Resources for Your Small Business Website: Free Photos and Text

On the Internet, small businesses can use large websites to differentiate themselves from other small businesses. Continuously creating new content can be a challenge, but new content is essential for attracting potential clients while keeping the site fresh for search engines. The greater the number of pages at a site, the better the site looks to search engines. Illustrations are essential for websites. The typical websurfer has limited patience, quickly leaving sites with text-heavy pages. Using illustrated pages can encourage websurfers to remain at your site.

Most small businesses lack the resources to create large websites from scratch. The demands of creating or buying text and photos are too great. Today, the Internet has the answer: Creative Commons. In this article we will show you how you can make a page with free text and free photos from Creative Commons licensed materials. The Creative Commons licenses allows you to use the materials as you like. The only restriction is that you must credit the authors.

Let's start this process by looking at pictures for ideas. Quickly search the web for Creative Commons Search and you can find their search page. As our site focuses on Japan, I typed in Japan in the search box. Then I checked the two little boxes on the right, modifying my search to only include works that I can use for commercial purposes and that I can edit as I like. Then I looked at my six options: Google, Yahoo!, flickr, blip, OWL music search, and SpinXpress.

I am looking for photos, so I selected flickr. The search provided me with 276,035 options. At flickr, we have three options for sorting the photos: most relevant, most recent and most interesting. I clicked on the last option, most interesting. Many of the most interesting photos are completely irrelevant, like the duck in London, which was the first photo. I selected the seventh picture down, bad luck by kalandrakas. I wanted to use the picture, but the bottom of my browser had a warning: "You should always verify that the work you are re-using has a Creative Commmons license attached to it."

I scrolled down the photo and saw text saying "Some rights reserved." The photo passed the first step. To be sure, I clicked the text saying Kanko's photostream at the top of the page. Then I clicked to reach her profile. Nothing at her profile limited my use of the picture. Some flickr pictures are first identified as fine to use. Then, when you visit the profile, there may be additional limitations. Therefore, I was free to use the photo wherever and however I liked. I decide this picture would be a great shot for a page discussing omikjuji.

So, I went back to the Creative Commons Search search page and typed in omikuji in the search box. Then I checked the two little boxes on the right again and selected Google from the six options. Unfortunately, nothing attractive came up in my search. I then turned to Wikipedia, which is also available as a resource.

Wikipedia contains millions of English articles. All of the written text at Wikipedia is copyleft, not copyright. You are free to borrow any of the written text at Wikipedia to use as is at your site or anywhere else, editing the text as you like. Copyleft means that the text is available to everyone. The top page of the Wikipedia site tells us that we can use the text if we follow the GNU Free Documentation License.

The major restriction is that Wikipedia must be credited for the text. Refer to the copyright if you would like more information. Please note that not all images and sound files are available for use. If you need more information, you could go to Wikipedia.

As this article is being published at article sites that discourage links in the body of the text and copying text, please note that the edited text below is based on information from Wikipedia's page on omikuji. Here, the writing is different from the text at Wikipedia. This article uses Wikipedia as a source, but you can simply copy your text from Wikipedia and edit it as much or as little as you like.

Omikuji are fortunes that are written on narrow strips of paper at shrines and temples across Japan. Visitors make a small offering and select one fortune from a box, hoping for a good one.

After selecting the fortune, the visitor opens it, discovering the general blessing which can be good or bad. The general blessing ranges from a great blessing, which is the best, to a great curse, which is the worst. In between are additional blessings and curses of varying degrees including small, half, near, and near-small.

The fortunes are about the visitor's life, including items such as wishes, travel, business, studies, and romance. Like all fortunes, the future is predicted. If the prediction is bad, the visitor folds up the strip of paper and ties it to something on the temple or shrine grounds, ridding themself of the bad fortune.

If the fortune received is good, the visitor should keep it. Receiving a fortune at a shrine or temple is very popular; the photo shows us how popular.

Now, we have our content. All we need to do is make the webpage. Between Wikipedia for the content and flickr for photos, we have created a page of beauty and content to our site at no cost and with limited time. We suggest you do the same.