Funny Cat Photos and Free Jpeg Images (Gasp)

I am taking a huge leap! I am now offering free jpeg images of funny cat photos on my web site. I never thought I would be saying that! But there it is. It is a limited offer. I am giving permission for people to download web resolution images from a total of twenty-four of my funny cat pictures…specifically a series of images featuring a cat named Maude in humorous anthromorphical situations. The images were originally made for a line of greeting cards, but the cards are no longer being published. And these aren’t out takes or inferior images, they are highly produced, digitally composited, art directed photos.

I have decided to migrate the images to CafePress, again as greeting cards, but also as a number of other products from mouse pads to pet bowls to coffee mugs. As web resolution images people may use them provided they either link to my site or leave the copyright notice on the images. If they want large enough files to use for print quality or better, they can license them for a fee. In addition to CaféPress I will place these images, or at least try to place them, with a non-exclusive rights managed agency (so that I can still sell through CafePress and license images for advertising and editorial uses).

These are not images well suited to advertising, though I imagine I can make a least some advertising sales. They are really best for exactly what they were designed for, greeting cards. That being said, they might work well for some people for blogs, for Myspace uses or Facebook or twitter backgrounds…who knows? There is a chance that offering some free images may help drive traffic to my site or to my CafePress store.

I am also optimistic that the free image may stimulate more publicity for the Maude collection of images and that offering free images allows me to legitimately optimize my site for high traffic-volume keywords such as free images, free jpeg images, funny cat pics and free downloadable images. I optimize pages where those images appear, and work at getting some links from outside my site with good anchor text in them.

I am using Wordtracker to find out which keywords make sense to go after in relation to my silly cat pictures and I have liberally used those keywords in my meta data, title tags, headings and body text. I will also write an e-zine article to help gain SEO traction. By submitting articles to the article directories I will get some backlinks with good anchor text.

You hear a lot these days about how in this brave new Internet world you give away what you used to sell and you sell what you used to give away. I’m not sure I entirely believe that, or that it exactly applies to photographers, but this does feel right to me. What is it they say, Nothing ventured, nothing gained?