Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of zero image views, I will fear no clicks

That’s right, beleive it or not I have a bevy of images that I have uploaded to Photrade that have absolutely no images views! Well!, we can’t have that now can we??

Most of them have never been viewed for one of 2 reasons,

1) I shared them originally on other sites and thus have not been posted anywhere since

2) I have uploaded them just to do so and they are either not share worthy or I just haven;t gotten around to it yet.

SO, I plan on making several random posts with these orphan images and see what shakes out

The fun part will be reliving the stories behind each one of them as most likely they will be different every time.

Spring, birds, seed, camera, begin! This was one of many birds I shot (with my camera) this spring right outside our back door. This was also the proud father of a baby female cardinal…which returned on many occasions together to have some bird seed we put out.

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

Some kind of weird bug! I really need to get an insect book so I can ID these suckers. These guys were ALL OVER the flowers and plants (weeds) in our backyard for a couple week span in May or maybe April?

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

You know that small container dental floss that the dentist give you after the end of every visit? This is the cutter from that container. I got several cool pictures from this thing, I think mostly because the plastic was this cool blue sparkle plastic…very designer.

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

Drops! Of water, one of my most favorite things to shoot. Hopefully I am getting better as I go along. This is about the 4th time I have shot them. I’d say a few more times before I really dial them drops in…make them the way I first envisioned them when I set out on this little adventure.

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

This is a children’s book binding that was doing it’s best to retain the pages of said book. It’s one of those cardboard books, a book about colors if I am not mistaken…how apropos!

Nice formatting by me right? Images, text, every which way but loose! This is not my car! A shocker right?? The only thing that is keeping me from having a car like this is the ability to seat 5 comfortably AND maybe $60K or so.

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

Mr. C, up close and personal. This was before I figured out how to shoot flash through my back window and door hence i being a little muddled.

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

Getting Paid at the Photrade!!!! My third ad revenue distribution

I just got my 3rd ad revenue payment from Photrade. I am RATHER please about that! Thank you!

HOWEVER, and this is a pretty darn big however, they are killing me with their code or lack thereof.

I do 75.8% of my posting (of pictures) on forums and myspace photo groups. BUT the current html photrade image coding does not work with forums (forums use BB code (bulletin board code) instead of html), and of course we all know how mental MySpace is in terms of what they allow for html in their photo groups and email and elsewhere.

So, while it sure is nice to earn ad revenue from sharing my photos, I’m getting short changed and then some since they do not have BBcode or MySpace friendly html code to “share” the photos. The lack of BBcode is monumental to me, in that there are a million different forums I could be sharing my pictures on, 1/2 of those million being about photography. Yes, photography forums…what a concept :)

I emailed customer service and they told me that at some point BBcode would be worked on, but in the meantime I am being robbed! (In a sense). I guess if my blog got 500 visitors a day that would not be an issue…but I need to work up to that! I only average about 22 a day right now…peanuts!

I know, I know, Photrade is still in Beta but hopefully the code options will be addressed soon.

To review how one makes ad revenue from their photos on Photrade:

FROM: http://info.photrade.com/content/faq?l=1#earning

Earning Advertising Revenue

What is the adcosystem and how does it work?

Photrade’s adcosystem allows photographers to get paid for every view of their photos while providing free content to online publications.  A photographer posts a beautiful photo of New York on Photrade.com to share within the adcosystem.  A blogger, who is writing about New York searches for photos of New York and finds the perfect photo to fit the post.  The blogger grabs the sharing code from Photrade and posts the photo in their blog.  When the blogger grabbed the code photrade put a small advertisement at the bottom of the photo, and also added text attributing the photo to the photographer (note: any/all watermarking remains on the photo).  Every time the photo is viewed the photographer earns a portion of the ad revenue generated by that image.  So, the photographer gets attribution and payment for the use of their photo, advertisers get contextual in-content ads and publications get beautiful free images.

{See the entire ad rev FAQ here}

And let’s not kid ourselves, what other photo site pays you to share photos?!?!

I’d still bank my photos with Photrade any day of the week. The 514 other photo sharing sites out there are not willing to pay me to share my photos and so, PHOTRADE is the tops in my book for that alone!

And of course I could not, in good conscience, have a post without a few pictures…these are a few of me!

I know, scary!!

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

Photrade, Featured Photographer: TimsDD

I was very pleased to learn that I was recently selected to be the Featured Photographer on Photrade.

Now, was that due to the fact that I have been with the site for so long or that a large portion of the initial invitees are bloggers? Just kidding, I am honored for the selection and it was fun to be able to answer the questions. I just hope I didn’t sound too much like a dork!

Anyway, it was nice to be recognized for my work. I know that once Photrade comes out of beta the site will really take off and many new and talented photographers will join.

Here are a couple of questions from the full article:

What do you shoot?

Everything!Which wasn’t always the case. I made the mistake early on, shooting nothing but nature & landscape stuff. So now I’m trying to do portraiture, and people are a lot harder to work with than say flowers or trees. It’s an adjustment but part of the learning process, both challenging and fun. My passion though is macro, I just love the world of close-up photography.

Why do you like using Photrade?

I like Photrade because they are trying to help photographers, regardless of experience level, showcase, monetize, and protect their work. I see it as being far from “just another” photo sharing site. I think it has potential to be THE site for photographers.

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom

Sell photos on photrade | By timsdigitaldarkroom