Observations
  • Home
  • Observations
  • Trendcasting
  • Odds 'n Ends
  • Science/Technology/Experiments
  • Mental Health

WPClipart-A labor of love...

5/4/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
It is the end of my first year of hosting this site and I thought that the honeysuckle photo that I posted here in an earlier post might be a nice image to show. And images are the subject of this post and the labor of love that some people display with their web efforts. Most of my images are original and I do the photography and drawing as required. But there are times that I really want an image that says it better than I can, so I have to search for good quality, public domain images. After all, this site is a labor of love and I have no intention of making money with it at all. But, I am not really able to afford image fees, so public domain fits the bill nicely. And that is where WPClipart comes in! A gentleman named Paul Sherman has had this site for several years and it is covered with a lot of public domain images that are safe and very effective. He puts in significant effort to share his collection with schools, businesses, and individuals like me. Here is an excerpt from his site on the collection:
The project started as a "safe" collection of clipart for my kids. Their middle school used AbiWord, and they were often searching for clipart that was both safe and copyright-free. Since this proved to be both difficult and hazardous (since image searches often yielded some very untoward photos) I decided to create a simple collection for their use. My background as both a photographer and a programmer lent itself well to the project, I put it online with my software for others to download and as the months passed it became very popular.
I made thumbnail pages and put up some Google ads, (made a bit of change every day), then suddenly the Google image search engine spidered the site and my server was a bit overwhelmed. After fielding 20-30k hits a day for a year or so I ended up putting the collection on a dedicated remote server, and the ad revenue takes care of the expense. And by using good image tagging and submitting XML sitemaps to Google with each update, the custom search function really helps track images down.
I did not expect to MAKE any money with the collection, so you won't see tons of ads and deceptive links or anything "tricky" to try to get clicks. The collection is self-supporting, and making it safe, useful and quick-loading are the ultimate goals. There is a Google ad atop each page clearly marked as such, so kids and everyone else can come by and find what they are looking for without being forced or tricked into viewing product information they are not interested in.
I would LIKE to do this full-time, but I am not sure I could "pay the bills" with the amount of revenue that comes from ads on an image site -- not without turning it into a ad-fest, and that would defeat the purpose of having the site in the first place . . .  The shear volume of traffic, however, may someday make this possible. -- I'm not complaining!

To me, this is a website that I can endorse and recommend to our readers. It is after all, another site done as a "labor of love". And, by the way Mr. Sherman, if you see an image here that you want to use, you have my blessing. Good work and a tip of the hat! The website is here.

0 Comments

    Archives

    June 2021
    January 2021
    September 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    August 2019
    December 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    All
    Bird Feed
    B & W Photography
    Candle Soot
    Chipmunk
    Chipmunk And The Puzzle Box
    Clothespin
    Contact Lens
    Containers
    Daisy
    Detergents
    E. Coli
    Fda
    Fluorescence
    Gardening
    Habitrail
    Halloween
    Herbs And Spices
    Herb Update
    Honeysuckle
    Hunting
    Insect Trap
    Large Pest
    Last Crops
    Light Bulb
    Mirai Corn
    Neon
    Odds
    Oplalescent Eggs
    Opossum
    Ouija Board
    Patent #1
    Patent #4
    Privacy
    San Francisco Earthquake
    Spider Frame
    Squirrel Buster
    Tea
    Trolls
    Window Herbs
    Wpclipart
    Youth's Companion