Downloads for one dollar,, are you kidding? Not with iStockphoto. You can find tons of great stuff on iStock.

There isn’t a yougraphic.com cause that would be pretty boring,, but there is a youtube. Have you figured out yet that video advertising is the wave of the future on the net? You can post any video for free to any free video hosting service like youtube, google video etc. You need footage though and maybe you’re not good with a video camera,, or maybe you don’t have one. Have you looked on iStockphoto yet? They have tons of video clips for $5 you can use to create your next video.

I’ve started experimenting with marketing via youtube and I am using video I got from iStockphoto. I’m not marketing anything really.. I’m just experimenting with how many views you can get from putting up video with certain keywords in the title. I am curious to see what gets the most hits. It’s for fun.

But seriously, Istock has a ton of great photos for your website or next brochure if you’re a graphic designer. You wouldn’t expect much for $1 but you can truly get great shots for that much if you’re looking to add nice images to your blog posts. I might consider doing that just to promote some artists on istock. There is some real talent on that site. Just search for anything under illustrations. You will see some great illustrators work.

iStockPhoto – Go have a look!

Istockphoto.com offers thousands of stock photos from photographers around the globe. Their rates are extremely cheap when compared to other stock photography sites. You can get a small image for the web for a dollar. Larger images for print cost 3 dollars. They also offer vector images that can be opened with adobe illustrator or macromedia freehand and manipulated from 1 – 5 dollars. This is dirt cheap and probably why this site has gotten so much attention since it’s inception.

When you are surfing photos at Istockphoto pay attention to the times a photo has been downloaded. Their site tells you how many downloads each photo or image has received. This is an indicator that the image you are viewing is either super popular or is not. Less downloaded images are less likely to be seen as duplicates on the web or in print. Less popular images of course might no suite your design but are less likely to be seen as an over used image.

If you want to use a popular photo but still look original try cropping the image. Many times people won’t be able to immediately tell that they have seen a photo before if it is changed up a bit. A simple reversal of the image might be all it takes. Try reversing the image horizontally or even replacing colors within the image. This can be easily done in Photoshop.

Fotalia.com is another stock photography site that offers photos not found on Istockphoto.com. Their site offers larger previews of photos so you can see clearly what you would get. I have found great photos that are not offered on Istockphoto’s site. They offer either web or print use for $1 dollar and $2 dollars respectively. I suggest checking out their site if you haven’t found that perfect image on Istockphoto’s site.