If you are using free classifieds to promote your products, you can use pictures to improve the effectiveness of your ad. Also, if you are developing a web site using a paid host or one of the free web hosting services I have discussed in my earlier post, you may need a few quality stock photos. There are plenty of places on the web where you can download royalty free photos and use them in your free classified ads, web sites, articles, and blog posts. But don’t download images from any website like flickr because almost all pictures you find on the web are copyrighted.
You can download royalty free photos and use it for commercial purposes. That does not mean you can download these photos and start selling them. You can use the downloaded photos in your websites, promotional materials, banners, Squidoo pages, free classifieds, etc. You don’t have to pay anything to the photographer. But the photographer still retains the copyright of the picture.
Some sites like flickr or freefoto offer royalty free photos under Creative Commons license. What that means is you have to attribute the source of the picture every time you use it. Some sites will ask you to place a hyperlink back to their site for using their free photos. I would not recommend those pictures.
When you use a royalty free photo in your website, rename the picture using a relevant keyword for better search engine optimization. Also, use keywords in TITLE and ALT attributes of your HTML IMG tag. Here is a list of half a dozen royalty free photo sites where you can download images relevant to your ads and web sites and use them for free without worrying about copyright violations.
Stock.Xchng It has over 350,00 royalty free images. You can use these pictures for your desktop wall paper or web site design. The site is a community of photography addicts who like to share their creative works with others. You can use the images in digital formats or in printed promotional materials.
Imagebase Royalty free pics for any use. Photos are grouped by people, object, nature, city, and holy land. There is also PowerPoint template category.
MorgueFile The site contains royalty free photographs contributed by many artists. You can use the pictures for commercial purpose. It has an advanced search feature that you can use to filter photos based on size, rating, categories, etc.
Woophy If you are looking for royalty free pictures of any place on the earth, its culture, and the peculiarities it represents, then you must visit this site. There is a large World map on the home page filled with dots that represent photos of that place. You click on the dot and browse all the photos taken at that place.
Unprofound Royalty free stock photos in this site are sorted by basic colors. If you are looking for an image that will color match with the background color of your website, this is a good place to find one.You can also create your own website here and upload your images for others to use.
EveryStockPhoto Though the site has more than 4.5 million photos, there is no uniform license applied to all the photos found at the site. It is a photo search engine and they try to index only royalty free photos. After you find a photo at EveryStockPhoto, you need to read the licensing terms for its usage.
StockVault It is photo sharing site. You can use the photos only for personal and non-commercial use. If you are building a site for the local chapter of your favorite charity or for for your home association, you can use their images in your site. If you are running a commercial site, I would not recommend royalty free images from this site unless you get explicit approval from the owner of the image.
FreeDigitalPhotos Royalty free photos are categorized by animals, people, places, plants, etc. However, it requires you to place a hyperlink to their site for every photo you use. I would not recommend it unless you are desperate for an image that you cannot find nowhere else.
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