How You Like this Freebie?
As the cliché goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. So why not let your images do some of that writing for you? Sounds like a great idea but you are a small business on a tight budget (or maybe you are just cheap). Either way, you want some high quality photos to use on your blog (or websites) but don’t want to pay through the nose for them. I can certainly understand where you are coming from.
So, what are you best options? You have two; stock photography and creative commons. There are sources for free stock photography, but it takes more time and energy than it’s worth to dig around and find what you need. I personally use iStockPhoto which has a wide selection at very reasonable prices. I typically use their smallest size image which will cost around $1. For a while, this was my favorite source for cheap photos.
However, my current favorite is creative commons. Why creative commons? Because I am cheap! Beyond that, they hire lawyers so we don’t have to and it is a standardized way of communicating licensing. The license to look for is attribution only (best case scenario). A simple link back to the provider (or photo credit) is required for the use of their photo. I prefer to link back to their flickr photostream as you will see at the end of this post.
You can do your searches directly within flickr or use the nifty Creative Commons Search tool. Make sure you are on the flickr tab, check the “Search for works I can use for commercial purposes.”, type in some keywords, and press go. Find a picture you like, click on it (should see the photostream link here), click “all sizes” right above the photo and select the size you need (I always choose small for this blog). Happy hunting! Nearly every photo on this blog comes from here.
If you happen to sell something where photos really get people excited about your products, then consider flickr as free advertising! Check out Manassas Cakery’s photostream. Can you see how that might draw some interest to you company when brides-to-be are searching for wedding cake ideas? And you would probably be okay with free one-way links because you understand how important links are to ranking in Google, right? Just be sure to license your work.
Other photo and image search resources:
- EveryStockPhoto.com – creative commons search engine and member bookmarking
- OpenClipArt.org – open clip art library
- Creative Commons Images – creative commons collection
- flickCC – unique thumbnail display panel of the first 36 matching creative commons photos
Lastly, be careful with flickr or you may never get any more work done. Especially if you begin browsing the entire collection. Have you heard of high dynamic range imaging (hdr)? Check out flickr’s amazing collection of hdr images! How cool are those?
I always start with flickr (Creative Commons Search) and if I can’t find what I need, then I move over to iStockPhoto. You will definitely find that each has their strengths and weaknesses. Really depends on what you are looking for. What are you favorite places to get photos for your blogs or website? Hopefully not Google image search as this could get you into hot water if the images are copyrighted.
Image Credit: left-hand
