Internet Home Business Success – Making Money With Flickr

Flickr is an image and video hosting website which also offers web services to its online community. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is also used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. It hosts in excess of 5 billion images and has an official app for the iPhone, BlackBerry and for Windows Phone 7. The service was never designed with commerce in mind but the savvy business person can use this platform to make money. The purpose of this article is to outline some of the ways you can use Flickr to generate income for yourself. Unlike some of the other social media sites, it is difficult to make money directly from this site but you can use it as a vehicle to generate income in other areas. If you run a small business and are looking for ways to supplement your income, Flickr may well be one instrument to take you to a point where you are achieving home business success using the Internet.

Flickr is a site visited by many people and like everyone else, these people will have needs. This community can be accessed to increase traffic to other sites. So while there are no direct ways to make money online with Flickr, there are ways you can use the site to help you with your business. Here are some ideas:

1. Produce a stunning image, post it onto Flickr and put a link to your affiliate page using the “Notes” function. Anyone looking at the photo who clicks the link will end up on your affiliate page. You may be advertising a brand of camera on Facebook for example, and this could result in steering a whole new range of potential customers to your ad.
2. Make your picture available in normal resolution but put a link on the photo to your downloads page. You can use a service like Tradebit to mention in the description line that a high resolution version of the image is available for download.
3. If you have a business which takes orders via the Internet then you can post an image of your product onto Flickr with a link to your virtual shop front. Anyone interested in the item who happens onto the image will be able to visit your shop with a click. If you sell items on eBay you can showcase them on Flickr and get access to this community.
4. If you are a serious photographer or artist, create a portfolio of your best work, post this to Flickr and use this to market your services. Mention that you accept commissions. Remember, the Flickr community is huge and you can access them to massively increase your exposure.
5. When you upload an image to your blog from Flickr, add the link to your blog post. This too could drive potential customers to your blog.
6. Post stunning photos onto Flickr and mention in the text that they are available to purchase as high quality prints. You can produce these prints yourself or have them professionally done. This could become a nice little side business. You can also mention on your Flickr profile that you produce prints for sale.
7. Flickr has a partnership with an organization called Qoop. This business creates products using images from Flickr (mugs, T-shirts, diaries etc). You can create the products on Qoop and use the images on Flickr to mention that these items are for sale and also include the fact in your Flickr profile.
8. Market your eBook. If you have written an eBook on photography for example, people will download it if they believe it can add value in their lives or their businesses. Set up a group on Flickr (Fellow Seascape Photographers for instance), post some really good tips and remind everyone that they can download your book if they need to know more.
9. Sell targeted photos. Attend the games of your local sports team and take some high quality photos. Post these to Flickr and then inform the team management (and players) about the photos. Let them know that you can supply high quality prints if required.

Ensure when doing any of the above, that the quality of the content is top rate (immaculate images, interesting and well written text etc). People are drawn to quality. You need also to add tags wherever possible. This will ensure that your articles come up in as many searches as possible. Join groups and participate in them. Being active in communities increases your exposure and your opportunities.

Using the above ideas you will be able to increase your income streams and if you persevere, they could provide the impetus needed to push you into the ranks of those who have achieved business success using the Internet.