Would it shock you to know that you’ve got less than 15-30 seconds to establish your credibility with new site visitors? Studies have shown that people make unbelievably quick decisions about a site’s value - it only takes most people a matter of seconds to scan a landing page and decide whether to stay or go elsewhere. Including good quality images that are relevant to the content on your site is one of the best ways to convince new visitors to stick around long enough to read your content and ads. I cant stress the next point enough. If you’re trying to make money online you’re in the business of getting and keeping people’s attention. If the majority of your visitors leave your site within 15-30 seconds, never to return, you’ve wasted time, effort and money getting them there, especially if you’re spending money to drive traffic with contextual advertising. Images should be thought of as an investment. They capture people’s attention far more quickly and effectively than any other element on a page, and pairing relevant, attractive images with your content says to visitors “this site is a credible and valuable resource for what I’m looking for.” The only problem is that most of us aren’t graphic designers or professional photographers who have tons of image stock to use. So where are the best places to find affordable royalty-free stock images? Here are a couple of great resources you can use to punch up a website without breaking the bank.

There must be hundreds of free online storage platforms out there, and, for the most part, you get what you pay for - most of them are riddled with ads, and very few provide the kind of speed and reliability that you want. If you’re like me, the reason you use an online storage tool in the first place is really just to have a way to share large files between multiple computers or with others. If you’re just looking to share large files, there’s a great free alternative out there called YouSendIt.

I’ve been using YouSendIt for about 2 months now and I’ll never go back to using online storage for sharing.

Here’s how it works:

1. Enter the email address of the person you want to send the file to
2. Your recipient receives an email that lets them immediately click and download the file.

Here’s Why I love it:

1. You can use an address book to save time and maintain contacts.
2. Up to a hundred people can download every file, giving you plenty of room to spread the word.
3. Plenty of size - you can send files up to 100 MB with a 1 GB monthly download limit and up to 100 downloads of every file.
4. 7 day delivery - your recipients have a week to download your files.

For most of us a free account will be more than enough, but YouSendIt offers several account options for people and organizations need a bit more zip-bang. Check it out at YouSendIt.com.