Money Makers

17 Best Sites to Get FREE Images For Your Blog

Written by Chris on October 29, 2008 · Filed Under Blogging Tips

Using images in blog posts not only complements your content, it also makes your readers stay longer on your blog. An image speaks for itself so your readers will be more inclined to read the posts. Even if an image isn’t going to complement your text, it will still pretty much enhance the visual appeal of your blog significantly.

Where to get FREE images for your blog? Finding quality images for your posts is already a challenge in itself. Imagine how frustrating it can become when you can’t find ones that you can use without having to pay for royalties or subscriptions. Therefore, to make your life easier, I’ve compiled a list of my favorites that I normally use whenever I need a free royalty-freeÂ image. These are the sites from where you can get any high-quality images of your choice at no cost – 100% FREE. However, remember to always check the licensing terms of any image you plan to use, crop, edit and photoshop. And, always credit the image owner. Here you go,

17 Best Sites to Get FREE Images For Your Blog:

Image Hosting and Sharing Sites
1. Flickr
The most popular photo repository and sharing application widely used by bloggers. Hosting over 2 billion (and increasing) images, you can find the most categories on Flickr. Also, you can have Flickr photos embedded on your blog to automatically rotate as a slideshow.

2. Photobucket
Another well-known image storage and sharing website where you can access to a huge user-generated content and create slideshow feature for your blog. It is the No.1 image site in the US at the time of this writing.

Image Search Engines
3. Creative Commons Search
Creative Commons Search allows you to easily find free-to-share or Creative Commons licensed images at Google, Yahoo! and Flickr. This tool has also been built into Firefox web browser for easy searches.

4. Every Stock Photo
Every Stock Photo is another image search engine that aggregates Creative Commons licensed images from other sites like Flickr, Stock.XCHNG etc. and present them in an integrated search.

5. Google Image Search
The most comprehensive image search service created by search engine giant, Google. With billions of images indexed, it allows users to search the whole World Wide Web for image content.

6. Yahoo! Image Search
The most visited website in the world, Yahoo! (according to Alexa), also provides a search service that crawls the web for billions of images, on top of that, it also added at least 2 billions (and increasing) images from Flickr into its image database.

7. Ask.com Image Search
Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, initially rode on Picsearch database for its image searching, launched its own image search service in early 2006. Ask.com Image Search is said to be the 2nd best image search engine, after Google.

8. Live Image Search
Live Search, formerly known as Windows Live Search and MSN Search, isÂ Microsoft’s attemptÂ to compete with the two search engine giants. Live Image Search allows quick image searching and browsing with its Smart Scroll, which gets rid of pagination. One of the most notable functions is its Scratch Pad that you can add images for later viewing.

9. Picsearch
Picsearch is another useful image search engine that crawls and indexes the web for images. They have reportedly indexed more than 2 billion images.

Stock Photography Sites
10. Stock.XCHNG
Stock.XCHNG is aÂ free stockÂ photo site providing hundreds of thousands of quality stock photos and royalty-free images for personal use with the restricstions specified by the image owner. Their image content is provided by more than 30,000 amateur and professional photographers.

11. Free Digital Photos
If you don’t want to go through the hassles of checking licensing terms of images, Free Digital Photos is for you. All the images in Free Digital Photos are free for commercial and personal use. Every image is free, and you have an option to buy high resolution versions.

12. Stockvault
Stockvault have won several awards for having the best stock photos in database. You can download all stock photos and high resolution images but only for personal and non-commercial use.

13. Dreamstime
This Romanian based company is one of the top 3 stock photo sites in the world. They have been in the business since 2000.

14. Free Range Stock
At Free Range Stock, you can rest assured of high-resolution or high-quality images available for FREE downloads. They also provide a plugin that you can place into your Internet browser for easy image searching.

15. Unprofound
You can access to the stock photos for personal and commercial use. However, Unprofound do not allow you to redistribute/resale the images to any individual.

16. Photogen
Another great site to download free images for personal and commercial use, again no resale/redistribution. Every image submitted to Photogen is checked for quality before going live.

17. Pixel Perfect Digital
Although Pixel Perfect Digital is currently not accepting new image uploads till 2009 (due to some abuse), you can still download high-quality images for use in your blog or commercial design project. Strictly no resale or redistribution.