Did you know that there are over 150 million blogs online, and that two new blogs are created every second? If you have a blog, you’ve probably caught on to the fact that it’s a competitive market. One tactic that is sure to liven up any post and help gain you an audience is image adding. However, adding an image to your blog post is not as simple as copy pasting something from Google search. Here are three things you should keep in mind about free images for blogs.
1. Copyright Violations are Not a Myth
Did you know that your site could be taken down or fined if an artist notices you are using their photograph? It doesn’t matter if you make no money, if you cited where you found it, or you didn’t know it was wrong. One blogger, Roni Loren of roniloren.com, details how a photographer found his picture on her blog and demanded compensation. She felt bad and took it down immediately, but still ended up having to pay for an image she didn’t even want, or really use. Backward images searches are easy for artists to do, so avoid the hassle and use free use images.
2. The Sites Where You Can Get Blog Images Free
What sites can you get free images for blogs from? Popular sites such as Flickr, PhotoPin, and Wikicommons are all up for grabs. What you want to look for is images filed with a Creative Commons license, which makes photos “some rights reserved” rather than “all rights reserved.” The giant contribution encyclopedia Wikiedia, for example, uses images covered by the CC license. Flickr alone has over 200 million CC images, many of them a very professional grade, so finding suitable pictures should not be too difficult.
3. Don’t Spam Your Readers with Photos
It’s true that images are useful for both capturing and holding reader attention. Images can help balance out the white space on a page, which has been shown to increase reading comprehension by 20%. However, remember that you can easily have too much of a good thing. If you find yourself uploading 10 pictures for 300 words of text, your audience is probably getting annoyed with scrolling and how long they need to wait for images to load. Compose your blogs like a newspaper article where images are used for effect, but not to an overwhelming degree.
Where do you get blog images free?