Whether it’s a hobby or it’s your job, making money from your photos can help supplement your income and help businesses get the right images for their brand. Many photographers are daunted by the stock selling process but in reality it is very simple.

Whilst you are able to submit your photos for review, not all stock photography websites will accept your work, so they would need to be of a pretty high standard to gain admission to a marketplace.

With that in mind, I would like to present to you eight websites to sell your pictures.

1. Snapvillage

Snapvillage is a microstock website from Corbis that offers a unique marketplace for pictures and illustrations. Users buy and sell images without restriction at affordable prices in an intuitive and interactive way.

Users can upload as many images as they like, the Snapvillage team then review them and post accepted images for potential buyers to see. Royalties are earnt every time one of the submitted images is purchased and there is also the option to set your own prices.

2. iStockPhoto

iStockPhoto claims to be the biggest stock marketplace on the internet. They offer images, video and audio and givce 20% of the base royalty rate for anything sold. There are other initiatives in place that allow users to gain more from their work, such as making the work exclusive to iStockPhoto.

3. Stockxpert

Stockxpert is a royalty free stock photography community with the goal to provide customers with affordable stock imagery while offering a powerful tool to photographers and digital artists who would like to sell their work. Stockxpert offer 50% of the royalty fee on each sale, with the ability to check on the balance earned in real time.

There are specific websites for international users, meaning photographers can be paid in their own countries currency.

4. Fotolia

Fotolia is the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to legally buy and share stock images and illustrations. They currently offer the largest image bank of free and affordable royalty free photos and illustrations on the internet.

Fotolia offer international versions of their site, where users are encouraged to express themselves via the community forums and blog. For every file sold, users receive a royalty based on their ranking and exclusivity on the site; most royalty’s are between 30% and 61%.

5. Shutterstock

Shutterstock offer many of their images to web designers, magazine editors and graphic artists whom sign up for their monthly subscriptions to buy images like the ones you may submit. In that time they are allowed to download upto 750 images of which you receive 25 cents for each sale. Once $500 is earnt, commission then rises to 30 cents per download.

6. ClusterShot

ClusterShot is different from the many stock photography sites out there in the fact you are free to submit whatever you want to the site and not have to run the gaunlet of passing a review. Clustershot think of themselves as an Ebay for photos, allowing you to submit as many pictures of your dog as you want. They have a very useful tool that integrates with your Flickr collection, allowing you to submit your entire collection for perusal.

Photographers can decide whether they set a fixed price or are open to offers.

7. BigStockPhoto

BigStockPhoto is an alternative to high-priced stock photography in addition to providing photographers with a marketplace to sell their work. They aim to bring power to the people who don’t want to spend huge amounts of money on stock photos, in turn repaying some of the revenue to it’s creator.

BigStockPhoto offers highest quality print and web resolution images – both photos and vector art – for virtually every use. Photographers will earn 50 cents for every image downloaded, with the option to withdraw funds once they amass $30.

8. 123RF

123RF is another subscription based website where buyers can either download to their prepaid quota or by using a credit system. Not only do 123RF offer a huge amount of stock paid images, they routinely release free to use images for it’s members.

Photographers gain 50% on the sale of one of their images.

Conclusion

There are a lot of different things to consider when submitting your photos. For example, it may pay to choose a specialised market for the subject of your photos, to work out what images are the best to submit or even what license you wish to grant your work. These are all important in regards to profiting from your work but also making sure you aren’t being exploited. As with all things of this nature, do your research and make sure you are clear on what you are doing before you submit to these sites.

Chart Chooser from Juice Analytics is an innovative tool that lets you create Excel and Powerpoint charts and choose what characteristics you wish to highlight in your data; Comparison, Distribution, Composition, Trend, Relationship and/or Table, and it will filter the selections highlighting the possible charts for your needs.

Once you have decided on your selection, Chart Chooser will display options to download templates for Excel and Powerpoint. The downloaded files will have random data filled for you to get an idea of how the data is presented and where you will be able to enter your own figures.

The good news about this service is that Juice Analytics doesn’t seem to be stopping with the current selection of graphs available on the site. Users are encouraged to suggest different charts to be added to their website and even design bespoke versions for organisations. Juice Analytics have also endeavoured to make all their charts Tufte-compliant (clean and minimal) whilst remaining visually aesthetic.

Juice Analytics also operates an analytics blog that focuses on free tools and open source code. Here, you are able to find a wealth of information on how the Juice Analytics team tackle different projects, including this project inspired by the New York Times.

