Flickr is a place to share and store you photos, but it can also be handy when networking and marketing your online business. The basic service is free, but for $25/year you get a huge amount of storage.
I started using flickr 2 years ago for my photography. Though it has slowly evolved into pictures of my jewellery.
I find that the photography community is much more active on flickr than the handmade community.
The following is my review on the in's and out's of flickring.
(10 is the best and 1 is the worst.)
Time Management
--I give flickr 5 out of 10
While it is fun to browse through and look at all the pretty pictures on flickr it can be very time consuming! It is also very tedious work tagging and uploading all of your images and making sure they have fun, attractive titles and descriptions! Flickr is not for the person who is already in a time crunch. Though if you do have time it is worth trying out. Just set up a routine and stick with it.
-Clock by withhugsandkisses
Connecting With People
-- I give flickr 7 out of 10
With flickr you can leave comments on other peoples photos and people leave photos on yours, which is great for getting feedback about your work. You can also become friends with other Etsians and you will see all the new stuff they have uploaded on your homepage or your contacts page. I do find that the comments on flickr photos can be to different extremes, either a lot of constructive criticism or just a random "nice" or a "that's pretty".
--I give flickr 8 out of 10
If tagged correctly, your photos have a great chance of showing up in google or yahoo searches. Your photos also show up in flickr searches and on the front page of flickr when they are first uploaded. You can add you photos to thousands of different groups that have themes like 'Etsy' or 'handmade'. The only problem with bringing traffic to your Etsy site is that you can only put your shop link in your profile. So someone really has to be interested to look at your profile and then carry on to your shop. Though, if used properly, it can bring quite a bit of visibility to your shop.- Pendant by melissajlee
User Friendly
-- I give flickr 10 out of 10
I find flickr very user friendly. It is very hard to get lost and there are instructions all over the site that tell you what to do next... for example, after you upload your photos it says "Finished! Next: add a description, perhaps?"
-Image by fosterbk
Overall I give flickr a rating of 8 out of 10. It's easy to use and not cluttered with things I don't need. I just have to make sure that I don't get sucked into browsing for hours, which I have succumbed to in the past... believe me. With flickr, you'll get out what you put into it, like anything I guess.
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