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I love dreamtime photo website they charge anywhere from $1-$4 per photo depending on how large you want it in pixels- also there is a whole search section for free photos from photographers. You can find really nice high key photos there. I used some for ebook covers that I have designed. - Maiken Jepsen

thank you guys, running to check those... - shiran

Yes, look at flickr pics which indicate that they have "Some rights reserved". Usually (perhaps always) when you click on those words you find that they're subject to either a creative commons Attribution license or a creative commons Share Alike license. The significance of each is here: http://creativecommons.org/license... - Isha (Marysia)

http://www.imageafter.com has thousands of free images. They can be a bit "raw", but you may find some of what you're looking for. - Paul Johnson

I always use http://www.everystockphoto.com It's like a meta search engine for stock photos. It also searches Flickr for CreativeCommons pictures. But as with the other sites you have to check individual licenses before using the pictures. - Michael Netsch

sometimes you can get free travel stock from area tourism agency, cvb etc. to use for publicity. that's cheaper than buying and quality is usually good. - Suzytino

Suzytino thanks - that's a great idea - shiran

Try Comstock. You can buy disks of images on specific topics. Last time I bought I believe it was around $350/disk. - Elliot Slater

gettyimages.com has some fab photos they may not be the cheapest but they just ooze quality - if that is what you want. Alternatively, try fotofilia.com - it is very similar to istock - Karen Purves

I've seen that sales page before and clicked away from it because it doesn't give a price. Sales pages that don't give prices are a real pain Emily - Isha (Marysia)

I use a http://kompozer.sourceforge.net - Mark South

I seem to be at exactly the same point as you, I've tried a couple of blogs which haven't done great so I am going for something a little more meaty. I got the business hosting package from Hostgator. I've tried Kompozer, MS Expressions and Dreamweaver. At the moment I am torn between Kompozer and Expressions. Dreamweaver is beautiful but really overkill for me atm. - Kittie Walker

This site just launch by Mike Filsaime maybe could help you a lot http://syedakram.instantaffiliatewebsite.com - Syed Akram

I use XSite pro, very easy to use and fairly inexpensive http://www.xsitepro.com/ - Rich_Glass

I use Wordpress, even if for sites without a blog. Excellent SEO, flexibility, lots of functionality built in and easy to include an RSS feed if you decide to have any sort of upadated content anywhere on your site. The off the shelf sites you can get are a little less individual and in myopinion don;t give you the opportunity to really stand out.as much as you could with your own website. Wordpress can be made to look nothing like a typical wordpress site. - Rob Cooke

I agree with Rob on Word Press. It can be made to look indistinguishable from Word Press. WP seo's just like a website, easier to maintain without needing to do HTML (CSS, Javascript) surgery. I do not know your niche, but for most niche's your customers won't even care. Some people have also used Drupal and Joomla. - Frank Dobner

When we first started out some years ago we used Website Wizard which did everything we needed at the time. It took about 12 months to outgrow them and now we use a combination of Web Page Maker, Joomla and WordPress depending on site content. - Kim Baillie

I am a bit of a WP fanatic myself, so I am biased, but I do think it is excellent. I'm talking about WP self hosted (not WP.com). If it wasn't for that I don't know when I would have got started building my first site. - Rob Cooke

I like http://www.weebly.com/ - you can create a website for FREE!!!!! You can also get a domain (although it does have 'a .weebly' part on the end of it) and they host it for you. Hope this helps. - Enzo Vullo

I am starting to build one too! It's like an online magazine though. http://ezinemax.com - Light from twhirl

I've tried Dreamweaver, Frontpage(garbage code), notepad(raw coding) and the winner everytime is Xsitepro v2. Check out my mentor James Schramko's site at http://www.xsitepro-seo.com and you get his awesome XSP cheet sheet when you buy through his link. Cheers Z - M Zhaduleus Billadeau from twhirl

my first successful site was built using phpnuke, it took away a lot of the html headaches, added some others..but was fun to learn and looks pretty nice http://coaching-youth-baseball.com/ - Brian McClure

Hi. I just did a post on this. Haven't tried the service but it looks amazing. http://www.squarespace.com/home... - Mike Staskiewicz

I really believe in the power of wordpress, but customizing WP is not that easy. - Soheyl

Yes. WP has a long way to go to educate its customer base on customizing their blogs/web code. They have documents upon documents that could create full time job to learn their stuff. I hope that they consider putting their stuff on video for simplifying the education. There is a niche for someone here to produce effective video training to utilize WP fully for us boneheads. - Frank Dobner

That looks like another fabuloso plugin Mark. You are a mine of generosity - thanks! - Isha (Marysia)

Yes it looks great, does it tell you how to manage affiliate links which has a lot of html code linking you to various affiliates, I presume you need more than just the url of the banner? - Frank Donnelly

I tried to use the Minimal theme that seems to have extra areas for ads but I couldn't find how to access them so had to dump it http://demo5.theme4wordpress.com/... The words you see in the Adsense and Sponsor boxes show in the published blog. Shame, because it's a nice-looking theme. Perhaps someone will come along and tell us how to use it... - Isha (Marysia)

For affiliate links there is MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate http://www.mbpninjaaffiliate.com/ - its a plugin you have to buy however, or there is the free wordpress one WP Affiliate http://www.seoadventures.com/wp-affi... - Mark McGimpsey

For Minimal - If I don't miss my guess there will be a series of files something like 250x250.php in the theme accessed through the Theme Editor which you will have to manually cut and paste your code to. Each file will be for one add slot. - Mark McGimpsey

Thanks Mark - thought it'd be something like that. I'll leave it till I have more experience - this is a pretty heavy learning curve already for me - Isha (Marysia)

I was looking at that theme last night, pity about those words staying in the box. So basically we can only use the spaces provided on the WPD themes? - Frank Donnelly

Unless you feel confident about using the plugins that Mark has recommended. - Isha (Marysia)

I did miss my guess - I just downloaded Minimal for a look. The sidebar.php files have a place for you to add the link and for the images you would have to substitute (images folder) with your own. This would be a manual undertaking it seems and perhaps not quite doable for a new person. - Mark McGimpsey

Thanks for that info Mark. - Isha (Marysia)

Thanks Mark, I will go through the themes again to see if there is a generic type theme. - Frank Donnelly

Rita - crafty you - sending us through your FF page like that - I must start doing the same :-) . I like strawberries - and look what I got using Cyclops - http://budurl.com/wnde - yum yum. Interesting that Market Samurai brings me hundreds of images for my keyword from Flickr, whereas Cyclops can only find 102. Goes to show just how good MS is. But shall definitely be using Cyclops, too. - Isha (Marysia)

Hi, Rita - Thanks very much for this! - David Lemberg

I don't know, how it happened, Marysia, sorry. I didn't plan to redirect you though my FF page. What would be the point? Accidents happen :) - Rita

Marysia - I'm finding Market Samurai brings back flickr photos that cannot be legally used, whereas the one's I checked in Cyclops were legal to use (creative commons) that probably why the big difference in number - Ginger G

no aussie flag ? - Allison

He is racist against aussies!! - Ed Dale

Aussie flags and more coming... - Dan Raine

That's only coz the poms can't play cricket - Greg Martin