Flickr is an awesome free tool to organize and share your photos. According to the site “Flickr is the best way to store, sort, search and share your photos online. Flickr helps you organize that huge mass of photos you have and offers a way for you and your friends and family to tell stories about them. “
Basic membership to the site is free. With free access you get:
• Space online for 100 MB monthly uploads
• Up to 3 sets you can create
• Ability to post any of your photos in up to 10 group pools
• Smaller (resized) images are accessible (though the originals are saved in case you upgrade later)
Purchase the Pro Account for $25 annually, and you will get:
• Stats! Including view counts and referrers
• Unlimited uploads, storage, sets, etc
• and a bunch of other cool attributes
I have a LOT of images stored to Flickr. I just love the site. It can be a TOTAL time waster though, fair warning. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted browsing available photos from the millions of uploads. 
Many indie crafters and artisan use Flickr to showcase their work. If tagged and described correctly it appears in google and other searches and can be used as an additional method to put your work in front of a HUGE audience. But Flickr is NOT a selling venue. As I was researching Flickr use, I found a few threads in the etsy forum that might make interesting reading for artists, crafters, indie shops and other handmade craftspersons. Based on what I gleaned from all the info here is a short list of do’s and don’ts:
1. Do create your profile and put your shop, studio, site, newsletter, etc links in it
2. Do put your store name in your tags (as ShinyAdornments NOT as http://shinyadornments.etsy.com)
3. Do put etsy or artfire, etc in your tags
4. Don’t put a link to your store in your description
5. Don’t mention the item is for sale in your etsy store in your description.
It is against Flickr’s Terms of Service to use Flickr for commercial purposes. You can find more information here http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne
6. Don’t mention the item is for sale AT ALL in your description
7. Don’t tell users to “see you profile” for information about you in your description
8. Don’t add ‘sold’ or ‘available’ to your description
9. Do add your pictures to pools in which you think they might be a good fit. To find more about pools, visit this link http://www.flickr.com/help/groups/
To add your images to pertinent pools/groups:
Once you are a member of that group, go to your Flickr page and choose
• ORGANIZE
• ALL YOUR CONTENT
• Wait for your pictures to load to the bar at the bottom of the screen
• Pull the pictures into the part of the screen that says “DRAG ITEMS HERE TO EDIT THEM AS BATCH”
• Click the link in the top navigation that says “SEND TO GROUP”
• Choose the appropriate group from the listed ones available.
Here are some links from the etsy forum for you to peruse:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5547566&page=1
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5551930
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5284133
How do you use Flickr? What do you like about it?
If you haven’t done so already, I’d encourage you to check flickr out. You can see all my photos at my Flickr pool here www.flickr.com/photos/shinyadornments
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