I find so many well written articles on here but many lack an appealing design. One easy thing every writer could do is using pictures in their articles. Not just only one so that your blog has a thumbnail, but maybe two or three more to give your words even more mood.
Sometimes I see people using pictures from Google. I want to be very clear: Don't ever do this! Those pictures are protected by some form of copyright almost all the time. If you use them and the owner notices that you may get in serious trouble.

Maybe a short anecdote about that:

I worked many years for TV Companies and did screen design for TV Shows. So sometimes when the deadline is tight or you are producing a live show where there is no time at all, an author has an idea about a joke or topic he wants to do in the show. He has a specific picture in mind he might have seen on Google or Instagram or something and he want to use that picture, but no one can reach to the owner. Then the author starts talking you into using the picture without clearing the rights.

Once there was a show where the author wanted to use a picture of a food blogger, my colleague showed him many pictures from free sources and even some from paid sources. But the author still wanted to use that specific picture from a famous food-blogger. We told him many times that this will backlash, but he didn't want to hear what we had so say. So we used the picture he wanted. Two days forward the show was on air and at the next day we received a letter from a lawyer wanting 8000$ from us because we used the picture of one of his clients. Long story short, dont use pictures you dont have the rights to use, it will be very expensive. He was lucky because the production company paid for the picture, but you are independent and so you will have to pay out of your own pocket. In some cases that may ruin you.

Since most of us aren't making that much money with our blogs, paid picture services aren't really an option. So I thought I should make a list of free sites I use all the time (even for professional work). Here are some of the sites I use frequently, some are more known some are less known. But every site has it's own specific usecase. I hope you find a site you didn't already knew.

Realistic Shots

Realisitc Shots provides perfect pictures for your lifestyle blog. They are already heavily graded and look like them come directly from Instagram.

Terms

„All photos published on Realistic Shots are licensed under Creative Commons Zero which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos, even for commercial purposes. Attribution is not required, but appreciated.„

Unsplash

Unspash is very similar to Realisitc Shots, Instagrammly looking photos that you can use perfectly for your blog.

Terms

„All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible.„

piqs

piqs is a german site so be aware that licenses may vary to your country but the terms site says that all pictures are under CC BY 2.0 DE. Nonetheless the site provides great quality pictures and you can find many that are not as heavily graded as on the two sides above so you still have the chance to give them your own look via a photograde software.

Terms

Please read the terms for CC BY 2.0 DE at creative-commons.org

Pixabay

I think most of you will already know pixabay, its one of the most known sources for free pictures, and also one of the biggest and best. It also offers vector graphics & videos.

Terms

"...images and videos available under Creative Commons CC0 on Pixabay. The term "image(s)" includes photos, vector graphics, drawings and illustrations. "Video(s)" means moving images, animations, footage and other audiovisual content.”

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons is also widely known but please keep in mind that you have to watch very closly wich license the pictures have because there is a wide spectrum of licenses on here.

Terms

Every picture may have a different license. So please keep an eye on what license the picture you want to use has. You can find a discription of those licenses here.

flickr

So thats one of my favorite sites. Flickr is widely known but one of my secret tips is if you want to use hystoric pictures (which are very very expensive most of the time) you can use the internet books archive on there to find what you need. But keep in mind you still have to watch very closely what license the pictures have since they vary very much on here also.

textures

This site is perfect if you need a seamless repeating pattern for example for texturing a 3D Object or making a seamless background and so on. You have 15 credits per day and can download 15 images per day. That should be enough for your posts, if you want to download more or a higher resolution you have to buy credits. But since those credits reload everyday you should be good.

Terms

Please read the terms, they are very specific on what you can and you can't do with them, from my point of view using them in your blog won't be a problem but #DYOR.

poliigon

This one is very similar to textures but with way better quality, I have nothing agains textures.com it's a great site with great quality and a huge variety but poliigon really set a new standard. I've been using it ever since it's release and cant work without it.
But every medal has two sides, so the drawback here is that while you can create a free account, once your credits are used you have to pay to keep downloading. But on the other side you can create a new account and download again for free.

Terms

So that were some sites I use all the time.

But I can't stress this enough:
do your own research before you take a picture from one of those sites!

I hope that article was helpful to you! If thats the case I would highly appreciate a vote. If you have a question feel free to ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer them. Maybe you have an other free site you had good experiences with, I would like to hear about it in the comments. If you want to see more posts like this follow me so you won't miss out.

Much love
Benjamon