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.

Seemingly technical in nature or “neat” perhaps flash animation only serves to distract visitors from what they came to your site for in first place, your product or service. Your services are what visitors are interested in not a blinking, noisy, website. Flash also creates major problems with getting it properly indexed. There is no way for search engines to extract content from your website as it is all contained with in swf. If you absolutely must have a flash page it is imparitive to offer an html version as well. Easy on eyes

Graphical elements play a huge role in a website design as well. You need to make sure you don’t have any extreme contrasts between colors and that you don’t use really bright colors as they are quite hard on eyes. Your logo or brand should be clearly displayed on home page and in more than one place. Instill a sense of well being with ease of use

Make sure you have all legal documents in place such as privacy and return policies. It is also important to have all of your contact information pricing etc. displayed in a manner that conveys legitimacy. It should be very easy to contact you for any questions your visitors may have. Include an opt-in newsletter

A great way to generate return customers is to offer an opt-in newsletter. This allows for direct marketing to people who you know are already interested in your product or service. What better way is there to keep customers abreast of new products or changes in services you offer. Use a trademark or tag line

In our case we trademarked manipulated at symbol with phrase bringing e-solutions to you, thereby effectively increasing strength of our brand. We are now able to effectively convey who we are but give a good creative idea as to what we do.