One tool that the team recently released was Concentrate, a search analytics tool for SEO and paid search professionals who wanted to make sense of search keyword data. Concentrate works by connecting to your Google Analytics account and helps to visualize keyword relationships to see connections and performance of common word combinations. All data collated by Concentrate is automatically formatted and information such as categorized search phrases and pattern groups can be downloaded to CSV format for off site analysis.

Juice Analytics is a great source of Excel and Powerpoint information as well as providing open source code, most of which are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. If you need to impress the board, your boss or your peers at your next meeting, a visit to these guys, even just for the Chart Chooser, should be your first stop.

Do you know of any other sites that offer templates like these? If so, let us know of your recommendations in the comments!

Before we look further into this tool, this article does take into consideration that Facebook does in fact have a built in Events manager. The aim of this article therefore is to highlight the alternatives to Facebook.

Creating An Event

You obviously want to advertise and highlight your party but firstly you must create your event on the Atomeet website. Part of Atomeet’s appeal is that it simplifies creating an event using intelligent suggestions and has a very aesthetic feel to it’s site.

To create your event, enter the name of your event, be as specific as possible with its location and then select the time you want it to start. Once you have agreed with the terms and conditions, clicking “Create My Party” will take you through to your party page.

Atomeet will immediately ask you to associate an email address with your party page, so that you can be alerted to any changes on your page and also to receive the unique URL to share with your friends.

By clicking the small panel on the left of your avatar, you can change the look and feel of your site. Atomeet have many different presets for you to choose from, whether it’s a Christmas or New Year party or just a drink down the pub, you have designs to reflect this.

You are encouraged to write a description detailing the finer points that you aren’t able to articulate anywhere else (dress codes, entry fee, etc). Entering a website address of the location and a contact number allows you to give a bit more security to the people who might be hovering on attendance to your party.

Once you have set up all the details of your event, you will obviously want to invite your friends. Atomeet automates this process by allowing you to import your contacts from your Gmail, Windows Live or Yahoo email account.

Now all that is left is to see if people will RSVP and actually want to come to your event! There is a wall that allows people to leave messages for the party organiser, to iron out any potential problems or to answer any questions attendees may have. As people respond they will be added to a realtime guest list on your party page.

Do you use any other party planning software or websites to organise your parties? Maybe one of the mobile or online event planners that were already profiled on MakeUseOf. If you do, please leave a suggestion in the comments.

The application itself is free for personal use and it is very simple to use, as found in the guide below:

Backing Up Your Files

Firstly you will need to download KLS Mail Backup and install the application.

When you first run the program, you will be required to select which items you wish to backup:

Once you have selected which items you wish to backup, you will need to specify where and how the files will be stored. To do this, click the “Properties” icon on the top toolbar. Here you will be prompted to setup the profile options.

Inside the Profile Properties screen, you will be required to enter the settings for where you wish to save your backup. Here you are able to choose your backup location, whether it be a network or local file path, a CD or DVD burner or even an FTP server.

The options on the left panel will allow you to specify the compression method of the backup file, backup type and will also present you with a summary of the processes the application is about to undertake.

Once all your settings are applied as you would like, click “OK” and return to the main application screen, where you will be shown what you have selected to backup. The final step in the process is to run the backup and securely save your system files. This is as easy as clicking the “Run” button on the top toolbar.

You will be presented with a progress screen of what the application is saving.  You can at any time cancel the process and change some of the settings. Once this is done, check that the file is located in the correct directory, save this to an additional storage location should just in case the worst should happen.

Restoring Your Backup

The restoration process can be initiated by clicking the “Restore” button on the top toolbar. KLS Mail Backup should automatically recognise where you saved your previous backup to, and will present you with a Restore Wizard window that should already have selected your saved file location.

If you wish to restore a backup from another computer, you will need to either copy the file to the location selected in the application or you will need to change the backup/restore location to the location of your saved archive file.

KLS Mail Backup is a very user friendly and powerful backup application that can save time and effort when saving your important mail and browser system files.

MakeUseOf had several other posts on backing your email and browser settings. Check them out as well:

• Back up your Firefox profile with MozBackup
• 5 Ways to Backup your Email
• Quick Tip: Backup Firefox Preferences
• Back Up Files To Email With Just One Click
• Amic E-Mail Backup – A Good Thing in a Small Package
• How To Backup Your Gmail Account To YOUR Hard Drive

What do you use to safeguard your mail and browser settings? Leave a comment below.

