If you're like me and don't take a lot of photos of your own to include in your posts, don't waste time by finding images for each individual post you write. Instead, find images in bulk.
Photo by alancleaver.
(This is a great tip Amy Porterfield offered in her post, How to Strategically Dominate the Facebook News Feed.)
How to find images in bulk to save time
- Make a list of the main topics/categories you write about.
- Carve out a good chunk of time (maybe 30 minutes?) to focus on image gathering.
- For each topic, search for images. Download a handful, save them to your computer (don't forget to note the link and credit info so you have it later), upload them straight to your WordPress Media Library (Media–>Add New) or simply bookmark the image links for quick access later.
- Then, when you're writing a post about one of those topics, search your already-gathered collection instead of doing a new search from scratch.
Do you do this or something similar already?
FURTHER READING:
How to Find Free Images to Use in Your Posts
How to Use Images Legally
How to Organize Your Blogging Time
Here at BloggingWithAmy you'll find tips, tools & tutorials about blogging and websites. In plain English. Want to 
Thanks for the fantastic advice! I'm just about to launch my site and getting quite a few posts lined up to publish. Finding an image for each one has been a very slow process. This suggestion will be a huge time saver.
And I even picked up a tip within a tip in your post. I couldn't figure out how to upload pictures to the media library and was instead loading them directly to the FTP site and then using the URL to insert it into the post.
Thank You!
Hi Amy,
Your suggestion may be a time saver in the long run for those who are organized. For the disorganized, like me, keeping track of source information for a large collection of photos seems to be an unwieldy task — since I can't even keep track of my own photos.
Instead I search Flickr for Creative Commons-licensed images when I'm writing a post and use the link code provided for attribution.
Ray
I hear ya. What about just bookmarking the image pages themselves? That way you wouldn't have to keep track of all the credit info but you wouldn't have to cull through lots of irrelevant images each time either. Just a thought!
Or use Pinterest boards to organize!
Great idea! Thanks, Stephanie.
I'm also collecting my Favorite Blogging Tools and Blogging To-Dos on Pinterest – I just link up posts on things I need to do later or awesomeness that I've used on my blog (like Sharebar – thanks to Amy!)
Hmm..that's interesting. I've never considered that.
What are your thoughts on the best way to keep up with the credits? Save it as part of the file name of the picture? Or just have a spreadsheet or document as a master key?
Evernote!
This is such a simple and brilliant idea! Thank you for the suggestion. I'm disorganized too, Ray, so I would probably save 3-4 Flickr images at the most and put them in a folder to find them later.
A lot of bloggers in my field (art and interior design) use tons of photos. Do you think it helps with search engines? I think my url is linked to all of the images but it's a lot of work to find them and I'm not sure how important they are since I'm just starting out.
Content is important but the photos are sometimes just as important to the user. What do you think?
Yes, I think in general, images are definitely great. Especially now that Pinterest is in town!
I often have trouble finding good quality pictures. Any suggestions where to look besides Flickr?
Try iStockphoto. Some are free, others are not. You have to shop carefully but the quality is good.
Yes, I was going to suggest the same thing.
I'll third the iStockphoto suggestion. It's so much faster than Flickr to find what I want that it's worth paying for the picts.
Sometimes it's worth paying something for a more efficient process. I always like iStockphoto as well…a great user experience.
I started a second blog that was topic specific and did not want to spend time using my photography like I do with my regular blog. As I looked into clipart, I found a series of images that I really liked but had to buy to use.
Since this other blog has five main topic areas, I bought five images. Depending on what the topic is, I use that image. If I have develop a different topic, I'll buy another image at that time. This particular series has quite a few to select from.
It was worth the money. I love the image and it makes my blog look very crisp.
You can see what I did at http://www.dogear6.com.
Nancy
Sorry Amy. I did not realize that putting in a link would require you to approve the comment.
No worries! It just holds it for moderation. I try to go through held comments once a day, so eventually it should show up. Thanks!
Yes, I totally do this.
I tend to 'batch' most all tasks (even blogging related).
It really does aid in personal productivity to do so.
See more on batching on this helpful article, if you like:
http://facilethings.com/blog/en/batching
Cheers!
~H
Great article – thanks for the link!
Great idea!
I've also found a few photographers on Flickr who have sets of FREE images and are perfect for blog posts. So, I can just search thru their set and can usually find something that works–especially if you're looking for something pretty normal (like a flower, or kids' face, or something).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkpoppyimages/sets/72157626954587269/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/sets/72157610551917961/with/4497349383/
Awesome! Thanks, Amanda.