Can a minute of your time and a camera help you get more traffic? Ask Flickr

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Reinvent the wheel?

Have you read Ana’s post about Images that will rock your world?

There were some comments on that post that were along the lines of “I am tired of Flickr”. Well, did you know you can actually generate traffic from Flickr?

No, I am not talking about putting your blog’s link in your profile and hoping people will click on it.

I am talking about getting much more than just one link (that no one will ever see, anyway).

I actually use this “strategy” from time to time on my static website and it works like a clock.

I would say that, in this case, there are two ways to generate traffic from Flickr.

One will work for everyone. The other one can work for everyone, but it will work better if you are in a niche.

Strategy 1 - works for any type of blog

Every blogger likes to have great images to go with their posts. Flickr is a great source of those.

With their Creative Commons search you can find images to use for free on your blog, as long as you link back to the original source.

A lot of people use images without linking back to the source. If you use Flickr you must link back, but you can always make the link no-follow, so it’s not such a big deal.

A nice thing to do would be to credit the author as well. It doesn’t cost you anything to do it, so why not.

Well, there is one extra thing you need to do to make all this work for traffic generation. Cause linking to Flickr and crediting author still doesn’t do anything for you, right.

Go back to the image, make a comment and link back to your blog.

Write a comment like you would on a blog post. Make sure it is not something like “Cool pic”. Tell author why you liked his image.

Most comments on images are something like “wow”, “what a pic”, “nicely done”. Make your comment stand out!

Then tell him/her you used the image in your blog post and link to it to show them how you used the image.

Some might say that they don’t see the point since all links from Flickr are no-follow, but don’t forget we are talking about traffic here.

If you want to milk it even more, search for popular authors that update their profiles often. Usually, their images as more visited. Chose one of their photos that will fit in with your post and do the comment+link thing.

So how does this work for traffic generation?

People are curious. They will see a comment that is different. If you linked a great title to your blog post in the image comments, they often click to check it out.

It is something like seeing an interesting post title among all those CommentLuv links in blog comments.

What happens a lot of times as well, is that the author will come to check out what you did. They love seeing how people use their images.

Aren’t you glad you credited them properly? Because when you do something nice with their image, they will often link to your post in their portfolio (usually on a blog somewhere). I guess that is a double win for you.

Strategy 2 - works better for niche blogs

This one is similar since it includes links under images too, but it might work better for people that are in a niche.

This way of traffic generation includes your own profile and images.

Let’s say you are blogging about dogs. You have a dog or two of your own and you take a lot of great photos of them.

There are many dog websites that will always be on the lookout for great dog photos.

So upload your images to Flickr. If someone likes it, they will use it on the blog. A visitor (dog lover) will see the image, go to check it out on Flickr and what does he see there…

Under your image you will add a description where you can write something about the image and put a link to your blog. Something like “This is my female pit bull Bonnie. For more Bonnie photos you can visit my blog http://yourdomain.com“.

More photos equal more links that will bring more visitors.

Why I think that this will work better in a niche is that it’s not easy to get targeted visitors to a traffic generation blog through a photo of your backyard. For a gardening blog, however, this would work great.

I don’t even have to mention how important this type of linking and traffic would be for a blog focused on photography.

Extra tip

Let me try and make this work for bloggers that are not in a niche! Since you are not blogging about a topic that can have targeted images, how about being creative?

Let’s say you wrote a blog post about 3 reasons why bag ladies would make excellent bloggers. You use a bag-lady image from Flickr and do all the linking and crediting the right way.

If you go back to Flickr and make a comment along the lines of: “Jane, I love the photos you posted here. Although I love colors, I found this black and white image of yours so interesting. I even used it on my new blog post 3 reasons bag ladies would make excellent bloggers. Thanks for the inspiration.” Of course, you would put a link back to your blog here.

Simple question - would you click on the link to see what the h… bag ladies have to do with blogging!? I am hearing Yes in echos.

As you can see, all it takes is a few extra minutes of your time and you can bring new, fresh traffic to your blog.

It won’t bring a thousand of visitors after commenting on one image, so don’t think of this as a magic button (no magic buttons in traffic generation). As always, you will need to work for each one of your visitors, but if even one of them becomes a regular reader, don’t you think you’ve accomplished something

Keep in mind that the same things you wouldn’t tolerate on your blog, Twitter or Facebook are not tolerated on Flickr. So don’t spam people with comments and links, be genuine and make this work for you, not against you.

Let me give you one last reason why you should try the Flickr.

Bloggers are always searching for new ways to generate traffic and get exposure.

Twitter is so over saturated, that you can see same old links tweeted for months. Facebook is getting close.

So how about finding new places to meet people and expand your circle of connections? Flickr is the place to do it. It is still relatively spam free. Not too many people are all over it for links and you can connect with new peeps.

Not only will you diversify your link sources, but you will create a whole new group of friends there. “Flickrers” (just invented this one, lol) are a friendly bunch and you can even get them to send you exclusive, one of a kind photos for your blog.

One of my experiences, after commenting on a photo I used, was contact from the author saying “If you ever need a specific photo, tell me, I will take one for you and send it“.

With us searching all over the place for great but free images, wouldn’t you want to connect with people like those?