Buying the rights to use photos on your site can be an expensive proposition, starting from dozens of dollars and going into the hundreds per photo. Luckily, there are a lot of websites out there cataloguing photos that can be used for free. The official term is royalty free photos, and usually there are some restrictions as to their use, such as the sensible

You are not allowed to use any of the images found herein for the purpose of spreading hate

The quality of some of these photos is amazing. Here are a couple of the most popular sites with royalty free photos. I chose them for the amount of photos and the fact that you can use them for commercial purposes:

- The Stock Exchange (100,000 photos)
- morgueFile (1,000,000)

morgue: a term used by traditional artist and publishers as a place to keep reference material

I bought The Search today (not online - in my local bookstore!) the new must-have book by search guru John Batelle.

Amazon link

A fact which stood out is the cost of acquiring new customers across different advertising channels:

Search $8.5
Yellow Pages $20
Email $60
Direct Mail $70

The numbers come from a Piper Jaffray study. It shows that AdWords are almost 3 times as effective as Yellow Page ads, and almost 10 times as effective as direct mail. They also require many fewer trees.

Peter Kent is the author of Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, a book I highly recommend because apart from being a goldmine of information on Search Engines, it is well written with a lot of humor, and the opposite of dry and powerpointy.

not just for dummies

The phrase Internet marketing often conjures just 2 forms of it: Search Engine Opitmization and AdWords. Hidden within Peter's consulting website is a Powerpoint presentation with a list of 33 ways to promote a website. Here it is; I have divided it by online and offline categories:

Online ways to promote your website:

- Search Engine Optimization
- Pay Per Click / AdWords
- Banner Advertising
- Trusted Feeds
- Build it and they will come

no wonder he has a great sense of humor, he is British

- Directory Registration (Including Specialty Directories)
- Link Placement
- Reciprocal Linking
- Local Directories
- Selling on eBay
- Shopping Directories
- Blogs – Your Own
- Blogs – Other People’s
- Affiliate Programs
- Coupon, Discount, & Freebie Sites
- E-mail Newsletters – Your Own
- E-mail Newsletters – Other People’s
- E-mail “Bulletins”
- “Giveaways” on Other People’s Sites
- Content Syndication
- Product Syndication (wallpaper, utilities)
- Browser Toolbars
- Viral Marketing
- Specialty Directories (e.g., Knowledgestorm)

Offline ways to promote your website:

- Advertise Through Existing Offline Ads
- Dedicated Offline Advertising Campaigns
- Push People to the Site from Your Brick-and-Mortar Store
- Offline PR
- Yellow Pages
- Direct Mail
- Community Marketing
- Offline Promotional Tie-Ins
- Customer Referrals
- In-Package Promotions