Images for your Blog Posts - 11 Amazing Free Stock Photo Sites
I have mentioned it atleast a hundred times on this blog that adding images to your blog just add life to your blog. Alot of people really loved my recent posts because I was adding some really good images. So I was getting alot of questions, Balkhis where are you getting all these images from?
Well I finally decided to answer that question. The sources for the images I use in my blog posts are Stock Photo Sites. Considering, I write posts daily, and if I were to buy images from istockphoto - I wouldn’t be getting a whole lot of profit from this site. Obviously I am using free stock photo sites.
Advantage of using these sites
- You get Free Quality Photos
- No Link Back required on most (Make sure you read individual image terms)
- Your posts have life and for free
- Did I mention free? What are you waiting for, start using them.
Even though they are not very hard to find. Simply google free stock photos, but I thought I should put down the list that I use often.
11 Amazing Free Stock Photo Sites
The list is in order from what I use the most to what I use the least.
- SXC.hu - over 350,000 quality stock photos by more than 30,000 photographers.
- Every Stock Photo - 4,331,819 free photos.
- Stock Vault - 10820 Stock Photos.
- Image Base - Don’t know the number, but they have some decent ones.
- Open Photo - Don’t know the number but I check it just incase.
- Morgue file - Decent collection here as well.
- Free Range - Tons of cool Images.
- Photo Rack - 27,881 Files in 149 Categories
- Free Pixels - 3,297 Images in 37 Categories.
- Free Foto - 121,099 images with 155 sections organized into 3,351 categories.
- Woophy - 10820 Stock Photos.
Tips on how to use these images
- Always read the guidelines whether the author requires link back or not. (Most don’t but some do).
- Absolutely don’t redistribute these images or sell these images. Most let you use them on personal / commercial projects.
- Never use the image hosted on their server.
- Download the image, and customize it to fit your needs. Always save original and then modify the copy of original. (I have 3 (250GB) External HardDrives filled). How do you think that happened?
- Always use the right padding for your images.
- If author requires credit, then link back to them.
- Don’t overload your posts with images, use them moderately and just have fun.
Well I don’t think there is a whole lot to say there. Now you all know how I was getting alot of images for my posts. You can also get these images from these sites, and I am sure with relevant images, your posts will look a whole lot better. Enjoy and have fun.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
Great links! Surely I’ll bookmark it for future reference. Thanks..
wowza!need it badly!:) running out of my own photos to use lol
You should try the design banner contest for Shoemoney. It would probably get your Uzzz Productions a lot of business!!!
Check it out
Paul .. please give me a link so I can see what you are talking about
Some great tips also do the shoemoney banner contest You might win for his new shoemoney tools
http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/08/28/design-banners-for-shoemoney-tools-affiliate-program-win-prizes/
thanks for the link. Considering Aug. 30th midnight so that would be tomorrow night. I’ll see if I can get my entry in.
Thanks for the list Syed - I currently use sxc.hu but sometimes can’t find exactly what I’m looking for, so the selection at Every Stock Photo looks good
Love the linke they will come in very handy. I am always looking for these places.
Great tips..
I was looking for the same..
Can I use images from google image search ?
What if I take a copyrighted image? what legal actions can one take ?
Yes you can use images from Google Image Search. But make sure you give the authors credit. If you don’t, they want you to remove it. If you don’t, they can send a DMCA Notice to your webhost and then the webhost will be required to shut you down. Depending on the policy, some will permanently shut you down, and some will shut you down until you take that image down.
So it is best just to give them the credit. Or use one of these images.
[...] List of 11 ways you can get free stock images for your blog post. [...]
As some of the other guys said, I’m going to be bookmarking this post because I like to use images in my blog and most of the times I spend quite a bit of time on them since I like making my own but this could make life a lot simpler for me. Thanks for the list!
This is a great resource, often sites charge so much just for one pic, that it would be a huge expense, this really helps!
Thanks,
JR
OH My! I knew about the first one but my on my! This is some yummy photo food Syed! Thanks a million.
hehe not a problem Joe. Enjoy the photos … hopefully your posts will have spicier photos now
Yeah, I try to use photos a lot more since thenetfool made a post about it, plus I like how it looks. If I have a decent sized post, there will be pics, this will save me a ton man! I almost bought an “im graphics pack”
The real thing I’m trying to do is win that “pimped by balkhis” lol
Cool! Thanx for all the links and the advices!
I would like to suggest another free stock photo site:
http://www.webphotomart.com
[...] Well if you are a designer, then you should definitely use them because they have a lot more variety, but if you are a blogger and can’t afford them, you might want to use some of the free ones that I mentioned in 11 Amazing free stock photos. [...]
yay! Thanks for the links Balkhi! I have been looking for free stock to use in my posts