WP Contempo has announced they will be releasing a LOT more themes in the coming days so head on over and subscribe to their feed to get instant updates.

Stock Xchng - A stock photo powerhouse, this Hungarian free stock photo website has it all. You’ll think you’re browsing a commercial stock photo site. The images are excellent quality and you can download them in full size.

Morgue File - A wildly popular stock photo site, Morgue File offers a huge variety of free digital stock photography for both corporate and personal use.

Public Domain Photos - A pretty self explanitory site, Public Domain Photos offers a huge collection of free public domain stock photos and a large free clipart gallery. A great free stock photo resource.

Freerange Stock - A great looking site offering a wealth of free stock photos. Many of the photos are shot by the Freerange staff or pulled from the Freerange archives. The Freerange community is supported by sharing advertising revenue among photographers. Images are minimum 2400 x 1600 making them perfect for use in web design projects.

Free Digital Photos - The name says it all! Free Digital Photos offers a great selection of free stock photos for commercial and personal use. They also have the option, with many of the photos, to purchase a high res version starting at just $10.00. This is great because designers can use unwatermarked low res images for mockups and switch to high res later on if needed.

Flickr Creative Commons Photos - Many of the millions of users on Flicker have chosen to make their photos available under the Creative Commons license. This means there are literally millions of photos on Flicker available for free use in a variety of different applications. Browse by specific Creative Commons license, and be sure you know what each type means, as they have specific requirements.

Yotophoto - Yotophoto draws free stock photos from a variety of sources so you can browse them all in one place. Find images from Stock Xchng, Wikipedia, Flickr, Morguefile and more all in one place.

PixelPerfectDigital - Browse from a great selection of free stock photos. Pixel Perfect Digital also allows users to comment on photos, allowing designers to communicate and help each other find great free stock photos.

Open Photo - Check out a huge selection of free stock photos at Open Photo. They offer everything from Animals to Nature to Concept Photography, making this a great resource for graphic designers and Bloggers.

PhotoGen - Photo Gen offers an amazing selection of royalty free stock photos. Featuring a wide selection of categories including architecture, abstract and more, Photogen offers a practically endless amount of stock photos to choose from.

Stock Vault - Stock Vault offers over 10,000 free stock photos that you can download and use for corporate or personal projects. A clean website that is easy to use, and will surely be a frequent stop for web  designers and bloggers.

Every Stock Photo - Every Stock Photo currently offers millions of free stock photos in their index and they do a great job of providing accurate information on each photo including important details like licensing, source, and dimensions. A great resource for designers!

Free Photos Bank - A clean, easy to navigate site offering free stock photos in a broad range of categories. They also display the dimensions of the photos and have a user rating feature to help improve the photo searching experience.

Free Images - A UK based free stock image website, Free Images offers over 2,500 free photos anyone can download and use.

Under the new ACRU system, EPN publishers will be paid between $1 and $50 per ACRU, mainly depending on the quality of the signup - as determined by eBay. Each publisher’s “quality score” will be updated each month on the 9th as eBay processes new data.

This is definitely bad news for any members signing up for EPN after today, as everyone will fall into the $1.00 ACRU category by default and remain there for at least one month.

At first glance, this looks like a blatant move by eBay to make more money by reducing the ACRU payouts to their publishers. Although the maximum payout has increased to $50.00, it may only affect eBay’s top affiliates, where people in the middle may receive far smaller payouts for ACRUs. On the flip side, this may simply be an attempt by eBay to weed out incentivised signups that don’t earn them any money in the long run.  If the main target here is reducing incentivised activity, EPN publishers may not see much of a decline in their monthly ACRU earnings, and may even see some benefits.

There’s no doubt it will take a few months to start seeing any significant data one way or the other, especially as existing publishers will stay on the current ACRU payment structure until November 1st.

What are your thoughts?

Google Adsense Program Policies make no allowances for deceptive practices. The most important thing a publisher can do to ensure the integrity of their site is to be aware of what is happening on your site.

Google has made it abundantly clear not to click on your own ads or ask others to do so. But what about practices a publisher may not purposely carry out?

Make sure that ads associated with Google never appear in an unrequested pop-up. Don’t be talked into purchasing traffic for your site that may contain adware.

Respect the Google trademarks. Don’t use any Google trademarks or logos without their consent.

