While I’m not actively pursing photography as a career anymore, I still love taking photographs of interesting people when they’re passing through town.
This was one such case where a Suicide Girl happened to be in town and we spent a bit of time shooting.
My rather meager online photography portfolio can be seen at modelmayhem.com
Polar Bears are one of the most dangerous and amazing animals on the planet, and they’re native to my beautiful country of Canada. The animal is iconic as a predator of the North but it’s a much misunderstood master of it’s domain, like the lion of Africa or it’s Grizzly cousin in the USA.
Below, I found 35 great examples of beautiful polar bear photographs. All photos are credited below and linked to the original artist to respect the creator of the image, so please don’t forget to visit their web sites to see more great photos.
I’ve been in the business of building websites for about 15 years now, I started back when monitors ranged from 640×480 pixels to 800×600 and we had only 256 colors to work with, so it’s been a long time for me and I can tell you that in those 15 years I’ve seen a lot of mistakes, I’ve made even more mistakes and I’ve broken a lot of rules but there are a few mistakes I keep seeing website owners and marketers make that really bewilder me, hopefully you’ve never made them:
Many website owners put up websites before their content is ready. This really irritates me because if a prospect has taken the time to come to your website, you should have enough respect for their time to have your content ready. If you don’t have it ready, don’t advertise it.
I’m going to let you all in on a secret here, fresh content makes the world go round. When I got started as a graphic designer back in 1990, there was easy money to be made in designing newsletters for companies (this was before the Internet). Businesses knew that sending out a monthly mailer was a sure fire way to generate business at a low cost.
The average monthly newsletter cost:
$1,100 to send 5,000 pieces out to other local business owners and professionals in the community (the other 500 we always held back for walk ins and trade shows).
Today, an average website is updated possibly once in three months with most becoming stale within six months. This, in spite of the fact that a website has unlimited distribution, no recurring costs and instant access to statistics and call to action capacities. For the same cost of printing a news letter in the early 1990’s, a modern website could be updated with fresh content and quality photographs every week.
The first thing I recommend to every business I work with is to reset the home page of every computer in their office to the home page of their website. It was a trick I invented as the Web Master at Corel Corporation, be forcing over 1,200 employees to visit the home page of the company website we received an endless stream of comments and feedback from our own team. Actually it was a trick I picked up from the makes of the Palm, I don’t know if the story is true or not but I’d heard it like this … when the inventors of the first Palm Pilot started thinking about what to put onto the PalmOS, they cut a few dozen pieces of wood to the size of the device and forced staff to carry it around. Every time the staff did something in the office they pretended to use this piece of wood … that’s how the knew what to put into the software. Frankly, I don’t know if it’s true or not but I love that story so my advice? Reset your home page to force your staff to visit your website every day.
When I ask my clients to name their top five competitors I hope they’ll ask me if I’d like to know the company name, the legal name, the name of the owner, her husband or their three kids. Sadly, many companies struggle to even name four competitors, let alone know anything about them. If you’re going to compete with somebody, know them and use the power of RSS feeds to keep track of them.
The design of my website here at thisismyurl.com is mine, I love it and I did it but that’s OK because it’s my personal blog. You’ll notice that my design work at tinkerpriestmedia.com or getawaygraphics.com is completely different, that’s because the websites are not designed to look good for me, they’re designed to look good for my target audiences. My friend Chris Bavota keeps telling me he wants to redesign bavotasan.com but I think he’s crazy, it’s a great design … for his audience. Keep in mind that if you sell shoes, your website should appeal to people who want to buy shoes, not people who want to sell shoes. It sounds like a silly statement but it’s a hard one to overcome.
In August, there was a great article in Information Week called 8 Ways to Make Money Online, I have to admit that I stole the title from them but then again I think Forbes did the same when they published their piece called In Pictures: Eight Ways To Make Money Online.
Here’s the trick to making money online, you won’t get rich. That’s a bitter pill for most people to swallow but sometimes it’s not about getting rich, it’s about helping to make the bills and earning money while you’re doing other things, a little at a time.
A few years ago I read a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad in which the author discusses how to make money and the power of a hot dog cart. In essence, he explains that the way to get rich isn’t through great ideas but by generating money while you sleep, eat or even play with the kids. That’s the trick with the Internet and making money on it, I get paid a great salary consulting for businesses around the world but I also make money every day just by running my websites.
Think about that, it doesn’t matter if I’m sick or on vacation, if I’m playing in the backyard or taking out the trash. My websites, my online stores and my games are all making me money everyday.
Here’s how I do it:
1. Affiliate Programs – See that link for Rich Dad, Poor Dad? Click on over to Amazon and buy it, you’ll get a great deal and I’ll earn a couple of dollars for sending you to them. That’s how Affiliate programs work. I have a similar deal with BlueHost, one of the best hosting companies around, who also happen to pay me each time people sign up with them.
2. Pay Per Click Advertising – By far, the best known source for advertising revenue is Google’s AdSense. With Google, you can place a small piece of JavaScript code on your website and they’ll present your users with advertisements from related sites. Each time a visitor clicks on one of the ads (mine are located to the right on this page) you’ll receive a small amount of money from the advertiser.
3. Affiliate Advertising - Throughout my website you’ll see small ads measuring 125px x 125px, these ads are for products and services that I’ve selected for my website. Unlike Pay Per Click Ads which pay each time you click them, these advertisements work more like the Affiliate Program model, with money being paid for sales received from my referrals.
4. Write Quality Content – Regular readers here on my blog will know that I’m a huge believer in writing quality content, what they might not know is that I also sell my work to other websites and to other bloggers who need quality content for their own sites. Sites like elance.com and helium.com are great sources of professional writing projects.
5. Photographs – Web site such as istock.com will pay you between 25¢ and $3 each time somebody wants to download your photography. With the advent of digital cameras, it’s easy to upload hundreds of quality photographs to websites and earn royalty cheques each month.
6. Sell Stuff Online – Use websites like eBay, Kijiji and CraigsList to sell everything from old LEGO to quality services. Some are free, some cost a little. I wrote a piece called Making Money Online all about this.
7. Be an Expert – Using tools such as Adobe Acrobat Connect, it’s easy to run online web seminars. Running these virtual training sessions allow people who live in remote areas to attend virtual conferences, learn from experts and take part in discussions without having to travel.
8. Create Content – We’ve already touched on the fact that you can sell photographs and writing but if you’re an illustrator or an animator, why not use those skills like I do? My content sells to people all over the world on websites such as istock.com and even Second Life.
During the course of writing this article, I found the following websites great sources of information:
