Where do you find free photos and images you can use on your internet business website or blog?
In this article I’ll share with you at least 8 internet websites where you can find stock photos that are royalty free for use on your online business website or blog.
We all like the word “free” and when it comes to photos and images the word “free” is very appealing. I need to point out that “royalty free” doesn’t necessarily mean that the photo is entirely free. Sometimes you’ll need to pay a 1 time fee for use of the stock photo. The neat thing is that you can find some excellent photos at no cost on the web. I’ll concentrate on websites and methods for obtaining completely free stock photos below.
Benefits of Using a Stock Photo on your Business Blog
Adding a photo to your internet business blog or website can produce the following benefits:
- Increased conversion rates
- Hold the reader’s attention longer thus they stay on your website for longer periods of time
- Add alt tags to your photos for increased search engine optimization
And don’t forget this important benefit- Ascetics…
In addition to breaking up long boring lines of words a photo can change the entire look of your blog post and produce a more positive internet business environment.
Taking Your Own Photos for Use on your Business Blog
You can of course take your own photos. Those photos would be free to use. However there are a few problems related to taking your own photos for internet business use:
- Not everyone can take professional photos
- You need a good quality camera
- Lighting, background and focus need to be just right
- It can be time consuming
I don’t usually publish a lot of my own photos on this internet business resource website. That’s because there’s a difference between a professional business website and a website for fun , family or organizations. Generally, you want to use a high quality photo or image on an internet business blog.
That said, I have an entire picture album (using flickr) on my mission’s website at http://www.missionspics.com. I use a Nikon D500 Camera to take my own photos and by no means am a professional photographer although I have managed to produce a few good photos like this one:
How to Find Royalty Free Stock Photos for your Internet Business
Here are some great resources for quality photos and images. I’ve listed my favorites in order. 1 being the very best. I’ve also included sample photos from each website.
1. Istockphoto.com
Istockphoto provides stock images that are royalty free. As I said above, you have to pay a 1 time fee for permission to use the royalty free photos on your website. However, you don’t have to pay every time for their free photos which are offered for download on a weekly basis. Here’s what I’ve done…
I signed up for a free account and signed up to their email alerts. Once a week Istockphoto.com sends out a “free photo of the week”. You may not need the image right away but this week’s photo may be valuable later on. I generally visit the site weekly and download the stock photo and place it into a special folder located on my spare hardrive. When I need a photo for my blog post I may find one that is applicable to my information once I refer back to my folder.
Here’s this week’s free stock photo:
2.Shutterstock.com
The Shutterstock service works just like the one above. They currently have over 8,300,000 royalty-free stock photos available. Here’s this weeks free image:
Free Stock Photo of the Week
3. Wikimedia Commons
Wikipedia has been one of my favorite websites for a long time for obtaining definitions and information. But did you know that there is an entire section devoted to royalty free photos and images? You can find it here: Wikimedia Commons
Try doing a search and see what you come up with. You may want to also subscribe to their email updates which features a “picture of the day” but be aware that not all of the images are free. When I asked for permission to use yesterdays free image I was denied permission by the author. Here’s a photo from the search results for “Free Photo” in the commons area:
free photo
4. Flickr
Flickr is a great place to find royalty free stock photos. Many of them are available for general use for the public. Once you find an author whose photos you like, simply add him to your contact list. My flickr page is located at http://www.flickr.com/photos/purposemission
I performed a search under creative commons located at http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ and came up with this free photo while searching for “free business stock photo”:
Free Business Stock Photos
5. Compfight
Compfight.com allows you to search through flickr for items. Be sure to check “commercial use” right beside the “Creative Commons” near the top of the page. Youl may also need to individually check each photo that you choose for specific user rights. Here’s a search result for “business photo”:
business photo
6.. SXC.hu
Try out the SXC.hu website for more than 350,000 stock photos you can use. You’ll need permission if you plan to distribute any type of photos you plan to sell. Check out their image license agreement for specific user information rights. Here’s an image that I found searching for the term “internet business”
internet business
7. EveryStockPhoto
Everystockphoto.com is a very good website for finding free stock images. First click on “advanced search” located on the right of the page. There is a dropdown menu for “license.” Now you’ll be able to search all types of licenses, some where you have to give attribution such as in the credits and others are that are completely free in the public domain. When I performed a search for “Internet business” I got search results for photoexpress. which is the next on my list.
8. PhotoExpress
Although I’ve listed this royalty free photo website last, PhotoExpress.com is by no means the worst place to find the stock photo or image that you want for free. I really like this site also since it’s easy to use and there are some great photos like this one…
Free Internet Business Photo
Plus Some More…
I’m sure I didn’t cover all the Royalty Free Stock Photo Websites.
Why? Once I posted this article I had another awesome service who started following me via twitter. Just because I didn’t list them the first time doesn’t mean they’re e not good. Hey we’re all discovering new services on the internet.
I just subscribed to Big Stock Photo.com. They have a pages of free photos available. (Thanks for following me @bigstockphoto)
Email Client Photo Pages
Gmail has Picasa Web Albums, Hotmail uses Photos – Windows Live and Photo Gallery – Windows Live for editing and Yahoo users flickr which we’ve already covered.
Who knows? You may just find a photo that you can use for you business blog on one of these personal photo pages.
What about editing your royalty free photos?
I use Picasa which is part of the Google pack.See this related articled called Basic Free Software for Internet Businesses for more information.
You may also want to visit My Internet Business Resources Page for an entire list of Free Photo Editors listed under “P” and then “Photo Editor and Organizers”.
I Appreciate Your Comments
Did you find this article helpful for your internet business?
Do you use another website or service to obtain your stock photos for free ?
I’d love to hear about it in the comment form below.
About Greg Nemer
I respect
your 
Plug here, but I really think you’ll like this one. It’s a completely 100% free stock photo, design and vector website.
Our site, http://www.allourstock.com is not spammy, it’s built around a nice, easy-to-use functional layout with easy drag-and-drop interface,
and has a lot more planned for the future. Currently we have about 500 images but we have a database of over 7000 yet to be added and
growing everyday. I personally shoot photos myself and create custom designs as well. All are available for person OR commercial use, most
of which do not require attribution.
AllOurStock,
I checked out your website and signed up for the free account. Thanks for the plug!
No problem, glad you liked it! We’ll be migrating to a CDN for faster viewing and adding 1000′s more products in the next month or so, stay tuned!