Where to Find Free Images for Your Blog or Website

Understand how free images are classified so you don’t incur costly fees

I love freebies. Most of us do. And what better way to enjoy free than with free images on your blog or website? But I and so many others have learned that it’s not right or legal to simply hop on the internet, find an image, and then just copy and paste it onto my site’s back end.

There’s a little issue called “copyright” which assigns ownership to photographers, just as copyright applies to writers, too. If I infringe on a photographer’s work product, I can face some nasty fees or other legal challenges. Plus, as a fellow content creator, I have a deep respect for these artists and their intellectual property.

So where do I find images for my blog or website? I don’t want to spend a fortune. And I confess that my own photos aren’t always award winners.

There’s good news. Plenty of free (and low-cost) images are available to bloggers and other creatives who are on a budget. Those of us who are less familiar with photographic lingo need to understand how different kinds of images are labeled. Get familiar with these terms. This way, you won’t mistakenly think an image is free when it has a cost. Here are four kinds of labels you want to understand.

The label, “stock images,” is an umbrella term. Stock images are professional-grade photographs that are available to the public to use. Some stock images are free (see “Free stock images,” below.) Others require a license (see “Royalty-free images” and “Rights-managed images,” below). A stock image photographer retains the photo’s rights and chooses how the stock image will be used.

Photographers occasionally license and sell stock images on their own but increasingly use stock agencies to take care of marketing and selling. In some instances, photographers offer stock images as a dedicated income stream. In other cases, stock images are leftovers from a photographer’s other work. Why not gain a bit more income or exposure from a photo session by selling the extra images?

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