With improved browsing features, Firefox 3′s performance over it’s earlier version Firefox 2 was plain to see. However, there was one issue that many users were starting to notice; the increased loading time when launching the browser.

This article will explain how to shorten the Firefox 3 load time, using free tools and your Windows command line.

Step One

Firstly, we will need to download a compression tool that will pack and reduce the size of your Firefox executable. This tool is called UPX (The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables).

Once downloaded, extract the file upx.exe and copy it to your Firefox installation directory (typically C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox).

Step Two

Close Firefox if you have it running. You will now need to open a command prompt window and change its path to the installation directory mentioned above. For those who are unfamiliar with the command prompt, there is help in a small file named Open Command Prompt Shell Extension. This will allow you to open a command window from the folder in Windows Explorer (see screenshot below).

Step Three

With the command prompt open and path changed, copy and paste the following script into your command prompt:

for %v in (*.exe *.dll components\*.dll plugins\*.dll) do upx “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\%v”

This command will execute the file packer which will compress your Firefox executable. Once it has finished, close all open browser windows and applications and re-launch Firefox. You should now notice an decrease in load time when starting your browser.

This tweak may be affected by any future updates to the browser but can be re-applied using the steps detailed above. Should you wish to reverse the process, you simply need to use the following script:

for %v in (*.exe *.dll components\*.dll plugins\*.dll) do upx “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\%v”

There are a few other tweaks you can employ to speed the launch of Firefox, namely uninstalling any unused Firefox Addons and changing your home page to a blank page using about:blank

Hopefully this tweak will allow you to improve load times on whatever computer you use. If you have any further tips on how to improve your Firefox load time, please leave a comment below.

Firefox photo from Flod

What is SmartClose?

SmartClose is a software application designed by BM Productions for Windows machines (currently excluding Vista) that will automate the process of closing of all running programs, disabling of your screen saver and also stopping selected processes from interrupting your tasks.

Say you have finished the task that required you to stop the running programs, you might need to resume what you were doing and reopen these programs or re-enable the stopped services. Part of SmartClose’s arsenal is that before it closes or disables anything, it will take a snapshot of your system, allowing you to return your computer to the state it was before you undertook your resource intensive task. Think of it as a Windows XP Restore Point but for system processes or any open applications.

Using SmartClose

After downloading and installing SmartClose, running the application will present you with a number of options, pertaining to the task you wish to undertake. Selecting “Create a system snapshot and close all programs” will take you into the Close Programs Wizard, listing the tasks which you can select to be performed by SmartClose.

Navigating to the next screen in the wizard, you will be able to select which programs you wish to be protected from SmartClose (therefore not being closed). Notable entries in this list would be applications such as your Firewall or your Anti-Virus, although these may be already protected as a design feature of the software itself.

The next stage will ask you to select where you wish the settings to be saved. It is recommended that you use the default location so that you do not need to change any other settings, although if you wish to, you are able to save settings to a custom file or under a custom name. The final screen will give you a summary of what SmartClose is about to process, allowing you to edit your settings before you close your selected applications and processes.

SmartClose will attempt to process all of your selected options, leaving you with a system free of any potential resource hogs. You will be able to, for example, run your defragmentation software or install a particularly big file. As soon as you have finished what you need to, simply re-open or select SmartClose from your taskbar, click on the option to “Restore a previously taken system snapshot”, and return your system back to the state it once was, it’s that easy.

BM Productions have an useful FAQ page, detailling any problems you may encounter using this software. Future versions of the software will look to incorporate the ability to automatically protect certain programs like Anti-Virus or Firewall software, taking the hassle out of deciding what applications you will need to add to the Protected lists.

Many content publishers will be interested in how they can serve their content on as many different internet platforms, designing layouts to work in all browsers and also allowing users to visit their sites on mobile devices.

Internet-capable mobile devices have been gaining in popularity over the last few years but with the release of Apple’s iPhone, websites can be served in their full glory via a 3G or Wi-Fi network. This, however, does not mean that developers aren’t keen to make iPhone compatible websites to keep their users happy. I am happy to report this can also be the case for website owners running the ever popular WordPress platform.

Today I wish to share with you how easy it is to make any WordPress installation iPhone compatible.

Step One

Firstly you need to check that you are at least running WordPress 2.3. If you aren’t, upgrading of your WordPress installation is highly recommended to patch known bugs and to enable you to use the plugin noted below. This tutorial is based on an installation of WordPress 2.7 Beta 3, which has minor changes to the style of the admin area. Readers using a previous version of WordPress will still be able to locate the same areas described in this post.

