Finding photos for your blog can seem easy at first glance with Google Images. But this is not always legal. Google itself says “image may be scaled down and subject to copyright.” So unless you do some research to find out the copyright conditions of the image, you are taking the risk of illegally using images. Now you can search Google Images for images you can use, you just need to go to the advanced search and click to “search only pages that are free to use, share or modify, even commercially.” When you do this, you will definitely see a difference in the results. Now at first using these copyrighted images on your blog may seem harmless, but imagine your blog years down the road, full of possible copyrighted images. And you are most-likely working hard to have a highly trafficked and visible blog, so why risk it. I’m sure there are many that are not very happy with the use of their images for free. Thankfully, there are quite a few good places on-line where you can legally download a free images for blogs. I’ve just had a hard time searching quickly to find high quality images that are free to use. Since I have many things to do, I try not to get bogged down with simple things like finding the right image. Sometimes I find some of the free image sites to be confusing as to which images are free and which ones cost – A lot of times, I tend to find myself looking at photos I need to pay for, even though I’ve searched for free ones. Today I’d like to give you a few of my favorite websites to find images that you can use to get some high quality photos to use legally and free, just by giving the photographer a credit.
Free Photos For Your Blog At Flicker
A great place to find free high quality photos for your blog is Flicker. First go to Flicker.com, go to the Explore tab, and then scroll down until you see Creative Commons. “Creative Commons is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright.” They provide some simple licenses that allow you to use their images. The one I really like to use is the attribution license, because it is simple and has the least rules to follow. This license, the attribtuion license, lets you use images for free by acknowledging the photographer. When using an image at Flicker, Flicker does require your image to link back to the image in Flicker if you post it on a website outside of the Flicker community. You can download the image, as well as grab a pre-made html code to insert. The code links the image back to Flicker and takes care of the photographer attribute that is needed. I always do a few things to the premade html code. I do add rel=”nofollow” for search engine optimization. The second thing I do is add target=”_blank”, so that the link will open in a new window.
A Couple of My Favorites to Get Free Photos For Your Blog
When going out to look for photos for your blog, one of my personal favorites is freedigitalphotos.net. You can use images for free at this site if you give the author an attribute by linking back to them at freedigitalphotos.net. They have a lot of illustrations, as well, which are fantastic images for blogs. You can put the attribute under the photo, as well as at the end of the post. Once you find the picture you like, click on the “acknowledgment required” link and it will give you some html code to copy that will make the attribute link for you. You can change the wording of the link up, so long as it still links back, and I do the same steps as before.
Another Favorite place of mine to go to find photos for your blog is IconFinder.com. You can easily look for icons, which come in various sizes, making them easy to use for photos for your blog. One thing you do need to be aware of, is they are not owned by IconFinder.com. All you need to do is make sure to read the license the icon is under by choosing the info tab for the icon to check. That will show you the license of the icon. I have found many images that you can use for commercial use for free on the site. Many you can use with the author attribute alone, as well. The site’s search is so easy and they make the info tab so easily available that you can search this site quickly.
An Awesome Place for Free Photos For Your Blog is CreativeCommons.org
Going straight to CreativeCommons.org is another great way to find free photos for your blog. There you will find works that are licensed that you can share, reuse or remix. Click on the Find search and you’ll be off to a start. It’s a great place to submit works of your own for others to use as well. so no need to risk breaking copyright laws, finding photos for your blog that you are allowed to use free and legally is actually pretty easy!
You can watch my video tutorial on how to get photos for your blog, and watch to see the process described in the article. As well as go to my blog for a video Blueprint for getting started with your own Blog.
