Looking for some royalty free stock photos and videos online? You’re in luck as I’ve created a list of some of the best royalty stock photo websites out there. No matter how colourful your language is, blog posts always look better with good quality pictures. Obviously the goal of most royalty free photography sites is to sell you on a premium subscription plan or to buy premium images, but honestly, 99% of the time you’ll find what you’re after for free.. and everybody loves free!
If your budget allows it and you can afford the premium images then yes they’re often better, but for most bloggers, especially those just starting out, you’ll be fine with the many free offerings available online. What you will need though is good quality photo editing software. The best photo editing software by far is Adobe Photoshop and it’s well worth buying a copy, even if it’s the shortened Photoshop Elements version.
Remember to check the requirements on each website as they may vary. I prefer those who don’t require anything in return, they let you use their images however you choose to, but some providers will ask for a link back or an attribution of some description.
5 Free Stock Photo Resources Online
- Pexels – One of the better free stock photo and video sites out there offering Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license images. Lots to select from and allows you to browse categories or search for the pictures you’re after.
- Pixabay – Good selection of free stock photographs, illustrations, vectors and videos to download for bloggers, business and personal use without attribution required.
- Unsplash – A growing collection of free stock photos for blogging or commercial use that don’t require a link back or attribution.
- Life of Pix – Nice gallery of beautiful royalty free stock photos to use for blogs and commercial uses. Lots of great nature images submitted by photographers from all over the world.
- Burst – Smallish collection of royalty free stock photos hosted by Shopify.
I’ll add to the list of free stock picture websites over time but for now you should be able to find almost anything you’re after in the five websites above. I chose them because I have used them, they have good quality images, and they’re not too annoying to use. A lot of royalty free image websites say that they’re free but then they require you to jump through 10 hoops and have all sorts of restrictions attached so they’re just not worth the bother.
The sites above don’t have these restrictions and they’re easy to use. What are your favourite free stock photo websites to use for blogging? And, see how much better this blog post looks with a picture? I forget where I got the image from but it was royalty free and no attribution was required. I then edited it with Photoshop and added the text “I am Confident”.
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