Next, we will need to download the plugin that makes it all happen. The plugin in question is called WPtouch and is developed by Dale Mugford & Duane Storey of BraveNewCode Inc. I have linked to the download hosted on the WordPress Plugin Directory as many WordPress website owners will be familiar with it.

Once downloaded, extract the archive and upload the resulting folder to the plugins folder inside your wp-content directory.

Step Two

Log into the Administration panel of your WordPress installation. Inside your Plugins screen, activate the recently uploaded plugin.

Without doing so much as uploading and activating a plugin, you have made your WordPress blog iPhone ready – but we’re aren’t finished just yet.

Step Three

The final step is changing some of the WPtouch preferences to work better for your blog. Clicking into Settings -> WPtouch will bring up a preferences page allowing to select how the plugin will serve your iPhone ready blog.

The first section you will encounter will be Optimization & Template Options. This section will allow you to enable or disable AJAX controls (allowing smoother comment submissions and page loading), decide whether you wish to enable Gravatars or even allow the submission of comments on your Pages (not to be confused with blog posts).

In the next section you can choose how your WordPress iPhone pages will look. It’s simply nothing more than choosing a colour palette similar to the full version of your site and applying it inside this preference screen.

Wptouch allows you to configure many more options inside its interface.  These include:

• Post Listings Options – Select which post-meta items will be shown beneath titles on the index, search & archive pages.
• Available Icons – You can select which icons will be displayed beside corresponding pages enabled for your iPhone ready blog.
• Default Menu Items – Enable/disable items from appearing in the WPtouch dropdown menu.
• Plugin Support & Compatibility – This allows you to configure plugins that you use to work with WPtouch. Some currently supported plugins include FlickrRSS, Blip.tv and Tag Cloud.

When you have finished amending the sections inside the Administration panel, save your progress by clicking Save Options at the bottom of the page.

Your blog should now be ready to be viewed by all iPhone users. Development of this plugin is ongoing and the team are adding many new features with every release. There are already a few tools that exist to make your website iPhone compatible (MakeUseOf uses a service called Mofuse for example) but for ease of use and customization, WPtouch is a safe bet. You can check out MakeUseOf’s mobile version at http://m.makeuseof.com.

Perhaps the reason these services have become so widespread is that the creators of these networks have released public API’s, allowing third party developers to utilize the services these networks offer. Examples of these API’s at work can be found inside our very favourite internet browser; Mozilla Firefox. Eliminating the need to install software and run it on your desktop, Firefox allows you to install powerful add-ons that add to the functionality of pre-existing websites.

Today I wish to share with you four Firefox add-ons that will add microblogging functionality to your browser meaning you will never miss a beat when it comes to updating or interacting around your microblog.

1. Pingfire

Pingfire is an add-on that connects to your Ping.fm account to allow the updating of services such as Facebook, Jaiku, Pownce, Twitter, Plurk, even your WordPress blog simultaneously.

Sitting nicely on your toolbar, a simple click will bring up a Pingfire input box, allowing you to specify where you wish to post to, the title of your post (if you are posting to your blog for example) and of course the message – which features a visual counter, alerting you if you exceed your 140 character limit on Twitter, Plurk et al.

You can select which network you wish to post to, using @fb to post to Facebook and @tt for Twitter, it doesn’t just work as a mass status updater.

One of it’s most useful features is the ability to quote text on any given webpage. All it requires is you to highlight the text you wish to post, click the Pingfire button on your toolbar and selected text and the URL to that page is added to your message.

To setup Pingfire, download the add-on from the official Firefox Addons website, supply it with your Ping.fm Key and you’re all set.

2. Yoono

Yoono touts itself as a tool that can “socialize your browser”. Weighing in at two megabytes, Yoono is deployed in your Firefox sidebar, allowing you to interact with people on your social networks, view their updates and also update your own. After sharing your login credentials, Yoono routinely updates your feeds, allows universal status updates and opens up your instant messaging networks to communicate straight from your browser.

Yoono currently supports MSN, Yahoo!, Gtalk, AIM, Facebook, MySpace, iMeem, Flickr, Twitter, Youtube, Last.fm, Seeqpod, Picz and Friendfeed.

It also boasts browser enhancements such as bookmark synchronisation, content sharing via its drag and drop interface and more recently integrates a shopping widget. Shopping portals such as eBay, Amazon, Buy.com and Shopping.com are supported.

