Where To Find Free Images For Your Web Marketing Campaign
 by: Roz Volv


The Web is flooded with million images. Try Google image search or my favorite Picsearch.com and know what I mean. You are tempted to grab the best images and use it for your website. And of course you can do it. Just right-click and save these images. They look so great on your websites. But as you can guess you can not do it or you can but on your own risk. A joke about Gettyimages - “they have three employees and two hundred lawyers” shows what you can expect – a big lawsuit against you or a nasty email with a request to delete the images you love so much from you website immediately.

Why? Images are commodity on the Web. A right image at a right place and at a right time can bring thousands people to your websites. Thousands- millions users and pageviews; this is exactly what most (if not all) website’s owners are dreaming about.

The beauty of the Web is that you have a choice. There are images on the web that cost a fortune and you should pay, there are images that cost much less and there are free images.

Rights-Managed Images: Images you purchase for a specific purpose at a specific price (think renting the photo or paying to borrow the image). The price of the picture is usually determined by how you want to use the picture (on the web, in print, etc.). The plus side to using a rights-managed photo is that you will most likely NOT see anyone else using the same photo (or model) promoting another product. The downside is of course the price; rights managed photos can cost you double (even triple) of what royalty-free runs.

Royalty-Free Images: Images purchased outright, either as single images or on disc volumes in bulk, and can be used any way you want, with certain restrictions. Pricing for royalty-free images is usually decided by the size of file you want to purchase; the larger the file (meaning, the better the quality of the image), the higher the price. The good news with royalty-free images is that if you are using them for the web (on websites, advertisements, etc.), you can use the smaller files, thus saving yourself a lot of money. For printing purposes however, you will need to buy the larger file sizes. And typically royalty-free images can be used however you like.

From my own experience working as a web designer for last ten years, I know that there are situation where you should buy and there are situation where you are just fine with free images. I am not talking about the situation where you boss or client asks you to get images from getty or istock, cut these images here and there and use them. This is not legal. I am talking about situation where free images (not royal-free, they still cost money) really free images of good quality can be used for your particular purposes.

One of good example is your Christmas marketing campaign. You want to place a face of Santa Claus on your page or your online newsletter. Or you want to have these attractive Christmas banners with a decorated tree, snow and red bow. You can do with FREE absolutely free images.

I found great Christmas images and I want to share them with you. You can find them at http://www.vancouvergo.com/free Hurry, they will be sitting here till the first days of 2007 then I will move them to an archive. I have other free images to share with you, you can find them on vancouvergo.com, just click "Free images".

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

This Ho-Ho-Ho article is written by Roz Volv, a http://vancouvergo.com webmaster. The site is in process of developing but already has a lot to offer including FREE web directory. You can contact Roz Volv at [email protected]

About The Author
Roz Volv is a http://vancouvergo.com webmaster. The site offers FREE web directory, tutorials, online coupons and more. You can contact Roz Volv at [email protected]