Free Pictures for Your Website

Nothing brings a web page to life faster than pictures.  

The suddenly hot Pinterest website is based on having a picture associated with each link.

People definitely LOVE pictures, but how to find great ones without putting a dent in your wallet (preferably without using your wallet).

This Free Pictures lens lists some sources of free and almost-free web graphics that can be used for commercial or personal use.   To make it even sweeter these free images are so beautiful, you'll have fun browsing around!   

Bet Your Sweet Bippie There Is!

Morguefile.com --Images are sorted into useful categories and ALL images can be downloaded for FREE and currently without links or credit being given to the creator. See the website for full terms. One note, while the photographers are extremely generous with posting these pictures, don't miss the comment on most picture pages that they would love to hear how you are using their pictures. I can attest that they do in fact appreciate this and besides, it's one more way to generate interest in your latest web creation. A win/win.

sxc.hu -- Huge collection of very searchable images. Most can be downloaded and used FREE, a few require either a small payment (usually $1 or $2) or credit to be given to the photographer.

publicdomainpictures.net - though not as extensive as the two websites above, there are still many nice images here and it's worth a visit. All images can be used free for both personal or commercial use without a credit. If you benefit significantly from a picture, there's a nice way to buy a cup of coffee for the photographer as a thank-you (Okay, you send them a small amount of money, not literally a cup of coffee).

www.pdclipart.org -- My latest discovery public domain clipart. Search tool for it seems to work well also. I'm psyched, since there are occasions that clipart actually looks more appropriate than a photo.

Finally...

istockphoto.com - Where you can purchase individual photos (as opposed to an expensive membership) for as little as $1. istockphoto.com also has a free image of the week. This weeks image, the photo of woman with hair blowing is above and this one of a girl sitting at her desk

was also a free IStockPhoto of the week. You can see how high the quality of IStockPhoto images are. While these photos generally cost something, there is very high quality control and an excellent advanced search ability, making these photos a great bargain. My rule is check the entirely free sources first and if I don't find what I want/need, then I go to iStockPhoto.

Note: IStockPhoto also has different prices for standard rights (using the photo) versus extended rights (putting the photo on an article for sale, such as CafePress t-shirt).

Pond5.com also has LOTS of budget-priced photos and music too!

One more in the "Almost Free" category is a package of more than 1500 images, most (but not all) geared toward creating websites or possibly Ebay sales pages for $4.95. Since 495 cents divided by 1500 images means these images cost less than a third of a cent for each, maybe I should term this As-Good-As-Free. I found a cute puppy picture and the sea lions pictured here from this package.

Pixabay.com is another website with free pictures that a reader recommended to me. I've used it less, so can't compare to the others, but if you haven't found what you are looking for yet, have a look!

Apparently Dreamstime.com has been been around for quite a while, but somehow I missed them until yesterday when a friend of mine who makes a lot of videos, including many viral videos, said, "I always use Dreamstime for my images." They have both free and low-cost ($1, $2 and $5 images). They also have some celebrety images!

So check them out -- I just did and found this image of horses in the FREE IMAGES section. Very cool.

Really Cool and Brand New!! They call them Web 2.0 Graphics

I read a review of a text graphics tool and decided to purchase (one time fee of only $6.97 - Sorry, it's been increased to $27, probably still worth it.). For that almost-free price, you get membership to a website that lets you create cool graphic text, buttons, etc. And people can share what they've created, so you can easily use other folks as a model (if you are graphically-design-challenged, like me).

Which would you rather see?

Check It Out!!! or

If you want to

Then,

Or

Click HERE to Learn More...

So here is why I still like it at the higher price, because no matter how many free graphics there are out there, sooner or later, you'll want to create one of your own. For the $27 you pay for this tool, you could pay a graphic artist to design perhaps one or two graphics for you and then you'd be done. No ability to get more without paying more. Again, sorry that it's not the ridiculously low $7 fee, but... I'd still vote this as a worth-the-price.

How amazing is this photo. Taken of Sunrise at Phu Chee Fah, Chiangrai, Thailand. It was available for use and I didn't have to credit it's generous photographer, but I'd like to by at least linking to the source of this beautiful free picture

Less than 3 years ago, Ashley Qualls created a website, WhateverLife.com. WhateverLife? Sounds like a name some kid would make up, right? Ashley was 14 years old at the time, so yeah, something some kid would make up.

Ashley liked creating web graphics, especially background graphics for MySpace and giving them away to MySpace friends or anyone else who visited WhateverLife.com.

Her designs were a huge hit and the price (free) was right. Ashley decided to start running ads on the website to earn advertising dollars. The first check? Was for $2700. The next $5,000. And the third was for $10,000. That's what a couple million page views a day will do for your bank account.

Ashley has hired her friends, her mother and a business consultant. But interviews show her to be incredibly down to earth with a great deal of common sense and business savy. Congrats Ashley. WhateverLife?? or Unbelievably-Great-Life? Well you can see that Ashley resonates with teens and I'm just a dorky mom. Anyway, you can check out Ashely's full story in the YouTube video below. Pretty cool, I think.

A lot of time when you search on 'Free Graphic' or 'Free Image' you will get a lot of links to 'Royalty-Free Images'. Royalty-Free means simply that when you purchase the right to use an image, you can use it as many times as you like without any additional payments.

A royalty payment is a payment that must be made each time an item is used or sold. So royalty-free images for sale, means you pay a one-time fee for the use of the graphic.

Now do you see why I prefer 'Free Graphics' over 'Royalty-Free Graphics'??

P.S. I do see people use these two terms as though they meant the same thing, which of course further increases people's confusion. Best thing to do is to check specific Terms of Use on photographs you use.

Please Let Me Know of Other Sources of Free/Almost-Free Web Graphics and whether you found these recommendations useful.