Have you heard about this site:  freerangestock.com ?   You donate your pictures to their site and make money by visitors clicking on advertising banners when they view your pictures. Right.  Here's an unedited quote directly from their photog terms: "First, make sure that you understand that the photos you upload will be given away and can be downloaded for commercial or non-commercial use."  The owner is apparently making the rounds soliciting photog's to join.  I guess if you are so desperate that you just want to have your pictures viewed and used by the world for basically free, then this site is for you.

Perhaps because they're free images, it doesn't matter??

Maybe the onus falls on the user since they are free.  they aren't buying anything so cant hold you responsible???

isn't this similar to Fotolias original free section?

At the company I work for, there are a number of social distribution lists where people talk about hobbies, etc.  I read through the photography list, and some work colleagues were talking about stock and microstock photography.  One guy posted that he shoots primarily wildlife shots and couldn't find much of a market in stock.  But one of his friends ran a site like you described above (free pictures, so revenue is through advertising).  He ended up posting his picts there.  He said he didn't make a lot of money, but he made enough to pay for new camera equipment (whatever that means).

Personally, unless it's a really high traffic site, I don't see how you could make much.

No, because the model sucks. The advertisement income has to be diluted over too many photographers.

And what's more, advertising on websites is doomed. It takes too much bandwidth for the user and it hurts the eyes. After the pop-up blockers, we got the ad-blockers like the one I use on Firefox. Pretty effective, I just don't see any Google ads and others on any site any more.

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2007/07/your-content-is.html states:

"People are getting a lot more sophisticated when it comes to ad blocking technology. Younger, more technically adept users have extensions installed. Take a look at digg, for example. However, it's going more mainstream. For example, the new version of Camino on the Mac has ad blocking built right into the browser. There will be an arms race between those who serve banner ads and the ad blockers that's similar to the spam wars of today."