own photos I have personally taken.

Jun 29, 2008 01:16 PM

Jimmy McCall

JimmyMcCall.com - Cunningham, TN

The Ex-Mortgage Consultant

Bill, I bookmarked the site. Will try to visit it later this evening. Sounds like a great to get information. Thanks

Jun 29, 2008 01:20 PM

Gregory Lohr

West Columbia, SC

Hmmm...maybe I missed something. I clicked on your link, did an image search for "house," clicked on a search result, and they wanted 20 cents for the image. ??? I guess they need to refine that "free" part a bit.

Jun 29, 2008 01:22 PM

Bill French

MyST Technology Partners - Dillon, CO

Chris:

It depends on the work - this is why we spend most of our time reading license agreements. Creative Commons allows authors to publish various formats both for and not for commercial work. Here's an example of one where commercial use would be allowed.

Jun 29, 2008 01:30 PM

Gregory:

That's why I said - "this engine is a youngerster" (code for "alpha test"). ;-) We will weed out the "somewhat not free" content sites based on feedback. However, I searched for "house", got a bunch of results, then refined the search to "Image", and I had 5 free photos to download within 30 seconds. I think it works pretty well.

Jun 29, 2008 01:35 PM

Christine L

Property Cupid, LLC - Chandler, AZ

Broker

Interesting info Bill, Thanks for sharing!

Jun 29, 2008 02:37 PM

Stefan Geyer

SOA Realty - Aurora, CO

Progressive...well done. I like the simple interface, which is in the spirit of blogging > drawing attention to type and content. I wish you the best!

Jun 30, 2008 01:46 PM

Thanks for the comments about the simple Interface Stefan. It was very hard to keep it clean, but a friend reminded me - "Never underestimate the power of white space." :-)

Jun 30, 2008 03:07 PM

Carole Cohen

Howard Hanna Cleveland City Office - Cleveland, OH

Realtor, ePRO

WOW Bill this is great. I just typed in three words of photos I had been trying to find for posts last month and got two out of the three. This is a big help! I wish I had 1/4 the creative ideas in my head you do! Hope you are well..

Jul 12, 2008 09:03 AM

Carole:

Glad it was helpful. Many of our blogsite clients are saying similar things, and I'm also now a fan of using content that is being published openly for the benefit of others. Every now and then, drop a note to the creators to thank them, or link to them - they will appreciate the feedback as well.

And thanks for the comment about ideas - I strive to think up new things all the time. We just launched a pretty cool wacky idea - our platform now matches up our clients with requsts from 12,000 journalists looking for experts on subjects they blog about. Eevery day it sends introductions to help our clients increase their business exposure.

My next project - twitrisk.com. ;-) A service that helps big companies assess the risks of their employee tweats.

Jul 12, 2008 04:29 PM

The connect the blogger to journalist idea is good on two levels. Good for blogger exposure and maybe even help the two 'sides' see that they can work together to each other's benefit rather than each side having to be right lol.

Jul 19, 2008 02:12 PM

Team Honeycutt

Allen Tate - Concord, NC

Food for thought ...thanks for sharing,.

Jul 19, 2008 03:22 PM

Carole -

"... connect the blogger to journalist idea ..."

Yep - this idea is working pretty well. A number of our clients have secured free press. It turns out that journalists really like to interview business people that blog because they have a "voice" and typically experience verbalizing their message and domain expertise.

In the I-can't-stop-inventing category, we recently integrated our Free Content search engine into MyST Blogsite so that our users can search for resources directly from their authoring tools [read more]. ;-)

Jul 19, 2008 03:45 PM

Easily Find Free Content for your Blogs

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