DOs and DON’Ts
Flickr is a community. As with any there are rules and traditions and people shucking them aren’t appreciated. Luckily these are pretty simple and sensible.
DO’s
- Do post more than craft pics.
Flickr is a great site, but it’s better when you use it as a part of your life, not as a tool to make money. Share those childhood pics, Back up your photos on flickr. Store the photos of your life there, but make it part of you. - Do join groups.
Groups are a major way to get seen by people, be it crating or not. Editors, craft publishers as well as buyers are known to find groups on what they are interested in. (I got my book deal due to being prolific in a themed craft group and sharing my pics and tutorials.) You can join a group add your pics and unjoin, but aim more to find groups you will consistently add to, and be a member. You can also have your pictures invited to groups in the comments, sometimes with a button to click that you won’t even have to join to add them. If invited, add it! - Do comment on other’s pictures
You like to get comments, so does everone! Don’t be quiet, be frinedly even if it’s to say “WOW that is cool!” - Do chime in on Group discussions
Share yourself, and your knowledge. Start a thread, answer a question, give some help. Some groups have fun photo games in discussion threads like eye spy etc… it’s very addictive. - Do go to Explore and look at what is there.
Just for inspiration. You will see some of the most wonderful pics in the world. Get ideas even. Nothing bad about that. - Do be a part of the Flickr community.
Enjoy it. Participate. Learn it. Live it. It’s a lot more fun when you start to connect. - Do put every picture into a set.
Orphans are sad. Even if you have to have one set called “everything else” this is good to help people see all your pics. And some folks will! There are also some handy backup services like http://sunkencity.org/flickredit that will let you download your originals from flickr so you can back them up to disk, but they only do it by the set. It also make sit easier to sort through them if you have them in some kind of set. (Note: You can only download originals if you are a pro user) - Do add new pics of the duplicate items
Some of your followers may not have seen when you first posted that item, if you are redoing your pictures and you took a nice one of a duplicate, send it up! People will look.
DON’Ts:
- VERY VERY IMPORTANT!! Don’t put any of your online store urls in your photo descriptions.
This is expressly against the Flickr TOS and they have yanked accounts, cleared thousands of pictures off the face of the earth for violating them. They usually warn you (not always though), and the rules are quite easy to adhere to, but if you ignore any warnings they will remove your account. It’s well documented. You MAY add your blog URL though, and your blog can have link to your shop. You ARE allowed to have your store URLs in your profile though! When you add pics, post then on your blog then add a “I blogged this at…” and let people come to your store through your blog. This lets them learn about you as well. - Don’t expect views to just happen.
Just putting them online doens’t mean people will see them. You need to bring the hits to you by using groups and commenting. Putting pictures on your blog from flickr, and linking back, will help too. - Don’t add your pictures to groups that don’t apply.
Don’t drown a non-craft group in craft pictures, keep your pics applicable to the groups you add them to. No one likes a shamless picture pimp. - Don’t send your pics to TOO MANY groups.
Don’t add too many pictures to a group at once, people really dislike seeing more than 20 or someone’s pictures in a chunk. Keep it under 10 (even if you can post more) to not look like a “group hog” and lessen your chances to get better exposure in Explore. (see ‘Terms to Know’ section). Let some other people get their chance on the first page of the group too! - Don’t just join all the biggest groups and just bomb them with your pictures endlessly.
If they want to see more of your pics they’ll go to your “Flickrstream”, or better your profile, which is what you REALLY want.
If you have any doubts if you are playing by the rules you can go to http://www.flickr.com/help/contact/ and ask for a account review (or re-review) of your account and pictures to make sure you are adhering to the rules. They’ll com back and tell you if you are in violation and offer suggestions.
Whew! That is pretty comprehensive.
People should know though, that even if you set your photos so that no one can download and print them, they still can download and print them. It’s just a little more work but any photo from Flickr can be saved to someone else’s computer and printed. Their “spaceball” trick will only slow down a determined image thief, not prevent them.
If you really REALLY don’t want anyone saving your photos, it’s best not to put them online at all.