For me, one of the most time consuming parts of being a blogger isn’t the writing part – it’s creating images which fit well within the blog post I have written. If I am posting a review, then I will of course use images I have taken myself. However, sometimes I write about something I don’t have a good image of, and need to use free stock images for my blog post…
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Free Stock Images For My Blog
For example, I could be writing about my dream holiday… I haven’t been to the destination (yet,) so I don’t have any images of my own to use. It’s not a good idea to just take photos from google. As these images belong to someone else, and could be protected by copyright. With that in mind, the best thing to do is use a stock image website. There are loads of them out there, and during recent years, I have found my favourites.
I thought that today, I’d compile my top 5 for my readers to peruse. To make things interesting, I’m going to search all 5 sites for a particular term. I’ll then share the first image, which is found on each website. The term I will search for is: “Beach”.
Pexels
Pexels.com is totally free to use and you don’t have to register. I have been able to download plenty of high resolution free stock images for my blog from here. You do have to sign up if you want to contribute images to their database though. The image below was the first image when I searched for “Beach” – A little slice of heaven, isn’t it!
Pixabay
Pixabay offers free downloads for smaller image sizes. However, you do have to register if you want the high resolution version. (There is still no charge for this). The image below is the low resolution of the first image when I searched for “Beach” – How perfect does it look!!
Burst
BURST is owned by Shopify. It’s a brilliant source for images when you want to search via categories. Their search feature isn’t as good as other sites though in my opinion. BURST let you download the low resolution image without registering. You do need to register for the high resolution version, though. The image below was the first image when I searched for “Beach” – definitely not the prettiest, but there’s plenty of paradise type images underneath it….
Freestocks
Freestocks.org have a great search feature. They also have a good range of categories to look through and let you download without registering. Freestocks only allow you to download the image in high res. In my opinion, this is too large for blogs as it takes ages to load. The image below was the first image to show up when I searched for “Beach” (I have resized it here)…
Stocksnap
Finally, Stocksnap has a good database of images, but you have to scroll past 8-10 sponsored (chargeable) images before you get to the free ones. Their website isn’t the easiest to navigate, so I usually try other places first. They do have a good catalogue of images though – underneath all the ads. They only let you download the image in high resolution. So I always have to resize them too as they are usually too big for blog use. The image below was the first image to show up when I searched for “Beach” (I have resized it here)…
Do let me know if you use these websites after reading this post, and what you thought of them. Have I missed your favourite off my list? Let me know if there’s an amazing image website I’m not using already! Finally, if you enjoyed this post, check out this section, for more inspiration.