Google made an interesting announcement yesterday. They say they have created an algorithim to begin searching flash files. My first reaction to this is pure joy. Really Google? I no longer have to weigh the pros and cons of using flash? I no longer have to sacrifice search engine optimization for fluid animation and fancy applications and vice versa? I no longer will be banished to the bottom of the search query because your spider has no idea my flash pages exist?

Not so fast.

Things they can do: “Index the textual content in Flash files, discover URLs that appear in Flash files.”

Things they can’t do: “Search images, videos, java applets, xml files, swfs within a swf.”

That’s a lot of stuff it can’t index. And what about broken up text? I assume it sees that as an image, hence no search on that. I am all for this progress. I love using flash, I just want to point it that this is just a small step in the right direction, and  hopefully a sign of even better indexing to come.

Getting paid for work is nice. Getting paid while you sleep is even better. It takes some time and commitment, but if you give it a solid effort, the results can be quite nice. Passive income helps freelancers get through the slow times between jobs and helps salary monkeys get through Wednesday afternoon without hurting their boss.

Selling Stock

A stock file is a ready made asset usually hosted in a library full of other assets of the same type.  The customer buying the stock gets to purchase a high end asset without having to commission a custom project or spend the time or resources to do it him/herself. The person selling the stock gets the benefit of reselling the stock creation as many times as they like. Photos are a popular asset. As a designer it is much cheaper for me to simply buy a few high quality photos for dollars a piece than it is to hire an expensive photographer for a custom photo shoot.

What about the Rights?

One type is Royalty Free, which means the customer buys the stock once and can use it as much as they like. The other type is Rights Managed which means they have to pay for each usage. In either case the customer is paying for the usage of the asset, but not the rights to claim ownership or resell it. You do also have the option of selling Exclusive Ownership Rights, which means you’re basically handing over the goods for a one time fee.

What control do I have?

Very little control. By selling stock you usually are consenting for it to be used in any variety of situations. If you are concerned about how or where your stock might be used, you probably shouldn’t sell any. If you sell stock photos of your kids you should be okay with the idea of coming across that picture in a magazine or web ad.

How much can I make?

Stock income can be a great tool for many types of industries. It’s great for designers, developers, photographers, writers and even musicians. The amount you can make depends on what you’re selling, how much the item is selling for, how good it is, and how many times it sells. That last note is probably the most important factor.

Okay so what can I sell, and where?

As a creative you should often be in a state of creating or producing something. Selling stock is great for you because you will often be able to strip out the more generic components of a project and sell them. Be sure to read the submission criteria on the stock sites though. You don’t want to waste time creating stock only to find out you can’t sell it.

There’s a whole lot of stuff that you can sell; Photos, Vector Art, Sound Fx, Music, Illustration, Flash Components, After Effects video, and even more! Here are a few of the sites I use for buying or selling stock. A quick search will show you that theres tons more out there.

• iStockPhoto - Photos, Video, Vector Art, Illustration
• FlashDen - Flash, Fonts, Video
  
• VectorStock - Vector Art, Illustration
• Audio Jungle - Audio FX, Music
• RevoStock - Video, Audio FX, Music

So that brings us the the conclusion of Part 1 of Creating Passive Income. I hope you found this guide useful. Stay tuned for Part 2 where i’ll get into easily making and selling products online.

Photoshop is the primary tool of my trade. Its been ages since I bothered looking for any decent tutorial sites out there, mostly because I rarely find anything useful for someone of a higher skill level. That changed when I discovered

The guys at PSDTUTS have a growing community of skilled designers and are committed to posting a new tutorial every single day. I like their blog format of postings, making it easy to check out the newest posts every day. Fueled by paid submissions, they offer $150 each, this seems to be working quite well for them.

They also have a growing network of other tutorial sites. Vectortuts.com and Nettuts.com are worth checking out too, they’ve definitely made it into my daily reading.

Check out some of their latest tuts:

Hi boys and girls, my name is Aaron Kruglyak, and you’ve found my new home on the web.

I am currently a Creative Developer employed at MediaWhiz . Those of you who’ve been around the blog world for a while are probably very familiar with some of MediaWhiz’s products such as Text Link Ads, Review Me and Shopping Ads. These products are quite popular in the Blog and Marketing world and I’ve learned a lot about this market in the year that I’ve been at MediaWhiz.

I’ve come to realize that just as a designer must keep up with the latest in design trends, semantics, browser differences, software and so on, we must also become knowledgeable in web marketing and how to design for optimization. What good are our beautiful websites if in the end they don’t sell very well?

This blog is still in it’s very early stages, obviously, but I hope to build a useful resource for like minded designers and webmasters. A site full of great inspiration, useful tips, recommendations, and a good deal of fun on the side. So come back in a little while and see what I’ve got for you.