For last week’s blogging tip we discussed ways to automate social media. Not surprisingly some people weren’t really in favor of it, but others found it really useful to get some social media exposure while leading a busy life. This week we’ll be talking about finding free photos to use on your blog.
When creating a quality blog, you cannot underestimate the importance of including a good photo in each of your blog posts. It brings a post to life and adds lots of great color to your blog. Plus that photo will be included when your post is shared on sites such as Facebook and Google+.
Unfortunately when it comes to blog photos, I see a lot of beginner bloggers making a big mistake. They are simply searching for photos on Google or elsewhere and using any images they find anywhere on the web. Since it’s posted online, it’s free to use right? Nope. And just adding a link back to the site that you ‘borrowed’ the image from doesn’t cut it either. That’s a bit like a thief leaving a thank you note after taking your bike.
The Risk Of Using Copyrighted Images On Your Blog
If you happen to be blogging as just a hobby and don’t make any money at all, you may be safe enough. In such a case, the worst that could probably happen is a cease and desist letter from a lawyer asking you to remove the offending photos.
On the other hand, if you are making money from your blog and you’re using someone else’s copyrighted images, you are risking the money you’ve made. Basically you are using someone’s protected work to profit.
If you end up making a lot of money with your blog, why would you want to put that at risk? Would you even want to potentially deal with the hassle of having to replace images down the road? Personally I’d rather avoid that risk and have some peace of mind.
In all likelihood, a lawyer would just ask you to remove the photos, but what if you are out of town when that happens? Or what if some particularly cranky site owner or photographer decides to skip that courtesy?
Besides the legal and financial risk, there is also the ethical side of it. I know I get pissed off when I see some auto-blog scraping my posts or when people steal my images from my older websites.
Where Do You Find Free Photos To Use?
Of course the very best source is your own camera. Then you can add some real personality to your blog. Also Google really likes unique photos which can get you some additional Google image search traffic. Or you could upload them to photo sharing sites for more traffic. Plus you don’t need to add in a link to credit anyone else. If I had a camera I’d definitely be going this route more often.
I get pretty much all of my non-cat photos from Flickr. Just be sure to scroll down and check the boxes for ‘Creative Commons license’ and ‘Find content to use commercially’. Then it will bring up images where the photographer has granted everyone access to use their photos without monetary compensation.
The tricky part is that some images that show up in that search still want you to pay to use them. So when you click on a photo check the License section in the sidebar. Some will say ‘Request to license …’s photos via Getty Images’.
Here are some other websites that you may want to consider using to find Creative Commons licensed photos:
- Creative Commons Search
- stock.xchng
- Free Digital Photos
- morgueFile
- WikiMedia Commons
- Library of Congress Prints & Photography Online Catalog
- US Government Photos and Images
Just be sure to double check that the photo truly is free to use before posting it on your blog.
Are These Photos Completely Free
Unless it explicitly says that the photos are copyrighted or require a special license, the images found on the sites above should be free to use. That doesn’t mean that you can just post the image and you’re all done.
You are still expected to provide credit to the photographer with a link. I’m not sure if it matters where you place that link, but I’ve been in the habit of just adding the credit link directly below the photo. I have seen lots of people credit the photographer at the bottom of their post and that is probably fine too. The key is that you’re not passing the photos off as your own creation.
I do admit that you will often find much better photos if you are willing to pay a bit for each one. Obviously that isn’t very feasible for new bloggers though. So I plan to keep using free photos until my blog is making more money. Then I’ll splurge a bit to take my blog to the next level.
If you are guilty of this mistake, don’t take this post personally. I know that it’s something that some people just don’t realize. I’d hate to see it cause problems for you eventually.
Where do you prefer to get your blog images from? Do you have any plans to eventually switch to buying photos? Any other tips to find good free photos?
Awesome list Jeremy. Sometimes I struggle to find images that I like so this list will help.
Well even with all of these sites in my bookmarks I do sometimes struggle to find a good image to use too. That is part of why I plan to eventually switch to using paid images. For now though I will just spend that extra bit of time searching the free images.
Great list. I will have to check some of these out. I find to date that I prefer to pay for photos so I know my butt is fully covered. Plus I often find the quality of the paid photos better.
