When you're building your business' website, adding some engaging images can help to not only enhance the look of your splash page and the contents within, but can also help with drawing in more traffic.
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Although "free" photographs from online resources seem like a good option since many contain collaborative works from multiple photographers and artists and, of course, they're free, be wary of any potential copyright laws that may have been overlooked or violated. And it?s possible that the photos you choose will end up on other sites as well.
The alternative is to turn to stock photography websites that contain thousands of existing photographs that can be licensed for specific uses. Also, using stock photography instead of hiring a photographer can save you time, effort and money because you can easily search for images under a range of different topics and don't have to invest in setting up your own photo shoot.
There are over a dozen different stock photography websites you can choose from and typically you can either purchase exclusive rights to individual images or you can purchase a subscription to download an "x" number of photos over a specified period of time.
One option is Photos.com (photos.com). It contains more than 325,000 professional royalty-free images and can only be downloaded through a subscription. Plans range from $149.95 to $699.95 and a single fee can enable you to download up to 250 photos from the Photos.com collection per day.
Another popular stock photography site is Photo-Wizard (photo-wizard.net) that contains thousands of high-quality photographs in more than 30 categories and can be used on websites or in promotional or educational materials. They are royalty free and single images can be purchased for $0.99 each. Subscriptions start at $49.95.
There's also ClipArt (clipart.com), which is known for its large variety of images and enables you to filter them based on file formats, like photographs, photo objects or clip art. Subscriptions can be purchased starting from $17.99.
If you're a non-profit organization there are some stock photography sites that will give you permission to use the photographs for free in exchange for acknowledging their source. Some of these include StockVault (stockvault.net), The Free Photographs Network (free-photographs.net) and Free Stock Photos (freestockphotos.net).
