The photo agencies take the pictures. Most of them are expensive and they are leaked on the web… I have no way of knowing where most of them come from, but I have to pay for them… and they are extremely expensive. It’s one thing if I’m a huge blog or a major TV show or something, but I barely make enough off the website to pay my bills, let alone dish out more than half the money to agencies… so I haven’t done everything the right way and I have to now or I’m going to lose the site. The problem is, the amount of traffic I get right now isn’t really enough to support the images I’d like to post. So I’m trying to work with some photo agencies to keep providing lots of pictures – but it is going to be costly. I am working on a new website that will be MUCH faster and more user-friendly, with better picture viewing options and other things, and that should help my site get more traffic, but in the meantime I am in a bit of a pickle. I don’t want to slow down with posting, but I also can’t continue to post images that have not been paid for. Then I’ll lose the whole site…

So anyway, that’s the story in a nutshell. I’m working it out. The majority of smaller sites you look at don’t pay for all their pictures either, but since mine is growing I’m getting in major trouble. I’m stuck in the middle – not enough traffic to justify the high cost of paying the paparazzi, but too many to stay under the radar!

I hope that makes sense!

Dana