Where to get images for your Ads, Landing Pages or Sites - 2017 Edition. (19)

We all need some photo content from time to time, whether we need them on our blogs, use them for making banners or landing pages. There is no shortage of paid image-banks, but most of them are way too expensive.

Here are some of them in case you are looking for high quality material and do not ming paying a few hundreds $ a month for access :

http://www.istockphoto.com/ by http://www.gettyimages.com/
https://www.shutterstock.com/ or their limited version https://www.bigstockphoto.com/
https://stock.adobe.com or their other one at https://www.fotolia.com
http://www.123rf.com/
https://photodune.net/ that is part of the Envato Market : https://market.envato.com/

In case you are looking for something more personal and don't mind to pay top $ for it, you can also choose to visit sites like https://500px.com/ and contact authors for individual licensing.

BUT WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO PAY?

First of all, let's face the reality – most affiliates don't give a damn about copyrights and use whatever images that they find. That's the way it is and there is no point in pretending it's not the case. In a world where ripping creatives and landing pages is the most popular sport ... it would be naive to expect everyone to honor copyright rules.

This topic has been discussed on STM Forum a lot of times already and truth to be told, the risk of getting into trouble because of an unlicensed image is very small. In most cases, a cease and desist order would do the job … but still, even thou I'm not gonna judge anyone, keep in mind some risk is still involved when working with unlicensed materials and you're the one who is responsible for your actions!

NOTE: Execute extreme caution especially when working with adult materials! Do not touch anything that looks even remotely underage, not even with a 10 foot pole! That can turn into a painful lesson that you don't want to go through.

WHEN RISK IS LOW, THEN WHY BOTHER?

Because it's better to not risk at all! And because you don't have to be a lazy ass that just rips stuff from others But anyways, whatever your reasons might be, I'm just here to give you the options.

When I'm looking for images to use on sites/blogs or something like that… I often start my search at https://www.flickr.com/ This is not exactly an image-bank, but rather a portal for photographers to show off their work.

But since many of them release their work under the Creative Commons license, you can use them for your marketing needs. Just make sure you check the particular license they are using – in some cases, they require attribution for example … the easiest to use are those that are marked as “Public Domain”, there are pretty much no restrictions on those.

BUT I WANT LICENSE FREE STUFF!

There are also some pretty good image-banks that offer license free images, obviously offering way less images than the paid ones, but they are still pretty cool places to use for image content.

Here are my favorite ones along with some new ones that I found while writing this article I checked all the sites and all of them were live at the date of writing this.

https://www.pexels.com/ - All images are distributed under the Creative Commons Zero CC0 License, which means that you can do whatever you want with them, including commercial use – resizing, cropping .. whatever.

https://www.pixabay.com/ - Another good one, using the same CC0 license. They claim to contain about 850.000 images already, which makes them a bigger source than pexels.com.

https://www.unsplash.com – Community of photographers who share their work under CC0 license too, this one is good for more artistic work. You can also browse by author, check how many downloads a photo has etc …

http://www.gratisography.com/ - This one features content from just one photographer, so the collection is limited … but the quality is awesome. Great for content with a bit of personality.

https:/www.picjumbo.com/ - This is a one man show too, the images are shared for free with only one limit – redistribution.

http://freestocks.org/ - This one utilizes full CC0 license again, there are some great photos from several authors to download.

http://www.lifeofpix.com/ - Not the biggest one, but using CC0 again and offering solid selection of HQ images. I can see these working well on blogs, sites …

http://www.freeimages.com/ - Another big one, but they don't have such a vague license, there are some limitations that you can check here : http://www.freeimages.com/license

https://stocksnap.io/ - Another license free – they will even send you the most popular images to your email.

http://deathtothestockphoto.com/ - And one more, again with almost no limitations other than non-pornographic or defamatory use … many of these sites require this actually.

http://openphoto.net/- On this one, the license can vary from one image to the next, it's always written under the image thou, so easy to find.