Don’t change the Adsense code. If you’re a pro at html, don’t assume you can add your own code. If you’re new to html, simply copy and paste the offered code. Don’t mess with it.

Provide a good environment for advertisers and a positive user experience. Don’t try to be deceptive in any way. Google’s rules may sound strict, but believe me, protecting the integrity of the Google Adsense Program is in your best interest as well as Google’s. After all, a positive, honest Google Adsense program means more money for all of us.

Useful Books About the Google Adsense Program For Users of All Stages

Do you need to buy a book to use Google Adsense? Not necessarily. Google’s support page has a wealth of information. But you might consider it if you want to read a personal account of an Adsense wizard such as Eric Giguere or say, if you want to learn more about HTML. ‘Who Let the Blogs Out: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs by Biz Stone has a lot of information on blogging as well as information about Google Adsense.

Imagine if you are running an offline company. Would you allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are dealing with your customers? By making your staff wear professionally, you are telling your customers that you do care about quality. This works simply because first impressions matter.

Similarly, the same case is with your website. If your website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute “quick fix”, you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care for quality.

On the opposite, if you have a totally professional looking website layout, you are giving your visitors the perception that you have given meticulous attention to every detail and you care about professionalism. You are organised, focused and you really mean business.

On the other hand, you should also have anything related to your company well designed. From business cards to letterheads to promotional brochures, every little bit matters. This is because as you grow your business, these items become the face of your business. Once again, think of the “salesperson dressed shabbily” anology, and you will get my point.

Have fun.

As previously mentioned, your social networking profile is important when it comes to meeting other internet users. This is because, in most cases, internet users are looking to chat with someone who has the same goals, views, beliefs, and interests as they do. Without a personal profile, it would be difficult or impossible to tell what your interests are. That is why social networking profiles are not only important, but they are needed.

When it comes to social networking profiles, a lot of focus has been placed on what you should include in your profile or display on your profile page. It has been said that pictures produce the best responses, as well as detailed personal information. Although a picture and detailed personal information may help to increase your page views, you may be getting views that you do not necessarily want. Despite what you may believe, most social networking websites do not have restrictions on who can view your personal profile. In fact, internet users, even those that do not belong to your online community, can easily see profile.

Since anyone, literally anyone, can see your social networking profile, on most social networking websites, you are advised to be cautious. Essentially, this means that instead of focusing on what you should put in your online profile, you should be focusing on what not to put. This is one the best ways to protect your safety, both on and offline.

As previously mentioned, pictures are often recommended with social networking websites. If you are interested in positing a personal picture of yourself in your online profile you can do so, but you are advised to carefully choose that picture. While you will want to look your best, you are advised against posting a picture that is too revealing or seductive in nature. Most internet users can look at these types of pictures without feeling a thing, but for others these types of pictures spell danger.

If you make the decision to post a picture of yourself in your social networking website profile, you need to be careful about the rest of the information that you post. Although you may not necessarily think about it, a picture is just a picture, but combined with your name and address, it could be a deadly combination. You are advised to only post your first name in your profile. This will make it more difficult for anyone to try and contact you off of the internet.

It is also advised that you carefully choose your location. A large number of online social networking sites require that you select a city, as well as a state. If it is allowed, you may only wish to list your state and not the city. If you are required to list the city and the state that you live in, you may want to think about using a nearby city or town, especially if you live in a small town. If an internet predator wanted to contact you and you lived in a small town, it could be fairly easy for them to find you. That is why it is advised that you carefully select the answer to the location question.

In addition to the above precautionary measures, it is advised that you do not post detailed information on your children, the location of your home, your income, or when you will be leaving for vacation. By keeping these and the above mentioned points in mind, you should be able to enjoy online social networking without having to always look behind your back.

The crucial point of planning your site is optimizing it for revenue if you want to gain any income from the site. Divide your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks. For example, you might have a “food” section, an “accomodation” section and an “entertainment” section for a tourism site. You can then write and publish relevant articles in the respective sections to attract a stream of traffic that comes looking for further information.

When you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your website, you can sell space on your pages to people interested in advertising on your page. You can also earn from programs like Google’s Adsense and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to those themed pages and click on the ads. For this very reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages need to be relevant to the content, so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly.

As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will bear more results than on magazines or offline media. Hence, start tapping in on this lucrative stream of profit right away!