Posting Pictures

A good blog is a good-looking blog. You will need some pictures to attract the attention of surfers and to let them see what you want them to click. After all, our purpose isn't just to have them reading, it is to have them clicking to see free hosted galleries so that they will buy memberships into our sites.

Thumblogger does not host pictures. That means that there is no way for you to put a picture into your posts without putting them somewhere so that they can be seen. The galleries themselves are hosted by our sponsors. But we need a way to post a sample on our sites.

Follow these simple directions and you will have pictures on your blog before you can say, "What the heck is hotlinking?"

1. Find a gallery. (I am assuming that you have already signed up for a webmaster affiliate program and know about Free Hosted Galleries. If not, read the associated posts) For the purposes of illustration, I will use this one. WARNING - This gallery is not safe for work, nor for those who are offended by nudity.
   
2. Choose the picture that you would like to use in your blog. I have selected the first picture in this case. I can use it here since it does not contain nudity. You should choose whatever you think will cause your blog visitors to click on it.
   
3. Save the picture to your hard drive. If you are using Firefox, just right click on the picture and "Save Image As". If you are using Internet Explorer you really should change to Firefox (see the link in the right column) for a dozen different reasons. But if you are steadfast in your desire to use IE, right click on the picture and "Save Picture As". Be sure to remember where you saved it.
   
4. We will use ImageVenue to host our picture. It is a free service made for bloggers. Open ImageVenue in a new tab or window. Click the "Browse" button and select the picture that you downloaded. Select image content (It's probably "not safe for work"). Then click "Send File(s). Now you can see your thumbnail image. My example thumbnail is on the right. All we have to do is get it to your blog.
5. Copy the code from the second box ("Hotlink a clickable thumbnail...). For convenience, lets paste it into notepad. You will notice two URL addresses. We are interested in the one that follows [IMG]. That is the address of the thumbnail. In our example, the address is http://img7.imagevenue.com/loc888/th_62950_test_123_888lo.jpg.
6. Log into Thumblogger, select the correct blog and click the "Add a New Log Entry" button.
7. Click the picture icon over the big text box. It looks like
8. When the new box opens, paste the address for the thumbnail into the Image URL field. Be sure to copy everything from http:// all the way to .jpg
9. Type an Image description and title. Use some "key words" for your blog.
10. Click the appearance tab. You will probably want to choose either left or right alignment. I have aligned our practice thumbnail on the right. That makes it appear on the right side of the post.
11. Putting the number 5 into the Horizontal Space field will keep things from getting too cramped. You can leave the other fields blank. (Or experiment to develop your own "look".)
12. Click "Insert". Viola! You have added a picture.
13. Left click on the picture in the Thumblogger new post box. You will see that the picture becomes highlighted.
    
14. Click the "link" icon. It looks like this .
15. In the "Insert URL" field, paste the link to your GALLERY. Be sure that the link includes your affiliate ID. If you used your webmaster program's gallery generator, it probably does.

That's it. Now write your content, adding a text link to the gallery and you are done. 15 steps sounds like a lot, but you will be flying though them by the time you have done 3 or 4 posts.

Get busy and get ready to start checking your stats.