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Top Free Image/Photo Sites For Teen Business Content
A picture tells a thousand words. If you are creating articles and high quality text content for your blog/social media posts, be sure to include images to grab your reader's attention and truly tell your story. The picture/image will draw your followers into your content. Have you ever heard of a “scroll-stopper?” A scroll stopper is when people on their social media accounts stop scrolling through their feed because an image catches their attention. If you are just posting text, there is a good chance people will scroll right past your post. If you plant a great image, you may catch a few eyes and land some readers. Does this make sense?
For your website, you should be applying the same concepts. Text, in itself, isn’t visually interesting. If you combine high quality images, eye catching graphics, and a few videos (all high quality “media”) visitors will have a much more interesting and engaging experience.
To add images and photos to your online business, you have a few options.
Upload your own photos and images.
Utilize the photos/media associated with your website building platform. In our case it’s Wix.
Download FREE photos from recommended websites and use them as your own.
Download FREE photos from certain recommended websites but you must attribute credit to the image creator/owner.
Screenshot/Download from Browser
Free vs. Royalty Free
Some of the “stock” photo websites I will be referencing provide photos at no cost and can be used indefinitely. Some other sites sell royalty free stock photos/images. Royalty-free images are a special category of images that come with a unique license. Individuals and businesses can license (purchase) a royalty-free image once, then use that image indefinitely without having to renew the license. Depending on the size/quality of these images, the cost can range from $20 to a few thousand dollars for each image.
What does “Stock” Photo mean? At its most basic definition, stock photography is an industry that creates and sells imagery in the form of photos, illustrations, or videos and can be purchased for use through various licensing models
Here are 4 of the best Royalty Free Stock Photo/Image websites
Paid Sites: Royalty Free Stock Photo/Image
For teens interested in making a living (or starting a business) as a “Stock” photographer here are some very popular sites to become a contributor to sell their own photos.
This next option is my favorite! The only time I have ever paid for an image is when I couldn’t find what I needed on the free sites. I composed a few Christmas singles (which are on iTunes) and had a specific vision for the cover. The free photo/image sites did not have what I wanted so I purchased a few images from shutterstock. They came out great! However, I use free images 99% of the time.
The photos and images on these next websites are free to download and free to use as often as needed. Explore all options and download whatever you can use for your online business.
FREE Images/Pictures
www.wix.com Free use of all photos
www.canva.com Free high quality photos. Less options on the “free” plan. The paid plan opens up many more photo options. Highly recommended to upgrade.
https://www.pexels.com Free high quality photos you can use everywhere. ✓ Free for commercial use ✓ No attribution required.
https://pixabay.com/images/search/pics Find images of Pics. ✓ Free for commercial use ✓ No attribution required ✓ High quality images.
https://burst.shopify.com Browse thousands of beautiful copyright-free images. All pictures are free to download for personal and commercial use, no attribution required.
FREE Images/Pictures: Attribution of Credit Required
https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/pics Find & Download Free Graphic Resources for Pics. 4000+ Vectors, Stock Photos & PSD files. ✓ Free for commercial use ✓ High Quality Images. Attribution is required.
https://unsplash.com/ Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. Better than any royalty free or stock photos. Attribution is required.
Go through all of these sites and look for images that you can use for your niche/interest. Download a bunch and keep them on standby. You’ll then be ready to begin uploading images to your blog, website, or social media accounts. Have fun with this!
SCREENSHOTS
I thought I’d save the best for last. If you see an image online that you would like on your website but can’t download the image, you can take a “screenshot” of it. It is perfectly legal for you to publish screenshots in an article/blog post that is discussing the content of those images. It would only become an issue if you alter the image/logo/trademark and make it into something that it’s not. If it’s a stock photo on a royalty free website, it’s probably best not to use it.
Downloading Photos right from the internet
Before using screenshot, you can try to download the image first. On a Mac, press “Control” and then click on the image. Look for the option to download the image.
On a PC…..
Right-click the image.
Choose the command Save Picture As. The command might be different in browsers other than Internet Explorer.
Use the Save Picture dialog box to find a location to save the picture. You can rename the picture as it's saved to your computer's storage system. ...
Click the Save button.
When you are ready to download images/photos, create a folder on your desktop and save all images in that folder. Create sub folders if the images should be in separate categories. Be sure to re-name your files and include keywords. Make a note somewhere if you need to attribute credit to the owner (you’ll note this somewhere on your website when attributing credit to the owner), and be sure to follow through with giving credit. This is based on the honor system. You will not be asked to remove the photo from your website if you don’t attribute credit, but it’s the right thing to do.
Call To Action:
Browse through these “FREE” websites and download images you can use for your new teen online business! I know you’ll have fun with this! I want to see some of your photos. Send them up to our group, facebook page, or post them on our FORUM!
- JP
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