Banish the Blue Frog ~ How to Link Up & Avoid the ‘No Thumbnail’ Image

So, you’ve had an amazing idea, you made it, it looks awesome, you have great photos and an easy to follow tutorial, now all you want to do is share the awesomeness with everyone else, so you link up to a bunch of your favourite link parties.

And then you get this

instead of your not to be missed project should be, that pesky blue frog.

You faff about with the link backs, check they all work, yep it opens up a new tab with the hosts blog all shiny and new.

Maybe you hit refresh a few times, nope, still the blue frog.

You might even be able hit that little x button in the corner, {yes I really do want to delete that blue frog}, then trying linking up again.

But you still get that blue frog!

Urrrggghh

This has been happening to a few of my link ups and to say its annoying is an understatement, I’ve tried text links and blog buttons, I’ve checked and rechecked soooo many times that the links work and from what I can see, every time I link back I’m doing it the right way but still that pesky blue frog follows me around.

I decided to go to the Inlinkz website and see what info I could find from there, in brief, not a lot, apparently there is just something that didn’t work or Inlinkz didn’t like / recognise / read my image, the cheek! Does that blue frog not realise how much time we spend not only taking photos but editing them as well to make them as awesome as possible!?

Anyhoo, there are 2 suggestions

1) Link up using a direct URL for your image  ~ for me this is just too much hassle

2) Link up using a photo from your computer ~ BINGO!

Using Inlinkz your image can be up to 1MB in size, plenty for a decent quality picture.

If you do get the blue frog thumbnail you can either delete it if the option is available

 {I don’t think it is on most parties I’ve seen},

kindly ask the hostess to remove your link

{just remember they are busy busy just like we are and may not get to it straight away}

or you can leave it and hope some folk are wondering what he is hiding today!

{Do you click on any blue frogs, or do you pass them by?}

Note: {Most link parties won’t let you link up the same URL twice}

From now on, I shall be linking up using an image from my computer, the link between mine and the ‘party’ blog still works, just the image will come from my computer rather than my blog. I maybe wrong, but I just imagine that folk are less inclined to click on the mystery blue frog than they are on an actual photo of your project / idea / whatever.

When you link back to another blog in a link party you hope for a little bit of traffic to come your way {otherwise why bother linking up!} so make sure next time you have your best photo ready to go, from your computer!

Here is a quick how~to

Fill in your details and hit Next step

From the 3 options, click ‘Upload from computer’

From the ‘Upload from computer’ tab, click on ‘Choose File’

From your picture library, choose your image

You will come back to this screen, make sure you click on ‘Upload’ for your chosen image to appear

Your chosen image will appear in the linky collection

If the blue frog pops up, {and you are positive you have done everything properly} well I have no idea and would suggest contacting Inlinkz or the host of the blog you are trying to link to

Hope you have found this helpful, I’ve seen other blue frogs out there so I know I’m not the only one who has somehow messed up this linking malarkey!

Linking up here