Stock photos play important roles in online blogs and a variety of small-scale and large-scale projects. They provide an impact that words could not suffice – a visual appeal that provides readers some time to pause after reading several lines or even walls of texts. However, some photos and illustrations in stock photo sites don’t come cheap and this is where cheap stock photos come in.
The internet is a vast infinite space of data that could store limitless amount of content. Given that fact, there are millions, or even billions of images scattered and stored all throughout its endless storage spaces. To make matters interesting, there are a whole lot of websites with a lot of contributors that provide fresh images and other content constantly with thousands and thousands of new images every week and month.
With an almost limitless supply of potential images you can use for your blog at your disposal at any given time, you should definitely invest in purchasing photos from stock photo sites. But you should make sure to thoroughly check out several sites so that you’d be able to find the content you need and not regret investing in a subscription.
The following sites are among the popular sites where you can buy cheap stock photos for your blog and projects:
- Fotolia – is a recurring stock photo site in most reviews and suggestion list due to their popularity as large stock photo company. Fotolia offers affordable royalty-free stock images and illustrations as well as other creative content. Its library is crowdsourced, meaning most, if not all, of the content they provide were contributed by its members. The major advantage of Fotolia over other agencies is that they do not give restrictions such as time limit or number of allowable prints.
- Morguefile – provides users with both free and cheap stock high resolution photos. They designed their site like a social media community wherein members can share opinions, likes, and they can ever share it on other popular social media sites. They also made a really cool feature that allows users to even edit and crop photos before downloading them.
- iStock – uses their own credit system which allow members to purchase their affordably cheap stock photos and illustrations. They sport a competent search tool that can neatly organize search results for the convenience of the user. Since this is also owned by Getty, you can rest assured this is a trusted place you can safely invest in.
- Shutterstock – along with Fotolia, this is one of the most recognized stock photo libraries with several millions of royalty-free content. Its contributors provide thousands of fresh new content every day and you will be sure to find something new after each visit.
- Bigstock – no longer features a pay-as-you-go payment system and now uses a subscription payment system instead. But despite that, they still several millions of interesting content and beautiful royalty-free stock photos. Furthermore, their subscription fees seem quite affordable nonetheless.
There are a lot more agencies out there that offer cheap stock photos but it’s always a rule of thumb to check out the features and images before paying for credits or subscription. And it’s always a good thing to check out sites that have a large quantity of quality content.
123rf.com
With Bigstock the name says it loud and clear. If you are looking for really big photos for large pint work, Bigstock has over 20 million royalty-free photographs with some images over 3,000 x 1,000 dpi definition. Like the first two on the list, Bigstock sells cheap stock photos by either purchasing credits at $2 apiece or low-cost subscription plans starting at $79, which lowers the cost per photo to just $0.53. Bigstock has an extended license option which allows you to use the purchased content in any derivative intended for resale. This works out to be much less expensive than other cheap stock photo sites because you pay only for your actual usage needs, which is a great lower-cost solution for smaller business.
images on the web. Dollar Photo Club offers photos for just $1 each, but the catch is you have to sign up for a membership that must be approved by their staff. If approved there is a $10 monthly membership fee, in addition to the $1 per-photo charge. That’s it, just the one take-it-or-leave-it plan at a fixed cost and membership can be canceled at any time. Dollar Photo Club also offers their members an Ambassador Program that allows members to refer others and receive a commission for each new member who is approved.
With over 45 million royalty-free stock images Shutterstock is one of the largest suppliers of cheap stock images on the web. Shutterstock provides two ways to purchase images: with an “Image on Demand” feature which is a strict “pay-as-you-go” system that sets the price at $14.50 per photo; or with a subscription that takes the price down to $0.27 per image with a 30 day package of 750 photos for $199. Obviously, Shutterstock isn’t the best choice if you are looking images for a few bucks apiece. However, if you are someone who uses a lot of images and requires a large selection to choose from than the low per-image price is very hard to beat and will meet the demands of even the most demanding photo buyer.