Want to get a ton of worthless traffic to your blog?
Just do what I do. When you copy a picture over to illustrate your blog post, file it under its real name.
When newspapers and other large sites file pictures, they use names like this — 11883006_400.jpg. When I file a copy of a picture, I write what it is. And that name carries over when the picture appears online.
Here are two quick examples.
One of the most popular posts I ever wrote here involved my 1966 Game, a series where I looked for equivalents of important 1966 figures in the headlines of 2006. For one post I found an old picture of Grace Slick from that period, on a search engine, and used it in the post. The name I gave the picture file, after I downloaded it, was Grace_Slick.jpg. (Oh, the answer was Ann Coulter.)
Ever since then, every day, I’ve gotten a few, or a few dozen, hits to that page. Almost all from image search engines. I don’t know if those people are reading what I wrote, or enjoying it, or what. Why they want an old picture of Grace Slick from my blog is beyond me, but it must be popping up to the top of Google Images and people remember here. (I hope this pleases her.)
Anyway, a few weeks ago I did a piece entitled My Private Seinfeld Episode,
about some other blogger who was taking the time and trouble to write
what a horrible, mean, and really bad person I am. (There are those who
agree with you, friend.) Since the Seinfeld episode I was alluding to guest-starred
Kathy Griffin as the "stalker comic," I used a picture of her. And I
put her name on the file, in case I might need it again, like now.
Well, Microsoft has apparently upgraded their own image search.
Because yesterday I had more traffic on this blog than on any other
day, ever — twice as much as ever before. And most of it came from
Live Search Images. Most of it was people looking for that silly picture I’d downloaded.
(Why did I download that one? She looked good in it, and I wasn’t
saying anything especially critical of her, just noting her work and
linking to it.)
Now it may be that at some point the copyright police are going to
come after me, or might come after you, for doing this. But if you
don’t want stuff copied, watermark it so it’s identified as yours. (I
very seldom use such photos.) Or use software which keeps it from being
downloaded, as many sites do. It’s not hard. In fact, it’s pretty easy,
and if you’re serious about keeping other people from having copies of
your old pictures it’s something I recommend. So I’ll tell any lawyer
who comes calling. While I could delete such photos from my blog, or my
files, they’ll live in cache forever, not just here but elsewhere —
that horse has left the barn, kids.
That is my story. That is my explanation. Make of it what you will.
