About Alchemweb

It has taken me thousands of hours of learning to create this business, and I couldn't have done it on my own. There are many, many sources of information that I have used.

In particular I owe a great debt to the following sites:

SEO Book - still great
Copyblogger - copywriting with pizzaz
Search Engine Land - industrial strength insight
Shoemoney - flair
Frank Schilling - thank you!
High Rankings forums - traditional
Cre8asite forums - warm

I'm also grateful to:

Dagon Design for the free contact form script

CSS Play for being an inspiring Genius (especially in relation to CSS menus)

Imapix for his gorgeous photos providing me with beautiful desktop backgrounds

Wallpaper Changer for randomly selecting those backgrounds!

I use Treepad Enterprise to run my fledgling business - it's brilliant!

Anybody who's into web design will sooner or later need FONTS. You can pay £20 or more for a font, which is insane.

So where can you get good-quality cheap or free fonts for commercial use? Not from the many, many aggregating free font sites, that's for sure. Each font usually comes with its own licence forbidding commerical use, which you can only read once you've unzipped the download.

Ultimate Font Download is a good solid base to start from and has over 10,000 fonts for a very small amount of money. The licence agreement is here. I've emailed the guy and read around and it seems perfectly legit.

Digital Graphics has a few free fonts for commercial use. The licence agreement is included in the single downloaded zip. (Warning - frames, which is why I can't link directly to the download page.)

Larabie Fonts has a lot of nice fonts that you can download individually. The licence agreement is on the front page (and also in the download).

KingThings has some lovely fonts available free for commercial use. I've emailed Kevin and he confirms this.

Manfred Klein has some fantastic fonts available for commercial use (you're requested to make a donation to a charity). The licence agreement is here and from this licence agreement is a link to the fonts.

Get your images from Fotolia!

Istockphoto is (sadly) now owned by Getty, which along with Corbis specialises in sending webmasters threatening letters demanding ridiculous amounts of money for image copyright infringment (close to a thousand pounds for each image - yes, I received the letters demanding a total of £10,000 after I used seemingly reputable templates ). Here's hoping Corbis and Getty both go bust very quickly.



You can see how to react to the Corbis and Getty problem in this Corbis and Getty letter summary, this 100 page thread on Corbis and Getty threatening letters and this further description of Corbis, Getty and PicScout.

The hired legal hounds are Baker and McKellan. Easy money, Baker and McKellan. Hope you go bust, too.

A pro forma letter for UK residents to send to the hired hounds or to Getty / Corbis can be found here

A Canadian legal view can be read part way down the bottom of this page.

And here's an article in The Guardian newspaper that drifts through some low-level investigative journalism about Corbis and Getty

Another website dealing with these clowns is http://extortionletterinfo.com

Here is a quote from the attorney who runs this site:

"Getty Images' deliberate, malicious, bullying, and presumptuous letter campaign ... engages in what is tantamount to legalized extortion. The letter in its entirety is both well-worded and well-constructed. It has been clearly been well thought out. Because of the deliberate construction and planning that goes into this letter campaign, it qualifes as a Scheme.

The Letter automatically presumes guilt of the recipient. The letter recipient is expected to provide proof of their innocence. In effect, the letter recipient is presumed guilty unless they prove their innocence.

Although the letter does provide for the possibility that the letter recipient was unaware and unintended of the alleged infringement, the Letter takes a heavy-handed and unforgiving approach of stating that they are responsible for all alleged "damages and liability". The Letter automatically presumes Getty Images has been "damaged" whether or not that is actually true or proven.

Because this scheme relies heavily on the letter recipients ignorance of due legal process and people's inherent fear of legal conflict as a result of that ignorance, it is considered by many as legal extortion.

Given the overall assessment of the situation, the term "legalized extortion" was coined to better describe Getty Images very aggressive letter campaign."

More from this site for US residents here

Corbis and Getty are dinosaur companies that used to charge vast amounts for the use of photos. Presumably their business models went belly-up with the advent of the likes of Istockphoto and Fotolia. My educated guess is that Corbis and Getty are in long-term decline, and their unimaginative executives have decided to try and grab as much as they could before the lights went out.

A classic case of reputation mismanagement. Corbis and Getty are doing their best to spread their bad karma around the internet and I shall go out of my way to help them.

Maybe Istockphoto will be released from Getty's claws soon, who knows?

Thanks to fsb.org.uk (the Federation of Small Businesses) for having a little bit of guts and courage.

Thanks for your forum help, BeeDee - if you live in Scotland you might need Glasgow Web Design