It's FREE!

Where to find FREE photos for marketing materials 

Your coupon is tempting, your copy is persuasive, and your offer is being sent to all the right people, so why are you still being ignored?

Everything these days happens fast. People want tomorrow's facts now and don't have time to wade through the details. Sure, bold headlines grab people's attention, but add a bold image and your customer will be hooked just a little longer.

That's great right? No, not if you don't have a budget to purchase images or hire a photographer. Before you go on a search engine image hunt, remember not all images are free for you to use and there are people who would love to slap you with a lawsuit for using one of their images without permission. Luckily, there is a whole world full of images just waiting to be borrowed for free!

One such site is the popular free stock photography site Stock.XCHNG at www.sxc.hu/ which has a wide variety of professional and user-uploaded images that are free and royalty free. Royalty free means that you don't have to pay the photographer each time you use their image. Stock.XCHNG also offers PhotoShop tutorials and other helpful tools. To download images, you have to become a member, but membership is free and signing up is easy!

Another great resource is www.everystockphoto.com. This site is very similar to Stock.XCHNG but instead of just searching its own database for images you're looking for, it also searches other stock image sites.

If you’re looking for other free image sites, remember that royalty free doesn't always mean that the image is free. So be sure to double check that the image is both free to use and royalty free before you find the perfect image.

Know of any other great Web sites for finding free photos and other marketing resources? Let us know!