While I don't expect to make a lot of money from affiliate programs I use, last month I made $100 with website referral program. Not enough to retire on, but I did nothing to make this money.

There is a dark side to affiliate programs. In order for you to get credit for a sale person usually must buy item when they click on link you have on your site. If they click on link, bookmark site and go back later to buy item, you will not get credit for sale. This is because banner, link or button on your site has a unique number that tells vendor which affiliate sale came from. So if person buys something without using link, there's no way to tell where sale came from. It's just something you have to accept with affiliate programs. This probably explains why after more than three years I have not made any money from many books on my site that have links to Barnes and Noble.

Another thing to watch out for are affiliate programs that pay you only after you get a certain amount of money in your account. If you sell a lot of item, or it has a high-ticket price, you should be fine. But I have friends that sell things that pay a small commission, and they're lucky to get a check once a year.

Next month's newsletter will be part 2 of this article, and it will cover selling your own stuff, and what to sell.

http://www.CreativeCauldron.com Jeff Colburn is a website designer and writer. His goal is to make the process of creating or updating your website easy and simple for you, while creating a website that meets all your needs and expectations. Jeff can also create all of the copy for your website.

Another low cost option is sites that have large collections of artwork on CD's. You pay for CD and shipping and they send you a CD filled with hundreds of graphics. For these sites, I would want to see what would be included on CD. If they don't show everything that will be on CD, they should show at least 100 images. I would hate to be shown 10 to 20 great images, pay for CD, then find out that rest of images on CD look like garbage. Again, check "Terms of Use" for these images.

Along these same lines, art supply stores often carry clipart books; some include all of images on a CD too. I have several from Dover Publications that have great stuff in them. Clipart books range in price from $5 to $25. Most are in lower price range.

When you are designing your site, be sure to think ahead. Maybe your site is a personal page now, but if think it may become a business site somewhere down line, then be sure graphics can be used on business site. This will save you hassle of recreating your site at some future date.

Before I tell you where to get all this free stuff, let me give you a piece of advice. The Internet if mercurial. The most amazing site can be there one day and gone next. Taking with it all that artwork that was perfect for your site. For this reason I suggest that when you come across a site with great artwork that you can use, first, bookmark it or put it in your Favorites folder. Then copy everything you may need right away. It will save you time and heartache down road. Of dozen sites where I found artwork for my site, ten were gone within a year.

Now, for all of those free sites you've been waiting for (Drum Roll!):

Photographs * All Royalty Free (they have artwork too) - http://www.allroyaltyfree.co.uk/ * AltaVista Photo Finder (click on images tab) - http://image.altavista.com/cgi-bin/avncgi * BigPhoto - http://www.bigfoto.com/ * Free Images - http://www.freeimages.co.uk/ * Free Stock Photos - http://www.freestockphotos.com/ * Free Stock Photos - http://free-stock-photos.com/ * FreeFoto.com - http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp * Geek Philosopher - http://geekphilosopher.com/MainPage/photos.htm * Morguefile - http://www.morguefile.com/ * Picsearch - http://www.picsearch.com/ * Stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/ * Stockstash - http://www.stockstash.com/ * Yahoo! Picture Gallery - http://gallery.yahoo.com/

Artwork / Animation * 1,001 Free Fonts - http://www.1001freefonts.com/ * Animations ($7.95 for a week) - http://www.animations.com/en/index.mc * Aon Celtic Art - http://www.aon-celtic.com/cfreeware.html * Barry's Clipart Server - http://www.barrysclipart.com/ * Castletrash Clipart (medieval, Egyptian, fantasy clipart on CD's) - http://www.castletrash.com/index.htm * Clipart ($7.95 for a week) - http://www.clipart.com/en/index * CoolArchive - http://www.coolarchive.com/ * CoolText.com (create logos and other cool stuff) - http://www.cooltext.com/ * Crystal Cloud Graphics (spiritual graphics) - http://graphics.elysiumgates.com/ * Dinc! (Retro fonts and clipart) - http://www.girlswhowearglasses.com/info.html * Flash Components ($24.95 a month) - http://www.flashcomponents.com/ * FontFreak (fonts) - http://www.fontfreak.com/index2.htm * Free-Graphics - http://www.free-graphics.com/ * FreeGraphicLand.com (links to other graphics sites) - http://www.freegraphicland.com/ * Gif.com - http://www.gif.com/ * Graphics Hunter (links to other graphics sites) - http://www.graphicshunter.com/ * Homepage Tools - http://www.homepagetools.com/ * House Ravenscroft (Celtic images) - http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/3374/index.html * Rowan's Icons (Celtic images) - http://www.conjure.com/ICON/icons.html * Top20Free.com (links to 20 graphics sites) - http://www.top20free.com/

This should be enough links to keep you busy for a while. So have fun, spruce up your website, be sure not to use too many large graphics and read those "Terms of Use."

http://www.CreativeCauldron.com Jeff Colburn is a website designer and writer. His goal is to make the process of creating or updating your website easy and simple for you, while creating a website that meets all your needs and expectations. Jeff can also create all of the copy for your website.