Click here to visit iStockPhoto

The Details

iStockphoto is a supplier of licensed stock photography, images, video, flash, and illustrations.  As I haven’t purchased anything from them in the past but stock photography, it’s all I’ll discuss here. Their stock is large, varied, and high quality enough to be worth working around an unusual pricing structure.

Their pictures come in all sizes, and their idea of very large is several thousand pixels to a side.  This also includes drawings such as vector image and Photoshopped illustrations that would work for the web.  You can search by an advanced filtering set in the sidebar which includes:

• Whether a picture is portrait, landscape, or square
• Where you want your text to go so the picture has space for you to put it.  It appears as a 9-square box, and you just click the sections you want blank
• Size
• Category
• Primary background color by Hexadecimal value
• Illustration complexity by checkbox (five categories total from their idea of basic to elaborate)
• And keyword.  You can filter by all of the above and keep narrowing to selection you want

The picture will also pop up if you hover over it for a closer look at the flick of a mouse.  Between that and the filter, it was easy to find a header image in my chosen category with enough blank space for my text.  A little effort in the filter makes searches match very well with what it is you want, or think you might want. 

Licensing is broad enough for many uses but it is not PLR.  Licenses come in Standard and Extended.  If you buy a picture, it automatically has standard licensing, but if you need more you have to purchase Extended extra.  With Standard licensing, it’s best to keep your uses for their photographs digital.  They’ve improved the licensing explanation from the last time I was there, but it’s still lengthy and can be read here.

The pricing structure is a bit odd.  Instead of purchase by a direct item or subscription charge, it’s by points.  Points can only be bought in one-off packages or in monthly subscriptions.  The smallest package is more than you’ll need for a site header and possibly other images to a splash page, but is affordable enough to be worth any addition cost.  When I bought the smallest points package, I was informed they would last for a year.  I then purchased my image and banked the rest.

Customer service provides numbers to call and an easy-to-use online help ticket generator.  I put in a test ticket for a licensing question, and it was answered in two business days to my satisfaction.  Their customer service is slightly above average and will serve, but is not exceptional.

Overall, the images at iStockphoto are of good quality and easy to filter.  The pricing structure is inconvenient, but worth the irritation if you need a small quantity of licensed images for web sites and don’t want the hassle of a subscription.  However, they’re purchasing packages are very scalable to larger users who may consume enough images over time to make it worthwhile.  I recommend image use in conjuction with your personal or commercial web site projects only, and not for product use or distribution.

Click here to visit iStockPhoto

Click here to visit EasyPLR

The Details

I’ve used EasyPLR products on two occasions now.  The first is when I bought one of their reports and used it to cut the development time on an ebook about how to make your site sticky.  The latest was a purchase of a Kindle PLR eReport which I intend to use in a future product reboot for The Ebook Walkthrough.  I was not disappointed in either instance.

EasyPLR sells limited quantity runs of reports, articles, and eCourses.  Although the first thing you’ll see when you land on the page is their sales pitch, you can find their latest offerings by scrolling down or clicking a category on the right under the “Quick Shop” selections.

The PLR products are sold shopping cart style and can be filtered by category or PLR type (article, report, or eCourse) with various links on the site and in the “Quick Shop” selections.  Payment is by PayPal or credit card (though PayPal).  In both instances, the content was delivered by email link without errors in a ZIP file, though I only bought one at a time.  Both times I purchased from EasyPLR, the products were delivered as OpenOffice/Microsoft Word compatible wordprocessor files.  The writing quality is better than the majority of PLR (and some finished products) I’ve seen.

Customer service is excellent.  When I emailed the site about a licensing question for my first purchase, it was answered clearly and promptly.  Even before you buy, there are articles posted giving suggestions about putting your PLR to use.  This advice was also in the product ZIP that was sent to me, along with several bonus links.  Yes, it’s in the interest of the owners there that you be able to put your PLR to use so you’ll come back and buy more, but it’s still a nice touch.

Licensing is solid but not broad.  You can read the complete list of can’s and can’t do’s at the link, but essentially the PLR is for product creation and resell only in finished form.  If your intention is product or eCourse creation, these reports are a good fit with some work.  The package cannot be sold as-is.

The big downside is also one of the upsides.  The product runs are limited.  If you don’t buy from a run before its empty, you’ll miss out on it.  This also prevents saturation and is thus a good thing, but if you see a product there that interests you, don’t assume it will still be there the next day.

Overall, the site is well organized, offers a solid variety of text-based PLR, and is a good value for the money.  If you don’t use a lot of PLR to gain content for eBooks, eReports, autoresponder courses, or other text-based products, buying from EasyPLR will allow you to purchase PLR without paying a subscription fee for more than you need.  As with any other PLR product, expect to work it to get it into a final form, but the products there are a good starting point.

Click here to visit EasyPLR

Click here to visit Bluehost

The Details

I’ve been hosting my web sites with Bluehost for a few years now.  My previous host has been Yahoo, and at the time it was very limited and more expensive than the hosting average, though very beginner friendly.  Though Bluehost’s administration panel proved to be less so, their customer service and broader range of options was still appealing.

Bluehost allows unlimited domains on a single account.  They will also sell them to you, allow you to transfer them to the company, park them, and will as an added expense give you domain privacy.  This means you show up Bluehost if someone looks up your domain ownership on something like WHOIS.

Among the most useful feature is the account integration to Simple Scripts.  This is the wizard-driven installation of any number of different site types, such as blogs, forums, and wikis.  As of this post, the choices include among other things:

• 6 different types of blog (WordPress, Geeklog, etc).
• 5 different types of forum site.
• 1 type of classified site.
• 2 guestbooks.
• 6 photo gallery choices.
• And 10 types of shopping cart eCommerce.

This review site is a licensed review site template loaded into a WordPress blog created by the Simple Scripts function.  One thing to note about this is that while it may create a functioning site for you, you will need to spruce it up beyond the basics afterwards.  However, the nuts and bolts of its functions will have been installed for you.

Their cPanel based administration has plenty of features and the hosting account will not require you to have your own FTP tool to use it.  It can be confusing at times though, as occasionally there are many different links to tools that do the same thing.  Some of them work better than others, like their FTP and backup choices.  I’ve since grown accustomed to getting around it and don’t mind, but the panel is not initially beginner friendly.

The only other minor annoyance is the promotionals within the administration area.  The account has plenty of features with the basic payment services mentioned above, but the company tries to cross-sell and upsell to the point of some minor irritation.  I haven’t seen a pop-up recently, but I’m not about to definitively state they’re gone yet.

The account has basic site building aids available to you, but for the more advanced users, Bluehost accounts can understand a multitude of different scripting languages.  SQL databases are also available, and an account may have up to 100 of them.  There are some functions I’ve never used since hosting my sites with Bluehost, but for the expert user that wants or needs to tinker, they are available.

Bluehost’s customer service is well above par.  All of the calls I’ve ever placed to them were answered quickly and courteously.  Furthermore, they have a support section that includes a knowledgebase, FAQs, and even video training on common topics.

I’ve found them to be a good host over the years.  Excepting the occasional irritation with the admin panel and the rare unannounced “server maintenance,” Bluehost does an excellent job of hosting sites.  The Simple Scripts integration in and of itself has proven handy for me on two of my sites now.  If you are not an absolute beginner at dealing with admin panels, I can in good conscience say you’ll get a solid deal with them.

Click here to visit Bluehost