Is the internet confusing you with legal terms and leaving you aghast as to how and where to get affordable royalty-free stock photos?
Stock Photo Services
There are a number of stock photo services available on the internet. Depending on your requirement you could find yourself in need of any of these services. Before you delve into what stock photo service do you need, you got to understand the license that comes with these photos.
Creative Commons Zero License
These are commonly known as CC0 stock photos and are open for use and modification for personal and commercial projects without prior permission from the owner.
Photos in Public Domain
Photos in the public domain either never had a copyright or their copyright has expired. These images can be used by anyone for their personal or commercial use.
Royalty-Free Stock Photos
Unfortunately, there is nothing free in ‘Royalty-free’. Royalty-free means that it gives you the right to use the copyright or intellectual property without you having to pay any royalties for the content. This essentially means you do not need to give license fees per use/per copy/volume.
My top 7 Places to find Royalty-free Stock Photos are:
- Envato Elements
- DepositPhotos
- Creative Market
- Picjumbo
- Bigstock
- Freepik
- Canva
Read on to find out what service can potentially suit you. But here is a big question, do you really need to buy stock photos?
Why Buy Stock Photos?
There can be a number of reasons you would want to ‘buy’ stock photos when there are so many free sites with a great number of quality stock photos.
You Love a Certain Image
Sometimes the heart wants what it wants. You could certainly develop a liking for some image and want to add it to your blog/design project or on some commercial project for your business. Sometimes you just know these images are so right for your design project or for your blog that getting them becomes a necessity for you. Other times it might come as a demand by your client. In any case, these high-quality images usually don’t disappoint.
You Like it ‘Picture-Perfect’
Using appropriate images for your blog posts can certainly take it from Ehh! to Aha! The human brain is trained to admire beauty. Once in a while, a beautiful picture in a black and white blog post can certainly ignite a spark in your readers’ mind. The subconscious definitely likes it.
These stock photography websites have highly talented professional photographers take their photos. Most of them have such an eye for detail that it leaves you in awe.
You Don’t Wanna Get Sued
Where there are so many genuinely generous people out there who give away there work for free, there are some mischevious people around too. We have heard plenty of cases of lawsuits where people are sued for using an image without a proper license.
Well, you must be thinking as bloggers I am obviously careful about using royalty-free, CC0 images but read on. There have been instances where people have put images on free stock photo sites and then removed them to sue people. So…
7 Perfect Places to Land Quality Stock Photos
You love your blog and business and can’t risk it for a mere image. Here are some websites with very affordable royalty-free stock photos to get you going.
Some of the links below are affiliate links. They don’t come to you with any additional costs but I get a small commission for spreading the word out to you.
#1 Envato
Envato Elements is simply the best deal out there. Not many people know that the huge online repository of graphics, themes, software, videos, and audios also has royalty-free stock photos.
They offer themed collections too so, it’s easy to find styled photos on a topic.
Pricing: $16.5/mo billed yearly ($33/mo billed monthly)
For this price, you get unlimited access to Envato Elements‘ graphics, WordPress Themes, Plugins, Stock Photos, fonts, design assets, stock videos, video templates, courses and ebooks from Tuts+.
Bonus: Photodune
Photodune by the Envato Marketplace is another great resource for getting affordable royalty-free stock photos. Especially if you are looking for individual stock photos for your projects/blogs.
Pros:
- You can purchase individual images
- Images are affordable for individual projects
- Bundles with similar themes for projects
Cons:
- Per Image, the price is more than what you would pay for in a subscription plan
Pricing: Stock photos in Photodune start from as low as $2.
#2 Depositphotos
If you use a lot of images in your blog you need to have a nice good credible subscription for your photos. Depositphotos is a good resource in that regard. They offer a fixed number of downloads every month and the remaining downloads transfer to the next month.
Plans
Pros:
- Unused downloads transferred to the next month
- Additional downloads for $1 only
- Can purchase a specific number of images too
- They have editorial images as well
- They have a free-image section too
Cons:
- Can’t purchase individual images
Pricing: $9.90/mo for a monthly flexible plan and $99/year for the same plan if you purchase an annual subscription. Additional images for $1 each.
#3 Creative Market
Creative Market has bundles as well as individual stock photos available on the website. These are super convenient if you are looking to purchase bundles with similar themes. Often times you’d need a few images for your project. In that case, going for a full monthly subscription is a long haul.
Not only that, Creative Market offers great graphics assets that can be integrated into your blog and social media graphics for as low as $2.
Pros:
- Quality photos at very reasonable prices
- Photo bundles are good for themed projects
- Can save a lot on photo bundles
- Individual image purchase
Pricing: Variable | Starting from as low as $2.
Bonus: You get 6 free goods every Monday upon signup. Believe me they are VERY GOOD!
#4 Picjumbo Premium
PicJumbo is a generous platform for free stock photos but it also comes with a PicJumbo Premium where you can get very affordable packages for great royalty-free stock photos. PicJumbo is a project by Viktor, who himself is a web designer, and so understands the requirement of a great picture that can go into your website and impress your audience.
Pricing: Starting from $10 for all premium photo collections.
Pros:
- Extremely affordable
- Various plans available as per your needs
- Web-friendly images
#5 BigStock
Bigstock has a ton of different plans to get you started. Not only do they offer quality stock images but also offer videos that you can use in your projects. Their plans come in a wide range and you can easily select one based on your blog’s needs and requirements.
Pros:
- A wide range of plans
- Quality photos
- Quality videos
Pricing: Monthly plans with 5 images/day for as low as $79. 150 images for $79.
Bonus: Start 7-day free trial and get 25 free images.
#6 Freepik
Freepik is a designers favorite place. With so many vectors, PSDs, stock photos and what not Freepik comes as a design resource that bloggers can greatly benefit from.
Although you can use their images for free, you need to give attribution to the author. To avoid that you can buy their very affordable monthly/yearly subscription.
Pricing: EUR 9.99/month or EUR 89.99/year (EUR 7.50/month)
Pros:
- No attribution for ‘selection’ resources
- Access to premium resources (stock images included)
- Graphic resources (vectors/PSDs…)
- High-quality stock images
- Extremely affordable
Cons:
- If you don’t have the subscription everything needs to be credited
#7 Canva
Many of your projects don’t require you to purchase a membership but many sites don’t allow you to get a single image at an affordable price. Canva comes with the best price and best value under such circumstances.
Pricing: You can get a single stock image starting from $1.
Not only that they provide amazing design resources, free stock photos and a gold mine of graphics templates available for free.
Pros:
- Free Stock Photos (too)
- Free Design Resources (too)
- Single Stock Photos available
- Edit Photos or add text before downloading
- Stock Photos for as low as $1
Cons:
- Have to purchase multi-use $10 or extended $100 license for removing the watermark
These were the 7 best places for you to get quality stock photos for your blog and business. Do you use any other site in addition to these for affordable stock images?
Not sure if you want to go buy stock images? Here’s how to Find Beautiful Free Stock Photos For Your Brand New Blog!
