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Where to Find Free Stock Images for Your Blog or Website

June 19, 2015 By Mark Badran 8 Comments

Free Iimages Online

Note: One of our most popular blog posts over the last couple of years, we recently updated this article with a couple of new and fantastic image resources we’ve discovered since the original post back in 2013. Enjoy!

Whether you sell products, services, or ERP systems – effective marketing relies on visual appeal. It’s no surprise that blogs and websites using eye-catching images attract more visitors and potential customers.

But finding high-quality images without having to break out your credit card can be a challenge. So here are a few tools for finding free stock images on the web.

1. Pixabay

Pixabay is probably our FAVORITE and most frequently-used free image resource because they tend to have a really nice variety and deep collection of quality images including drawings, photos, and vector files.

Pixabay Free Images

In general, it’s true that you get what you pay for. There are literally hundreds (probably thousands) of free image sites out there. But many of them are not worth the time you spend searching for and scanning through pages and pages of cheesy photos that you’d probably never use on your website.

But Pixabay is a pretty decent exception to that rule. Sure, you’ll find a lot of low-quality “amateur” photos and you probably wouldn’t call most of the images you find “great” – but there’s also a lot of really good stuff on the site.

Note: the search results page almost always shows a row of image candidates at the top (from Shutterstock) that you have to pay for. So you can just ignore the first row – everything below that first row is typically free.

2. FreeDigitalPhotos.net

FreeDigitalPhotos.net is a community of stock photographers and digital artists that allow their work to be downloaded free of charge for personal, business, and educational use.

free digital photos
In general, you’ll find decent-quality photos that can be downloaded without registration. The smallest, low resolution files can be downloaded for free while larger, higher resolution files are available for a small fee (but still pretty cheap).

Image courtesy of ddpavumba / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of ddpavumba / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Cost of Free: The only thing that FreeDigitalPhotos.net asks is for you to publish a credit acknowledging the artist and source of the photo. Take a look at the stock image just to the right for an example of an appropriate image credit  and artist acknowledgement ==>

 

3. Canva

CanvaCanva is another great free image resource, but it’s a little different than a typical free photo site. You don’t actually download a ready-made image. Instead, Canva provides the tools for you to create your own graphic images.

Canva is a design tool for non-designers.  Far less complex and intimidating than something like Photoshop, Canva provides a really nice drag and drop interface, pre-made templates that you can modify, and other tools that make it really simple to create cool graphics.

Canva requires a bit more time and creativity than just downloading a photo. But you also get more flexibility to add custom colors, images, and even your logo to the finished product.

For example, here’s an image we created in Canva as part of a blog post about LinkedIn Groups:

LinkedIn Groups Ruined

Canva provides templates to create a wide range of graphic images for brochures, business cards, flyers, social media profile backgrounds, infographics, and much more.

The Cost of Free – there’s a pretty wide range of really cool graphics that you can create for free on Canva. But some of the premium background images or design elements can cost money depending on what you choose. Even then, they tend to be just $1.

4. Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that fosters the sharing and creative use of various media including photos, videos, written content, and more.  It provides a framework for you to use the creative work of others for commercial purposes.

Like a search engine for creative content, Creative Commons searches Google, Flickr, and more for images that have been tagged with a Creative Commons license and are available to use on your blog and website.

Word of Caution: There are a number of different license options that authors can choose on Creative Commons.  So while many photos can be used without worry, be sure to review the licensing requirements of each photo and give proper attribution where required. Not every image on the site comes with the same rules and requirements.

5. Unsplash

Unsplash is another great resource for “freely-useable images” which, according to the website, means the following:

  • All photos can be downloaded and used for free
  • Commercial and non-commercial purposes
  • No permission needed (though attribution is appreciated!)

While Pixabay is our favorite free image site, Unsplash is a great backup in cases where you can’t find what you need at other free sites (and don’t want to take time to make one yourself at Canva) because of a similarly deep and diverse collection of images from business and technology to animals and nature.

Over to You – What’s YOUR Favorite Free Stock Photo Resource?

Filed Under: Blogging Best Practices, Online Marketing, Website Marketing Tagged With: Blogging Tips, Free Stock Images, Website Marketing

Comments

  1. Stuart Miles says

    March 19, 2016 at 12:53 am

    My web-site provides 30,000 images, free of charge for any use. Don’t hesitate to visit here – BusinessImagesFree.com

    Reply
  2. DanielLee5 says

    June 27, 2015 at 6:24 am

    I like Unsplash and Pixabay, if it comes to serious projects, I’d recommend http://www.templatemonster.com – the biggest Internet photo collection, HQ categorized themes for WordPress, Magento, Joomla, eCommerce and other platforms.

    Reply
  3. Investeren says

    April 17, 2015 at 12:22 pm

    I really really love pixabay.com. I recommend that one.

    Reply
  4. asmalen says

    January 12, 2015 at 11:46 am

    Subscribe to photograph the site and benefit from a price advantage.
    http://en.fotolia.com

    Reply
  5. Bob says

    May 12, 2014 at 11:28 pm

    Also check out goodfreephotos.com for thousands of public domain photos.

    Reply
  6. John Lee says

    October 20, 2013 at 9:41 am

    Thanks for the tips and greak list @Patrick

    Another great Pinterest style layout free image gallery site is

    StockPhotos.io

    Reply
  7. Patrick Haley says

    October 10, 2013 at 7:28 am

    Some others I use are:

    pixabay.com
    morguefile.com
    sxc.hu
    public-domain-image.com
    photopin.com
    freefoto.com/index.jsp
    psdgraphics.com/
    myfreedigitalphotos.com

    Reply
    • Mark Badran says

      October 11, 2013 at 11:57 am

      Wow, some great additional image resources. Thanks for sharing Patrick!

      Reply

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