Can You Legally Use That Image On Your Blog Or Website?

Where To Get The Best Free Images For Blogs

I'm often asked on what sites do I find the free stock images I use on my blogs and on the backgrounds for my bookmarks. I mainly hit just three sites on the Internet that have consistently had the best free images for blogs that I've ever found.

And these images can be used and shared for free, even commercially, without paying any royalty fees or paying for a membership to access the content.

Royalty-Free But Not Completely Free Stock Images
There are some website owners who believe in paying for everything they use, even their images. And that's fine! There are sites where you can find very high quality stock images that you must pay a membership fee to access plus you have to pay at least $1.00 or more to download and use. The photographers are paid a portion of these fees also.

For example, iStockphoto, which is the most often used by site owners and bloggers, has a massive collection of high quality photographic images you can purchase to use. You need to register an account and then purchase credits which are used to purchase the photos.

Since these are royalty-free images, meaning you only need to pay once for the photo and you can use it for multiple applications. So for instance, if you paid for the photo to use in an article, you can also use it in your print material without having to pay for it again.

This is actually a great opportunity for new artists to showcase their artwork and get paid for others to use them. I've used iStockphoto on occasion when I've exhausted all my other free resources and I'm still stuck for some images.

Completely Free Stock Images
For those of you just starting out, though, there are still people out there who enjoy providing content for others to use for free, with no royalty fees or any other strings attached whatsoever. And the sites themselves don't even charge a membership fee to join and download their content.

Because I'm a one-person operation and I provide my content for free, I do use the completely free sites first.

Microsoft's Clip art, photos, and animations
The Microsoft Image Gallery is the first place I go for the images I use on my blogs. The reason I really like using the images from this site is because of their licensing terms.

From Section 3.2 of the Microsoft Services Agreement:

Who can access my content? You have initial control over who may access your content. If you share content in public areas of the services or in shared areas available to others you've chosen, you agree that anyone you have shared content with may, for free, use, save, reproduce, distribute, display, and transmit that content in connection with their use of the services and other Microsoft, or its licensees', products and services.

If you don't want others to have that ability, don't use the services to share your content. If you use or share content on the services in a way that infringes others' copyrights, trademarks, other intellectual property rights, or privacy rights, you are breaching this agreement.

You represent and warrant that for the duration of this agreement you have (and will have) all the rights necessary for the content you upload or share on the services and that the use of the content, as contemplated in this section 3.2, won't violate any law.

In plain English, this means if you upload your images to Office.com, you are allowing anyone to use those images for any reason, including commercial. Basically, if you don't want people to access and use your images, don't put them there.

The quality of the photographic images at Office.com is comparable to other sites, and users are continually adding more images to the site, so there's always a wide variety. You can also download your favorite images and edit them in a photo editor before using them.

Because of the licensing and terms of use Microsoft provides, Office.com is actually the best source for free images for blogs I've found yet.

Stock.XCHNG
I love this website for free images, but today you have to be a little careful when using them. Now that Stock.XCHNG is a part of the Getty Images company, I make sure that I have a disclaimer on my blogs and sites to protect myself. Getty Images can be a little shady in their handling of images, as I explained in the video above, so you have to be careful about what you use from this site.

Google Advanced Image Search
Google is another place where you can find free images for blogs, but you need to use Google's Advanced search to find images you can use without worrying about royalties and licensing. I show in the video exactly how to access images that have been uploaded by the users with no strings attached, completely free to use including for commercial purposes.

Take Your Own Photos!
This is probably the absolute best way to get free images for websites and blogs - take your own photos! If you look at my article about getting PC help, the first two images in that article are photos I took myself of my own headset using just my webcam and PhotoShop.

You don't have to be a professional photographer to take some of your own images for your blogs. As long as you have a decent digital camera, or in my case, a webcam that takes still shots, you can always make your own free images!

Karen S Musselman blogs about a variety of topics including working at home and online marketing. She offers tips on a variety of home business topics and how to make money blogging. Visit today for more information and stop by her YouTube channel too!

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