[Journey] Getting backlinks from big websites using Creative Commons images

Hi all,

I open a new journey for a side project. I got the idea through a Youtube interview from Authority Hackers (very good videos).

Principle

The principle is as follows:

1. Make your own images for your niche
2. Put them on Flickr and similar websites with a Creative Commons license
3. Let people steal your pictures
4. With a tracking solution, detect the websites that are using your images.
5. Ask them to put an attribution to you, with a backlink.

Apparently, it's a good way to get VERY GOOD backlinks, including from mainstream media.

Example

Let's imagine your niche is Artificial Intelligence. You want to release on the internet images like that, under common creatives license where the attribution is mandatory:



Such images have a good potential to be copied a lot, even by very big websites.


My goal

I have a small website on a very specific technical niche. I am writing the articles myself as it requires specific expertise (that I have). It's a lot of work: basically, while blogging I have the feeling to write a full book.

There are not a lot of requests for the related keywords, but the keywords have a high value. My goal is to get a good ranking for this website as if I rank it well, I may get tons of proposals from companies to put ads on my site. I am pretty sure that some companies can pay 500€ or 1000€ per month to be featured on a good ranking website.

I think that at the content level, I can compete as I am a good writer (in french) and I have the expertise in my niche. Backlinks are a different story.

So, I decided to try this method: conquer the niche through images. I have an advantage: most french websites in this niche are using images with English text (like the AI image above, in French it's "IA"). So my goal is to make highly-attractive images with french texts, that can be grabbed by some media or big french websites.


A twist

I am not a graphist. So instead of hiring a freelancer to make the images, I had an idea: make "configurable images", where I can change the text. With a few "templates", I will be able to release hundreds of images in my niche.

Let's say that the text can be changed easily in the AI image above. I can write AI, but I can write also some other words, like "Robots", "Bots" or "ML" for Machine Learning. But I can also translate the words into multiple languages despite I am not a graphist. This is a fucking idea honestly.

What I did currently

This is what I did today:

I posted a job on Fiverr, very detailed
I attached a doc with 10 examples of images I am looking for to explain the quality required.
I have been very clear on two points: (1) only copyright-free elements, (2) Explanations on how to change the text for each image

I had a lot of offers, but most of them were trash or generic messages. One guy sends me a nice-looking example. I asked him to confirm if I will be able to change the text. He confirmed.

Hired. 90€ for 10 images. And these 10 images will turn into at least 500 images in my niche just by modifying the text. In my niche and language, this will be a flood.


Twist if this is a success

If the results are good and if I am really able to change the text as I want, I am even considering opening a "picture library" on my niche website, with all images, ALT tags, descriptions, and license rules, everything branded as "free illustrations on <niche>", ordered by keyword (eg sub-topic).


This journey will likely be a fail (unexplored territories for me), but I will share the results!

Interesting idea, I look forward to hearing if anyone uses the images and if anyone replies when they're told about the mandatory attribution

How can one track his images online?
Best of luck on your journey!

An update.

What has been done

I received the images from the Fiverr seller. Not perfect but that's ok. The images look good (despite being too much similar to the samples I sent) and the text is easy to change.

From these 10 images, I generate my 14 first images by varying the text to cover the full spectrum of my niche, in two different languages.

I posted this first batch on Flickr. The filename has been changed to take into account the keyword I want to push, as well as the description

I register an account on CopyTrack, and I uploaded the 14 images. Now they are monitored to detect any copy.


Next steps

- I will open a "photo library" on my niche site, with all images generated. I am currently looking for a good image gallery plugin.

- My goal is to quickly upload/monitor 100 images. Then I will make a pause to assess the first results, in terms of SEO and detection of copies. I never used Copytrack before, so let's see.

- To be considered: I am frustrated by Flickr as the free version does not allow to see viewing/download stats. I am currently hesitating to pay to understand exactly the Flickr potential.

Skiimpo said:

How can one track his images online?

Click to expand...

This post should answer this question

A new update.

What has been done

Set up an image library on my niche website (details below)
Set up a paragraph on my gallery Wordpress page to explain the license requirements
Uploaded 6 new images on my website / Flickr / Copytrack, with ALT & description

Details

• I used the plugin "WordPress Portfolio Builder – Portfolio Gallery" (free version). This is an excellent plugin as you can create several galleries easily. I created two galleries for each niche topic: one for the English images, and the other for French images (all my pictures contain text obviously).
• I put all galleries on the same unique webpage, each of them being separated by an H2 title.
• The rendering for the Wordpress part is excellent. The result is clean and attractive.
• I made a mistake on Flickr: I didn't set the copyright correctly for my first uploads. The license part should be CC-BY-ND, meaning "Creative Commons with attribution and no derivatives".
• I also added licensed information to my Wordpress page
• I had one detection of a copy by CopyTrack. It was a false positive.

Continuing this journey
As the process is now clear, I will continue this journey by posting only summarized statistics. Currently, they are:

• Total # of images published (Flickr / Wordpress / Copytrack): 20
• Number of detection by Copytrack: 1 false-positive

I will add any information about the ranking of images, their usage by a third party, the number of webmasters contacted and the number of backlinks when I will start to get results (if it happens...).

Does anyone have a list of the photosharing sites that keep the metadata, location and exif? Most of the big ones except for flickr strip it off.

Could you share how your strategy played out after two years? Thanks

phucac32 said:

Could you share how your strategy played out after two years? Thanks

Click to expand...

It's 2 years already
I think it didn't work for him since there is no updates

Salamouna said:

It's 2 years already
I think it didn't work for him since there is no updates

Click to expand...

Bumping Old threads because they didn’t read the date. This kind of thread should be locked once they reach X time without replies.

That is very interesting method, I will follow this journey closely. Gl

Almostbr0ke said:

That is very interesting method, I will follow this journey closely. Gl

Click to expand...

No don't follow it
It's dead already

Funiki said:

Bumping Old threads because they didn’t read the date. This kind of thread should be locked once they reach X time without replies.

Click to expand...

I read the date and specifically asked for an update after two years. But as Salamouna mentioned, it probably didn't play out as expected.