In addition to high-quality content, we must also pay attention to the presentation of the article. In order to enhance the presentation of the article, you should add relevant pictures to the article because:
[Tweet “A picture is worth a thousand words”] You may have noticed that we use images in all of our blog posts to make them more engaging. There are many images available online, but it is important that you only use them on your blog or in other projects where the owner has given permission.
I’m not going to talk about image licensing here, but instead I’m going to share my list of websites where you can download stock photos for free. Yes, you heard it right, it’s completely free.
Thanks to all the commenters who recommended many other free stock photo sites to make this list even better. I suggest you check the comments section and feel free to recommend a site you are using. These images can also be used for commercial purposes.
Free stock photos for commercial or blogging use:
1. FreePik
FreePik is the most popular site for free stock photos in 2020. It is a freemium site that offers free + premium stock photos and definitely stands out.
It offers modern vector images and characters to make your website or landing page stand out.
2. shutterstock
I discovered this website in February 2016 and I've been in love with it ever since. Unlike other websites, here you can download high-quality pictures and use them in your personal and professional projects without providing any copyright. Yes! You heard it right. The quality of the pictures you can find here is outstanding.
3. Pixabay：
After trying Gratisography, I really fell in love with using beautiful images. There are more colors and emotions. I believe we will see a lot of related trends in the stock photography industry in 2020 and the next few years.
You should also bookmark Pixabay, as it offers a wide variety of images from all over the world. These images are free to use, even commercially. No attribution required.
4. Pexels：
This website was recommended by Shouter Dipal and it looks pretty good. All the images here are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license , which means you can use them for commercial purposes as well.
The CC0 license is issued by the non-profit organization Creative Commons (CC). They add 1500 new high-resolution photos every month, and currently they claim to have over 10,000 photos.
5. Stocksnap：
This is another free stock photo website where you can download high-quality images for free. All images are licensed under CCO (same as above).
6. Flickr
Flickr is one of my favorite sites to search and download free web images. It has a huge database of royalty-free images and whenever I’m in a hurry to download images for an article, I visit the Flickr website.
To download any image, you just need to visit the Creative Common category and search for the image, you will get a large number of related images of different sizes and you can download any image that is suitable for your article. You can read more about Flickr in the following article:
7. MorgueFile
Morgue File is one of the best free stock photo websites that makes it easy to search for images by category. You can select the image category for a more relevant search. It has a clean landing page and simple navigation. It also gives you the option to crop the images and makes it easy to post on your blog. You can read more about MorgueFile in its review.
8. FreeRangeStock
You can download images from FreeRangeStock for personal or commercial use. To download images, you need to register quickly and for free on the FreeRangeStock website.
In addition to downloading images, if you are a photographer then you can also upload images and earn money through their Adsense revenue sharing program.
You can also edit directly in Pixlr and then download it to your computer. The only thing you might not like about Free Range stock is the interface, as it is quite old and not very user friendly. It costs zero, but do you really mind? 🙂
9. Shutterstock
Shutterstock is a very popular website that has a large variety of materials, such as images, videos, and music. Once you register, you can get free images on the website every week. They also offer paid plans ranging from $29 to $199 per month, and you can choose according to different needs.
10. Canva
Canva is an online design website that provides a variety of images, posters, and LOGO templates for you to use. At the same time, they also support downloading free images. The advantage of using Canva is that you can immediately crop, add filters, add text, and create after downloading the image, and directly apply it to social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It is a very convenient one-stop creation tool.
The above free websites can help you when you are on a budget and need free images for your project. Be sure to read the terms of use of each website to understand where you can and cannot use the downloaded images. Most websites do not allow the use of downloaded images for pornographic websites or trademarks.
Do you prefer to use royalty free images on your blog ? If yes, please share with us which stock photo website do you prefer to use to download images?
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