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/ - Quite a big one here again, almost 200.000 pics, some with additional licensing, but many are distributed as public domain.

https://www.splitshire.com/ - Free to use with some content limitations.

http://www.1millionfreepictures.com/ - The author doesn't really offer a million of photos, but there are many to choose from. Mass download available at an extra price.

http://viintage.com/ - This is a special one, offering vintage style graphics and 1000s of them with any limitations. Premium stuff available too.

http://nos.twnsnd.co/ - This one also offers old photos, free of copyrights.

http://publicdomainarchive.com/ - Not sure how big this one is, but it's free of copyrights too

http://skitterphoto.com/ - Another one built on user submitted content under the CC0 license.

https://morguefile.com/ - Close to 400.000 images on this one again. Quality varies based on the author. Free to use for commercial projects too.

https://freeimages.red/ - Quite a small one again, but with CC0 license, so worth a look.

https://www.goodfreephotos.com/ - And yet another one with public domain photos, 16.000 to choose from.

http://realisticshots.com/ - Great one for social media posts or blogs, limited amount of pics but very good quality.

http://freenaturestock.com/ - Need some nature shots? Smaller collection from one author, but with a free license

http://magdeleine.co/license/cc0/ - This site has photos with several licenses, I linked directly to the CC0 section.

http://isorepublic.com/ - This will be the last one for today. Very open license again, no attribution needed, thou they have some limitations as per their terms.

DON'T BE LAZY, THE IMAGES ARE THERE FOR THE TAKING!

As you can see there is a TON of sites where you can get images/photos for free. Don't be lazy and start using them. An image is worth a thousand words and it's very true in AM as well.

NOTE: Before you actually start using these CC0 images, it might be a good idea to read more about the Creative Commons licensing, just to make sure you understand what it is about : https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/

Your perfect image is just a few searches away … happy hunting

PS : In case you know about some other source(s) that should be on the list, please mention it in the comments.

What a great list!

Thank you so much

Google images - I know it's an easy one, but if you use certain/more keyword phrases you can get very specific and "rare" ones. Also look further than only page 1,2,3 or 6, sometimes a golden one is hidden at page 32!

Getty images loophole (might also work at other image sites); search for you thing, for example Tesco. The results already show HQ small images (mostly without gettyimages-mark), screenshot them and increase size like 25%. Big enough for a Facebook ad. Free and HQ

*this is not legal, so be careful!

Originally Posted by stickupkid

Google images - I know it's an easy one, but if you use certain/more keyword phrases you can get very specific ones

Getty images loophole (might also work at other image sites); search for you thing, for example Tesco. The results already show HQ small images, screenshot them and increase size like 25%. Big enough for a Facebook ad. Free and HQ

Originally Posted by matuloo

Google images works indeed, but I wanted to write about fully legal ways of obtaining images in this article

That's amazing. Thank you. And thanks again for regularly contributing good info to this forum both in comments and threads. I hadn't considered this and have just been downloading from google images while practicing coding my own landing pages lately. So this brings up a couple questions. Considering pop campaigns are short lived especially while testing LP's, what are the chances of being caught up with a copyrighted image? Consequences? Does the answer to the past two questions change in a tier 2/3 GEO? Does drastically altering the image in photoshop void copyright?

Originally Posted by brandonsharpe

I hadn't considered this and have just been downloading from google images while practicing coding my own landing pages lately. So this brings up a couple questions. Considering pop campaigns are short lived especially while testing LP's, what are the chances of being caught up with a copyrighted image? Consequences? Does the answer to the past two questions change in a tier 2/3 GEO? Does drastically altering the image in photoshop void copyright?

Originally Posted by stickupkid

My contribution is totally illegal...

Another addition to this list. Make and use your own photos. If you are focussing on a certain niche, for example fashion.
Go to shops, take your camera and make some good photos! This way you know NONE of your competitors is using the same, which make result in way better CTR and lower cost!

