A picture is worth a thousand words, or so it’s said. It’s worth $1.50 too. For just over a dollar an image you can take your site from well-written but sort of “blah” to fabulous. The use of awesome images play a large part in the perception of the visitor. As you’re about to publish a post, put in the extra time to find a great image or two- it will be worth it. It’s all part of managing your online brand. Visitors to your site will perceive it, and you, as being more professional. Following are my favorite places to look for images:
Sources for free images:
StockXchng – free stock images. The quality here runs from great to just mediocre, but I always look here first and often find exactly what I’m looking for. Many of the images require no attribution at all, but be sure to check the terms of use.
EveryStockPhoto – indexes images from a wide variety of sources. They also index StockXchng, but it’s unclear whether everything that is there is also on EveryStockPhoto, so I check both.
Flickr – I use a great plugin for WordPress called PhotoDropper. It searches Flickr for images available under the Creative Commons license.
Once you’ve taken a look at the sources for free images, check out the many low cost stock photography sites. My favorites are:
Sources for low cost images:
iStockPhoto – They’ve got zillions of images and the small size is only about $1.50. They have a new, improved search engine called “Best Match” which is constantly learning from customer search behavior to provide increasingly improved results. They offer free photos every week and a free vector every month. If you really want to splurge, check out their new premium image collection called “Vetta”. Here are a couple of samples – nice huh?
Shutterstock – This site boasts over 7 million images and operates solely by subscription. Blog-sized images end up being about $4 depending on your subscription plan. They offer a free photo and vector each week as well. Here are a couple of examples of the selection available:
Crestock – These images are just a little pricier at $5 each, but they have a free photo each day. Here is an example of a daily free image:
One last thought: remember that if you claim income from your blog on your taxes, you can completely write off the cost of images!
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Thank’s for sharing with us this informations.
I can add to your list of free images sources this two sites:
http://www.openphoto.net/
and http://www.stockvault.net/
Images from stockvault.com
can’t be used in commercial purpose.
I’m looking forward for oyur new articles.
Right You are! I also have been known to use fotolia. They have a great selection of images, and prices are still quite low, however these days you do generally have to get a bigger size if you want to use it for print!
Excellent advice. However, there are at least a couple of sources of high quality, professional-looking images which can be used for no cost. Try Flickr and Wikimedia Commons. By using the advanced search facility on those sites and searching only for those images which are licensed for use, you can find great images for free. Remember, though, to abide by the terms of the licence.
Yes, I listed Flickr. Wikimedia Commons is a good one too. Thanks!
Whoops – so you did. Apologies.
Kenny
Wow great article, it comes in really handy for me right now. Thanks a lot!
Wonderful post, with lots of helpful links to stock image sites. It’s very important to put images with your post, aside from being perceived as more professional, the images provide a focal point of interest. It also breaks the monotony of seeing just lines and lines of text. Thanks!
Thank you very much, Randa for showing us the places to get some beautiful photos. I knew the latter four websites, but I didn’t hear about the first two websites. Since they’re free, I’ll definitely check it out!
Thanks for the info, im always looking at for new places to get images. try morguefile.com, they do some quite good stiff
Thanks Randy, ive just come across your blog and find it very useful, ive just used stockxchng after reading this post, before i spent a small fortune on istock images. The images ive found on stockxchng are just as good and best of all FREE, thanks again
Lots of good sources, at work they use Getty Images. They are very expensive and it’s a massive operation. They probably have everything under the sun including celebrity and politician pics you can buy for publication. I use Dreamstime for professional gigs and they also offer freebies a lot. If it’s just a background image is much more fun making one yourself and you can use a dozen free graphic programs like gimp.
I have a question Randy. Can I use images that i have bought from places you mention, in offline?
You have to check the terms of use anytime you buy an image. Each site is different, but they are all intended for use in both online and print applications.
I suggested that the stock photo places have a way in which the cost of images increase after certain number are purchased. That way they are not overused. In the end, it’s the photographers who price them and many are just happy to make a few bucks here and there, but I found this great photo for a corporate website and 3 months later saw the same photo in the competitor’s site. We were a small business so we didn’t hire our own photographer or buy an exclusive.