No matter your industry or profession, visuals will play a big part in promoting your business in both your online and offline marketing. In fact, visual imagery (over plain text) is 40X more likely to get you noticed or shared on social media than other types of content.
When it comes to stock images though, it’s important that you do your research and ‘shop around’; as this will help you find images that will allow you to stand out in your marketing.
To get you started, we’ve compiled a list of great stock photo sources that are free to use. Be sure to have a browse through them, and start creating collections of visuals that you can use to promote your company in your marketing materials.
Before you go ahead and start your research, it’s important to understand that – for the most part – the ‘free’ photos provided by the websites below aren’t strictly owned by the sites.
They’re actually owned (and are therefore the Intellectual Property) of the original creator or photographer.
Because of this, we as content creators need to bear in mind that we may be asked by the original creators to credit their work in some way. It’s also worthwhile reading the T’s & C’s on each website and double checking that the images provided are allowed to be used commercially.
Free stock image sources
- Death to Stock Photo – Yeah you guessed it they want to brake away and redefine what stock photography is. They offer high-resolutions images in their newsletter. You can go premium for $10/month if you want access to the full library.
- Raumrot – Not the nicest sounding name ever, however, Raumrot offer free photography that are often themed which is great when searching for the same type of images in a set.
- Gratisography – Gratisography is a simple photo resource that is updated weekly with high-resolution photos for personal and commercial use for no cost.
- PicJumbo – PicJumbo offers you free stock photography for personal and commercial use. The filing system PicJumbo has for their images is brilliant; everything is labelled correctly, helping you find what you need fast and easy.
- Pexels – Pexels offers you free stock photos and they add 5 fresh photos each day – they also offer you royalty free stock video as well! How cool is that? Both photos and videos are available for personal and commercial use.
- Unsplash – Unsplash provides you with ten high-resolution photos every ten days that are free to use for personal and commercial use.
- Little Visuals – Little Visuals will email you 7 high resolution photos upon sign up ,and will email you 7 new photos every week.
- PikWizard – PikWizard provides unique stock photography, many of which are entirely exclusive to the site! The images are also available to use commercially, making this a great option for your business content.
- The Pattern Library – Saved the best till last, The Pattern Library is a little different to the rest. It pulls patterns and designs shared by designers that you can use in your own work!
Be sure to browse the options we’ve given you and figure out which sites are best (and valid) for you and your brand’s visual content. Many of the sites could provide the same images, but don’t get lazy in your research – keep on going until you find the visuals you want!
