Flickr.com is the biggest photo sharing sites in the world. Its size is precisely why you want to join and start sharing pictures.
You can go anytime and see amazing photos from every corner of the world. I’ve made it a part of every day. I’ve addicted family members to it. Media and publisher’s go to it to find images. I got a craft book deal thanks to Flickr! You can make friends, find fans, and be discovered. But you also see other people’s stuff and learn new ways to do things and take pictures. It’s awesome. It has a totally different vibe than most other social sites.
But remember, Flickr is about people who like to take and share photos – not people who want to get spammed into the netherworld to buy your things. Don’t just join and start sending your pics everywhere, have something interesting to contribute. This guide I hope will help you learn how to best use it and be a good “Flickrite” and not an obnoxious desperate promoting maniac no one want to look at.
I use it for all kinds of things, and it’s a great way to promote your store and art as well as share your life.
There are also site rules and “site culture” to be aware of, and I’ll try to get to all of it in this article as much as I can, Flickr is very powerful and multifaceted, but fair warning: It’s also addictive.
In talking about Flickr today I realized that not many folks really know how AWESOME Flickr Pro is and how much it’s worth it.
I wrote this up as small part of a yet unpublished Guide on Flickr for Artfire:
Free Vs Pro acocunts
Flickr has two kinds of accounts: Free and Pro. Free is just that, free. But there are some limitations.
Free: $0
• 100 MB monthly upload limit (10MB per photo)
• Only latest 200 pictures are viewable (you can have more, but only the latest 200 can be accessed. If you go pro, the hidden pictures will be available which is nice if you lapse.)
• 3 sets
• Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images only
• Post any of your photos in up to 10 group pools
• Only smaller (resized) images accessible (though the originals are saved in case you upgrade later)
• NEW: Unlimited sets (formerly was limited to three)
• Ads.
Flickr pro is an incredible deal, and worth every cent. Flickr pro is the best deal out there for storing photos. bar none. I have my own domain and server space and I removed my photo gallery for flickr, I couldn’t host my own for the price of a Pro account.
Pro: $25 year
• Unlimited pictures and storage. No limits on how many pics you can upload (size limit for each photo raised to 20 mb max – thats a HUGE photo)
• Unlimited sets and you get Collections (this is worth it alone) which you can put sets into.
• ad-free (I never noticed how many ads there were till I logged in on an alternater free account once… wow lots of ads.)
• Post pics in up to 60 group pools.
• Stats on your photos (awesome, I’ve found so many refs to my stuff, this gives you a way to follow up and leave comments and thank folks for the linkage)
• Ability to replace a photo (more useful that you’d think if you want to swap a better version and not lose all your comments)
• Upload short video clips (most cameras now shoot 60-90 second vid clips, flickr calls them ‘long pictures’. this more of a fun thing, but it’s still cool)
• Archiving of high-resolution original images : this is more signifigant than you first think. When you have a free account you can’t access any “orginal” size photos you upload, they are there you can’t get to them so using flickr as a back up is largely difficult. But being pro means you have a offsite backup, and after I suffered TWO hard drive fails in two months and lost EVERYTHING locally it saved my butt.
• Alternative layout templates for your account homepage. They have a few different options (1 column, 2, 3, sidebar with your choice of collections or sets listing). So you have some options to say what you want peopel to see when they arrive at your top page. Big pics? Small pics? Sets or collections, or neither? Your choice.
• No ads.
As a pro user ‘ve found it totally worth the $24 a year. You won’t find a better list of offerings, or a nicer group of folks. Google charges much more for less on Picasa.
I even buy pro accounts for my friends and family for birthdays and they all consider it as fabulous as I do.
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