In this week’s episode of the Extra Paycheck Podcast we’re talking about finding beautiful royalty-free images for your online business.
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You know that you need to have images for your online content. Either to break up a big chunk of text on your blog, post to your Facebook page or simply improve your website. But where do find images for your online business?
Sure you can simply do a Google Image search but you probably already know that you can’t just save those images and use in your online content. Most of those images belong to someone and you don’t want to infringe on the copyrights. What’s the big deal, you ask? A moment when you get sued and asked to pay $8,000 per image that you used without having the proper rights to use them. And yes, many content creators have been sued for tremendous amounts of money for this specific reason.
Create Your Own Images
This is an obvious solution for many. Your current smartphone is most likely capable of capturing amazing images that are comparable to some of the newest DSLR cameras. You can even make your own light box for free or almost to make your images look more professional. I took this photo with a cheap camera and a home-made light box:
You can follow my guide of building a light box and taking similar photos right here.
Besides taking photos of objects you can also create your own images using software like Photoshop or Gimp (completely free). Sure there is a learning curve but there are loads of free tutorials online on how to use Gimp. There is also Canva, Snappa and many others.
But what if you can’t (or don’t want to) take your own photos or design your own images?
Free Stock Photos
There are several websites that offer copyright free photos completely free of charge. There are many of these websites around the internet however I will only mention two. Just like with recommending any services or products on this blog, I can only vouch for things that I have personally used in the past or still using in the present.
Unsplash is one of my favorite royalty free photo websites. They have loads and loads of completely stunning photos and you can use them completely free of charge.
StockSnap.io also features a wonderful library of CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) images meaning that you can use their images any way you want, without even crediting the author (although it’s always appreciated).
Although I really like both websites I often do not use their services for a few specific reasons. You’ll need to listen to the full episode to hear those reasons.
Buy Images
Last year I found a deal from DepositPhotos (affiliate) and I just had to sign up for it. This website has over 60 Million files from verified photographers and I can do whatever I want with these images. I often can’t find an image in a very specific niche on any free stock photo but Deposit Photos always has me covered.
Their photos of people also come with a model release form so you don’t have to worry about that (this is important to me but might be of no importance to you).
In the end of the day I still use all three methods depending on my goal. Sometimes I need to take my own pictures, especially for “Hot-to” and “Tutorial” style guides. I often end up editing or modifying images using Photoshop. Sometimes I use free stock photo websites and other times I buy pictures from DepositPhotos.
Scroll up and press the PLAY button to hear the full episode.
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– Alex