Originally Posted by stickupkid

Another addition to this list. Make and use your own photos. If you are focussing on a certain niche, for example fashion.
Go to shops, take your camera and make some good photos! This way you know NONE of your competitors is using the same, which make result in way better CTR and lower cost!

Originally Posted by matuloo

Yup, I wanted to do the same for our dating campaigns, but my wife gave me an ugly look when I brought it up )) Just kidding obviously, it's a solid idea for some niches for sure!

Originally Posted by stickupkid

Haha, what CTR would you get ya think? Honestly!

Great share!!!

The sites you mentioned use CC0 but they're for legal uses only. For example, pexels on its FAQ states that it can be used in any 'legal' manner. I'm thinking about using cc0 images of people for sweeps endorsement photos but I'm pretty sure that is not legal - i.e. the fact that they've claimed that they've won a iphone? What do you use for one of those sweeps lander wherein a person claims to have won an iphone in an fb comment with their profile pic and comment in a wheel of fortune sweeps lander?

Does the fact that its cc0 make it alright to use it any way you please? Including in the manner described above?


@matuloo;

Originally Posted by telebind123

The sites you mentioned use CC0 but they're for legal uses only. For example, pexels on its FAQ states that it can be used in any 'legal' manner. I'm thinking about using cc0 images of people for sweeps endorsement photos but I'm pretty sure that is not legal - i.e. the fact that they've claimed that they've won a iphone? What do you use for one of those sweeps lander wherein a person claims to have won an iphone in an fb comment with their profile pic and comment in a wheel of fortune sweeps lander?

Does the fact that its cc0 make it alright to use it any way you please? Including in the manner described above?


@matuloo;

Originally Posted by telebind123

The sites you mentioned use CC0 but they're for legal uses only. For example, pexels on its FAQ states that it can be used in any 'legal' manner. I'm thinking about using cc0 images of people for sweeps endorsement photos but I'm pretty sure that is not legal - i.e. the fact that they've claimed that they've won a iphone? What do you use for one of those sweeps lander wherein a person claims to have won an iphone in an fb comment with their profile pic and comment in a wheel of fortune sweeps lander?

Does the fact that its cc0 make it alright to use it any way you please? Including in the manner described above?


@matuloo;

Thanks for this huge list @matuloo

I was thinking on how to avoid searching manually on each site. Here is a string that you can enter in Google Images. It will restrict the search only to the sites in the list, and Google algorithm will rank photos of all sites based on your keyword. Just change "your keyword". You can use quotes or not, to narrow the search or not.

"your keyword" (site:pexels.com OR site:pixabay.com OR site:unsplash.com  OR site:gratisography.com OR site:picjumbo.com OR site:freestocks.org  OR site:lifeofpix.com OR site:freeimages.com OR site:stocksnap.io OR  site:deathtothestockphoto.com OR site:openphoto.net OR  site:publicdomainpictures.net OR site:splitshire.com OR  site:1millionfreepictures.com OR site:viintage.com OR site:nos.twnsnd.co  OR site:publicdomainarchive.com
 OR site:skitterphoto.com OR  site:morguefile.com OR site:freeimages.red OR site:goodfreephotos.com OR  site:realisticshots.com OR site:freenaturestock.com OR  site:magdeleine.co OR site:isorepublic.com)

Ya know... now that I see the whole world of online images from the perspective of someone searching out photos to use... you literally could not pay me enough to put my own photo or photos of my family on Pixabay or Pexels lol... seriously... you see these nice folks on Pixabay uploading all these images of themselves and their kids... and god only knows what morally questionable uses they will be put to one day... (not talking about anything illegal or nsfw - just ad campaigns that use the picture in a way you would never want your image portrayed, etc).

One day you upload your photo to Pixabay... the next day your face is on the bottom of every news website on earth above a headline implying you have E.D.