Photos are vital for your blog posts. An engaging photo, even loosely related to your post content will make readers more likely to pay attention to your content. Photos present an image of professionalism that will make readers trust your content more.

While you can easily get free photos from Wikimedia, the images available are not always a good fit for your topic. If you are looking for better free images, there are some websites you can try. While an internet search will turn up multiple sites that offer “free stock images”, the phrase is misleading. These sites are actually providing “royalty free” images that you must pay to download. Many sites allow use of images free for personal use, but not for commercial use. It is important you find truly free images that do allow commercial use.

For absolutely free images, you can try some of these sites. It is important you understand that usage permissions can change at any time. You should read the permissive use statements yourself before using images from any of these sites.

MorgueFile

Don’t let the name fool you. This site has nothing to do with death. There are some incredible images available for free. The gorgeous photo you see to the left came from that site. You embed the code in your site (as you would with YouTube), which gives them the link back and saves you hosting space. Of all the sites reviewed here, this one is by far the easiest to use.

FreePixels

FreePixels offers you free photos that you can download to your PC, but there is no need to register. Simply click on the photo you like, download, then post to your blog. This image (left) was taken from that site.

FreePhotosBank

This site is similar to FreePixels, but lets you view all photos by a photographer. This is nice for the photographer and makes it easy to find images similar to the one you are looking at. The image to the left was downloaded from FreePhotosBank.

DesignPacks

This site offers some incredible image theme packs. Fifteen images are available in each pack, which you download as a zip file. This image would make a knock-out background.

freerangestock.com

This site is not nearly as easy to use as the others, but gives you another source for free images. You must register to download photos. Still, the quality of the photos available is excellent as you can see.