Sometimes it can seem daunting to find free photos online. There are countless stock image sites out there, but if you are starting out blogging or even as a small business trying to find images for your site, the costs can easily mount up. Especially if you follow the idea that the more content you put out, the better.
There are actually several sites that offer free photos under creative commons license. If you are unfamiliar with creative commons, it’s basically a license that people tag their images that offers people’s images in the public domain. Pretty nice, isn’t it? There are several ways to find it, but here is a good place to start.
Sometimes you’ll find the perfect image that way. But there’s another way that is embedded in the ever-popular Google Image Search that is even easier. For those who don’t know, Google image search is like google, but for pictures. Pretty simple, really. It searches the descriptions, captions, and titles embedded into the photos online to find what you’re looking for, and the results are actually pretty good.
The Steps:
Let’s say that you have a travel blog but your camera was stolen so you can’t share the photos you took of a trip. Bummer, but it happens (like it did to me). For this example we will use Byron Bay, Australia because it’s just a great place.
Step 1: Go to Google Image Search and Type in your search.
Step 2: On the results page, click on the “gear” icon in the top right and choose “Advanced Search”
Step 3: Click on “Usage Rights” At the end of the bottom and choose “Free To Use Or Share”
There is a slight area here on the option to choose “Free to share, even commercially”. If you are using the image to sell a product, then you might want to choose the “even commercially” option. But if it’s for a blog post and you aren’t directly making money off the image, you should be fine using the “free to use or share” option that gives you more results. Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer so if you are worried about this you might want to ask someone more qualified. I can tell you i’ve never been hassled with anything I’ve used….
Step 4: Find and download your image!
Once you see an image you like, you just have to click on it, click “view image”, and download it!
And there you have it! If you need help posting an image, get in touch with me for a one on one coaching session. Or you can always contact me via the many methods below.
Good luck!
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