Making Money From Photos - Step One

The first thing you should do when you set out to make some extra cash from your photos is to get a website or blog. Now I know what you are thinking, "great now I have to shell out some coin", but that's just not true. There are plenty of places out there that provide free websites or blogs.

The two sources that I use are Blogger for my blogs, and Googlepages for my websites. Signing up for these sites is free, and since they are both run by Google it is easy to implement your Google Adsense into these sites and start making some money without even selling any photos! That's right all you need is some sweet photos, traffic sources and like I said before, a bit of patience.

First of all lets take a look at Blogger. A blog is pretty much a website that you can post in however much you like, and is sorted by date. Therefore, everything you post automatically shows up at the top of the page. You get to choose your own URL (website address) so you should try and choose something that people would naturally search for if they were looking for pictures. For instance, my blog addresses are as follows...

http://natureswallpaper.blogspot.com
http://focusingphotos.blogspot.com
http://stunningphotography.blogspot.com
http://photoholicsanonymous.blogspot.com
http://worldsofwater.blogspot.com
http://sunuptillsundown.blogspot.com

Once you have chosen a URL for your site you need to choose a title for your site. Simply try to have is match or come close to your URL, this helps when it comes to getting traffic from search engines and the like.

After this you can edit your fonts and colors of the site to make it more visually stimulating, blogger makes it quite simple just go to the "Layout" tab. Once you have the colors and fonts you want you can begin posting. You can post as many shots as you like on one post, but I normally limit it to one photograph per shot so people can comment on that specific shot.

Once you have posted a few photos you can sign up for Google Adsense and start putting ads on your blog. Be sure to read the terms and conditions so you do not put too many ads on your site. Also, make sure to use "channels" in Adsense so you can keep track of where your money is coming from. Adsense allows you to choose different shapes and colors so try and match your blog as best as you can. When you have the adsense code that Google provides for you just go to "Layout" and then "Add Page Element". After this choose "html/java script" and paste in your ad. Bam! You are done, and your ad should start to show up in about 10 minutes or so. Of course you can add links to other pages and gadgets to your blog to spice it up, but this is the basics.

Now for Googlepages, the setup here is slightly different as your content is not sorted by date, what you want to show up at the top of the page is your choice. Again, Google Page Creator is free so go ahead and sign up. As with Blogger you have to choose your URL and fonts, colors, title, ect.

With Googlepages I prefer to have a main page and then create a bunch of subdomains which are as easy as clicking the "create new page" button. You can check out my Googlepages for more info...

http://natureswallpaper.googlepages.com
http://amazingplants.googlepages.com

Stay tuned to this site for even more information, remember this is just the beginning, but once you have a photography site you can direct all the traffic you get from all the other sites out there that you will be using. The more traffic, the more ad clicks, the more money in your pocket!

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Just leave it below in the comments!