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Yes if you can afford it, that is definitely the better option. A good photographer will usually try to charge money for their better shots. I’m now thinking that if it also saves a bunch of time in searching for photos, it might be even more worthwhile. Anything specifically labeled as ‘Creative Commons’ does keep your covered though. I do wonder whether they are able to later change that license.
I believe the terms of open source licenses generally prohibit the copyright owner from later enacting a more restrictive license.
Good to know. I guess that would be pretty unfair to start with one license and then screw people over later.
I usually just pick something out through Zemanta.
Whenever I create my own image, I always label with a Creative Commons- Share Alike license. Because I find it frustrating when all of the relevant images for something are copyrighted; I don’t want to make somebody else frustrated too.
I haven’t heard of Zemanta, but I will check it out soon. Thanks Edward.
And smart move making your own images Creative Commons. I’d do the same even in hopes of getting some extra links.
I’m a creative commons guy. I’m thinking about taking a photo class so I can start taking pics of my own. If I used my own shots now, it’d be all shots of my finger in the way and bright sunlight behind blurry subjects.
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lol….I’ll probably be the same way when I get a camera. I’ve always wanted to take a photography course though. So it would be a good excuse for that.
I stick with Flickr’s Creative Commons. Over 150 million photos, and they’re great quality as well. Great post though, and you listed some sites I didn’t hear about before.
If you really like flickr, try comfight.com as mentioned by Steve below. It searches flickr is such a more user friendly format. I’m gonna switch anyway.
Yes, the search is better, but the quality of photos is not. Plus, certain images show sizes, others don’t, and finally some images (like Shutterstock images) have labels on them You’re right though, it is faster.
For my purposes I do prefer compfight so far. For me time is crucial when choosing a post image. I want to limit the time as much as possible and still find what I need.
Guilty as charged! Thanks for this post. These are all things I’ve wondered about, being pretty new to blogging. I think I’m going to take some time to replace old pictures as the titles of these pics are bringing search traffic to my blog – not good considering they aren’t my pics and the names of the pics have nothing to do with my blog!
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Ahh first person admitting to guilt so far
Good to hear from you. It’s been a while. It would be a hassle to replace a lot of photos though. I would mostly focus on the ones that are getting traffic.
Jeremy,
I try to use my own photos but I recommend compfight.com (free and royalty free and great search).
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Thanks for the awesome share Steve. I already checked it out and I love it. I hate going through page by page on flickr. This is gonna save some serious time.
I’m also guilty of using whatever I find. Thank goodness I don’t make one cent of money!! I’m going to book mark this page and use it for reference in the future when looking for photos. Thanks a bunch.
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Well no need to bookmark this page. Just try some of the sites out. I’d say the compfight.com mentioned above. Then bookmark whichever one you like best.
And you don’t use all ‘borrowed’ photos. At least your Wordless Wednesdays are all originals.
Do think long term though as I’m sure you’ll be making money through your blog if you keep working hard.
I haven’t added photos to my blog yet but I think I’m going to have to start soon. This list will be a valuable resource! Thanks for putting it together.
Lance@MoneyLife&More recently posted..5 Tips for Your Financial Indepedence Day
No problem. I do recommend you start adding photos. It does add some extra time to creating posts, but it really adds a lot to a blog. It is a big part of what separates reading a blog from reading a book.
I use the free Photodropper plugin for WordPress. Sometimes it takes a bit of searching, but I’m usually able to find a quality image that best fits the idea behind my post. Plus it automatically puts a link at the bottom. Does the job and saves messing about on search engines, not knowing whether the source is ok.
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Ahh glad someone mentioned the wordpress plugins. I’ve never tried them, but if they can find good images, it would save a lot of time. It is a bit annoying having to add the link in manually. Yet another thing to add to my to do list lol.
I use Deposit Photos and pay for pix sometimes, but when I want free images, I LOVE morguefile. Saw you mentioned them. I like them, but sometimes you have to sift to get what you’re looking for.
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I tried using morguefiles in the past, but I didn’t have much luck. I guess it depends on what specifically you’re looking for. I just found flickr to have the most variety for free stuff. So I just stick with them rather than spending too much time looking for the perfect free photo.
I have a question maybe you or one of your readers can answer. I use photos that are licensed under the CC license on my blog and usually I add the owners name as part of the title of the picture and in the alt text I usually give a link to the user profile of that owner. Would this be enough to cover myself?
