If you have a website or a blog or if you create marketing materials, you probably have run into instances where you needed graphics to make a point in a post, to illustrate your brochure or to make your website pretty. While there are many sources of royalty-free images, royalty free doesn’t mean FREE. You still have to pay to have the rights to download and utilize those images. So what’s a cash-strapped marketer, individual blogger or small business to do?
Say hello to stock.xchg! Recently acquired by royalty-free asset super site iStockPhoto.com, stock.xchg is all about truly free images. Individuals take photos and/or create interesting graphics and then upload them to the site. You get to download and use the images for free. Each artist has the right to ask for credit for their work, but the licensing requirements are very liberal. You can utilize the images for commercial purposes such as printed materials, websites and other marketing materials. You cannot compile and resell images, and you must get permission from the artist if you are going to use the image for something you’re going to resell (website templates, printed items you intend to sell, print-on-demand items).
What’s nice is that the vast majority of the images are very high quality and high resolution. Of course, if you can’t find what you need, convenient PAID content is served up by iStockPhoto right above and below the free stock.xchg images, but even those paid images are inexpensive.
Now you have no excuse not to include professional-quality images on your site and on your marketing materials. You’re welcome!
Photo credit:BrokenArts