Simply put, Yoono is a social aggregator that, combined with it’s recommendation system, allows you to keep your finger on your friends activity without any extra software or even leaving your browser.

3. Plurk Sidebar

Plurk rose to fame when Twitter was experiencing the worst of it’s outage issues. Many users complimented its interface and ability to start more in-depth conversations through its threaded replies.

Although there is currently an unofficial one, there is not a publicly available Plurk API. This has led to many “workarounds” when it comes to building add-ons that compliment the service. That said, there is a Plurk Firefox add-on which is aptly named Plurk Sidebar.

Plurk Sidebar doesn’t feature the layout and interaction that is featured on it’s website. It does however bring a more Twitter-esqe feel to Plurk, using the Mobile version of Plurk as its foundation.

Installation of the Plurk Sidebar requires you to download the addon to your desktop and to physically drag and drop it into your Firefox Addon’s window.

Once installed, drag the Plurk icon onto your toolbar. As the sidebar uses Plurk’s mobile site, you will not need to supply this add-on with any login credentials, it should use your Plurk cookie for this.

4. FriendFeed Sidebar

The FriendFeed Sidebar is not technically a Firefox addon, more of a Firefox tweak. Many readers will be aware of MySocial 24×7, an addon that incorporated FriendFeed functionality into a Firefox sidebar. Unfortunately development was halted as Firefox released the third version of it’s browser, meaning most users were left without the ability to interact with FriendFeed without visiting the site itself.

Recently FriendFeed released their “Real Time” feature, an update that allowed users to see updates on their friend’s activity as it happened without the need to refresh. This Firefox tweak harnesses this new feature and incorporates it into a sidebar without the need for the installation of a third party addon.

The process is easy. Simply follow these simple steps:

1) Add the following link to your bookmarks: http://friendfeed.com/realtime?embed=1

2) Right click the bookmark inside and select properties.

3) Tick the “Load this bookmark in the sidebar”.

Once this has been done, select the bookmark from your list and it will display the FriendFeed real-time updates in a sidebar.

Conclusion

Many of these add-ons have a direct crossover and it may mean you won’t need to install these four tools mentioned inside the same Firefox installation. Some of these tools have greater practical applications inside the workplace as they don’t require you to visit the actual website in question.

Do you have any tools that you think would warrant a place on this list? If so, the comments section is your friend.

With such a huge product base, simply browsing Amazon has almost become a tedious job. There are the lists of “What’s Hot”, but the interface is more functional than enticing.

Therefore, allow me to introduce Amazon Windowshop.

Simply put, Amazon Windowshop is a virtual portal designed to display “What’s Hot” on Amazon.com interactively. Here, text links and preview buttons are nowhere to be found. Instead you are presented with unique “tabs” that display new and popular music, films, book and games.

This service is very simple to use and can be navigated using just the keyboard. Instead of using your mouse to click links, you are encouraged to select from categories such as “New Music This Tuesday” which, as you may have guessed, displays all the popular music releases, “Bestselling Video Games”, charting that particular month’s sales and pre-orders and even suggests bands/acts you should listen to in their “Music Artists We Think You Should Hear” section.

If, like in the screenshot above, you select the “Bestselling Video Games” section, you will be presented with the top ten best-sellers in that category. Each game will feature its official trailer and plays automatically so be careful if you are checking this out in an environment that wouldn’t lend well to Banjo Kazooie’s catchphrases!

Inside the music sections, you will be treated to a thirty second snippet off a track from that album with the options to buy said album on either CD or digitally from their MP3 store. The book section surprises, it includes a voice-over reading the synopsis of the book but Amazon haven’t yet incorporated their “Search Inside” feature.

Amazon has made use of Adobe’s Flash Player and have also tapped into their S3 service so they can deliver high quality images, video and audio clips quickly to the user. The service is updated real-time and provides complete integration with Amazon’s commerce store meaning if you like what you see/hear/feel/think, you can travel to the product site and purchase to your hearts content. There is no word on whether they will introduce the “Search Inside” service but incorporating it into their Flash interface shouldn’t be too much hassle for their developers.

Currently, Windowshop is only available for US audiences and there are no indications as to whether it will be ported to their worldwide user base. I think the real question is whether Windowshop can be incorporated into Amazon’s main portal, allowing users to choose their own way to browse the store.

What do you think of Windowshop? Do you see yourself using it? Is this the future of Amazon? Or is it just a sales gimmick?