I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think that would be sufficient. Mentioning the url in the alt text is basically just hiding the credit. It is not a true link to the source. You might want to read this: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
The question is, why would you want to hide the photo credit like that? It would make it appear that you are taking credit for the photo unless they happened to hold their mouse over the image.
You know you have a point there. Perhaps I will go back and add a caption to the photo so that the link can track back to the artist. Either that or I will just add a link at the end of the post to the authors site. I just don’t want to clutter up with to many things but perhaps this wont be too much. Thanks for the feedback.
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No I think the clutter should be minimal. Since every blog that uses these types of free images is supposed to add a link back, they’ve managed to do so with minimal clutter.
Not too long ago I became part of this “Link with Love” thingie (there’s a button/sidebar pic on my site) that gets at exactly what your post is talking about! Liek most newbs, when I started my site, I just grabbed pics from wherever — they’re all on the internet, so it’s all free, right? WRONG! Haha, like you suggested, I mostly take my own photos, or do a google search for images but do the advanced search where you see only images that are free to use. The flickr one is pretty good too, like you mentioned.
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Glad you overcame that problem. I think in your case it is relatively easy to take photos for lots of your posts. A lot of the time you are talking about something specific at one of your jobs. With finance topics it’s usually a little tougher to be able to take the photo of exactly what you want when you want it. Sometimes buying a photo is cheaper than driving out somewhere and spending the time trying to find that shot. I guess the trick in that case is to take a lot of photos for future use.
I sometimes use Flikr but I’m sure to search only for creative commons licensed photos. However, I primarily use Free Digital Photos. They have some decent designs and it was the first place I stumbled upon and it’s where I seem to go most often.
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And don’t forget all the great recipe photos you take. You’ll have to get even more use out of that fancy camera and try to take some finance related photos too.
Excellent list!
I usually start with wikipedia, now I certainly have more options especially with the government pictures archive. Besides that, nothing beats using your own photos.
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I’ve used a couple from the government websites, but there is limited selection on there. I wouldn’t trust wikipedia for images though since anyone could add a copyrighted photo.
I haven’t used many photos in posts. I write most of mine during my lunch hours at work on my phone, and it’s kind of a pain to search for and add photos using my phone. I will definitely have to check out the wordpress plugin though. That sounds like it might be really useful.
A quick question: Do readers really care about the pictures? Personally, I know I never really spend much time looking at them. I skip right to the text.
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I think the photos help more with making a good impression on first time visitors. Regular readers probably don’t look at them much. I just think it brings more life to posts.
What you could do is start writing one day ahead and scheduling those posts for the next day. Then when you go home you could add a photo to the next day’s post from your home computer.
I use morguefile. I’d be terrified to use an image that wasn’t mine or free! Sure, it’s not *likely* you’ll get caught, but it’s just not morally sound to steal someone else’s work and then benefit from it!
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Not surprising Michelle after reading your post about ‘accidentally’ stealing the $2 bottle of shampoo (I think that’s what it was anyway). There are moral obligations to consider. I have worked for companies where lawyers have contacted them to remove certain images. So it does really happen, although probably a lot less likely on a blog. If they see a bunch of ads or see that the blog has grown a lot, they might get a bit more aggressive.
I use morguefile for the most part–when I actually put up pictures. I am trying to put more up. Sometimes I just get lazy
Or I take pictures of my cat so that’s my work! Thanks for the list though–I’ll probably be looking through here to get other ideas.
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I guess I haven’t been following long enough to see many of those cat photos. It would be nice to just skip adding photos sometimes, but I just feel that something is really missing when I do that. That’s why I resorted to using cat photos for all my blog update posts. I figure it’s better than nothing and it’s a good excuse to share photos of my cats. I probably should get creative and turn them into lolcats type images with some good text included.
I first got my photos from istockphoto. Then I decided I didn’t want to pay for them and now use flickr. For most of my investing posts, I just use the excel graphs I create.
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For a topic like investing you are rather limited of the type of images you can use. It might be a good idea to use a different photo for investing posts which do have something relevant to use.
Jeremy, what about photos from google searches? If it doesn’t explicitly say you have to pay than isn’t it free? It’s in the public domain. Thanks for writing about this!
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Nope, not free at all. The majority of websites have a copyright listed at the bottom of their sites. It’s like saying that any stores that don’t have a sign to not steal are open to business for thieves. Being on a copyrighted website means it is not in the public domain for usage by others.