Does it really matter if I have a picture on my article or not?

This question comes from John Robertson, a fairly new contributor who signed up under my referral and has published consistently since.  (Psssst, he was also an honorable mention in this year's Halloween flash fiction contest.)

His question was:

"Just out of curiosity: Does it make much difference if you add pictures? I thought about just taking some that I thought would work well with my articles, but I wasn't sure if it would really be worth the extra time.  Any advice on that?"

 Answer:

In short form, yes, having pictures does help, even if only a little.  Most people are visually inclined so in general, more people will click on an article that has a picture rather than one with just a headline.  Also, having an image makes it easier for the staff to feature your content on the front pages (and yes, the page views garnered from being just on category front pages is worth the few minutes it takes to find an image).

Here is a link to the images topic within this blog.  Read through some of these posts (yes, some are a little old but they still apply).