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Some blatant self-promotion for the pictures in the newspaper

By Staff | Feb 28, 2008

You will have to forgive me for this week’s column. I readily admit that it is a classic example of blatant self-promotion.

You have probably noticed that under many of the photos in the Faribault County Register there is a sentence after the cutline/caption that reads, “To see more photographs of this event, log on to http://cu.faribaultcountyregister.com.”

Perhaps you have done that; logged on to our website and clicked on to the CU link and checked it out.

Each week we take a lot of pictures, and only a few make it into the Register, mainly due to space limitations.

However, each week we also take all of the pictures that we took at an event and upload them to the CU site. So while there may be only two or three pictures of an event in the paper, there may be up to 30 on the CU site.

That means that if you want to see all those pictures, you can, by going to the CU site. And while the pictures in the newspaper may or may not be in color, ALL of the pictures on the web are in color.

The pictures are also available for purchase. (This would be included in the blatant self-promotion disclaimer in the introduction to this column.) Not only can you purchase the picture, but you can also purchase cool stuff with the picture of your choice on it, like a coffee mug, mouse pad or T-shirt.

Or lets say that you want to purchase pictures of you, or your friends, or your grandson, or whoever. It is easy to do. Perhaps you just want to see if the Register photographer got a shot of you when you were at an event, like the county fair.

We track how many people purchase a picture, and we also are able to see how many people just looked at each picture. So far, in the four months that I have been here, the most popular picture (as far as being viewed) was one of the ones of the BEA Triple Award winners. It has had 113 views.

There are others. The photos from the Kerry fire have had as many as 90 views per photo. The girls basketball team photo from the St. Clair tournament has had 87 views.

Things like Bucs Night Out, and the creamery building going down in Winnebago have had 60 to 70 views on many of the pictures.

Many of the sporting events will hit as high as 50 to 60 views, but many are in the 20 to 30 range.

Some of the pictures from the kids fishing contest that ran in the paper just two weeks ago have already had as many as 30 to 40 views.

This all means that some people are taking advantage of this service that we offer. They go to the Register website and then to the CU web site and look through all the pictures we have there.

We share this CU site with our sister paper, the Fairmont Sentinel, so all of their pictures are also on the site.

Plus, people like you can also upload picture galleries on the site, such as photos from a train trip across the country.

That means that there are literally thousands of photos on this site. But they are conveniently located in separate galleries, so it is not too difficult to move through the site and find the picture that you want to see.

That picture might be a picture of you, because the site is called CU and we see you at different events and then post the photo for you to see.

If you have never tried looking at it, next time you are out web surfing, stop in. You might be surprised at what you see.