One of the biggest challenges as a blogger is making a post cover photo. You need a good photo at the top of your post to grab people's attention. Make them want to see what your post is about.
When you share your post on most sites your cover photo will show up with your post name and the first few lines of text. A good cover photo could mean more people reading your post.
When I make my cover photos I usually have a concept in mind. Like for my fall posts, I wanted nature photos with fall leaves. Since I currently don't have any of these photos in my portfolio and the leaves around where I live are never very pretty I went to the internet.
The thing with getting images off the internet is if you just get them off google or any old site you could be infringing on someone's copyright. If you use images found on google with the owner's permission you could get sued on a copyright claim. You wouldn't want anyone using your content without asking, would you?
This is where stock photo sites come in. These sites offer copyright-free photos. Some sites charge for these photos but there are some sites that offer stock photos for free! Today I've included my favourite 3.
These are the 3 sites I use the most. They are the only ones I use actually. I like these sites the best out of all the free sites I've checked out for a few reasons.
For one these three have a search function. Some of the other sites have searched but a lot of them didn't work quite right or the photos weren't tagged well so they didn't show up well in searches.
The selections on these sites are pretty good too. Some of the free sites didn't have much of a selection at all. There are a ton of images on pexels and pixabay. There are a bunch on Unsplash too but not as many as the others.
I also really love the quality of the photos on these sites. All of the ones I'm downloaded have been high quality and look great.
Here are some unedited photos from each site.
And if you can't find what you want from these sites there are paid stock sites. The only one I think is worth the money is Shutterstock.
Shutterstock has over 100 million stock images and offers different packages from one-time payment for a few images or monthly for more images.
Once you pay and download the images there are yours to use. However, you can not use the images on merchandise, if you what to do that you have to pay more for the license for that.
The prices below only pay for a common use license.
Basic packages are 2 images for $29, 5 images for $49, and 25 image for $299.
Professional packages are monthly or yearly and are 350 images for $199/month or $169/year, and 750 images for $249/month or $199/year.
They also offer team packages if you are buying images for more than one person.
I think the 350 images a month at the year subscription price is the best option. You can download them all and if you don't use them all right away you have 350 Images to save for later. If you go for this option though make sure to download every photo allowed that month, and you will pay only $0.25 for each photo.
The price doesn't seem so bad after you break it down like that but I get that it's not for everyone. That is a lot to spend on images.
A little tip with using free stock sites always give photo credit to the site whether or not you are required to. The free sites are run on user submissions. Someone may have uploaded a photo they didn't own.
When I used Stock Photos I'd put a credit at the bottom of the posts that the photo was from one of the free sites and I had a disclaimer on my disclaimer page that stated:
"These sites ensure that all their images are royalty-free and free to use however the photos are uploaded by their users so it is possible that photos were stolen and uploaded to these sites. If this happened and I'm using one of your photos please let me know. I'd be happy to change the attribution on the post or page to link to you and your work or I can take down the image if you prefer."
Are there any free stock sites you like that wasn't on my list? Do you use stock sites? Or do you only use your own images? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Thanks so much for reading this post! I hope you enjoyed it! Please leave a like if you did, it's much appreciated!
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to leave them in the comments below.
Photo Credit: All Stock Photos are from Pexels.com Unsplash.com and Pixabay.com Sample photos are unedited.
Cover Photo was taken by me with a Canon T5 Rebel and an 18-55mm
**This post was not sponsored**
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