The Problem With Royalty Free Images

In the world of the internet blog, content is king. It doesn't matter if the blog is personal or for business, or a combination of the two - if a visitor is not engaged on a visual level, it's not unusual that they would leave much sooner than if they had a combination of both text and engaging visual images. An image is a good way to add life to what might otherwise be a rather drab lump of dead text on the screen.

Don't have a blog? Well maybe you could use some nice imagery for your Squidoo lens. Or maybe you would like to create your own t-shirt or mug to sell on Zazzle. There are also sites that allow processing of CDs using your own content. Your imagination is the only limit.

Weaned as we are by the internet giants, it seems quite plausible that we simply 'Google' anything we need information about. In fact the number of websites on the internet runs into the hundreds of millions. All of them teem with information. Whether or not it is the correct information is another matter, but it exists there in the cyber world - thrust towards us - as a solution to every problem we have.

It's not unthought of then, to 'Google' free images for commercial use in order to find some engaging content for our blogs. But why is it that the purveyors of these 'free' images that Google offer insist on us paying for them? Is it that they have found a source for free images and are charging us money for our ignorance? Or are they merely our benefactors who are saving us from sub-standard, poor quality images which would only mar our otherwise beautiful websites?

I don't know if we will ever know the answer to those questions, but if there's one thing anyone should know about the internet, it's to look further. Don't settle for what's offered when you can get it yourself for a little extra work. I began my search for images that I could use free - and more importantly that could be used freely for commercial use. So far, that journey has helped me to amass a collection of over 96 websites - all including free, varied, quality images. And my search continues. I laugh when I think of those other sites trying to convince me to pay for an image they claim is free. So should you!

Dave Lynch runs an internet marketing blog for newbies and offers subscribers a list of 96 websites with hundreds of thousands of real free images for commercial use. You can find more information here: http://www.davesinternetmarketing.info/royalty-free-images-free-for-commercial-use

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