If you have a website, blog, or just want to design a great looking auction–then using graphics, animations, images, and cartoons are a great way to make your auction or website look more appealing.
Images give your visitors something to look at. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures are just fun to look at! After all, why do you think magazines often use lots of pictures? Advertisements work the exact same way. Pictures grab out attention, and they are great for adding something to your blog, website, or auction listing.
Where Can You Get Free Images, Animations, and More?
There are lots of great websites that you can use to get a free image, animation, and more. There are a few things you want to keep in mind, however, before you rush off and start copying or downloading pictures. First, are you allowed to legally use the image? Many websites will indicate whether or not you can use the images for yourself (or commercial purposes).
There are lots of sites on the web, and you could start by doing a quick search online for “free animations, clipart, or images.” Here are some websites I have personally used in the past for great animations: animationlibrary.com, and animationfactory.com.
You can also do a search for “public domain pictures” and you will find a lot of websites with pictures that no longer have a copyright. If something is in the public domain, that means the original copyright owner has passed away (in most cases, copyrights expire up to 70 years after the death of the original copyright holder).
Once you find a picture or animation on the web you want (and are allowed) to use, you can then download it.
How to Use Animations, Images/Pictures in your Blog or Website:
Inserting an animation or image into your blog, website, or auction listing is simple! First, never copy a picture and insert it into your site without hosting the picture yourself. If you just go and copy and paste an image from the web, then that means you are using the other person’s bandwidth on their website. Hosting and bandwidth isn’t free, so they could actually come after you for money if you aren’t careful.
So before you even use a picture, make sure you are allowed to use it, and then download it onto your computer. You can download most any picture by simply right clicking your mouse, and then select “save as.” Then a box will pop up asking you how you want to save the image. Just create a name, and then select the file or folder you want to save it in (usually “images”). Then download the image. Some websites may have an automatic “download” button or link so that you can easily download the image.
How to Host Your Pictures, Images, and Animations Online:
When you are finished downloading the image, you can then proceed to host it online. Hosting your image simply means you are placing the image on a computer server that will be connected to the internet at all times. This ensures the picture will be displayed properly every time someone looks at it.
There are several ways you can host your images online. You can use a free account such as photobucket.com, or imageshack.us. To use those free online hosting companies, you simply create a free account and then upload you photo. They usually give you a link that is ready to be copied and pasted into your auction, myspace, or website.
If you have your own website already, then you can simply upload your image or animation to your website using FTP or your website design software (such as Kompozer, Frontpage, or Dreamweaver). Once the picture is hosted online, it is ready to insert into your Myspace profile, blog or website, auction listing, and more.
How to Insert a Picture into Your Myspace, Blog, Auction, or Website:
After you have hosted your picture online by using either a free photo hosting service or your own website, then you are ready to insert that picture into your blog, myspace, website, eBay auction listing, and more. There are a couple of ways you can do this.
First, you may be able to simply look at the picture online, and right click your mouse and select “copy” from the menu. You can then go to your auction listing, or webpage and select “paste.” Many times, this will work and show up properly in the auction, website, or web page. This is easiest, and doesn’t require dealing with any HTML codes.
If that doesn’t work, you may need to manually add the image or animations link within a small piece of HTML code so that it will show up properly. The HTML Code is below:
<IMG SRC=”http://www.example.com/images/dollar.gif” WIDTH=”31″ HEIGHT=”44″ ALT=”Dollar sign” VSPACE=”2″ HSPACE=”2″ BORDER=”0″>
In the code above, you would replace the URL for “http://www.example.com/…” to the URL location of your pictures. You can adjust any of the above if you want to change the height, width, and add an alt tag in case the image doesn’t display.
Then, take that code, and simply insert it into the raw HTML of your web page, auction listing (hit the HTML tab on eBay), and more. Then your images will show up, and you have just added a great image or animation!