It is undeniable that web pages and blog posts pop more and garner more attention when paired with a compelling image – both on your website and especially on social media.
I used to be a big fan of purchasing images from iStock because they have a huge selection of quality images that you could typically get for a couple bucks a pop. But last year, they restructured their pricing model, and almost everything is so outrageously priced now, that it’s just not reasonable for the small business or solopreneur with a limited budget, and I no longer recommend them to my clients.
I do still point people to Dreamstime and Bigstock because they have fairly reasonably priced credit packs and subscription options and the same high-level quality of images as iStock.
But if you’re looking for free
(and I frequently am), here are a few lesser-known stock photography sites that are worth spending some time perusing…
OpenPhoto – http://openphoto.net/
I like this site a lot because the photos are searchable and curated (meaning they have taken the time to assign categories and tags) so it’s easier to hone in on what you’re looking for and not get lost for hours scrolling through eye candy (like I have been for the past 2 hours that I’ve been trying to get this article written).
Gratisography – http://www.gratisography.com/
This is a personal (but growing) collection of photos by Ryan McGuire who has generously made them available free of copyright restrictions. They are beautiful and artfully composed. They lean towards the more whimsical, less business-oriented, but sometimes a business blog needs a little whimsy.
Startup Stock Photos – http://startupstockphotos.com/
This is a scroll-and-browse collection of photos (that keeps going and going and going). They are fantastic images that tend to be business oriented. Lots of laptops and hipsters working and having meetings in coffee shops or industrial-looking workspaces.
Stokpic – http://stokpic.com/
This is another curated site, so it’s much easier to search through a specific category to find something that will work for you as opposed to the infinity scroll. Really beautiful photos that are free from copyright restrictions.
Pexels – http://www.pexels.com/
No categories to browse through but a decent search engine that lets you narrow in on what you’re looking for. I did find duplication from some of the other sites on this one which means 1) they’ve got a bigger collection than say Startup Stock Photos or Gratisography, and 2) they’re a little more diverse than some of the other sites. They seem to have a great collection of landscape and nature photos as well.
A couple of things to pay attention to…
- Many of these sites make their images available at fairly high resolutions meaning they can be pretty big files. 99.9% of the time, you won’t need an image that large, especially on a website. If you were to use it as is, you would end up making that page take forever to load which is a bad thing for your visitors and for Google. So be sure to do 2 things with the image before you click that ADD MEDIA button:
- Scale it down to an appropriate size for your blog using something like Photoshop or Pixlr. Typically 900-1200px wide works well.
- Once it’s sized appropriately, then compress the file by running it through a compression program like TinyPNG which preserves the image quality but seriously decreases the file size – again, so it will load faster for your visitors.
- Be sure to check the licensing on the individual photos you select. Photos on the sites above should be freely available to use without restriction although some may request attribution (which you can easily include in the caption box when you’re adding it to your blog post). It’s always a nice nod to the creator to give them credit.
Of course, these sites are just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens and dozens out there, but I get overwhelmed trying to deal with dozens and dozens, so I’ve just included some of the ones I’ve enjoyed the most.
