Leave a signature at the bottom of your Flickr photos in the description field (as you can see on this photo).

I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this earlier, but I didn’t, so that’s that. I have been very active on Flickr of late, sorting out old images, re-tagging existing images, amending descriptions, sorting sets out, tagging with image location details on the map (which is fun)… the whole works basically. I started to take note of the view counts of each of my images. One photo, which I posted only last Monday morning, Brighton Pier at Sunset with Flock of Starlings, by the evening had over 100 views, which I thought was just monster.

Then the idea just popped into my head.

Chances are people viewing the photos will, arhm, view it and leave. There is not much else to do on Flickr really. Flickr doesn’t make it so obvious that you may be a hugely successful Blog writer or enthused wannabe Pope. The traffic that Flickr gets is just astronomic, so it makes sense to somehow tap into these ‘views’ and try and snare people in to checking out your other endeavors.

Flickr does allow for simple ‘HTML’, so after my brief descriptions, I have included a brief description, some URL’s to this WordPress Blog, my Tumblr Blog and my other various Social and LifeStream Feeds. This just a sample of the text:

It is still in the process of being altered, changed, swapped around. Trying to figure out what is appropriate, what is overkill etc. So just living with a few examples to see if I can gauge any reaction.

I haven’t had chance to really style it yet, I will add some small chicklets like I have on my site, making it a little more eye catching. But the framework is there, and hopefully, people viewing my photos, who like them, may now be interested to check out my other endeavors.

Flickr Groups

Leading on from adding URL’s to your photos, we then move onto using the Flickr Groups. A means to show your photos and thus create more exposure to your URL’s and any other tempting messages you decided to leave in your Photo descriptions.

Specifically, if you are a Freelance Designer, who takes on work from local areas, then this can be invaluable, as I have just learned myself this morning. Regard the photos as an extension of your online portfolio, even if you are not hugely into Photography, adding photos to Local based groups is a no brainer. This does work.

Just this morning I received from Flickr a message from a chap who had seen some of my photographs of Seaford, where I live, on a Seaford Flickr Group, funnily enough to do with Seaford. From this he then saw my website and took an interest in my desire to create Blogs and Websites. It’s early days, but I feel that this use of Flickr to help promote yourself is a valuable tool in a Freelancers arsenal.

For any Designers come Photographers, here’s a great Flickr Group called Graphic Designers Moonlighting as Photographers. Well worth adding some of your Photo’s here, if only to raise your own confidence.

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Tumblr

This is a great tool for budding Designers, Freelancers and aspiring Photographers. This merits a post on it’s own as I have a lot to talk about this. But check out my Tumblr Mini Blog for an idea on how I am integrating Photos on Flickr with Tumblr.