Excellent And License Free Stock Photo Websites For Bloggers

Image by Gaetan Lee

Using images in your blog posts not only makes it attractive but in most of the cases also lures readers into reading the complete post , instead of just scanning through it and going away .

There are hundreds of websites offering quality images . Some of them require a fee , some do not allow photos to be used commercially and some have ambiguous terms of agreement . After going through about 50 such sites and analyzing various aspects , I have produced the following list which allow photos to be used free and for commercial purposes . Some may require attribution but that shouldn’t be a problem . I think this list should suffice a blogger / freelancers’ need for free quality images .

1: EveryStockPhoto

This website offers all kinds of photos , but you should do an advanced search and select attribution under the license category to find photos for your blog .

2: Stock.xchng

Stock.xchng is probably the oldest site in the list , offering hundreds of photos which are free for commercial usage . It also offers a forum where you can ask questions in case you are not able to find your desired image .

3: Flickr

Who doesn’t know Flickr ? It is an abode of images . However in order to get the images which have Attribution license , you can click here . Further you can read the posts of Skellie and Tay , who have elaborately described the ways to get best flickr photos for your blog . And yes!…there is a cool wordpress plugin called Photodropper which lets you use flickr photos in your blog easily , although I am not sure if this plugin is compatible with Wordpress 2.5 .

4: YotoPhoto

Yotophoto (www.yotophoto.com) is like a search engine which collects photos from sites such as Flickr, Wikipedia , Stock.Xchng , Morguefile , Pixelperfect Digital and OpenPhoto for images in the public domain , or made available under CC , GNU FDL or similar licenses . Hence this can be your one stop resource for finding free photos . ( Note : This site appears to be down since the last 3 days but still worth bookmarking so that you can check it later )

5: Wikimedia Commons

WikiMedia Commons is a huge database of all kinds of media files , contributed by the public . However it contains both free and copyrighted images . Hence you need to go to Category:Public Domain and there you can search for GNU Free Documentation License or Creative Commons Licensed Photos . You may also search for it on the main page under categories in the right .

6: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Freedigitalphotos.net is another good resource for finding royalty free photos . Although the search function of the site may not be very good ( as I tried ) and you may need to manually browse through the categories , but the good thing about this site is that it clearly mentions on its homepage that the photos are royalty free and can be used forcommercial purposes .

7: Dreamstime ( Free Section )

The free section of Dreamstime certainly does have some quality photos which you may find interesting .

So which stock photo website do you use for finding images for your blog ?