When I started a blog for my real estate business several years ago I quickly realized that I was going to have to find a way to find illustrations for my blog posts. Blog posts without images can look pretty bland. Images on your blog can also drive a lot of traffic to your website. But where could good topical photos be found? My quest for images grew as I started several other blogs.
I knew enough about copyright law to realize that I couldn't just take someone else's work. Many people are under the misconception that they can use any photographs and illustrations they find on the web. That's simply not so. Just because you find an illustration in Google Images for example doesn't mean that you can use it. Others think it's OK to take someone's image if they link back to the website or include attribution. Again, that's not so. It very likely could be copyright infringement with legal and financial consequences.
You can use an image if you have explicit permission from the copyright holder or if you find an image that is clearly copyright free. Try a search online for "copyright free images" or something similar. One place to search for images that are available to use is Creative Commons on Flickr. Even here you'll need to pay close attention to what if any limitations there are on use. Some photographers won't allow their images to be used for commercial purposes for example. If your blog is for business you'll need to find another photo. Often you'll be asked to attribute the photo that you use with a link back to the photographer's page.
It's often easiest to take photos yourself You can do a good job with a moderately priced digital camera and some practice. In a pinch you can use the camera in your phone. Keep the resolution low and the image size small. There's no need for high resolution since you're using the pictures online. A larger picture will take too long to download and will slow down the load time on your website or blog.
You may want to tinker with your photos once you download them to a computer. Irfanview is an excellent photo editing program. Best of all it's free. You can rotate, crop, resize and brighten your images with Irfanview. You can also add text or merge photos together to create panoramic images.
Eventually there'll come a time - or a post - when you can't easily take a photo to illustrate your point. It's time to turn to the stock images sites online. While some offer images for free you'll often have the best luck with sites that charge reasonable per image fees or offer monthly or yearly memberships. Enter a search term on the stock images site and sift through the results for an appropriate image to illustrate your post. Can't find something you like? Try the search on the web to see if there's another site selling photos and illustrations that has something that might work. Sometimes in a pinch you might need to edit your post a bit to include something more in line with the illustration you've chosen.
Good illustrations are a valuable element in your blog or website. Eye catching illustrations will add to your site's appeal. If you properly optimize your images for web searching you'll be amazed by the traffic that arrives at your blog via your images. Getting the best illustrations for your blog or website is well worth a small investment in time and money.
My quest for quality illustrations for blog posts led me to create a vintage images website. Here you'll find a wide variety of illustrations at modest prices that you can use on your website or for a myriad of other purposes including business cards, crafts projects, scrapbooking and more.
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